AN: Sorry for taking a while to update. This story is my next big focus so hopefully I can manage to not spend as much time on new chapters as it happened for this one.


Chapter 2

Cell Growth

It had been an hour and a half since Bubbles had left home for her most recent solitary night shift. As of now, her search hadn't led to any crime-fighting, as the city looked to be as calm as it could be throughout the night… well, it was true for the the districts she had checked up until now at least.

Yet, she knew she couldn't just check the entire metropolis. First, because the city was huge and she was alone, and second… because it was still a night shift.

Bubbles let out a yawn, unable to contain it any longer. She was beginning to get sleepy, which was in fairness one of her goals for the night. Considering that there was nothing to worry about as far as she could see, all she could do was going back home and get a couple of hours of sleep before the next morning.

Thus, she halted her flight and took a moment to stretch herself out, before turning around and flying in the general direction of the outskirts where her home was.

It was rather surprising, therefore, for Bubbles to hear screams in the distance.

After a brief second of hesitance, Bubbles zapped towards the origin of the sounds. She could hear more screaming in the distance… whatever was going on, it had to be serious. No time to go back and warn her sisters about it!

After a couple of turns at intersections and some seconds spent in flight, she finally arrived at her destination: one of the main avenues of Townsville. No one was on the street, as expected given what she'd seen during her previous reconnaissance patrol. The screams were coming from a building on the side, the base of a skyscraper in fact. Bubbles could even see people at the windows screaming their hearts out in the night, calling for help like their life depended on it. Which may have been the case…

Only when she carefully looked at the very foundations of the building did Bubbles understand why the citizen where so frightened.

Something was doing… something. Bubbles was unable to connect the image she was seeing to anything she had memory of, animals or monsters alike: it was a... a messy cluster of… something liquid?

It was hard for her to describe. The thing was only slightly greyish in colour, but in fact its body was mostly transparent, and below its 'skin' she could see something else moving fast and, apparently, at random, multiple objects in fact. Yet, the most striking feature was the lack of body parts: it was a shapeless mould of… whatever it was made of. The only hint at it being alive was that it was doing something at the skyscraper… something damaging.

Bubbles could see it now: it was consuming the foundations of the building, somehow, and it had gotten pretty far into the lower floor. The entire building gave a wobble, which in turn made the people above let out even more terrified screams.

"Bubbles! Bubbles!" a woman shouted when she saw the Powerpuff Girl hovering in the street. "Help us!"

She didn't let her say it twice. Floating towards the creature, Bubbles scowled at the thing, but she still decided to talk to it first. No harm done in trying to get this sorted out without a fight.

"Hey, you! You… whatever kind of monster you are!" Bubbles called out. "Stop it! You're scaring the wits out of the people in it!"

The creature didn't budge, and simply went deeper into the building. Bubbles could hear the fizzling of metal and concrete from behind the body of it.

"Hey, rude! I'm talking with you! HEY!"

Finally, she finally managed to get its attention… at least, it looked like so. The fizzling stopped, but the creature didn't turn around at all. It simply froze, seemingly having just crashed like an old pinball game shaken one time too much.

Yet… Bubbles could feel that it hadn't just stopped in confusion, or even died on the spot. No… it was still there.

She felt like… it was observing her.

Then, without a notice, something sprouted out of the creature, a tentacle of sorts made out of the same material that composed the monster, aiming for Bubbles. Yelping in surprise, Bubbles dashed out of the way before the pseudopodium could grab her.

It didn't end here though. Bubbles looked at the thing just in time to see it bolting out of the skyscraper at surprising speed, sliding towards her. She flew upwards before it could reach her, putting some much needed safe distance between herself and it.

More pseudopodia appeared out of the creature, but Bubbles simply flew a bit farther and easily avoided them. Now that it was in the centre of the street, Bubbles could take in the size of the monster—slightly bigger than a standard house in the outskirts of Townsville. Definitely large, but not as big as some of the giant robots, hulking monsters and other foes she had to deal with in the past.

