They awoke in their bed, at the same moment. They sat up sharply and looked at one another, then out into their room. It was only seven but the room was already flooded with light. They saw their suitcases sitting there, all packed for the Bahamas.
"Girls? Do you remember anything about someone named Jack?"
"Yeah, Blossom, I sure do." Buttercup replied.
"Was it really real or did we all just share each others' dream again?" Bubbles wondered.
"It was real, Bubbles, I know it was!" Buttercup insisted.
"Yes, I think so, too." Blossom said. "Well, we can find out if Jack really defeated Aku or if it was all a dream."
"How?"
She said nothing but floated out of bed and reached under it for her book bag. She slid it out and pulled out a scrapbook she'd been keeping. She tossed it on the bed.
"In there. It's my September 11th book. If Jack was real, that thing will be blank."
She got back in bed and opened it so they could all see. There on the first page was the photograph of themselves and their teacher, Ms. Keane, standing in front of the World Trade Center. It had been taken by the professor during their trip to New York in the summer of 20001. That the picture was even in this book at all was bad news.
"Well, that didn't change, but I'm afraid to look at the rest."
Nothing had changed. All of Blossom's newspaper clippings and her little written thoughts were there.
She closed the book. "That answers that." she said sadly.
"It musta all been a dream then." Buttercup muttered.
"Well, " Bubbles said helpfully, "at least there isn't any Aku then."
"Yes there is, Bubbles." Blossom tapped the scrapbook. "There's always gonna be evil, no matter what name it goes by."
"But where did we come up with that name?" Buttercup wondered.
"Probably from some old movie when we fell asleep in front of the TV."
"Girls! Come down here, now!" they heard the professor calling.
"Great!" Blossom said, throwing off the blankets and jumping out of bed. "Here we are talking about a stupid dream and we're gonna be late for school!"
"That's funny!" Bubbles said. "In my dream, the professor yelled at us that morning, too!"
"Hey yeah, me too!"
"Me three."
"Girls! Come here! Now!"
They flew down the stairs and saw, instead of him ready to chew them out, the professor staring at the living room TV with a stunned look on his face. He had on the major cable news channel and on screen were two bearded men with turbans on their heads being held at gunpoint by men in camouflage fatigues. The words at the bottom of the picture read:
'Breaking News: bin Laden Captured'.
They let out a collective gasp, then a joyous whoop. "He did it! Jack did it!" They hugged one another.
The professor stared at them curiously. "Girls? Did the President recruit you three to search those caves with your x-rays for a special-forces mission and you didn't tell me about it?"
"What?" Blossom shouted. "No!"
"Then who's this Jack you're talking about?"
"Uh, nothing, Professor. Maybe it's a coincidence." Blossom mumbled. "This is really great news, Professor! I'm sure it's all we'll talk about in school today. C'mon, girls, we better get ready."
"Wait, girls. I'm not sending you today."
"Why not?"
He grinned sheepishly. "Well, you see, I was going to wait until just before you were going out the door, but as you can see, it's nowhere near time for you to leave. I have a little surprise for you. We aren't going to the Bahamas for the weekend."
"We're not?"
"Nope. We'll be spending two weeks in Japan!"
"Jack!" they shouted. They didn't know that bin Laden's capture was just a coincidence, but this was not. Their world had already started to change.
"It's déjà vu all over again." Buttercup cracked.
"When are we going, Professor?" Bubbles asked, all excited.
"This afternoon." he said, then frowned. "We've got plenty of time for you to pack…and to tell me who this Jack is."
"You wouldn't believe us if we told you, Professor." Blossom said.
"Try me. To the lab. Now!"
"Pretty crazy story, huh, Professor?" Buttercup said when they were finished. He was sitting at his desk and they sat, still in their nighties, on their beanbag chairs that they had brought down.
"Yes, Buttercup, that's the craziest story I've ever heard."
"Okay. Now that that's over with, why are we going to Japan all of a sudden?"
He reached into a drawer and pulled out a very old, very battered hardcover book.
