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Chapter 9
Two Sides
Boomer spitted out some dust that had found its way into his mouth after his most recent encounter with the floor. Then, he licked the red trail that was coming out of his mouth before standing up and turning around to face the darn girl who was actually beating him up hard, much to his dismay.
She was still smiling with that hateful, evil smile that Boomer found more annoying than ever. He wanted so much to remove that smile from her face… by punching the face itself. His attempts at doing so during the last few minutes, however, had been ineffective.
Decay was powerful, that was true no matter from where he looked at it. She had powers similar to the ones of the European sissy friend of the Powerpuffs, and she fought with a style similar to Donnie's as well, yet different in enough ways to make her unpredictable. Moreover, she didn't show any sign of fatigue or exhaustion.
He still wasn't surrendering! While Brick and Butch mostly thought of him as the weaker one, he would have preferred to be beaten up until there was nothing left of him rather than surrendering. It was true when he fought his brothers over something mundane; it was true when he fought the Powerpuff Girls.
And it was especially true now!
"Still breathing?" Decay said, that horrendous smile still on her face, "How cute of you! I'm almost sorry that this time I'll have to make you feel real pain!"
Boomer didn't answer, or at least he didn't do so with words. The eyebeams he shot at her were a good enough answer, anyway. But Decay someway expected this as well, and the two rays hit nothing but the umpteenth protective force field she raised.
The blast produced some smoke, from which Decay emerged at full speed, taking Boomer aback. She seized him by the neck effortlessly, and while trying to break free Boomer realized that whatever he did now, it was not going to free him out of her grasp. He was lost too much strength during the fight, he needed some time to recover, just a few moments to catch his breath.
Unfortunately, he didn't have that time…
Decay eyed the struggling boy with arrogance as he pitifully tried to pry himself off her. "That's all you can do now? Boooring! And I hate boring things. Time to end you!"
She charged up something on her right hand. Boomer was finally beginning to feel something comparable to fear, but luckily the emotion failed to take control of him as an unknown force shoved the girl away from him.
The blue ruff fell to the ground and immediately began coughing, refilling his lungs with fresh air (as fresh as stale air found deep within a mine underground could be, but better than nothing). He glanced at whoever was the saviour that had come to his aid.
He expected one of the Powerpuffs, maybe Bubbles with one of her annoying smiles she often gave him when talking with him.
He expected Brick or Butch, both surely ready to pick on him for his failure at keeping 'girly' at bay.
He did not expect to see Donnie.
Said boy stared at him for a second before saying a simple "Go".
Just a single word, but still meaningful. Fighting the urge to protest, Boomer forced himself to his feet and floated away, immediately locating where his brothers and the other puffs were. He was not retreating! Just the time needed to regain control of his arms… those punches from that girl hurt, give him a break!
He arrived to meet them just in time to hear them talk with each other. "…c'mon Butch, let's go help Boomer."
"Thanks, but I'm already here…"
Both his brothers were momentarily surprised by his sudden appearance, reaction to which the Powerpuff Girls couldn't help but giggle a little bit.
"What are you three laughing about?" Butch demanded.
"Oh, nothing, nothing…" Buttercup answered with a face that said everything but that.
"Bah! I'd like to see this 'mutual relationship' moment to end soon… and I don't see any motive to make it any longer than it already is," Brick said.
"Nothing against it, Brick," Blossom agreed. They might have been forced into an alliance by the events, but those were still the Rowdyruff Boys they were talking about here. She wasn't going to give them her trust any longer than needed, period.
"Guys, sorry for interrupting your diplomacy thingy, but you might want to see this…" Bubbles said.
The full team of six superpowered kids looked in silence as Donnie waited for his foe and most probably new archenemy to free herself from the bunch of debris she was currently buried under.
"Do you think we should help him?" Bubbles asked.
"I don't know… He did say that he wanted us to stay away from her and let him deal with her on his own," Blossom recalled.
He needed to decide what to do in any case. Leaving Donnie alone might have been a bad idea, but why was he so insistent when he told them not to intervene? As if he feared what could happen if they did join him in the fight.
She had a little hypothesis about it… which had something to do with a certain mad and half-mutated doctor.
"I don't care about what the dimwit said," Butch interjected, gaining glares from the Powerpuffs, "I just want to get girly to cry on the floor in defeat!"
"Butch, wait a second," Brick's tone was more thoughtful than usual, "I want as much as you to remind that girl of how crossing the Rowdyruff Boys' path is a bad idea, but staying here and watch her and the puffs' new best friend fight might not be that stupid. Let's see what those two got in their sleeves. We might learn something that makes it worth it, even if just to beat both later."