"You're a big, fat, mean blob, don't you know?!" Bubbles shouted. Her eyes lighted up as she charged up her eyebeams. "Somebody ought to teach you how to behave!"

She fired her heat vision at the creature, which didn't even try to avoid it. The beams hit it head on, and the creature finally gave some kind of animalistic trait out—a loud, guttural roar of distress and pain.

This new monster was quite peculiar, but Bubbles was confident she could take it on by herself. She kept firing eyebeams at it, but it soon appeared that the creature was a fast learner, as it started to zig-zag around the street, evading her shots. At one point, it also started to move away from her.

"Hey, come back here!" Bubbles didn't know if the monster was taking its leave already, but since the current intentions of the blob-thing weren't clear, she decided to follow it to at least make sure it indeed wanted to leave Townsville—and make it clear they weren't welcome. She dashed away, leaving behind a streak of light blue as she flew after it.

While the creature was surprisingly fast, Bubbles' own speed was more than enough to keep up with it. For a minute, they played a cat and mouse game, the monster repeatedly changing directions and taking sharp turns into different streets.

Bubbles fired her eyebeams whenever she had a clear shot and managed to land more hits on the thing—as confirmed by the loud growls of protest coming from the monster. It wasn't slowing down though.

"You can't escape me, meane! Get back here!" Bubbles shouted after it, but the monster's answer was literally just taking another turn.

The thing was… they were in a straight street with no intersections. The monster literally turned into a building.

The thing lasted for less than three seconds, but it was enough to take Bubbles aback. The monster disappeared into the wall… it happened so fast, she could do nothing but reach its last position, mouth agape.

"How!? Where—" she halted when she noticed something. An alley…

It was an alley that brought to the parallel street on the other side of the block. Yet, it was also a quite narrow alley of sorts, no wider than five meters.

Even so, as she focused her eyes, Bubbles clearly saw the monster sliding its way through it before disappearing beyond the exit on the other side. Somehow, the beast had managed to squeeze itself into that small of a space and go right through to reach the other side…

Recomposing itself, Bubbles flew upwards until she was over the buildings and moved over to the other street. As she expected, the monster was nowhere to be seen.

'Dang, I lost it!' she thought as she looked around, trying to locate anything that could lead her to the current location of the beast. It was hard, though, in the darkness of the late night while helped only by the artificial illumination of the city, and while the monster was big, it could easily hide behind the tall buildings of this city block.

She slowly hovered down, hoping to find something that could lead her back on the pursuit. 'Perhaps it leaves something slimy behind itself like snails. Ick…'

It was that or going back home as fast as she could to warn her sisters. If the monster was to be found while searching at random, it would've been better to look for it with the full team on the case.

Bubbles wasn't able to see anything weird or wet on the ground as she moved down at first. Apparently, the monster didn't leave trails behind itself of whatever it was made of. However…

'There!' she finally saw an oddity in the scene—a slightly warped light post. Then she saw more: missing rubbish bins, upside down benches, even small holes on the asphalt of the road. There was a path! She only had to follow it with her own eyes.

And that she did, finding out that it led to a second alley. Almost automatically, Bubbles looked up to see if she could fly over the buildings to move to the other street in this case as well.

Instead, she saw white spheres going straight for her.

"YEOW!" Bubbles let out in surprise as she narrowly avoided them, bolting away. She looked at them as they fell down, and when they reached the ground they unceremoniously collapsed, releasing whatever they hid inside them.

She clearly heard the fizzing sound she had heard before, and it didn't take her long to put two and two together when she saw the holes that they left behind. 'I guess I should avoid those…'

Then, she looked up and sure enough here it was. The monster was currently grabbing onto a side of the buildings beside the alley, a few stores above her. Bubbles didn't even have the time to say something back that it flung more spheres at her, though perhaps flinging wasn't the best word for it. From Bubbles' point of view, the spheres looked like they literally shot out of its body.

