The three villains careened up Main Street. Mojo crouched in the domed cockpit of his thirty-foot stomping machine, shaking the earth and rattling all the shop windows with each mighty step. Princess zoomed to and fro in her flight pack with its twin jets, and the evil Him led the parade, high-stepping in his black boots, waving and twirling his fluffy pink stole. And above Him, below Princess, and in front of Mojo's great machine, the furnace raged, shooting jets of crimson flame every few seconds; some arced into the sky, others sliced across the street leaving smoking trails, and still others set unfortunate buildings on fire. One such house, now three blocks behind them, exploded with a boom and a shower of flaming debris.

Unfortunately Mojo had guzzled a little too much punch, and the Robo-Jojo teetered and staggered from side to side, occasionally smashing into a building and scattering bricks and bits of glass in the street.

"Care-ful!" Princess shouted. "Can't you see where you're going?"

Mojo, lidded-eyed and content at the controls, muttered, "You dint tell me ya daddy shpiked th'punch!" and hiccupped.

She rolled her eyes and folded her arms, hovering in front of the Robo's windshield. "Well, sheesh, you tasted it, didn't you? I only drank Kool-Aid." Said as if this was indisputable proof of her eternal sainthood.

Him, whose shark-toothed smile had never left his face all night, pointed skyward. "My, my! Look who's coming to join us!"

Princess looked. Mojo, as soon as the words registered in his fogged oversized brain, looked.

A blue streak, arcing over the city. Beside it, a green streak.

A pink streak.

"So she had the nerve to come back." Princess contemplated her fingernails, finely manicured for her that morning by the butler as she watched a Jerry Springer rerun on the giant wall-sized TV screen in her room. Mojo was ranting something over the robo's P.A. system in a slurred voice; neither she nor Him really heard it.

Three colorful flashes, and the new arrivals stood in the street -- Bubbles, Buttercup, and leader Blossom, her arms folded, barring the villains' way.

"Not -- so -- fast," Blossom said.

Princess smirked. "Well! Looks like Miss High and Mighty still doesn't get it!" She did a loop-the-loop in the air. "Well, hero? Come to ice over the party?"

Him added, "Would that change anything you did?" He went up to Blossom and draped a claw-tipped arm around her shoulder. "Face facts, dear. For it is a fact, and it always will be. Nothing can ever undo it. Isn't that right?" Then, switching from his effeminate voice to a low snarl: "Isn't it?"

The girl started to tremble again. Then all at once she kicked him away, sending him tumbling, sucked in a breath, and blew with all her might.

Nothing happened.

Blossom drew another breath, tried it again. Nothing but lukewarm air drifted from her mouth. She tried again, and again...

Nothing.

The three villains erupted into fresh laughter, Mojo's loudest of all, ringing over his loudspeakers.

Him got up and dusted himself off. "What's the matter, dear?" he crooned. "Did your breath thaw in the heat of your shame?" He snarled these last two words out in his sinister devil-voice. Then he returned to his effeminate cant. "You see...I know something about you that you never realized. Such curious things, your powers. No one can understand how they work, or what unforeseen thing might undo them. Especially ice breath. Well, guilt undoes it. Feelings of shame choke it out and render it inoperative. It won't work for a Powerpuff Girl burdened by remorse!"

The furnace shot a volley of flares, arcing and whizzing in all directions, hitting buildings in splashes of fireworks, setting them ablaze. Smoke billowed; sirens howled in the distance. People ran screaming along the street.

Buttercup sprang forward. "C'mon, girls! We can still kick their butts!"

She flew feet-first at Him. No good; the flares were too many and too fast. One struck Buttercup and slammed her into the street in a shower of sparks, leaving a smoking crater. She crawled out of it, groaning, wisps of vapor curling up from the edges of her hair, as the network of flares played above her.

Bubbles, clenching her teeth, spread her arms wide and slammed her hands together in a sonic thunderclap. The sound waves pulsed forward and rippled the flares a little; but that was all.

Mojo's voice rang from the Robo-Jojo's loudspeakers. "Mu-ha-ha-ha! I am enjoying this almost as much as the little wench's pictures!"

Buttercup whizzed back to her sisters. The three stood in a row, mouths tight.

"Power up, girls!" Blossom said; but she was starting to tremble.

Three pairs of lasers blazed forth. They got nowhere. Whether the girls aimed for the devil-man, the airborne brat, or the towering Robo-Jojo, flares intercepted the beams and snuffed them out.

"Hee-hee-hee!" Princess hovered over the furnace, smugly secure. "Could your crime-fighting days be over, Blossom? Maybe you should go back to picking up trash...hey!" She jetted down to the sidewalk, landing in a blast of smoke. "Well, well! Will you look at this!" She ran to a store window.

Blossom looked. She cringed. For a moment her heart died, for it was the very place she had robbed on Father's Day. And the golf clubs themselves, the Pro Excellence 2000's that the Professor had nearly had a heart attack over, still dominated the display window.

