It's A Terrible Life

by i am a good fighter

If you were given the power to change your past, would you? Or, perhaps, the better question to ask is...SHOULD you?

4. Part 4

PART FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Far, far away, on the screen of a strange-looking television set in a strange-looking dwelling, were the frozen images of the Powerpuff Girls and the monster. They had been frozen in that same exact position since time had stopped. In that odd room, out of the mist suddenly arose a ghostly figure, an old man dressed in white. It morphed into the red demon known to the world as HIM, and as it took a seat on the couch, it laughed balefully.

"Hahahahahaha!!! Guardian angel, indeed! And it only took me ten of those mortals' years to come up with it! Now, those Powerpuff Girls will be mine for eternity!"

It picked up from a table the TV remote control and a rubber duck. It aimed the remote at the set.

"Now, Mr. Quackers, let's just sit back and enjoy the show, shall we?"

The demon gave the toy a squeeze, as if in reply.

* * * * * * *

Blossom was suddenly aware of her surroundings and it caught her off-guard. Directly ahead was the creature and behind it somewhere had to be Buttercup; off to her right, Bubbles floated uncertainly at a safe distance, waiting for instructions. But all she could see before her were the images of her children, and her son's wailing, "Where you goin', Mommy?" filled her ears. She shook her head to rid it of them and shouted, "No! Go away!"

* * * * * * *

"No, Joey, no!" Buttercup cried out, putting out her hands to stop the bullets. Blossom's shouting snapped her out of it. "Huh? Who's she talking to?"

The scene before her brought her fully back to reality. "Oh, man, it really happened! Okay, now how do I fix things?"

* * * * * * *

"Joey? Who's Joey?" Bubbles wondered, the second after she had snapped out of her trance by hearing her sister. Right after she had screamed, "I'm sorry, Professor!"

* * * * * * *

"It's working!" shouted HIM. "They think they're undoing the past and that past hasn't even happened yet!"

* * * * * * *

"Professor? Where?"

Blossom swiveled her head and didn't see him. Or Joey. Whoever that was. This was strange. But she had to stay focused and try to remember exactly what she had done wrong the first time, so she wouldn't do it again. Which was it? She had ordered Buttercup to stay in place and Bubbles to come back after she had fled. Which one shouldn't she do? Maybe both!

"Oh, this is so confusing! I don't know what to do!"

So when the monster continued to flail at her, she just tried to stay out of the way but did nothing else. It seemed to get larger in front of her eyes. She was sure it hadn't; it was just her doubt confusing things even more for her.

* * * * * * *

Buttercup didn't see the professor either, but she was more intent on remembering what not to do. She remembered. When Bubbles had flown away, she had moved in, in spite of Blossom's warning. So she hovered in place, waiting. And she thought she saw the monster grow in size. "Nah, it's just an illusion!"

* * * * * * *

"I'm not afraid of a little fire! I'm not gonna run! I'm not!"

And when the monster spit the huge plume of flame at her this time, Bubbles stayed there and took it. When the smoke cleared, she could have sworn the monster was a lot bigger than before, but she couldn't be sure.

* * * * * * *

HIM watched the girls trying to avoid the savage arm-swings and kicks as they fired their lasers ineffectually.

"Hah! Those little fools can't see that they've been tricked into doing the opposite of what they thought they did the first time, and their fear and confusion is feeding the creature's strength! I'm winning! I'm winning!!"

* * * * * * *

Blossom narrowly avoided another kick and took another rip in her dress. The stench of the beast's breath made it hard to think. She did her best to move in and out between those slashing daggers and give a few kicks of her own, but she was fighting it by herself. Her sisters were hanging back. They weren't doing at all what she remembered.

Bubbles decided to take action. She headed for the creature. It turned its attention away from Blossom to her and swung at her. She was able to get inside the blades enough to be hit by just the open palm of the huge hand, and it knocked her back.

"Ah, okay." Blossom thought. "This is where she takes off. Then Buttercup comes in, and now is when I just let them do what they were gonna do."

But Bubbles snarled in anger and rejoined the fight. Startled, Blossom saw the monster suddenly increase in size. Confused, she shouted, "Bubbles, why didn't you fly away?"

"Why should I? I'm not a big chicken like you think I am!" She delivered a kick to the underside of the beast's chin. Instead of rocking it, it only grew again.

Buttercup had seen Bubbles returning and it confused her, too. It wasn't like she remembered. But she wasn't going to disobey Blossom's orders to wait the thing out, never mind that Blossom was disobeying her own commands. To her amazement, the monster grew even larger. "Something's not right here! This is all wrong!"