The Powerpuff Girl had yet to be intimated though. Bubbles flew straight for the blob monster, avoiding the spheres as they arrived—they may have been dangerous, but compared to Mojo's latest missile models it was easy to avoid them.

As she got closer, it progressively became harder to keep evading the projectiles, so Bubbles switched tactics.

At one point, from the creature's point of view, Bubbles flew straight into a sphere and said vesicle exploded, releasing the contents around.

What had really happened became clearer as a red beam shot out of the sphere's contents and hit the monster head on. It didn't even manage to release another growl of pain that Bubbles appeared, speeding up for it.

"YAAAH!" Bubbles flew fist into the monster, and her hands connected with the 'skin'.

It was like the monster wasn't even there.

She literally flew through it. There was no resistance whatsoever, even if she distinctly felt her hands going through things. Particles she didn't know the nature of hit her face and body as well, making her flinch in disgust, but for the sake of the attack she kept pushing until she connected with the building's wall.

In fact, it wasn't a wall, it was a window, and she crashed into the glass. She immediately felt herself leaving the monster's body, and she came to a skidding halt on the floor of a dark office.

"Oh, ew, ew, ew!" Bubbles couldn't help voicing her distress as she looked at herself and started to pitifully try to cleanse her clothes and skin of the monster's body parts. Something slimy was all over her, but she managed to get out the biggest particles. The colours and forms of the things would probably have been an interesting study, but Bubbles was too much worked up to notice.

Then, she heard the roar, distracting her from the current predicament. Realizing she had forgotten about the monster, she mentally thanked that the floor was an office where no one was inside at that hour, then she flew over to the cracked window—the monster was not there anymore.

When she flew out, she was barely able to catch the monster's crashing down on the road. It had fell down.

That attack must have hurt it more than she imagined. Well, it deserved that! It had tried to eat a skyscraper with people inside!

"I hope you understood your lesson now!" Bubbles shouted at the monster. There were lights appearing all over the street's walls, as people clearly had been woken up by the commotion, and the monster was clearly visible to everyone thanks to the various light posts.

The monster didn't move. Then she heard it. More fizzling sounds. She couldn't see it, but the monster was definitely 'taking nibbles' at the road now!

"Are you just going to keep eating like that?!" Bubbles yelled, half-offended by the monster's lack of attention to her words unless it wanted to attack her. The creature didn't budge, seemingly refusing to answer. It reminded her of Buttercup refusing to acknowledge her while having dinner when she was trying to talk to her. Except that Buttercup didn't plan on hurting people.

She had to make her point clear. Bubbles wasn't looking forward to making another deep dive into the thing's body though, so she prepared to serve another round of heat vision to the creature.

However, she suddenly realized that perhaps that wasn't enough to actually make the creature understand what she wanted. She looked around, trying to come up with an alternative in case there was one, and then she saw it. A billboard, placed on the other side of the road with the shorter buildings.

Without thinking twice (and without thinking about the damage expenses), Bubbles flew up to it and easily pulled it off by sheer strength. Then, she flew right over the feasting monster and let it fall down.

The people on the apartments around looked in amazement from their apartments as the billboard fell towards it, the monsters not even flinching. Eventually, the board crashed down, making a lot of noise and raising a dust cloud, apparently splatting the monster like a bug.

"Serves you right!" Bubbles exclaimed, hovering down to check on it. Already the citizen along the street were cheering for her.

Then, as the dust settled, she saw something moving.

No, the monster wasn't dead. That could've been expected… but what she didn't expect was that it didn't look like it was hurt either.

The billboard was mostly still intact, since what had made a lot of noise and dust were the external parts of it that broke off in the impact. The main body was still intact… it bobbed over the monster's body, as if it was floating over the surface.

Then, Bubbles saw the monster's body move. The 'skin' enlarged around the board's corners, until it was as large as it. Then, it moved upward, encircling it, and before she could realized what was going on, the board had been phagocytised.

