When Mojo left, all hell broke loose.
Boomer had heard the chaos upstairs and when he found Brick's body, he attacked Blossom.
"You stupid fucking bitch I knew this would happen!" He had punched her in the face and leapt at her so quickly that she didn't have a chance to react. The next thing she knew was that Butch was pulling him off of her and she was covered in blood, her face a mess. They tried to explain to Boomer what had happened but he insisted that she had killed Brick and that struck a chord with her because in a way, she had killed him. Although he wasn't dead yet.
"Boomer, please, we need to help him. We can't waste time fighting right now!" She said as she brought Brick to the bed.
Boomer shot a look at her so fierce that it could have sent a dagger through her. She tried her best to ignore him.
She once again felt for a pulse on Brick's neck and was relieved to find him still alive, but barely. Butch had no idea what to do and Boomer wasn't willing to help in any way so Brick's life was in her hands.
"What could possibly help him? I don't understand." She began to pace the room, her head throbbing as she raked her brain for any ideas.
"I don't know if this would be helpful, but after you girls kissed us and we blew up, Him brought us back." Butch stated, both him and Boomer standing in the center of the room watching her.
She rolled her eyes. "Thanks Butch, I didn't notice."
He crossed his arms. "Well, I wasn't finished. Him brought us back by going to the place of our death and pouring Chemical X all over it and boom, the boys are back in town." He made a motion that represented an explosion.
She sighed. "But that still doesn't help us figure out how he could stay alive. If we bring him back and he has the same emotions then he'll just die again." She tapped her finger against her chin. "Him gave you guys an anti-cootie serum back when he resurrected you, making you immune to our kisses..."
"So do we just give him a shot of that?" Butch questioned, cocking his head to the side.
Blossom frowned. "No, because kisses and love are different, they have varying levels of affection. Kisses are physical and light, they hardly have any meaning. While the feeling of 'being in love' is emotional and goes much deeper in it's complexity."
Butch gave her a blank look but Boomer began to nod. "Then we need the next level of an anti-cootie serum."
"Yes, exactly. But what could that be?" She wondered and both boys also went into deep thought.
Then, it struck her.
"Him." She stated, catching the boys' attention. "He was the one who got the serum, maybe it wasn't an anti-cootie serum at all but part of him. Like magic. He gave some of his powers to you in order to make you stronger so that you could defeat us. But it wasn't enough magic to stabilize your composition, your ingredients still need more magic to be able to properly bind together and withstand emotions." Then she thought to herself, 'that's why Brick was able to fly in Him's underground lair and I wasn't.'
Butch grinned. "So we just need to ask him for more of his magic!"
Suddenly, her face fell. "We can't."
Boomer mocked her frown. "Why not?"
She bit her lip, again trying to search her brain for ideas. "Brick killed him."
After processing her words, the boys went into a flurry of curses and shouts, but she didn't hear them. She looked at Brick. His pale form was motionless, she couldn't even see the rise and fall of his chest because his breaths were so minuscule, and his face was twisted in pain, eyebrows knit together and jaw clenched. She was running out of time.
"Bloss, what're we gonna do?" Butch asked her once him and Boomer finally calmed down.
Him was obviously the only answer to saving Brick, she just didn't know how. What she did know was that Brick only had one chance and she wasn't going to let him die. So she scooped him into her arms and turned to his brothers.
"We're going to Him's."
The place had changed since she'd left it. All of the separated chunks of land came together to form one large room that was cast in darkness from the empty walls. No pictures flashed across them anymore. The furniture and tables had crumbled so that stuffing and shards of wood now littered the floor. The only noise in the room was the sound of the static on the TV. She landed on the floor and it groaned from the weight. She hovered above and watched a crack splinter through the ground, threatening to collapse. She slowly flew forward. She guessed that the barrier which had restricted her powers before had now fallen due to Him's death. It seemed that the entire place had fallen and began to decay with Him. The walls peeled away like wallpaper, except the peelings were just as black and empty and nothing was behind them. The ceiling was no different and flakes of what seemed to be ash rained down, flecking her hair and skin. She shivered as a sudden chill filled the cave.
"Fuck..." One of the boys murmured.
