PART THREE



CHAPTER NINE

"I got a real bad feeling about this!" Bubbles told herself. Nothing they tried was working, and it was all things Blossom had ordered. She could see her sister growing more worried by the minute and her other sister, Buttercup, champing at the bit to do things her way. Though they had grown older and bigger, and their powers had increased along with their physical size, all of that plus their years of experience hadn't gotten her sisters to fully cooperate with each other. Bubbles had for years had a feeling that it would haunt them someday. That feeling was stronger today. This monster wasn't the biggest they'd seen, nor the most powerful, nor the scariest. But there was something about it that worried her. Maybe it was the one who could finally outlast them, keep fighting after they were exhausted. She knew there had to be one eventually.

As if to confirm it, the thing spat a mountain of flame at her. She shrieked, backing away. Something else she couldn't explain was that she was acting more afraid of things all the time. Her sisters were on her for it and even the professor had noticed. Maybe it was because as she'd grown, she realized that there were other things in life that meant more to her than what they'd been doing almost since they were born. She tried to stay focused on the task at hand, and called out to Blossom, "What are we gonna do?" That's when she heard Buttercup's frustrated 'pussyfooting around' remark and Blossom's shout to continue waiting it out. But even she could see that it wasn't getting tired at all.

Then, it attacked her and she broke and sped away. Blossom's angry shouting stopped her and she flew back, chagrined once again at her growing cowardice. She suddenly saw what her foolish flight had caused. Buttercup had grown bold and used Blossom's momentary lack of attention to move in on the creature. But it saw her and swung. Bubbles saw her sister fall back and overcame her fear enough to launch herself at it. It sensed her, however, and the arm that got Buttercup came back around and raked across her body. She felt the intense pain the sharp blades caused and blood flew up into her face. Panicking, she headed for the ground below. She heard her sisters call out her name, and she knew she should go back to help them. But she was too afraid. They'd be better off without her anyway. She could stay out of their way, safely on the ground, until the fight was over. They were both attacking it now.

She landed and pulled up her dress to look. Bloody scratches covered her chest and stomach, but they didn't look too bad. Maybe she should go back up. Then, Buttercup crashed to the ground a hundred feet away, got up, staggered a few feet more, and collapsed. Nothing she hadn't seen before, or done herself more times than she could remember. She looked skyward to find Blossom. Her sister was nowhere in sight, but the monster was falling. So, they had finished it without her! She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down. But she knew her respite would be short, for in a minute, Blossom would be giving her holy hell for bailing out. Buttercup, too, when she saw the few measly scratches.

She'd have given anything if that had happened, but the chewing out from her sisters never came.

CHAPTER TEN

"Professor, why do you hate me?"

Bubbles asked the question, a year after her father and Townsville had buried their two fallen heroes and the city had turned its back on the one remaining. The one everybody blamed for what happened that day, after her meager injuries had been revealed and footage of her sisters' final battle had been replayed over and over.

Professor Utonium had, in fact, not treated his one remaining child as though he cared much about her, instead wallowing in his own grief and self-pity. This day, though, he regarded her sadly instead of snapping at her like always. She'd tried to be helpful, doing everything he asked of her, but it was never good enough. "Oh, if only Blossom were here…" Things like that.

But now, he said, "Bubbles, honey, I don't hate you. It's my fault your sisters aren't here as much as it is yours."

That hurt. Though she already knew how he felt, it was the first time he'd actually come out and admitted that he thought she was at least partly to blame. But she hid it for the time being.

"Why, Professor? You weren't there."

"But I should have seen it was coming. I shouldn't have been letting you fight at all."

"What?!"

"Yes, Bubbles, you were always the weakest…but I hoped you'd get stronger as time went on. I was just in denial, not paying attention to what your sisters and my own eyes kept trying to tell me."

"But I'm just as strong as they are!" She still slipped up occasionally, referring to them in the present.

"Yes, Bubbles, but not where you need it the most."

Horrified at what he was saying, she shrieked, and her head was never the same again.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Get in here and shut the door, stupid!"