Thanks to the monster's slightly transparent skin, Bubbles was still able to look at the image on the board, a simple sale announcement with a big bag of cereals. The image of the box liquefied before her eyes, breaking down into pieces in the span of a few seconds. The board was no more.

And she noticed that the thing's size was different than before. It was bigger now. Not by that much, but still noticeable.

In that moment, Bubbles realized that this was no ordinary Monster Isle monster. There was something about it that irked her, and it wasn't just the general ickness, no.

As the monster roared and flung more spheres at her, Bubbles flew away from the thing, her mind settled on what she needed to do.

'I have to get Blossom and Buttercup's help!'


The hotline rang. However, it had to continuously ring for an entire minute before Blossom finally managed to open her eyes and get up from bed, half asleep and half annoyed.

"Bloss, please destroy that thing or I'll do it myself," Buttercup grumbled in her sleep. Blossom shook her head but nonetheless she hovered quietly to the ringing red phone before her sister could act on her words to answer it.

"Hello?" she said when she got the phone up to her ear. "It's a bit late, Mayor… can't it wait a bit?"

"Hello, Powerpuff Girls?"

That wasn't the Mayor voice.

"Uuh, yeah?"

"This is Directing Chief of the Townsville PD talking. We've met already in the past, you may remember at least the one occurrence when we dealt with a traitor cop, but this ain't the time for presentations and memories, uh… Blossom, right?"

"Yes… what is it, chief?" Blossom wondered. If she thought about it, it made sense that the Mayor wouldn't be on the phone this early in the morning if not downright middle of the night (at least as long as his slumber wasn't disturbed by nightmares and the such), but somebody different from the Mayor calling them was a rare occurrence.

The Professor had made sure to establish a protected encrypted channel to the phone line due to various cases of prank calls for the girls (including instances from their own enemies as well), so only the Mayor and TPD could call them now—yet, it was always the Mayor that still communicated with them basically all the time.

"We have a situation downtown… actually, it's already moving away from the city centre. Ugh! Get your details straight, Perez! Sorry, I mean, we've received reports of a monster wreaking havoc in the city, some kind of blob thing that looks like a giant amoeba or something, I'm not sure, these reports are weird. Anyway, we've dispatched a few patrols to confirm what the heck is going on, but we've called you because I'm reading that, apparently, one of you is fighting it by herself."

"Wait, what?!" One of them? Buttercup had just told her to answer the phone, so that left off…

"The reports from the emergency phone lines mention Bubbles, though I won't take that info for granted. In any case, she seems to be having a hard time holding it off, Blossom, so we thought I'd better to warn you in case you were still at home. You think you can join back with her and deal with the monster before it can cause any more chaos?"

Blossom had missed half of the Chief's words. She had immediately looked at her bed, and sure enough—Bubbles' side was empty.

"W-we'll deal with it, chief, thank you," Blossom said, closing the call. By now, Buttercup was sitting on the bed, looking at Blossom with a half-annoyed, half-sleepy look.

"I swear, whoever thought it was a good idea to attack the city in the night… I'm gonna—!"

"Bubbles is missing, Buttercup!" Blossom interrupted. She was already surfing through their wardrobe and she snatched a dress for herself before throwing a green-coloured one at a stunned Buttercup. "I don't know why, but she left home and went to fight a monster by herself!"

"W-wha? Why would she even—?"

"I don't know, but we'll ask her once we get there. Now we gotta go!" Blossom was already dressing up at surprising speed, with Buttercup managing to shake herself awake after the news and doing the same.

As they finally finished to get ready, a blue streak suddenly bolted into the room through the windows.

"G-girls!" Bubbles uttered once she realized her sisters were already up.

"Bubbles! Where have you been!?" Blossom chastised. "What were you even thinking, going out in the night alone?"

"I-I… we'll talk about it later, it's coming!"

"Who's coming?" Buttercup questioned.

