She saw what she knew she would see: curly-haired Princess, with a freckled face and eyes as black and suspicious as a weasel's; Him, that crimson being who went by another name in religious writings; and the host of this gathering, resplendent in blue and white, crowned with a shiny cap over his bloated, superpowered brain -- Mojo Jojo. They all looked up; they all smiled.
The girls froze in midair.
"Oh no!" Bubbles' hands flew to her mouth.
"Woah!" Buttercup stared. The two girls rushed to cover Blossom's eyes, but too late -- she had seen it.
Splashed all over the observatory walls, in giant posters, and smaller pictures in rows and columns, were pictures of the illustrious leader of the Powerpuff Girls, not soaring above the city that she and her sisters protected, not cuffing a villain or dispatching some towering beast without even ruffling her pretty red bow -- no. This was the Blossom in prison coveralls, Blossom enduring taunts from passersby, the downcast, disgraced, convicted criminal Blossom!
"My chauffeur's a good photographer, don't you think?" Princess snatched a handful of cookies from a buffet table and stuffed them in her mouth. The table stretched across the observatory, loaded with bananas, pineapples, and every kind of sweet dessert, as well as tall pitchers brimming with purple punch and cherry Kool-Aid. Mojo, not bothering with goblets, hefted a punch pitcher to his mouth, splattering some of it on the floor. Princess kept talking as she chewed: "We woo won'rin when woo'd fow up!" She added something else that was unintelligible except for the word "jailbird." Blossom cringed.
Mojo threw aside the empty pitcher and stabbed a gloved finger at her. "Yes! Did you think I would forget such an effrontery? And now you go back to leading your girlish gang as if nothing ever happened? It stuns my superior brain that anyone would let you lead them now -- a felon with a criminal record, and her picture in the Townsville Police scrapbook!"
He turned his green simian glare on Bubbles and Buttercup. "What is the matter with you? Has the realization not hit you yet? No one can ever see you the same way again if you continue to associate with this pilferer of putters and stealer of sports equipment! They'll think you are as bad as she is!"
Bubbles shrieked, "She's our sister!" in a voice so high it almost shattered the goblet Princess was sipping Kool-Aid from.
"Wrong!" Mojo roared. "You were not born from the same womb! She happened to be created in the same laboratory accident that created you, nothing more -- "
Buttercup was nose-to-nose with Mojo in an instant. "Say that again, Mo-jerk, and I'll put you in intensive care! Blossom's our sister! She made a mistake, but she paid for it and it's over, so knock it off!"
Blossom was covering her face. Bubbles put an arm around her shoulder. "It's all right, don't listen to him, he's just mean, it's all right..."
Blossom gave a long, low wail; then she burst into tears and shot out of the observatory.
Silence.
For a moment Bubbles looked out the jagged hole in the ceiling where her sister had made her exit. Then she slowly turned around and fixed Mojo with a look even more withering than Buttercup's.
"Mojo." She spoke in a low voice. "Remember when I beat you up all by myself?"
"But this time," Buttercup growled, "she's gonna have plenty of help."
The monkey gave them a silly smile. "Oh, Powerpuff girls," he said in his mock-solemn tone. "You sound just like a couple of criminals. Or at least friends of one."
Then a crimson flash ignited, like a red sun lighting off in the observatory. A cackle of devilish laughter, and two girls screaming.