The girls were not happy that Brick implied fighting Donnie as well as Decay in the future, but they stayed silent and focused on the one on one battle that was about to take place.
Boomer still felt some aches on his body and didn't really want to resume the fight that soon, so he kept his mouth shut as well. Butch gritted his teeth, but even he didn't try to argue with his brother. He wanted to fight, not to argue… especially not with Brick who at the moment wasn't in the best of his moods. He resigned himself to wait a little bit longer than he wanted.
Porter acknowledged the fact that the infra-humans for now were going to stick to the bystander role. Mojo Jojo was no more at his side, the ape had apparently something in his mind to try to deal with the Powerpuffs and had left for the shadows that now were present in large areas of the room, as a lot of the lights had been damaged in the previous fights, but he didn't mind.
For all he could see, for the time being there were no more obstacles left.
Now, the test he had longed for could finally begin.
Donnie's wait ended when Decay finally freed herself from the remnants of a section of the lab's sidewalls… or to be more precise, she exploded out of them.
She slowed her flight down while hovering towards the ground, finally landing just ten meters away from Donnie. She once again freed her left eye from her rebellious hair, then she stood motionless, staring at him.
The boy returned her gaze without flinching. The fright he had felt previously under her stare was now gone.
For half a minute, there were no sounds heard, except for some laments afar coming from the lurking mutants that roamed around the hallways of the tunnel network nearby.
"You are so cute…" Decay suddenly said, following with an awkward little giggle. Donnie's face remained as stoic as ever.
"I'm not falling for that. You are a living danger, for every possible person I can think of! I cannot let you go loose… Decay. I'm going to stop you, whatever is the cost!"
"Ohh, so heroic for you to say… charming! If you really say so, I believe you…" Decay said with a suddenly unsecure tone who would have been more proper to a shy little girl. She moved one of her feet forward and rubbed the floor with the tip of her shoe, giving even more credibility to what Donnie knew was an act.
She gave a little glance to Donnie before whispering, just enough loud for the boy to hear, "…but you'll have to catch me first."
Donnie spent a few seconds without moving. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated on his breath.
Then, he zapped towards Decay, fists forward and ready to strike. The girl instantly stopped to pretend and went in full battle mode as well as soon as she saw him bolt. When the boy reached her, she easily parried the first few punches thrown at her. Then, it all became a blur as Donnie and Decay began attacking each other at speeds rarely seen by the occupants of the room, which is saying something given the current occupants included the Powerpuffs and the Rowdyruffs.
Punches, kicks, every possible melee attack was used from one of the duellers to gain the upper hand on the enemy, along with the occasional appearance of force fields, and for some long seconds the battle remained even, the two of them acting like they were the mirror reflection of the other.
Then, in an attempt to break the stalemate, Donnie quickly created a force field and moved forward with the shield up, trying to run over his foe. But Decay had already had a similar idea and did the same to counter his move, resulting in having the two immaterial shields collide with each other.
The two of them were now separated only by the thickness of their own force fields, four centimetres at most. Donnie and Decay remained where they were for three seconds, staring into each other's eye. Then, the boy dashed away in retreat, just a moment before the force fields disappeared from reality.
Decay flew upwards and began to charge up teal-coloured energy grenades. Donnie frowned before doing the same with his yellow orbs, and for a minute the two of them flew around in a zig-zag pattern, throwing grenades at each other. They were however too fast to be actually damaged by them, and the controllable detonation trick didn't work since they both owned it and therefore knew how to avoid that attack type.
Suddenly, Decay changed her movement direction and flew towards another part of the laboratory, away from Donnie. The boy immediately went for the pursuit, following the bright teal streak the girl left behind her, but she had already managed to get some distance between them. Soon, the escaping teal ruff began to move in a random way, getting into an area of the large laboratory where the damage was more serious and the hiding places were plenty. It took her only half a minute to effectively lose her pursuer.
After flying for some additional seconds around, Donnie moved upwards and scanned the area around him. Yet, Decay was still nowhere to be found. How in the world has she disappeared? Darn it, I can't believe I lost her. Is she that fast?
He closed his eyes and focused his full attention on his hearing. He began to hear more distinctive sounds that were not audible before… various footsteps approaching and moaning sounds, surely a new group of mutants was approaching… the dull noise of the air conditioning system…
The light 'swish' of something closing in behind him…
Instead of turning to control the source of the noise, Donnie sprinted forward instinctively. He had an idea about what was emitting the peculiar noise, and if his theory was true, he sure would not have wanted to be near it.