The reply came when they heard a low growl coming from outside. When Buttercup and Blossom flew up to the windows, they saw in the distance the approaching form of the blob monster that had attacked Bubbles, moving over an house in the distance.

"That must be the monster that the Chief told us about," Blossom stated. "All right, we'll deal with it girls. Still, Bubbles, you'll have some explaining to do after we're done!"

Blossom kicked herself into flight, only to be stopped by Bubbles caught her by her leg. "Blossom, wait!"

"What?!"

"We need to get the Professor out of here before we fight it!"

"…why? We're just gonna beat that blob to a pulp before it can even touch our home," Buttercup replied.

"No, you don't understand, I already fought it and it… it's too dangerous for the Professor! I'd rather see him somewhere away from that thing!"

Buttercup scoffed, while Blossom eyed the approaching monster, which was surprisingly fast given how closer it had gotten in the last few seconds.

"Okay, okay. Bubbles, fetch the Professor and get him in a safe place. We'll deal with the blob monster in the meantime."

"Thank you," Bubbles nodded before darting through the door and towards the Professor's room.

"Why even letting her do it, Bloss?" Buttercup said. "Monsters are usually concerned with fighting us more than causing damage."

"I don't know… Bubbles sounded really concerned, Buttercup," Blossom replied as they flew out of the room, facing the unicellular beast. "I guess it's better safe than sorry."

"Suit yourself then," Buttercup shrugged. "I call dibs on the final hit, though."

Blossom sighed. "We are going to stick to a plan, Buttercup. You can have the final hit, but don't just randomly charge until I say so, understand?"

Buttercup shook her head. "All right, all right."

They floated outside and over the road of the neighbourhood as they watched the monster going throughout the houses, either passing over them or in-between, at surprising speed.

"Okay, let's see what this one got. Eyebeams!"

Blossom's and Buttercup's eyes flared up and eyebeam blasts shot out of them, going right into the monster. They hit it square centre, causing the beast to growl in pain, but it didn't slow down. In fact, suddenly it leaped in the air, skipping two house lines and an entire road while heading straight for the girls.

"Oh, so this one can jump at least!" Buttercup exclaimed. She punched her own hand in excitement. "Maybe this is gonna be worth losing an hour of sleep after all!"

"…stay where you are," Blossom said with her eyes narrowed. "We're going to let it come at us and counter-attack as soon as he's over us."

Buttercup glared at Blossom for a second. "Oh, come on! Can't we just charge at it while it's still in the air?"

But Blossom's serious frown didn't leave space for discussion, so she eventually concluded that she may as well respect her order for the time being. "Ugh, all right."

The two remained focused on the incoming monster even when they heard the Professor's screech coming from the house. On the side of the house, the Professor's room's window shattered into a million pieces as Bubbles flew out of it with haste, carrying a still partially asleep but definitely extremely frightened Professor Utonium, still in his pyjamas.

"WHAT THE HECK, BUBBLES!?"

"Sorry, Professor, it's for your own good!"

"What do you mean—woooah!" As Bubbles flew up high in the sky, she saw the falling monster closing on Blossom and Buttercup.

The two Powerpuffs got ready to punch the beast back, but as soon as the thing reached them, their hands hit nothing. In fact, what happened was that the monster moulded its own body, creating tunnels inside itself in the exact points where the girls were.

"Wait, what!?" Buttercup shouted. She tried punching the sticky walls around her, but they moved, avoiding her own punches. "You've got to be kidding me!"

In the span of three seconds, the monster had gone right through them, and landed on the road. It roared, then proceeded to ram into the Utonium household.

"Come back HERE!" Buttercup shouted, flying up to it, but the beast ignored her, its body turning as it saw something that caught its interest and started to move in their direction.

Blossom, equally as surprised as her sister, but more cautious of the blob's behaviour, noticed its change of target, and following it she realized that it wanted to go after Bubbles and the Professor. 'It's still chasing her down…?'

