(AN: Hi… I'm rather surprised to be back in the PPG section of FFN. Yes, back. This is actually where I first started writing fanfics, nearly six years ago. So if any of you actually remember me, you've certainly been here awhile.
To be honest, I would never have thought that I would write another PPG fanfic. I actually don't even think about this show much anymore. But I was working on a drawing with a bunch of my favorite characters in it, and I knew that if I left out Blossom and Mojo Jojo, that would be a very noticeable gap. I used to be SO obsessed with PPG it wasn't even funny.
So I pulled out my DVD of the Powerpuff Girls Movie. And by God. Here's the result.
This is odd… very odd. Even I don't know what to make of it. It's odd, sick and wrong, weird, confusing… all that. You have been warned. I had to go off of my memories of Blossom and Mojo's characterization, seeing as I don't have my tapes and DVDs with me. And YouTube depressingly had very few episodes of the original PPG show… about nine-tenths of the PPG stuff I found was of that God-awful new anime. (No offense to anyone who likes it… but my God. If you're going to change around the plots and personalities that much, just create a whole new show with whole new characters.)
I would appreciate it if you didn't flame this. I mean, flame if you so want to. But it'll be rather pointless, because I'll probably agree with you. I'm quite aware of how wrong this is. Trust me.
The Powerpuff Girls belong to Craig McCracken and Cartoon Network, and may they never rest eyes on this writing. I'd probably be put on their death lists.
Enough author's note. Here's the fic! Enjoy, and read with an open mind. Or try to.)
O.o.O
All my life, I've been trying to make up for how I felt in the past. How I feel now. Why I am truly a freak.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Oh, but you're Blossom, you're the leader of the Powerpuff Girls! You're perfect!"
I wish that were so.
I'm ten years old now. In the literal sense. I was created ten years ago. I entered this world as a five-year-old. That was ten years ago; now I am a fifteen-year-old. And yet I'm much more. I always have been. Even when I was five.
I was so upset at what I was, before my sisters and I even became your beloved Powerpuff Girls. Back then we were just the "bug-eyed freaks". In our freakiness we all seemed, on the outside, to be equal. But no one knew just how terribly distorted I was.
Bubbles? Oh, so she had superpowers. But other than that, she was your typical five-year-old girl. She was the most normal out of all of us. Buttercup, not so much. She had a quest for violence that most psychologists would probably find unhealthy. In fact, they probably still do, but since that's useful for a superhero no one complains. Buttercup's certainly in the right profession. She's one of those girls who would go fight crime even if she didn't have superpowers.
I was so envious of them back then. I still am, I guess, although as we've grown up the differences between the ways we think are beginning to close up. You see, in the ways that they thought and saw the world, they were your typical kindergarteners. They thought in terms of black-and-white. They had difficulty seeing the long-range effects of their actions.
But I was the leader, and I was the freak of the freaks. I was five years old, and I loved to jump rope, color, play house, and all that you would expect a girl of that age to enjoy. But my asset was my mind. It was my asset, and my curse. I had all the selfish impulses of a child, and all the complexity of an adult.
For a time, I thought that perhaps Buttercup shared my syndrome. Maybe she did, at least a little. But not like me. You see, she only had a crush. A crush based on nothing but spur-of-the-moment admiration, a crush that was gone as quickly as it came.
Mine was a crush too, and yet it was more than that. It was the girlish admiration of Buttercup, but it was also the connection of two kindred souls. I felt giggly and overwhelmed at the same time. And unlike Buttercup, mine never really went away. Despite all that he's done to us. To me. All the times he's hurt us, I hate him for it, and yet at the same time I'm enamored.
I don't know what to do.
I knew how terrible my feelings were even before I learned how evil he was. Back when I only knew him as Jojo. And even then I tried to rationalize. Well, of course I was fond of him—he was the only one besides the Professor to take us in and accept us! Bubbles and Buttercup loved him too. But for them it was different.
And even though I wasn't the girl I am now—I was technically only a few weeks old and hardly knowledgeable in what made the world spin—I still knew that a five-year-old girl probably shouldn't be feeling this way about a monkey, regardless of how different he was. Or how different I was.
I tried to tell him, alone, after he told my sisters and me to go home and get lots of rest for our "special day". Which, of course, was pretty special, but for a completely different reason than my sisters and I would have thought at that moment. Because, that night, we still trusted Jojo.
"Jojo," I said to him after my sisters flew off ahead of me, "I'm not sure if we've thanked you enough for all you've done for us, and I'm not sure if my sisters know how—"
"Oh, Blossom, thanking me is not necessary," said Jojo humbly.
"Yes it is," I insisted. "You're the only person in the world who has accepted us. You could have just shunned us like everyone else, but instead you took us in. And I'm so grateful for that…"
"Of course I accepted you, Blossom," said Jojo earnestly, actually taking my hand in his. "For we are very alike in our mutations, more alike than you know. No one else understands us, and for this reason I have taken you and your sisters in. Only together can we show Townsville what the four of us are really made of!"