Blossom expected Buttercup to be joining them, but her sister still held back. How could she not make the same mistake she made earlier if her sisters weren't doing the things she told them not to do? Angry and confused, she yelled, "Buttercup! Get your butt in here and help us!"

"No! I can't!" was the response she heard. She did the splits just as a kick was about to disembowel her, and the claws passed harmlessly beneath. The monster realized it would get more done by retracting its blades. They took harder hits when it connected. It could finish slicing them up later. Blossom never saw the arm coming straight at her from her left. Bubbles did and stepped into its path. It sent them both hurtling toward the street. This time, Buttercup broke her holding pattern and rushed down to them. They corrected and came up to meet her.

Bubbles exclaimed, "Girls! Is it just me or is the monster getting bigger?"

"Yes!" Blossom said, then angrily turned to her other sister. "Buttercup, why aren't you helping us?"

"Because you told me to wait, and I didn't, and that's when everything went wrong!" Buttercup put her hands up to her mouth. "Oops!"

"What did you say?" Blossom asked, feeling suddenly chilled.

Bubbles interrupted, "Yeah, Blossom, I didn't run away this time because you yelled at me last time!"

They floated there staring at each other and came up with the same answer at the same time. "Guardian angel, huh?"

"Girls, we've been tricked!" Blossom spat. "The monster is feeding off of our decisions to undo what we never really ever did in the first place!"

"Forget the monster!" Buttercup cried. "Let's get HIM!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"BLAST IT!!" the demon roared. "Those accursed little brats figured it out! I never thought they'd have time to compare notes!"

He swung one claw, creating a pink cloud that rose up through the ceiling into the sky far above his lair. "Well, I'll fix that! I'll remove their memories. No, wait. If I do that, they'll just focus on defeating the creature…I want them confused!"

* * * * * * *

"No!" Blossom ordered. "We have to get rid of the monster first. Then we'll go take care of …of…gee, I forgot what I was gonna say!"

"Yeah, me too." Buttercup agreed. "Somethin' about a weird dream I had…only now I can't remember!"

The monster all this time watched them, and seeing them forgetting about it, approached.

Bubbles mumbled, "Me either…all I know is that…hmm…I'm not even sure if I was in it!" Then she saw the beast bearing down on them. "Girls! Look out!"

They got out of the way of the two hands slapping together, just in time. They regrouped above.

"Well, I know the monster was in mine!" Buttercup glared.

"Yeah, mine too!" Bubbles said. "It was a famous actress!"

"Not in mine!" Blossom countered. "Joey Finkelmeyer was the monster and you and he had three kids, Bubbles, and you had to kick the professor out of the trailer park so you could all stop Buttercup from being the worst criminal in…Hollywood?" She scratched her head.

Buttercup frowned. "That is one strange dream, Blossom, but where were you in it?"

"I dunno."

This time they didn't get out of the way, and they found themselves crawling out of craters in the street. Buttercup dusted herself off as they flew back toward the fight. "Man, if we don't get those stupid dreams out of our heads, that thing is gonna finish us!"

"But what if our dreams are the key to us beating it?" Bubbles asked worriedly.

Blossom's eyes shot open wide. "Bubbles, that's it! We've gotten all mixed up somehow. It sounds like we all had kinda the same dream. Keep attacking this thing and think to yourselves, what wasn't in our dreams that should have been?"

* * * * * * *

"What in Hades is she talking about now?" HIM wondered, scratching his beard. The plan seemed to be working beautifully once he'd mixed up their memories. Now, he had no clue as to what he could have possibly forgotten.

* * * * * * *

The girls concentrated on fighting, keeping their thoughts to themselves. Gradually, they started to wear the creature out. It began to shrink a bit.

Blossom tried to recall her dream. It seemed to have involved her leaving Townsville and the professor at some point, and her sisters were in it but not herself. It wasn't a very happy dream. It wasn't even like what she had told them it was. She tried to make a mental list of everyone who appeared in it. People she knew and complete strangers. In one part, Townsville had been under someone's evil control…but whose? There was a piece missing, and she couldn't find it. She quit thinking and kept punching and kicking. Maybe it would come to her…

Bubbles had the same problem. Her dream was also very sad, and she had the impression that Blossom had been the cause of it, and Buttercup was a hero somehow. But she couldn't remember herself at all. It had taken place mostly in Townsville, she thought, and she remembered guns…a lot of guns. Now, who liked guns that she knew? A kick almost tore her arm off, and she decided she'd better get back to fighting. She'd figure it out, she hoped…

"Forget that stupid dream and fight!" Buttercup told herself. She tried, but the puzzle wouldn't leave her alone…She remembered a really old man signing a bunch of autographs, and at one point, Blossom was up on a stage accepting some gold statue thingies from a guy in a tuxedo, only before she could give her speech, she drank a glass of water and fell over. Then she remembered Bubbles yelling at the professor because he knocked over a jug of milk. But where was she? If she wasn't around, Townsville wouldn't be the nice place it seemed to be in the dream…but why? Why wouldn't it? Something was missing, and she tried the same thing as Blossom, making a mental list. It had to click sooner or later…and later might be too late, period.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

To the people on the ground it looked bad for the girls. They had been battling the creature for hours, and doing a good job of keeping the damage to downtown to a minimum. Most of it was from the girls crashing into buildings or cars or the street. Each time they got up and went back, but the girls could be heard talking to themselves instead of calling out to each other like they always did. It looked very bad indeed.