Her thought got the confirmation it needed when the monster slow crawl turned into a fast skid in the direction of Bubbles, who was still flying in search of a place where to leave the Professor.

Yet, its determination wasn't enough to ignore constant attacks, and Buttercup proved to be an annoyance it couldn't ignore as she shot another eyebeam blast at it, scorching the 'skin'. The monster growled and slowed down, and Buttercup took that as her cue to charge in. "You and I are not done yet!"

As soon as her punch reached the monster's membrane, though, she suddenly felt like her decision wasn't the best, as she didn't actually feel a hardened skill layer crumble behind her punch. Her entire hand went through the membrane like she was cutting through swiss cheese, and the entity of the damage ended there.

"Huh?!" confused, Buttercup didn't react immediately, so she didn't see the pseudopodium sprouting out of the creature's body nearby, then bolting at her. It rammed into her full force, and this time it felt like she had been punched by a proper Monster Isle monster full force as she got thrown away and down the road, where she slammed on the asphalt.

Buttercup gritted her teeth as she started to stand back up, but rather than just waiting for her to get back into the fight, the creature roared at her and slimed right on her.

"BUTTERCUP!" Blossom was ready to bolt towards the creature head on to help her sister, but her worry proved unneeded as Buttercup literally exploded out of the creature. Something slimy went behind her as she flew, but she seemed otherwise unharmed.

Surprisingly, Buttercup didn't press the attack, preferring to fall back with her sister. "Are you all right?"

"Just a little bit dirtier than usual, not that it bothers me…" Buttercup replied, trying to clean off organic particles she had no idea of the true nature, and didn't want to know either. "That thing somehow can either harden the… skin of it at will, else it's basically a giant jellyfish Blossom."

Blossom nodded as the monster slimed towards them, emitting another low growl. Now that they were able to stare it down, both of the puffs had understood that this monster was actually pretty small, just a bit bigger than a house—nothing comparable to the hulking beasts they were used to. They just had to pay attention to any unwanted surprises, and it would be an easy enough job.

"Very well, let's get this over with. We take it from the sides, Buttercup, and wear it down while we wait for Bubbles. Got it?"

"Roger, red!"

Thus, the two Powerpuff Girls sprang into action, starting to pelt the monsters with eyebeam shots from opposite directions.

In the meantime, the Professor had finally ended his flight on a nearby house roof, as Bubbles put him down. The Professor had somehow forgot already about his rude awakening at the hands of Bubbles and subsequent flight, as he had only eyes for the creature the Powerpuffs were fighting.

"Fascinating… I've never seen something like that, and yet it is so reminiscent of…" he said to himself, a hand on his chin. He managed to capture the 'science mode' look even with the least appropriate of clothes he currently had.

"Stay here, Professor!" Bubbles said quickly. "I've gotta help Blossom and Buttercup!"

"Wait, Bubbles! I think I know how that creature works. I may be able to think up of a way or two to defeat it quickly!"

"No time, Professor!" Bubbles was already hovering towards the battle. "I know it's dangerous, but it is not invincible, I know that. It'll be dealt with before you know it!"

Then, she dashed away towards the monster. Her sisters had been keeping up the barrage non-stop and the blob monster looked quite in distress. It emitted roars and tried to shoot more of the white spheres that it had used against Bubbles previously, but it threw them in random directions, apparently disoriented by the two-way attack.

Fact was that the spheres were landing around the neighbourhood! They could end up hitting homes and even people!

Bubbles decided that they needed to put an end to this story right there and now. She flew right towards the enemy rather than attempting to join the barrage with her sisters, but still charged up her eyes. She didn't cry out as well to signal them, since she didn't want to warn the monster while it was stunned; she simply kept her speed up until she was too close for the creature to avoid. No use keeping her mouth shut after that point.

"TAKE THIS!"

