OK, a small retraction is necessary at this point; I was originally going to make this second chapter into a songfic, hence the musical suggestion at the top of chapter 1. Then, I decided against that idea, 'cos I feel that adding songs in, in that way, makes a story more confusing (especially for the author). And you have to match up the story to the lyrics, which would've made this a LOT harder still. So I'm dropping that idea (probably on its' head. :-P).
By Gregory Cooper
Chapter 2: War
"Hey Mojo!" yelled Ace, the green-skinned leader of the Gangrene Gang, over the roar of all the machinery.
"Do not address me in that way," replied the chimp, "for my name is not merely Mojo. For, if my title really were simply Mojo, then my full nomenclature would not be Mooooojo Jojo, which it actually is. Ergo..."
"Yeah yeah, whatever. Anyhoo, how come you invited us," he indicated his four rather odd looking comrades, "to join the Beat-Alls instead of getting Fuzzy back?"
"It is quite simple, and I will elucidate it thusly. You five are far smarter than Fuzzy, for he is dumber than all of you (put together). And there are five of you instead of just one, meaning more defence against attacks from those most accursed of brats, the Powerpuff Girls."
"Ah. Right."
"Plus Fuzzy doesn't know how to load and operate a chain gun. Now hop to it."
Several blocks away, Bubbles and Buttercup were lurking under the rubble of what once had most probably been an electronics hardware store.
"I still can't believe it...Blossom's really gone," whispered Bubbles in a voice hoarse from crying.
"Snap out it, B-Bubble-head, or you'll...have me crying too," said Buttercup, sniffling a little.
"You? Crying?"
"Yeah, me crying." Buttercup said indignantly. "What, you think I ain't got feelings?"
"But...the way you acted back there..."
"Look sis, this just isn't the time for bursting into tears, OK? We start blubbing, and we'll end up being caught or killed too, most likely."
"So what ARE we gonna do then?"
"Well," said Buttercup, floating off the ground a little way in a menacing stance, "first we're gonna find the scum-suckers who did this to Townsville, and then we're gonna 'em a taste of what it is to be a Powerpuff!" she said, and smacked her fist into the other open palm.
"Yeah! We'll beat 'em, in memory of Blossom!" cheered Bubbles, growing more determined to get revenge by the minute.
"That's the spirit..." said Buttercup, as she followed her blue-eyed sister in the city sky once more.
It took longer than usual for the sisters to get home, as they had to avoid all sounds of gunfire, just in case. Also, just in case, they had decided right from the start to keep silent unless absolutely necessary, so as not to alert any potential enemies to their location.
Finally, however, as they arrived in their own neighbourhood, they found evidence that the Beat-Alls had already been there. Almost every building in the Pokey Oaks suburb had been crushed, flattened into a pancake, and then indented with caterpillar tracks from the Beat-Alls very own war machine. As the two girls flew over the area in a thorough sweep, searching for possible survivors, they found none. What they did witness lots of though, was the full horror of the situation; there were a few corpses in the streets, so recently killed that they were still warm. Some were riddled with bullets, while others had been caught in massive explosions of some kind. Still others had simply been crushed by the sheer weight of the war machine passing over them, and now merely resembled massive, half-done, 6-foot pizzas, only covered in the tomato sauce.
This, nonetheless, was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Upon closer inspection with their X-ray vision, both sister discovered even worse atrocities that had been visited on their fellow citizens. Many had been crushed to death, not by the war machine per se, but by the great mass of the rubblethat had once been the buildings they had occupied. Most had simply been going calmy about their daily business when the end came for them, and so their broken and twisted bodies were found, still seemingly trying to continue watching the television, cooking, cleaning, ironing,...the list was almost endless.
Eventually, they had had enough, and became so nauseated from the sight of the carnage that they had to deactivate their X-ray vision and fly up into the clouds, where they couldn't see the scene below.
"Didya find the Professor?" asked Bubbles, in a weak voice.
"Nope. I bet they've taken him," replied Buttercup, thinking aloud.
"Why would they do that?"
"In the hope that we wouldn't attack if they have a hostage."
"So what can we do then?"
"We'll try to rescue anyone they may be holding, before facing off against them."
"B-but they have bullets that can hurt us," pointed out Bubbles, at which Buttercup's face fell slightly. "How're we gonna get close enough to rescue anyone or face them?"
"Hmm...you've got a point, Bubbs." Buttercup ruffled her sisters hair playfully as she considered some possible solutions.
"Eureka! I have it!" Buttercup suddenly shouted out.
"You do?"
"Yes, I do."
"Is it contagious?" Bubbles said, worriedly.
"What?" Buttercup was momentarily thrown off track by this comment. "Oh...No. I know how we can get close enough. We need a trump card."
"What's a trump card when it's at home?"
"Umm...something that'll give us an advantage, and keep them from shooting at us too much."
"Oh!" Bubbles caught on to the idea. "Like in films, when the villain goes round wearing 'splosives?"
An energy-saving light bulb went on very slowly over Buttercup's head. "Yes, of course! Bubbles, you're a genius!" Bubbles just looked mildly confused however. "But where are we gonna find explosives in Townsville though?" Bubbles realised that Buttercup was about to do something that could be very dangerous. Her jaw dropped.