"It's not all of a sudden, Blossom. I've been planning this for a long time. I just wanted to keep it a secret and surprise you. Now, I'm going to tell you girls a crazier story."
They looked back and forth at each other. What could be crazier than what they had been through?
"You see, I went there once, many years ago, when I was doing some mineral research. But that's not all I was researching. I was also doing some family research."
"What? You're Japanese?"
"Not really. Hardly any that counts, anyway. It was really just a family myth that got handed down over generations, that one of our ancestors was once a great samurai warrior."
They gasped yet again.
"Yes. Crazy, isn't it? Someone supposedly from my mother's side, going way, way back. I never believed it. But when the chance came one summer when I was in college to go on this trip, I jumped at it. Part of the story was that this warrior came from a small village, and it just happened to be near where our group was going to be. So in between our research, I asked some questions. Never found any direct connection to anyone in my family, but I also never found anything that would disprove it, either. But, the legend of this supposed great warrior was known to some of the older residents of that town. It seems he was quite a character, always telling stories to anyone who would listen, about how he had fought a great evil with his magic sword and battled it to a draw."
"Huh?" Buttercup interrupted. "You mean he never beat Aku?"
"This Aku was only one of many evil creatures from the folklore of that time. No one truly believed in demons. Even then, people knew as they do now that evil is something that takes hold and thrives in people's hearts. But apparently this guy believed it and told his story to anyone who would listen. They all thought he was crazy."
"But HIM's real, Professor." Blossom reminded him.
"I know, Blossom, and that's how he works, through others."
The girls didn't know what to think. "Did we really just dream all of this, then?" Bubbles asked. "Or are we crazy?"
"I believe you, Bubbles." he said. "When I said everyone thought he was crazy, it wasn't exactly true. He had family, and his tales were written and passed down to future generations. Most of them were lost over the centuries, and I do mean centuries. The heyday of the samurai ended in the late eighteen hundreds but they go back to the fifth century. But some of the writings survived and I was able to translate some of it."
He opened his battered book and read from it. "My translation of Japanese wasn't the greatest, and some things don't translate to English well at all. But here's a little. 'Near the end of my journey through the many strange lands, I encountered creatures of such virtue that I felt sure the evil I had sought to eliminate could finally be destroyed. There are many virtuous qualities, of course, but these three were revealed to me as the virtues of Wisdom, Strength and Mercy.'"
"He's talking about us!"
"Sure sounds like it, Bubbles. There's more. 'Though these creatures shared these and many other qualities with each other; Wisdom to me was like the sacred cherry blossom, blazing with beauty and full of the passion it inspires in the young of heart.'"
"Me?" Blossom gasped.
"'Strength was like the wild meadow flowers, their beauty undiminished by their fierce independence and will to survive.'" He looked at Buttercup and smiled. "Sounds like he's talking about you, kiddo."
All she could do was let her jaw drop.
"And then there's this. 'And Mercy was like the purity and effusiveness of the spring brook, full of winter's snows.'"
Bubbles made a face. "Esuveness? I'm not sure I like that!"
"No, honey, it means something good. He might have written this in his later years and couldn't remember your names but this is how he remembered each of you. Or maybe your name and Buttercup's don't translate well into Japanese, but I'd say he came real close to describing you."
"So you believe us?" Blossom asked.
"Yes, girls, because there's more. It has to do with your creation."
That was met with wide-eyed silence. They couldn't believe it.
"Yes, girls. One day, our research group heard about an archaeological dig near the town where we were staying and a few of us decided to check it out. We were allowed to look at an area that hadn't been searched yet, as long as we didn't disturb the site. Well, I hadn't been there ten minutes when I saw something that looked totally out of place. I called one of the dig organizers over and showed him."
Blossom, Buttercup and Bubbles spoke at the same time. "What was it?" "What happened?" "Was it a skeleton?"