Blossom and Buttercup watched as they stopped firing moments before Bubbles connected with the monster. As expected, she went right through it once again, but this time Bubbles threw punches and kicks around herself. She kept her eyes closed since she was still disgusted and wanted to at least keep the slime of the monster's internals out of her eyes, but she still felt the particles on her hands and feet, crumbling under her hits.

Then, she fired the eyebeam blast upwards. Buttercup let out a cry of amazement as the red beam suddenly burst out of the monster and ran high towards the night sky. It did much more damage from the inside than any of her or Blossom's attacks had managed before, creating a large hole in the membrane and dispersing body particles all around it.

Bubbles finally left on the opposite side from which she entered, then she flew upwards while cleaning herself off the best she could. Blossom and Buttercup quickly rushed to join her.

"Way to go, Bubbles! That was a good way to finish it off!" Buttercup complimented for once.

"I knew it was vulnerable from the inside… I just guessed really, eh," Bubbles smiled, though she grimaced as she attempted to tear a sticky particle the size of an apple out of her dress. "It's still slimy and icky, though."

"It's not over yet, girls."

Blossom pointed at the monster and sure enough, here it was, moving still, though it wasn't having the best time of its life clearly. It still emitted noises but those were close to laments right now. The injury had already been closed out, the only clue about the recent events being the remains of the creature's internals around it.

Then, the fizzling noise started again.

Blossom and Buttercup didn't react, but Bubbles knew what was going on. "Oh, no! Girls, we have to stop it!"

"What?" Buttercup and Blossom said together, but before they could argue further, suddenly the monster fell into a depression on the road.

"It's getting away!" Buttercup shouted. "The coward!"

The three flew up to the black hole that had been created. Already the monster was no more visible in the darkness—it was still very early in the morning, so the darkness didn't help.

"We have to chase it down!" Buttercup, all the ever unrelenting, stated.

"No, wait… maybe it has had enough." Blossom suggested.

"No, Blossom! We have to go and finish it off!"

Bubbles brought a hand to her mouth. Her sisters looked at her in surprise.

"Bubbles… are you all right?" Blossom raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, I just… Blossom, I saw what that monster can do. It can eat things, everything, and use it to grow. I threw a billboard at it and it literally grew a few feet in size under my own eyes. It was trying to eat a skyscraper when I first found it… I-I'm worried that may not stop there."

Blossom looked at the hole. They could now no more hear the fizzling noise—the thing was fast when it wanted to dig rather than just absorb, that was for sure.

"We can't chase it down in there. It's basically asking for an ambush," Blossom stated. "This monster is easy to tell from the rest, in any case… if it shows up again today, we'll know."

"Aww, come on…" Buttercup protested. "It might not even get back for a second round at all."

"I would be better if it actually left us and the city alone, really… but this thing… I'm not sure, I'm not convinced it is from Monster Isle. It's too small for a monster like the ones from there," Blossom said, giving another glance to the hole.

"Maybe it's young? Goin' back crying for mommy I'm sure…" Buttercup grumbled.

"Young monsters don't attack the city, Buttercup," Blossom stated, "And even if it was, it could've tried to actually get away from the city and leave for the island in the sea, not dig down to get away from us. No, this must be something else."

"I… I just hope it can't grow that big beyond how big it is right now…" Bubbles said.

"Girls!" a shout came from the distance. The Professor waved his hands in the air in an attempt to get their attention. "Any help here?!"

"We'll leave things be for now, but not let your guard down, okay?" Blossom concluded. She gave a look to Bubbles. "We're getting to the bottom of this."

Bubbles nodded, her smile returning as she thought that now, together, they could easily deal with the monster and solve everything before the end of the now beginning day. The girls quickly flew up to the Professor and grabbed him while returning to their house. The girls' home had endured some damage as there were some cracks on it on the front, where the monster had slammed itself into, and basically every window on that side was shattered as well.

"You even knew that thing was going to ignore us at first and go for the house…" Buttercup told Bubbles. "You tried fighting it by yourself, you said?"