"You're not serious, are you? You could blow yourself up!" she squeaked, almost in the range of bat sonar.
"Not me, we." Bubbles was stunned speechless. "And yes, I'm deadly serious. It may be the only way we can stop the Beat-Alls from taking over everything!"
"OK..." said Bubbles, thinking deeply on the matter of a possible suicide mission against their enemies, "...what about the missile silo on the other side of Citysville? We could take a couple of the warheads from the Trident missiles."
"Nukes?!?" It was Buttercup's turn to be stunned senseless this time. "Are you out of you mind? What happened to 'we might kill ourselves'"? She asked, doing a decent imitation of Bubbles' high-pitched voice.
"Well," said Bubbles, "if we're gonna carry 'splosives, we may as well make sure they're powerful enough to stop the Beat-Alls and their weapons." Buttercup thought about this. "And if they have enough duranium to use on their bullets, they probably have duranium armour, too. And only a nuke'll get through that."
"Good thinking Bubbles," Buttercup said. "Seems to be your day for bright ideas, doesn't it?"
"Well, let's get going then," Bubbles replied, with a grin. "We've got baddies to stop."
"Well," said Princess, staring pointedly at Mojo, "you had me spend $20 million in R&D on building this....machine, before Him went and killed them all. So what does it do?"
"At the moment," replied Mojo Jojo, deep in thought, "very little. It scans the mind of its' target to uncover what they desire most strongly." "That's ALL?!"
"What exactly were you expecting for $20 million, considering the amount of duranium armour on this device?" Mojo said, a bit peeved at Princess Morebucks' reaction. "And anyhow, it isn't finished yet."
"Really?" This piqued her curiousity. "How so?"
Mojo simply ignored her and turned towards the red, cross-dressing demon who was currently spitting acid at a few people still struggling to hold on to life. "HIM!!"
"Yeees?" answered Him, in his feminine voice. "You called?" Then, he noticed the device for the first time. "Ah, is that it? Do you wish for meeee to imbue it with magic now?"
"Yes please."
At that moment, Ace finally decided to pipe up. "So what'll this thing do when it's all magicfied?"
"It will not only be able to read its' targets desires, but also project an image of said desire directly into the victim's mind, distracting them from whatever task they are undertaking at that time. And if they are distracted, then they will not be carrying out whatever task they are carrying out properly, efficiently and thoroughly, and hence when they are fully distracted, they will be easy prey, and hence this will have facilitated in their demise..."
"Yeah yeah. Got any targets in mind, monkey-mouth?"
"As a matter of fact Princess, I do so have an idea of potential targets whom we might use this machine on to great effect, and thus be able to finally do what we have all longed for for so long - to kill them....
"You mean the Powerpuff Girls?" interjected Ace.
A massive, manic grin appeared on Mojo Jojo's small, green, slightly deformed visage. A similar, altogether more evil-looking one appeared on Him's face. For the very first time ever, Mojo uttered but a single word.
"Exactly."
About fifteen minutes later, Buttercup and Bubbles, the two remaining Powerpuffs, were just moments away from facing their arch-nemeses, the Beat-Alls, once again.
"Remind me again why we didn't just use the Professor's equipment to create a Powerpuff army that could wipe the floor with those doo-doo heads?"
"Because, Bubbles, there's no guarantee that the formula would stay stable for long, or at all. Remember Bunny?"
"Yeah, but that was 'cos we subs...subis...substiis...changed the recipe."
"Even if we could get it right in time, Bubs, think about it. After this battle, an army wouldn't be needed any longer. What'd happen to them all then?"
Bubbles thought about this for a few moments, as they drew ever closer to their target. "Oh."
Buttercup was glad Bubbles finally understood her argument. "That's my point. Otherwise though, it's a brilliant plan." "Really?"
"Yeah. Plus I think the Professor kept...keeps all his Chemical X in a lead-lined, duranium safe, and we don't know the combination to open it."
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that." By now, they had arrived at their destination.
"POWERPUFFS, PREPARE TO MEET THY DOOM!" bellowed Him, now using his masculine voice, and in his incredibly muscular physical form.
"Oh please Him, that's lame."
"Yeah, we've seen it all before," added Buttercup.
"Really? How about we just shoot you, then?" asked Him, reverting to his feminine voice in mid-sentence.
"Yes. I'm sure you already know the effectiveness with which these duranium-coated bullets can despatch you, as you seem to be missing the third of your number, your precious leader."
"Can it, Mojackass."
"Be careful what you say, Powerpuff Buttercup, for we can kill you two anytime we wish now."
"Not really," squeaked Bubbles.
"What do you mean?" asked Princess.
"What she means is we're both rigged with explosives. You shoot us, we start the countdown."
"Oh please," muttered Princess.
"A foolish threat," added Mojo, "as we would simply be protected by this war machine's duranium armour, which is impregnable, indestructible, and impervious..."
"To everything except for a thermonuclear detonation," finished Him. "So you see, this is futile."