HIM thought it looked very good. Whatever idea Blossom had come up with, it hadn't worked. The creature on its own would have gone down some time ago, but he was still influencing it, and would until the Powerpuffs were destroyed. It shouldn't be too much longer, the way it looked to him…

* * * * * * *

"Keep attacking, girls!" Blossom encouraged them. "Don't give up!"

Buttercup grunted with her exertions. "Man, I wish I had one of Mojo's laser guns right about now!"

"Huh?" Bubbles said, looking sharply at her sister.

"Buttercup!" cried Blossom. "You took over Townsville in my dream! Mojo should've tried to stop you but he wasn't in it!"

Bubbles got very excited and gave the monster two savage kicks to the neck before escaping a slicing claw. "Yeah! He wasn't in mine either, but there were all these guns and weapons!"

Buttercup saw the beast seem to sag and gave it two chops and a kick. "Hey! I don't remember him either! That's gotta be it!"

"But why wouldn't Mojo be in all of our dreams?" Bubbles wondered.

Buttercup frowned. "Yeah, he'd be the one I'd think of first!"

"Yes, Buttercup! Unless…unless someone was controlling what we dreamed about!"

She grinned at her red-haired sister. "And just who might that be?"

"Someone who hates Mojo more than we do!" Bubbles called out.

"Yes, Bubbles." Blossom said with a smile. "He wouldn't ever give Mojo credit like that, by putting him in our dreams!"

* * * * * * *

At that moment, HIM heard a ringing in his ears. He had no idea what it was. It wasn't the telephone. It was annoying, but nothing compared to what he was witnessing on his set. Those not-so-little-anymore creeps had figured him out anyway. The game was over, and he let them have the used-up creature. Ten long years to come up with this scheme and they had beaten him once more. He half-expected them to show up any minute and give him another pounding. He sighed and turned off the TV, wishing for that infernal ringing to stop.

* * * * * * *

The monster hadn't been dispatched as gruesomely as in their dreams. Buttercup had simply flung it into orbit to be with the many others sent there over the years. Wearily, they floated to the ground and accepted the accolades from the citizens and posed for snapshots.

Usually, they just wanted to go home after a fight. They had plenty of things to do as busy teens. But this evening, they felt a sense of just how close they had come to their destruction, and they needed to feel some of that love. As they made their way through the crowd, Blossom's sensitive ears picked up something. In an alleyway, a man was yelling at a woman holding a baby. Why it angered her so, she didn't know, but she was in the man's face in a flash. She backed him up against the wall.

"See here, buddy, there's no excuse in the world for you to verbally abuse someone like that! Don't let me ever catch you doing it again!"

The man backed away, looking for somewhere to run, but her sisters were blocking his path.

"You better think about taking some anger management classes, pal!" The guy pushed his way past Bubbles and Buttercup and ran.

"Nothing to see here, folks!" Buttercup sang out, and she and Bubbles shooed people away from the alley.

Blossom turned to the woman, who was deeply embarrassed. "How often does this happen?" she asked softly.

"He's good to us." the woman protested. "He just got laid off from his job and he's worried."

Blossom frowned. She was defending the bum. "Has he ever hit you?"

"No!"

"Does he drink?"

"A little. He had a couple this afternoon…"

Blossom reached into her pocket for two of the small plain white cards she always kept handy, and a felt-tip pen. She wrote her phone number on one, and asked the woman for her address. When that was done, she said, "I think it would be a good idea if you went to those classes together. I'm going to pay you a visit in two weeks to see how things are going. And if he ever lays a hand on you, you call me, no matter what time of day it is."

Blossom stroked the baby's hair and smiled. The boy had managed to sleep through the whole thing. "Take care of that baby."

The woman said a simple 'thank you' and walked away. Blossom found Bubbles standing at her shoulder.

"Blossom, what was that all about? We've always been too busy to get involved in people's personal problems."

"I don't know, Bubbles. That kind of thing goes on every day. It just made me mad for some reason."

They headed back toward where the media was. They hadn't been interviewed yet. Blossom saw someone heading toward Buttercup with a pen and paper. "Uh oh, Bubbles, let's move!"