"Uh, yes… I thought it wasn't that big of a problem at first. It was small compared to other monsters after all…" Bubbles explained. "I knew it was very stubborn from the way it ignored me when I first caught it attacking the city."

"What were you thinking, Bubbles?!" Blossom suddenly intervened. "If you saw something like this you should've gone to get us right then and there! And you still didn't tell us what were you doing out on your own in the first place!"

"It was eating a skyscraper, Blossom! The building was already tilting by the time I was there and people were screaming for help, I couldn't just not do anything!"

"You could've distracted it, then guide it to us first, rather than just trying to fight it on your own," Blossom retorted. "Bubbles, you should've known better."

"I thought I could handle it! You girls also fought on your own already, we all did!"

"It was an unnecessary risk!"

"Girls, girls, please, I don't think it's the time to raise your tone now, isn't it?" the Professor chided in. Blossom and Bubbles both scoffed, but kept their mouths shut as they scended on the front lawn and let him go there.

"Now…" he said, still in his pyjamas but still managing a solemn look. "That creature that attacked you… I believe it is a fascinating specimen, we rarely saw monsters like that in the past. Has any of you, actually?"

"I don't think we ever did, Professor… the Monster Isle guys are also far more willing to listen us out, sometimes," Bubbles said.

"And they are more up to a fight and only raise the white flag at the very end of it," Buttercup added.

"They can often be as deadly and cruel to the townspeople though…" Blossom argued. Bubbles and Buttercup stayed silent, not wanting to agree out-loud but recognizing that their sister had a point.

"Well… what if I told you that our mysterious 'blob monster' here doesn't even have a brain to actually be reasonable, or accept a fight challenge?"

The girls looked at him in confusion.

"Of course, it doesn't have a brain, it's some kind of blob monster!" Buttercup said. "It's not like gas monsters or mud monsters have a brain, either!"

"Yes, yes, but what I wanted to actually reference," the Professor quickly save himself as he realized he'd just stated the obvious—he sometimes forgot that the girls knew more than most kindergarteners, "is that what we're seeing here is a monster that may be replicating, at a scale orders of magnitude larger than the natural one, the structure of cells."

"Cells… you mean, what you and me and everyone is made of?" Bubbles mentioned.

"Precisely. The 'skin' is a membrane rather than actual skin, and it isn't all that protective as you saw yourself."

"Yes, but it can still pack a punch Professor," Buttercup massaged the back of her head as if to prove her point.

"Did it? Hmm… the fact that the monster exists is already a marvel on its own, so I wouldn't exclude more oddities and surprises from our mutual friend here," the Professor said. "Good grief, what I wouldn't give to be able to capture it and study it! The possible breakthroughs of a close enough replica of the cell structure at this size may be amazing!"

"Let's talk about that after we defeat it, okay?" Blossom said. "And after we find it…"

"Yeah, that thing could be everywhere right now. Where are we even going to find a giant amoeba-whatever thing like it?"

The girls looked at her, then they looked at the Professor, who let out a 'wow' of surprise.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, you can't be serious!" Buttercup reached the same conclusion. "It can't be them!"

"It may not be them… but it may have been caused by them, Buttercup. It wouldn't be the first time they manage to actually succeed in crime without actually realizing it," Blossom said.

"But they're in jail right now, aren't they? They're still in for what they did when they stole all oranges in Townsville…" Bubbles sounded almost as much unconvinced as Buttercup.

"They were there last we heard," Blossom specified. "It's our first lead, but we may as well follow it girls. We'll pay a visit to the Amoeba Boys!"

"Oh brother…" Buttercup rolled her eyes. "What a bummer if it's really them…"

The Professor nodded. "I'll get back inside, girls. See if I can find out anything on my own and checking on the damage the monster… and Bubbles caused," he eyed briefly the blonde girl, who tried to smile her way out. The Professor wasn't swayed, but he let it go in the name of the biggest issue at hand.

"Good luck girls with your search… and be careful!"

"We'll be, Professor!"