The uniformed cop nervously approached the young blonde woman with the bulging muscles and the hard blue eyes. She was dressed in black, wore no makeup and her hair was cut short. Easy to hide under a dark cap.

"Anybody see you?" hissed the woman, formerly known as Bubbles, the Powerpuff Girl. She sat in the dark of her hideout in the warehouse district of Townsville.

"No."

"Good. Let's have it!"

"Okay…the raid is set for nine tomorrow night. Full riot gear, gas, dogs…the whole nine yards."

"What a waste of the taxpayers' money!" she barked, and laughed a mirthless laugh. Anyone who dared join in uninvited got a painful reminder from her with a non-lethal blast from her eyes. When she expected you to laugh at one of her jokes, her eyes told you. This time, everyone laughed. Oh, and you hadn't better call her Bubbles, either. Ma'am would do just fine. Or Sir. She liked that even better.

At 25, she was leader of the biggest gang of thieves in Townsville. Something inside her had snapped after that day the professor had told her how he'd really looked at her all those years. And that her sisters had complained to him about it…she felt betrayed, and no longer had any feelings toward them, or anyone, for that matter. Her heart was a block of granite. The only thing she cared about was committing crimes, the bigger, the better. And they were getting to be both every time out. Coming up next was the planned heist of two billion in gold from deep below the army base. No one would dare to attempt that. But she already had it figured out, just like every other plan of hers that had worked. For the last seven years she had shown everyone just who was 'weak in the head' and 'yellow'. It was clear this woman feared nothing and no one.

She snapped her fingers. A signal to one of her henchmen, who opened a steel box and took out a stack of bills. He tossed it to the crooked cop, who quickly counted out ten grand in used 100s, as agreed upon.

"All there?" the cold-eyed woman asked.

"Yes, ma'am." the officer grinned.

"Pleasure doing business with you. Make sure you aren't followed."

With that, he was dismissed. Another one of her dark-clad men let him out into the night. She took a cell phone out of her pocket and called someone. "Ten minutes." was all she said. She stood and walked to the freight elevator, to take her to the roof, where she would fly off to her new headquarters, already fully stocked for weeks after hearing the rumors about the raid. All that the police would find the next night would be empty coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and the like. And three large wooden crates filled with army-surplus automatic pistols and rifles. All with their firing pins jammed in backwards and welded into place, all perfectly useless. And all perfectly legal, with the original bill of sale sitting in the open on top. Her way of saying, "So, you still think you're smarter than me?"

Ten minutes later, while she was flying unseen in the dark over the city that had spurned her, and her cohorts were on their way in their vehicles, a drunk suddenly wandered into the path of a single patrolling police car. The driver screeched to a halt, got out and rousted the drunk, slamming the poor unfortunate against the hood. It was a dark, abandoned stretch of street, and no one heard, or if they did, cared that one of Townsville's finest was about to get the beating of his life from someone who turned out to not be drunk. The stunned cop never knew until later his 'reward' had been lifted from him. Laughing to himself as he hurried to his car parked five blocks away, the hood thought, "Lucky for him he ain't floating in the bay right now! Imagine, insulting the boss like that, counting the cash right in front of her!"

The gang members all knew better than to do anything that stupid.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Three years later she was the most successful, the most feared, the most ruthless criminal Townsville had ever known. Allegedly. The police had never been able to pin a single crime on her. Underlings had been caught and were doing their time, maintaining their silence. They would be paid handsomely for it upon their release, and if they didn't keep their mouths shut… She was free to walk the streets, or fly over them. People shrunk back from her wherever she passed. No longer did anyone think the former Powerpuff Girl was a weakling. They hated her, and she reveled in it.

Professor Utonium, though, had never stopped trying to reach out to his daughter after seeing what he had caused. She ignored every attempt, until one day, she decided to meet him for lunch. To rub it in.

He arrived early. After being taken to their table, he opened a small packet of powder and dumped it into a glass of water. It dissolved, leaving no indication at all of anything being there. The act was witnessed by several nearby diners, who looked at him strangely. When they saw who his lunch partner was as she came through the door, they turned their heads back to their own meals, grim, rigid smiles on their faces.