She looked down and gasped. A pile of at least a hundred bodies laid on the ground, their skin blue and peeling, their eyes wide and staring into her own, seeming to follow her movement. They were dead. The ones on the bottom were more grotesque than the ones on top. Their bones were peaking out from behind dead skin that looked like it had been eaten away by the chemicals within it. Worms, mice, and small parasites scattered themselves among the bodies, their feeding causing blood to flow from the host.
"Why are these here?" She whispered, almost concerned that someone besides the boys would hear her.
"He fed on people's souls, but didn't need the bodies, so he left them here I guess." Boomer spoke.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, erasing the image from her mind, before continuing on. Brick's heart beat was so faint that she could no longer hear it, even though his chest was so close to her and she had super hearing. They needed to find Him.
"Blossom."
She whipped her head around and saw Butch's glowing green body a ways away, crouched over something on the ground. She hurried over to him, Boomer following.
"I think this is Him's." He held up a single eyeball and she winced at the sight. It was indeed Him's, a dark yellow iris and a pupil that had been pierced by a blade, dripping with black blood. She carefully touched the ground next to Butch, testing it's stability. She found it safe and trekked forward. It only took her a few steps before she saw the trail of black liquid leading up to a scattered mess of organs, and finally the gruesome body of the monster himself. He looked just like she remembered; his abdomen ripped apart and hollowed, his face missing one eye, and a chunk of his skull broken off. The missing piece of his brain laid beside him now, as though all of his contents had been gathered into one pile. She was able to hold back the bile last time and she still did this time, but Boomer was forced to turn away and relieve himself in a corner, the sounds of him retching bouncing off the walls. Butch covered his eyes.
Blossom gently laid Brick beside Him and got on her knees. She had thought about what she could do as they had made their way here and she thought she finally had an idea.
"Could his blood contain magic?" She wondered out loud, hoping for some kind of opinion from the boys. But they were too distracted from the sight and she got no response. She reached her hand out and dipped her fingers into the dark blood, expecting it to burn her or cause some form of pain, but it did nothing. She grit her teeth as she eased closer to Him, inspecting every inch of his body. There had to be something.
"Oh my god, stop touching him." Butch groaned, now covering his mouth instead to hold back the puke.
She ignored him and continued to search for an answer. She felt inside Him's empty eye socket, pried open his other eye, peered inside his mouth, felt around his neck and still came up with nothing. Her shoulders sagged and she dropped her head.
"Blossom?" Butch moved towards her.
She shook her head. "I don't know what to do. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not even a leader anymore..." Her chest ached and she found herself sinking into the darkness surrounding her. There was so little time and so little for her to work with, how could fate put someone else's life in her hands? 'It always been this way.' Her mind told her. Even when her sisters' actions saved civilians lives, it was always her leadership that directed them. She had always been the one to make the decisions, find the solutions, and save the lives of her people. She had never failed. Not one person had died at her hand. Not the towns people, not her enemies, and not her sisters. There was no way she could let Brick be the first.
"Brick!" Her head snapped up as Butch hurried over to his brother's side, green eyes wide with terror. "He's not breathing!"
She knelt beside Butch and found Brick's vein, but no pulse. She tilted her head and leaned close to his mouth, but Butch was right. The only thought that came to her mind was CPR and she quickly pressed her hands to his chest and tried desperately to revive him. She had six minutes to bring him back or his brain cells would begin to die and he would be gone forever.
"Please don't let him die." The sound of Butch crying stabbed her in the chest so sharply that she became winded. Boomer covered his mouth, baby blue eyes wide and filled with tears. Both brothers were watching their leader die. Seeing the life leave her counterpart in front of her along with his two brothers sobbing in the darkness made her realize how similar the puffs and ruffs actually were. She knew exactly how they were feeling right now and she couldn't quite believe how connected she felt to them. It was almost as though her heart was breaking along with theirs. She paused. The flurry of emotions and noises caused her surroundings to transform and she was again crouching in the empty, destroyed street of Townsville as rain cascaded over her trembling body. She felt the cool water, the recent injuries, and the sticky blood on her hands. She could hear the soft trickling of rain into the crater where she knew her sisters laid, but she refused to look up. Brick was still in front of her, her hands on his chest, but his eyes were open and glaring straight at her. No words were spoken and yet her thoughts rang out, "If he dies, you can go back to your sisters." She knew that. She wanted to go back. But...she just couldn't bring herself to step away and let Brick die. Not with the sobs of his brothers, not with her title as a hero, not when he had been merciful enough to let her sisters live, not when the ache in her chest ceased to stop even when she knew her loved ones were safe. Because maybe they weren't. She bit her lip and looked into her counterpart's eyes. He loved his brothers, and possibly her, even though all this time she had thought that a villain couldn't love at all. The Professor raised her with the idea that villains didn't have hearts. And how could someone who doesn't have a heart love?