Buttercup hated being asked for her signature. She thought it was stupid to collect someone's name on a piece of paper or a photo and when asked, always told the asker to get a life. In disbelief, they saw her write something and hand the man, not even a kid, back his paper and pen. That's when they noticed the line. They sauntered over, grinning at their sister.

"Gee, Buttercup, what brought this on?"

"Oh, I don't know. It ain't as bad as I thought it would be. It's kinda fun, actually." She said all that without looking at them, instead smiling at two people and signing their pieces of paper. "I don't want to see this turning up in some auction, now." she warned the next person, who promised to treasure it always. Before long, all three of them would be signing the next hour away.

CONCLUSION

When they finally floated into the house, it was dark. They had missed dinner, but they weren't hungry. The professor was probably down in the lab, working. He would know from the news that they were all right. But to their surprise, he was sitting in the darkened living room watching an old black-and-white movie. He turned around.

"Oh, hi girls. Boy, what a day you had! You must be starving. Let me heat up the leftovers…"

They held up their hands in protest. "No, I think we're just gonna hit the sack, Professor." Buttercup told him.

"Hey, what movie is this?" Bubbles asked. It looked familiar.

Blossom recognized it. "Professor, what's this doing on now? It isn't Christmas!"

"I know Blossom, and it wasn't even listed, but when I went to watch the movie I'd planned on, this was on instead, and I just had to see it. It's one of my all-time favorites!"

Buttercup groaned. "Professor, you've seen this a hundred times! How can you sit through it again?"

"What is it?" Bubbles demanded.

"It's a Wonderful Life", Bubbles. It's about a guardian ang-"

Blossom stopped in her tracks. "Oh my God!"

"'Night, Professor!" they called out and raced up the stairs.

* * * * * * *

Bubbles had their old room. It was the biggest, so her sisters dragged their mattresses over and squeezed them in. They probably wouldn't be getting to sleep right away, anyhow.

They remembered…all of it. They lay there staring up at the ceiling in the dark, exchanging their horror stories and sharing each others' agony. Then they talked about what it all meant.

"I didn't really have it so bad, Blossom." Buttercup said. "But what HIM put you through, I say we go over there right now and make him pay for it!"

"Now I know why you wanted to help that lady so much, Blossom." Bubbles sniffed.

"Yes, Bubbles. And it was despicable of him to convince you that you were a coward, to make you into something evil like that. But girls, we have to remember it was all just HIM's illusions. We weren't those people. None of it was real."

"It sure felt like it. Pretty darn clever of him to make us feel guilty for causing each other to die."

"Yeah, Buttercup." Blossom agreed. "He used that as the foundation to build everything else on, and it almost worked. We tried to do the opposite of what we thought caused our lives to go so bad, and that guilt only strengthened the monster."

"HIM must have seen we were figuring it out and mixed up what we remembered." Bubbles said. "But we figured it out anyway."

"Maybe not, Bubbles."

Bubbles sat up sharply. Blossom turned over on her side toward her sister, seeing only the luminescent green eyes in the dark. "What do you mean, Buttercup?"

"Maybe we had help. Didja ever think that maybe we have somebody looking out for us?"

"You mean maybe we really do have a guardian angel?" Bubbles asked, somewhat disbelievingly.

"Could be. They supposedly do exist, but it ain't like the TV and movies. You never get to meet them."

Blossom was amazed by the possibility. "Gee, Buttercup, I never thought about that before! We've always kinda been Townsville's guardian angels in a way, but even superheroes need 'em, too, I guess."

"We sure needed one today, whoever it was." Bubbles said softly.

"Yeah. I hope if they were new, God gave 'em their wings." Buttercup answered. "They sure earned 'em."

The girls talked quietly for a little while longer, then drifted off to sleep; blissfully free of any lingering bad memories. When they awoke the next morning, all they would remember as a group was the fight the day before. Blossom would remember her promise to check back with that woman. Buttercup would no longer be averse to signing her autograph. Bubbles would only have a vague sense that her occasional bouts of fear were a good thing and kept them all out of danger. None of them would remember why. HIM would have to try something else.

* * * * * * *

Those were the demon's thoughts exactly. While the girls slept peacefully, he tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Ten years was nothing to him, but they might be old ladies by the time he came up with another good plan. And then, what would be the point?

He put another pillow on top of his head and still it wouldn't block out that infernal ringing. It hadn't ceased since he'd first heard it, the moment the Powerpuff Girls had broken his spell for good. He clutched his toy duck and tried to think of something else to block out the noise.

"Oh, Mr. Quackers," the demon sighed. "I think it's going to be a loooong eternity!"

THE END