She walked to the table, a half-sneer on her face, and sat. She laughed inwardly at the instantly solicitous waiter. Everyone in the business knew she was an extremely generous tipper, but they didn't know she did it just to watch them performing like circus monkeys. The professor seemed to have aged at least twenty years instead of the dozen since she had left, and that pleased her as well.

"Thank you for meeting me, Bubbles."

He had to know she hated that name. "I figured it was about time, Dad."

He winced at the snide usage of the title none of the girls had ever called him by. He shook his head sadly. "You never did change, Bubbles."

He pushed on in spite of her angry expression. "No, you haven't changed at all. I can remember a little girl who couldn't keep up with her sisters until one day she got so angry at being a little bit behind them that she tried to prove she was as good as they were. Physically, she was…in the training room…but she just didn't have the mental capacity to go with it, and she turned on innocent people. What you've been doing these last twelve years is the exact same thing."

"How dare you." she growled.

He ignored her. "Intimidation…violence… corruption…those are the only things that make your schemes come to fruition. You aren't half as smart as you think you are, and you never were."

He said it all without a trace of rancor. That, she could have countered. If anything, he seemed even more sad, and his pity infuriated her. Because it was all true. Her jaw worked as she fought to keep her temper under control. She reached for her glass of water and drained it. She found the words that would hurt him equally.

"I was never your little girl. None of us were. We were just your little experiments. Well, Professor, this one backfired on you!"

She stood suddenly to walk out, too fast, she thought, because the blood seemed to rush out of her head. Funny, that had never happened before. She felt dizzy and warm all over, and she gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. Everyone in the room seemed to be looking at her…except the professor, who looked away, tears running down his face. Her hands went to her throat and she gave a strangled cry as she collapsed. She heard the chair fall backward underneath her, and she heard something else…applause..cheering. They were standing at their tables, cheering!

In what she thought was her final moment, the block of granite broke. She knew that he had poisoned her and she forgave him. She cried out inside her head, "I'm sorry, Professor! Girls, please forgive me! I'm sorry! I know I was bad! Please don't let HIM get me!"

"That old fool?"

The voice startled her, and the touch of a cool hand on hers; then she was being pulled to her feet. The dizziness was gone. The voice and hand belonged to an old man dressed all in white. He helped her to her feet, picked up her chair and got her seated, then leaned on his cane to watch her, a bemused look on his face.

"Who-who are you?"

They all said the exact same thing, he noted. "Why, I'm your guardian angel, of course."

"You don't look like one."

"Yes, I know. But wings don't last forever, you know. We have to keep earning new ones."

"Oh. But why are you saving my life?"

"I'm not, my child."

"But-" She waved around the room where time had stood still.

"Have you ever heard the saying that if you save someone's life, you become responsible for it? We don't do that. You're responsible for your life; I'm only showing you that there are alternatives."

"But the professor poisoned me! I was dying!"

"My dear, you don't know that, and neither do I. Maybe what was in that water would only take your powers away. You would have some serious choices to make then."

"So what are you here for, then?"

"Just what I said, to offer you alternatives. You may change any one thing in your life. You can choose to see if you will in fact die, or just lose your powers and have to deal with the consequences of what you've done. You could go back and decide to not drink that glass of water. Or you could choose something else entirely…but whatever it is, I'm not responsible for the result."

She couldn't believe this was happening. But it was all real. The tears frozen on her father's face certainly were. What should she do? Take the chance of dying and take her punishment in the afterlife? Or live, without her powers, and face the music here? Maybe she should just go all the way back to the beginning, to the day she and her sisters decided to dedicate themselves to fighting the forces of evil, and stay out of it. She gasped. That was what she had chosen. How had she gotten so far away from it that she had become the evil she'd sworn to fight? By refusing to admit that she was weak, when she could have been working on getting stronger instead of denying it. It was the day her sisters died, the day she finally gave in to her fears and ran…

"Can you really send me back to any moment in time?"

"Yes, Bubbles, I can."

"Okay. I know what one." She stood up and held out her hand. "Let's go."

The next time she saw the professor's face, she swore, he would be happy.