I blushed, I know I did. "Thanks, Jojo… I, um… I'd better go catch up with my sisters now," I managed to say before flying off, mentally hitting myself for acting like such a weirdo around him. I mean, there I was, five years old, finding myself completely enamored with this monkey who I had really only just met.
Buttercup once had a crush on Ace, the leader of the Gangreen Gang. But once she found out he was using her, she was completely over him. That's where she and I differ.
You see, when we found that Jojo—or should I say, Mojo Jojo—was only using us as part of a scheme to take over the world, we all felt crushed and betrayed, but I even more so.
He broke my heart.
I hated him for that. I always have. And in my career as a Powerpuff Girl, whenever we have been called upon to kick Mojo's behind for doing some insane, criminal, brilliant thing, I've had to hold myself back from hitting him too hard. That's Buttercup's job, not mine.
Yes, I hate him for breaking my heart. I hate him for all those terrible scheme's he's concocted over the years. I hate him because even after what he's done to me, I can't get over him.
And I hate myself for it.
All I can do now, now that I'm older, is accept how right he was. We are alike. We're both too smart for our own good, an intelligence that stems from a common source. Don't you see what that means? Our minds are remarkably similar. The only difference is that I am good, and he is evil.
Or so one would think. So one would like to think. But unfortunately, the world isn't just one thing or the other. I've understood this my entire life.
I'm not pure. Not at all.
But still I try. I'm the leader, and I know I have to be perfect. That's my role, and I don't fight it.
Okay. So now I bet you're thinking, "So this is all well and good, Blossom, but why are you bringing this up now? We haven't heard from Mojo Jojo in ages!"
Yeah, I know. To be honest with you, I had half-convinced myself that he was dead. We hadn't heard from him for so long, you know. He used to try to take over Townsville on a weekly basis… but he just sort of vanished. And having him completely gone from my life would make things so much easier for me!
And yet I always knew, in the back of my mind, that he wasn't dead. Our lives are so intertwined that I would have felt it if he had died. We're so interconnected, in fact, that I very likely might not be able to exist without him.
Terrible, you say? Makes no sense, you say? Sick and wrong, you say? Well, hang on tight. It only gets worse.
I saw him the other day.
I was in Townsville Park, looking for a certain type of beetle for my biology class. We're working on our bug collections, and we need at least two bugs from each order of insects. I knew that the beetle in question could be found in great numbers at the park.
So that's where I was, holding my jar laced with formaldehyde, looking for a specific bug that probably wasn't going to show up (I know my luck), on my hands and knees on the pavement… when I became aware of a shadow blocking me.
And oh, I knew who it was before I even looked up… and I could feel my whole body tightening with rage, with longing, with fury, with lust. I tried to tell myself to not turn around and look, but by the time I had decided to convince myself, I had already turned to look at him.
The years have not been kind to him. His fur was gray around the face, his eyes were baggier than usual. And, for the first time, I noticed just how much damage he had suffered at the hands of my sisters and me. His nose, probably broken more times than I could count, was almost off-center. His whole face, in fact, looked disfigured and marred.
But he still had that menacing presence about him. In spite of all the conflicting emotions I felt for him, I had always feared him—and with good reason. I knew what he could do. He was powerful, and he could very well have destroyed us back when he was our main enemy, if he hadn't let his guard down. And all I had to do was look at him to know that he was still powerful. He could still destroy me.
"Blossom," he hissed, saying my name as if it were a vile curse.
I stood up, refusing to look up at him. It was odd. The last time I fought him was when I was, what, eight or nine years old, and after all that time I had grown taller than him. Only by an inch or three, but still, I could feel myself almost getting cocky.
Almost.
"Mojo," I said back, glaring at him. "I was wondering if you were even still alive."
"Of course I am, you stupid girl," he snapped. "If I had died, you would have known! You would have felt a sudden gap in your pathetic little life, a life that is both pathetic and little, and when I say little I do not mean small, but I mean that it is insignificant and worthless—"
"Shut up!" I screamed, although for some reason I felt almost like laughing. He was still the same old Mojo.
But any laughter that might have sprung up was cut off suddenly when I finally processed just what he had said.
So then, he knew the same thing I knew… or at least the same thing I suspected.
Of course he did! We have the same mind!
The same mind.
"You know, don't you?" he said, pointing a gloved finger at me, his eyes fierce. Never mind that I was taller than him; he was intimidating me like none other. "Each of us is dependant on the other for our survival!"
"Had you died… what would have happened to me?" I asked quietly.
"How am I supposed to know?" he growled, glaring at the ground.
I stared at him, feeling myself growing more and more enraged by the second. What did he want, my sympathy? True, he looked like crap, but he had done terrible, wicked things—it served him right!