"Ah-haaahh!" Him sprang to the window, a crimson blur. There was a smash and a tinkling of glass, and he held the golf bag aloft in his two lobster-claws. "Behold, the instrument of evil's victory! I ought to take it home as a trophy!"

"Oh, let me have them!" Princess reached for them, but Him played keep-away. "My daddy would lo-o-o-ove these!"

Blossom watched the scene. Her sisters, hanging tense in the air, looked back and forth between her and the villains.

Him said, "Why dear, your father's own golf clubs must make these look dime-cheap."

"That's not the poiiinnt!" Princess whined, stamping her feet. "I want them, I want them!"

"No!" Mojo's distorted voice blared from the P.A.; he must have cranked it up to eleven. "If anyone steals those, it will be me! But as I do not care for the game of golf, it will give me the greatest of pleasure to flatten them into sheet metal!" And he raised one of the robo's giant feet in anticipation of this.

Suddenly Blossom yelled, "Hey!"

There was a great silence, except for the steady rumbling of the great maw flaming in the air.

Princess looked lazily over her shoulder. "Whaddya want, jailbird?"

Blossom pointed. "Those clubs. It almost killed me just to see them. I wouldn't in a million years even think of stealing again. But you're -- "

"Thrilled to do it?" Him warbled. "Of course we are, dear. That's the difference between you and ourselves. We're honest about being evil. We don't pretend to be something we're not." Mojo grunted an assent over his speakers.

"But you don't have to be evil! No one's forcing you to commit crimes!"

Princess rolled her eyes as if to say, "Look who's talking."

Bubbles held up a finger and smiled. "'Nobody's perfect,'" she recited as if she had been waiting all day for her chance to impart this bit of wisdom.

Blossom added, "And maybe there's a difference between people who foul up but learn from it and move on, and people who just keep doing wrong and making excuses for it, and never caring about the people they hurt."

Buttercup boomed, "And which one of those is our sister, Princess, and which one is you? Or Him? Or Mojo?"

The sirens howled. No one spoke.

"Well?" said Blossom.

Him opened his mouth, but Bubbles cut him off.

"Go, Blossom! Try it again!"

A crimson flare rumbled out from the portal and swept across the girls' path. They scattered as sparks flew and flames roared. Blossom heard Him shrieking below, "Burn them burn them!"

Whirling to face the furnace, she sucked in her breath, took aim, and spewed forth an arctic blast!

In seconds the fiery maw was covered with a white sheet of ice. The flares flickered and died, leaving the villains with shocked faces, as if their clothes had fallen off.

"Bubbles!" shouted Blossom. "Buttercup!"

"We're on it!" The two sisters zoomed around, cutting blue and green arcs in the smoke-choked sky.

Princess shrieked and throttled her jets. Too late -- a blue streak sliced through the jet pack, reducing it to sputtering rubble. Princess smacked face-first to the street and scrambled for home, her nose bloodied, crying for her daddy.

"And stay away, spoiled brat!" Bubbles shouted after her, raspberrying for good measure.

Mojo, up in his cockpit, blinked at the green shooting star streaking towards him. Finally his tipsy mind comprehended what was happening, and he gave a yelp and yanked levers, turning the machine around with a chugging of its engine.

"Not so fast, Mo-joke!"

Buttercup smashed through one side of the canopy and out the other, grabbing the monkey by the collar and towing him after her. Glass fell tinkling to the street. The great machine teetered, staggered and collapsed with a crash that shook the entire block. A pow, a bam, and the simian made for his volcano-top observatory as fast as his ape-feet could take him, black-eyed and with his striped brain-cap split down the middle, blubbering all the way.

Blossom stood and faced the devil-man. Her sisters swooped down and alighted on either side of her.

A grin slowly spread across the devil's face. He raised his claws, holding two big black-and-white photographs -- Blossom's mug shots.

"Look, dear. Look. From Powerpuff Girl to common thief. Who ever would have thought of it -- "

Blossom's eyes flared red. Two laser shots, and the pictures dissolved into ashes, fluttering to the street.

Him drew in his claws. "Ummm..."

Bubbles and Buttercup sprang at the villain and whirled around him, blue and green electrons around a writhing crimson nucleus, batting and socking, and finally grabbing his arms and carrying him to the iced-over furnace.

"Ahhh!" Him struggled. "No, no!"

Bubbles grinned. "Ready? One -- two -- "

Buttercup yelled, "Three!"

They threw him right at the opening. He smashed through the ice and into the roaring flames. His scream floated back out to them until the rumble of the furnace drowned it out.

"Now, Blossom!" The two darted away from the furnace.

Pulling the deepest breath she can manage, Blossom blew a long, sustained blizzard. The flames smothered in a storm of white; ice caked over the infernal weapon and built up until it wobbled, plunged to the street and shattered in an explosion of snow and ice.

And the girls, they laughed, they giggled, they joined hands and swooped in circles through the gently falling snow that covered the damaged buildings in white, cleansed the air, and blanketed the street until all trace of the devastation was invisible and forgotten.