"No, Bubbles, it wasn't that kind of a dig. But, they threw us out. They thought we had contaminated the site, and the organizers told us to get out. So I picked up the object. They weren't interested in it. When I got back to the place we were staying, I took a closer look. It was obviously something modern, because fiberglass wasn't around whenever that culture had lived there. When I moved it, I heard something sliding around inside it. I took out my knife and cut the end off of it and dumped the contents out on the table. It looked like dust. It looked like nothing, really, so I forgot about it until late that night when I went to bed. When I put out the light, the stuff glowed in the dark like you wouldn't believe."
"No." Blossom thought, a chill running up her back. "It couldn't be!"
Buttercup beat her to it. "Are you tryin' to say that whatever that stuff was is Chemical X?"
"It's not the only thing in there, Buttercup, but I now believe it's what got the job done." he said with a small grin.
Blossom sat up sharply, knowing the answer before she asked the question. "Professor? Was it in like a little tube with the ends melted together?"
He stared at her with his mouth open and pulled the small fiberglass tube with one end missing from his coat pocket. "Blossom?" was all he managed to get out.
She jumped, not noticing her sisters staring at her. "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!!"
She turned to them and began to explain in a disbelieving monotone. "I did it. You guys weren't watching. I didn't believe the sword was magic like you guys did but when I saw Jack sharpening it I decided to take the stuff that came off the blade and bring it home for you to look at, Professor. I put the tube in the hem of my dress, but when we came back I wasn't wearing it." She looked at him in disbelief. "How?"
"It was put there at that dig for me to find, Blossom. By the same creatures who sent you back."
Buttercup shook her head. "Man, this makes no sense at all! The thing that helped give us our powers came from the future after we were already born."
"But it seems like that's exactly what happened, girls. I'm sure someday I'll come across an existing theory to back it up."
"I think it makes sense, kinda." Bubbles said. "It means that it wasn't really an accident when Mojo pushed you, Professor. It was 'sposed to happen, just like everything else that happened."
"Yes, Bubbles. It also means that Mojo was a part of it for a reason, though he doesn't know it. You know the story he made up that time he tricked us into giving him your superpowers?"
"Sure do!" Buttercup snorted. "How'd we ever fall for that?"
"What if he didn't make it up? To be honest with you, I don't remember much. I was so wrapped up in you girls."
"And we were wrapped up in ourselves." Blossom said, somewhat ashamed. "Maybe he really did feel neglected. I mean, look how he turned out in the future when he thought we were gone."
Buttercup wasn't sure she liked where this was going. "Are you saying we should try and be friends with him?"
"I don't know, Buttercup. But do you remember the last thing Jack said to us?"
"Yeah. Never quit fighting."
"Nuh uh!" Bubbles corrected. "He said, 'Your struggle is just beginning.'" She was surprised at herself for remembering that. "What did he mean?"
"It's real complicated." Blossom said. "Professor, see if this makes sense? Jack also said that it was his struggle, with Aku. Do you think that maybe he never did beat it, because it looks like all the bad stuff that happened in history still did. Maybe he only did enough to take away the future that Aku made, and after that, Aku and Jack battled each other for the rest of Jack's life, inside of him. That's why Aku is only considered a legend, and why nobody believed Jack when he told them what he went through."
"It makes a lot of sense, honey. Evil is something that lives in our hearts if we aren't careful to always stay on guard against it."
Buttercup gasped. "Professor! Jack said almost the same thing!"
"And that's what he was trying to tell us." Bubbles said. "Maybe nobody is all good or all bad."
Blossom looked at her. "You're right, Bubbles. Not us and not Mojo, either. It won't be easy. He isn't going to love us overnight."
"The feeling's mutual." Buttercup muttered.
The professor stood. "Well, girls, we need to get moving if we're going to catch our plane. Maybe we'll learn more about our mutual heritage on this trip. And when we get home, we'll see about extending an olive branch to my old lab monkey."
"Okay, Professor." Blossom said. "I think we oughta give it a try. But we still have a score to settle with HIM!"
"He won't ever try that again!" Bubbles promised.
"And maybe someday, he'll only be folklore." the professor said.
As they floated out, Buttercup muttered again. "Geesh. I can't get used to the idea of Mojo being our brother. It would be stupid to give him our powers again."
"Girls?" the professor said. "From what you've told me, I think we already may have!"