"Mojo, I've always thought you were brilliant," I blurted out. "You could have done such great things… but you became a villain! You endangered millions of lives, you caused harm and destruction… and I hate you for that!"
"Oh, listen to Blossom the little goody-goody!" he said, fixing his glare on me. "You should stop trying to rationalize, to reason with yourself, to ponder the situation and come up with an answer that you know is incorrect, false, and untrue! You know I had no choice! We're two sides of the same coin—you good, and I evil!"
"I'm not good," I whispered bitterly.
"No," said Mojo, grimacing, "you are not pure good. As I am not pure evil."
I looked down, fuming at him and myself. I had been desperately trying to stop myself from divulging everything to him, but it seemed that it didn't matter anyway. He already knew.
"I hate what you've done to me," I said angrily. Oh, I was being so accusing! But I couldn't stop. Seeing him again after all these years was letting out all the bottled-up anger I had. "You were the only person I ever trusted besides my sisters and the Professor. But then you betrayed me. You crushed me. I've never been able to feel for anyone the way I felt for you! Look at what you've done to me, Mojo! I'm a wreck! I have no friends—no boyfriends—no lasting relationships of any kind outside of my family—and it's all your fault. You destroyed me. You—you broke my heart!"
"And you think I'm faring better?" he snapped. "The whole world hates me! At least you are accepted! Everywhere I go I am greeted with mocking and ridicule—and I thought that you would understand." His tone was suddenly accusing, and I felt like I was going to throw up from despair. "You knew what it was like. You were the only person in the world who could have helped me. But you and your accursed sisters thought it better to foil my every plan and beat me senseless."
He paused for a moment, unable to speak through his shakes of rage. I was shaking too, although I'm not sure from what—rage, fear, grief? All of the above?
He finally took a deep breath and looked me straight in the eyes. "So how can you say that you hate me, Blossom? How can you say that, when I have far more reason to hate you?"
"Just leave me alone," I growled. "I never want to see you again."
"I can't leave you alone, and you know it," said Mojo.
"Yes. I know it." God, apparently it was "Blossom-Spills-Her-Guts-Day".
"And I think that you do want to continue seeing me." For the first time that day, Mojo smiled at me. A rather nasty, malicious smile, but still a smile. "For you do know that I am the only person on this planet who will ever truly understand you."
"Yes, I know," I said, not even bothering to try to hide anything from him anymore.
"And thus, being the only person who really understands the real you, I'm the only person who could ever really, truly love you."
"Yes, I know," I said again. "But it's a two-way street, Mojo. Because I'm the only person on Earth who understands you, and who could ever love you. And I hate you. I despise you!"
Mojo just smirked. "So you say."
"I do! I hate you! I loathe you! I completely abhor everything about you, Mojo Jojo!"
Mojo put up his hands in mock resignation. "Oh, I am certainly not one to argue with the almighty Blossom, leader of those accursed Powerpuff Girls! Although arguing with you would be far too easy, seeing as I abhor everything about you as well!"
On the word "abhor", Mojo suddenly grabbed me and pulled me close to him, one hand around my neck as if he were about to strangle me, and his other arm around my waist.
"Let me go, you monster," I hissed, trying to control my heart rate and the overwhelming portion of my brain that wanted nothing more than to lose my virginity to him, right then, right now.
Why not? He'd taken everything else from me…
"I don't think you want me to let you go."
"I most certainly do. Get your hands off of me."
"If you did want me to let you go, you would have broken away already. I have no superpowers as you do, my twin, my other half. You could very easily get yourself free!"
As if to prove him wrong, I yanked his arms away from me, grabbed my bug jar, and flew into the air. "You stay away from me," I shouted at him, well out of his reach. "Don't ruin my life any more than you already have."
"Too late for that, my dear," he said maliciously. "You do realize, of course, that I am not young. I am old, well advanced in years, among the elderly, a senior citizen, a—"
"Get on with it!" I shouted in frustration.
"I won't live much longer," he finally said, grinning evilly at me. "What will happen to you then? You will be able to test our theory that we cannot exist without each other. You had better hope that we are both mistaken."
I zoomed back home, not wanting to hear anymore. In a flash, I was in my room, sitting on my bed, and staring blankly at the ceiling.
We were wrong, we had to be wrong! How could our lives be so intertwined that we would die if the other did?
Bu-bump bu-bump. Bu-bump bu-bump.
I rested a hand on my heart, trying to calm it. My heartbeat always seemed to be a bit irregular anyway—
My heartbeat.
My heartbeat!
I had two!
How had I not noticed it before?
I flopped down on my bed, finally letting myself cry. I cried tears for my wasted life, for the destruction of my trust, for my eminent death when my second heart stopped beating. The heart of my twin, my other half. My evil heart.
"Curses," I whispered.