"He was the only person who ever loved me." Butch murmured through his sobs.
Blossom sucked in a sharp breath as she was pulled back to reality and found Brick's eyes closed once again. She slowly retracted her hands. CPR wasn't going to work. She glanced at Butch. "Your dad never loved you?"
He glared at her through a pool of tears. "Mojo left him to die and Him was a devil, so no, my 'dad' never loved me."
She was about to offer him a sad reassurance when her eyes went wide. 'You can't love someone if you don't have a heart.' She scrambled back over to Him and felt his chest. It was still solid and would need to be cut through. She used her eye beams to split his torso in half before peeling back a layer of thick red skin and sliding her hand into his chest. Blood squirted all over, covering her arm and drenching her body. Veins, muscle, and fat slid between her fingers as she eased them deeper, carefully to make sure she didn't destroy the object she needed most. She forced her hand through the ribs and then she felt something soft. She didn't know how delicate it was so she eased her other hand into Him's chest and pried apart the contents surrounding the soft object. Her heart leapt at seeing a pink, almost fluffy, ball that resembled the fur trim on Him's dress. She gingerly slipped it out of his chest and rushed over to Brick.
"What is that!?" Boomer gagged, breaking out of his sobs. Butch was close to vomiting.
"Him's heart." She stated. Although the saying the Professor had taught her was false, seeing as Him did have a heart, it was still the only reason she thought to find the devil's core organ. She knelt beside Brick. "It would make the most sense for his heart to be the center of his powers so if I could somehow transfer this to Brick..." She frowned, feeling the delicate organ in her hands. It was almost weightless and reminded her of cotton candy. Cotton candy dissolved, could she dissolve this into Brick's body? She looked at her counterpart and saw that his skin was losing color. She had to do something. She broke off a small piece of the heart and crushed it in her palm, it felt like a thousand tiny needles piercing her hand, but when she opened her fingers a cloud of pink dust showered from her hand and over Brick. It seemed to vanish upon touching his skin. She knew that she could be doing this wrong but the time it would take for her to think of any other option would be too long for Brick to survive so she held the heart over his body, shut her eyes, and crushed it into a million minuscule pieces.
"You're going to need this, too." She turned around to find Boomer kneeling on her other side, a vial in his hand. "Chemical X." He explained and she gave him a small smile before taking it. She slipped her hand under Brick's head and tilted it forward so she could pour the liquid into his mouth. Then, she waited.
All three of them gathered over Brick's still body, the cave grew eerily quiet and a tension shifted through the air. Blossom shook her head. "He should have woken up by now, right?"
Butch shrugged and Boomer answered, "I don't know..."
She bit her cheek and leaned forward, taking Brick's face in her hand. She slowly rested her other hand over his heart. "What if he-"
She gasped as hot fingers wrapped around her hand and Brick shot up, making all three of them jump. He inhaled sharply and his red eyes flashed open, quickly glancing from side to side. He looked at his brothers, then at his surroundings, and frowned.
"Brick?" Butch murmured, inching closer. He rubbed away the tears that still lined his cheeks.
The said ruff blinked. "What?" He asked, fairly aggressively.
Blossom shifted away as both brothers leapt on top of their leader and hugged him. She even chuckled as Brick cursed and tried to flail away.
"What the fuck are you guys doing?!"
Butch embraced his brother tightly. "Man, we thought you were dead!"
"Glad you're not." Boomer grinned, arms secured around Brick
Brick allowed them to hug him for a moment before he eased them away and stared up at Blossom. His eyes were narrowed, his skin flushed red, and his breathing heavy. "What happened?"
She sat beside him. "I told you it was more than just a fever."
He shook his head. "You've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, Red."
She gave him a small smile, resting her hand on his arm. Boomer and Butch were so giddy with excitement that they were paying the two no attention. So she leaned forward and whispered into his ear, "So do you."