"So you mean what I'm wearing on my back ISN'T a nuke then?" asked Buttercup. The Beat-Alls faces collectively went slack. "And Bubbles is wearing one too."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Oh yeah. Think about it. You've already killed the civilian population for miles around, and if you kill us, that leaves only you lot in Townsville. We detonate these just as we die, and that takes all of you out as well. Everyone," she stated, staring at Him.
"Activate the device!" screamed Princess, who then realised she was the only one who knew how to operate it. So she switched it on and aimed it straight at Bubbles, to begin with.
Immediately, Bubbles saw the Professor and Blossom sitting up in the road directly beneath her, quite clearly both alive. She flew down towards them as fast as possible. "Blossom! Daddy! I'm com..." was all she could say, before she was struck with a lethal blast from an AntiX cannon.
The Antidote X flowed through her body as fast as lightning, disabling all her superpowers. Now without the ability to control her descent, she merely dropped the 100 feet or so to the ground, as Buttercup looked away and the Beat-Alls leered at the sight of yet another human pizza being made.
After it was all over, Mojo smiled smugly up at the last remaining puff, and leeringly said, "well, it looks like your time is up, Powerpuff Buttercup." Then he signalled to Princess to aim the device at Buttercup next.
At once, she saw before her, tied to the roof of the Beat-Alls war machine, her best friend and next door neighbour, Robyn Snyder. Alive and well, for the moment at least.
"Buttercup, help me!" screamed Robyn, her voice cracking from terror. Her hair was plastered to her forehead from nervous sweat, and she was shaking in her bonds. A look of total fright was evident in her dark brown eyes.
"Don't worry, Robyn, I'll save you!" Buttercup yelled back, and dove down to untie her friend form her precarious position on the slightly angled roof of the machine.
A moment later, it became clear to Buttercup that Robyn had, in fact, been a hallucination induced by Princess' device, and that where she had thought her friend was was actually a giant duranium spike sticking out of the top of the tank. A giant spike that she was now well and truly impaled upon.
She gasped for air, but there wasn't much chance of that any more. As she groped on her back for the detonation switch to her nuclear warhead, Him's voice rang one last time in her ears, echoing in a manner even more eerie than usually.
"It's no use, little girl. I already de...the warheads using my magic."
The last thing she saw before she blacked out forever was all the members of the Beat-Alls laughing at her in an extremely demonic manner......
"So, how are thing's going for them, Dad?" asked the girl who floated next to him, wearing a black dress with a dark green centre stiped, her dark green eyes not quite covered by her short, brown hair, done in short ponytail.
"Yes daddy, what's happening in there?" asked her auburn haired sister, who wore a similar black dress, except with a red central stripe, and her hair in a long braid down to the middle of her back. Her light pink eyes flashed with excitement.
"Now girls, you know well enough to wait until your sister get's...oh, she's here," he's finished his statement as a third girl, with bright blue eyes and her blonde hair in twin ponytails flew in through the open window, her dress, matching her sisters' but with a blue stripe, floating behind her in the wind. She touched down gracefully in front of her family.
"Sapphire," said the man, "what took you so long?" Her sister glared at her too, not out of anger, but impatience.
"Sorry daddy," the 8 year old girl said, dropping her backpack in the corner of the room. "I had to stay behind to finish off my math homework."
"Well, you're here now. So let's go and look in on the 'inmates'," the man said. He ushered his three daughters through a door which had painted on it the words "Doctor Iradium: Head of Physics Dept, Citysville University."
"What inmates, daddy?" asked the curious brunette girl.
"Well Jade, rather than punishing the most dangerous criminals with imprisonment that they could easily escape from, they're locked away in our Virtual Prison wing of the university. Look." They had arrived at a door that said, "No admittance except to authorised personnel." The doctor inserted a key card and punched in some long code number, and the door opened.
"But how?" asked Jade's pink sister.
"They're put into a virtual reality scenario so life-like, they don't even realise it isn't real. So they have no need to escape. You understand that, Ruby?"
"Yes daddy."
By now, they were in the virtual prison control centre, where a console with a giant screen atop it was surrounded by 8 VR interfaces, each one occupied. They were filled by Him, Mojo Jojo, Princess, and the members of the GGG.
"We keep them fed and cleaned, and they will live out the rest of their natural lives in this prison, not even knowing it. Now, how are your virtual counterparts handling them...?" Doctor Iradium checked some data on a recent printout. "Oh dear..."
"What is it, daddy?" asked Sapphire.
"It seems that your counterparts, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have been murdered.
"WHAT?!" Ruby, Sapphire and Jade could hardly believe their ears.
"Apparently, my counterpart had concocted a similar containment scheme for the criminals IN the simulation, but the virtual Townsville was wiped out before it could be implemented."
"Well," said Jade, "on the upside, they can feel happy in their world..."
"And we can be happy in the real world," said Ruby. And so Doctor Iradium went about checking all the systems, as was his daily routine, before leading his girls home, to a lovely night spent with family.
The End.
There will be a sequel to this fic in due course, folks. It will be a crossover fic (my first ever attempt at a crossover), entitled "Monster see, Monster D'Oh!". I have no idea when the first chapter will be posted up though.
