The next day at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten, Miss Keane was reading Lord Jim to the class when the hotline buzzed.
Bubbles and Buttercup looked at their sister, who did not move from her desk but stared at her feet, fidgeting nervously. A hush seemed to fall over the class. The phone sounded again, deafening in the silence.
Buttercup stood up. "I'll get it -- "
"No." Blossom flashed to the hotline and picked it up. She cleared her throat. "Blossom here." A pause. "Yes, Mayor?..." She stiffened. "Why do you want to speak to Bubbles or Buttercup? What's wrong with me?"
"Blossom," Miss Keane whispered. "You're raising your voice."
The girl blushed. "Sorry. Mr. Mayor? Would you please just tell me what's going on?" She listened. "All right, we're on it."
She banged down the phone and turned to her sisters.
"Girls, there's some kind of disturbance in the park."
Everyone quickly made the connection: park equaled volcano equaled observatory equaled...
"All right!" Buttercup shattered the silence. Her voice was like the Professor's voice yesterday, too loud and too cheerful. She swiped the air with her ever-ready fists. "Let's go get'em!" And Bubbles filled the air with giggles.
"Cut it out, girls, this could be serious. Be ready for anything. Let's roll!" And Blossom was off in a flash.
Soaring over the city, her sisters in formation behind her, Blossom smiled. The old rush was returning. Her heart started to lift. Yes! Once she busted a real criminal, everything would be okay. Then she remembered how she tried blame her crime on Mojo, and...she bit her lip and sped faster.
The park trees flew by below, and then, looming ahead, its dome glinting in the sunlight -- The observatory.
"Buttercup, scan the hideout."
She did so. "I'm picking up three life forms inside. They're jumping all over the place, raising some kind of commotion."
"Let's go listen in."
They flashed to the observatory dome, pressing their ears against it.
Blossom's eyes opened wide.
She heard a sound like chomping and the smacking of lips, an occasional giggle or laugh; and thundering above it all was a voice she had come to know very well, like a mad genius making a presidential campaign speech.
"This marks a banner moment in the annals of evil, the chronicles of crime, the whole hallowed history of heinousness! When the so-called 'do-gooders' let slip their guard and reveal their hypocrisy for all to see! The enjoyment I derive from it! The pleasure that tingles me from my toes to the top of my superior brain! Mu-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Then a gurgling and slurping, and someone tittering in the background.
Another voice joined in. "Yes indeed!" A sing-song voice, and almost sickeningly effeminate. "And to think, Mojo, that you saw it all up close, with your own eyes!"
"I most certainly did! Mojo was just minding his own business," the voice fell to a mock-solemn tone, "paying his Father's Day respects, when that poor desperate wench intruded into my home and dragged me to the police station in a pathetic attempt to frame me for her crime!" Whoops of laughter.
Then came a girl's voice, whiny enough to make the Powerpuffs wince. "And to think she's the very same one who told me -- " a high, mimicking tone -- "'You've done nothing worthy of the name Powerpuff!' Well look who's talking!" And she let loose a torrent of giggles.
Princess -- for that was the giggler's name -- continued: "She doesn't know it, but I had the chauffeur drive me every day to wherever she was picking up garbage, and I watched her through a telescope. Sheesh, the look on her face!" A round of laughter arose; she must have done a comical imitation of that expression.
Buttercup exploded. "That's it! Nobody talks that way about our sister!" She crashed through the dome with a BOOM, leaving a jagged hole. Bubbles raced in after her.
As for Blossom, she was trembling, and her face had flushed red. But she took a deep breath and followed her sisters inside.