Even so, he had been too slow. The stealth grenade once again proved to be effective at being 'stealth', whoever the user was, and the light-blue oval detonated five human steps or so away from Donnie. The explosion was far more powerful than the one of regular energy grenades, and the shockwave hit Donnie full force.
Dazzled by the light, Donnie didn't even try to slow himself down but limited himself to protect his body from the sheer heat of the energy expulsed by the grenade with his arms. Therefore, leaving himself vulnerable.
Decay swooped down like a hawk on a rabbit, and Donnie wasn't even aware of her when the first fist reached his face. Then, Decay went around her stunned foe, now as dangerous as a training dummy to her, and followed up with a powerful kick right on Donnie's back.
The Powerpuffs and the Rowdyruffs were still all able to effectively watch the fight even from their distance thanks to their supervision, and when Donnie got hit, they all somehow felt a shiver running down their spines.
Bubbles put a hand over her mouth and left out a little squeal she couldn't contain. Boomer gulped and made a took in a long breath… he had the impression he had managed to feel that hit himself.
Porter's creation wasn't finished yet with Donnie. Smiling, Decay kicked him again, this time sending him flying towards another set of machines which had managed to survive the past fights. There was in particular a stasis cell where a 'failed mutant' was contained, which Donnie crashed into.
He still wasn't knocked down. Fighting both the immense pain on his back and the nausea given by the liquid of the cell and the random body parts littering around, Donnie flew away from the remains only to find out Decay was already there, waiting for him above with a punch ready to strike.
I need some time to breathe! She is too fast!
Parrying one attack after the other, Donnie decided to recover to extreme measures. He charged up a yellow orb in his right hand, while using the left one to continue keeping the teal ruff at bay. Then, he went for a punch with the grenade still on his hand, one that Decay easily blocked.
He expected that.
Decay managed to raise an interrogative eyebrow before seeing the thing explode in front of both their faces, sending them flying in opposite directions. Donnie recovered in mid-air and finally gained some precious seconds of pause as Decay did the same but did not sprint right away towards him.
Buttercup scoffed to her counterpart, who seemed to be enjoying the show given the shakes of his body, unlike her. If she knew anything about fighting, that last move from Donnie meant that the battle was not going well for him.
"Hehe… Nice move, hottie. My turn!"
Decay didn't move to attack him… but what she did was not something Donnie thought was possible.
She charged up what seemed to be common energy grenades, on both hands… but soon Donnie understood that they weren't. Too big and too bright, their light soon gained intensity, an amount able to light up a good portion of the chamber. Decay was in visible struggle, but her smile was still plastered on her face.
She moved her hands over her head, and the two spheres fused into a bigger one, which started to even have lightning bolts zap around it. The sphere left Decay's hands… by itself.
It moved a meter away from its creator before stopping and emitting what seemed to be a pure energy-made support shaft, even though the contraption as a whole was still floating in the air. Before Donnie could fathom what the heck that thing was, a laser-like blast was fired from it.
He barely managed to evade the ray, which finished its course on a nearby wall with a loud explosion. But it was only the beginning, as the previously mentioned sphere started to fire rays at machine-gun-rate at Donnie, who found himself with the need to fly fast and without slowing down to prevent the rays from annihilating his head.
His flight was however stopped by the appearance of Decay herself, who attacked with a haymaker. Donnie avoided easily her fist, but to do so he had to reduce his speed… too much. The Energy Turret fired yet another ray which this time hit its target dead centre.
Brick had a scowl on his face while all of this happened, and he kept scowling even when Donnie was flung away from the turret's blast, event promptly followed by another series of teal coloured energy rays.
He wasn't very preoccupied for the twit himself; he'd survive. He was rather more concerned about that thing the girly had summoned that was acting like it was completely independent, as it continued to shoot the yellow puff even after this one landed on the ground, all while Decay was elsewhere.
What kind of powers had 'girly' still in store that they didn't know about?
His thoughts were abruptly stopped by the high-pitched and, for him, very annoying voice of the other redhead in the group. "That's it, we've seen enough. Girls, time to move out and put an end to this madness. Bubbles, keep your distance. Buttercup, with me!"
Buttercup and Bubbles both nodded and the three of them hovered in the air… then Blossom halted, slowly turned her head around and glared at Brick.
Brick didn't even try to act like he cared about her, even if she knew why she was looking at him.
"…so?" she questioned.
"What, Blossy? Do you expect us to come help you, maybe?" Brick answered, still scowling. "We may share some common enemies like that girl and Methuselah, but right now there isn't a single reason that'll make us help you and your sissy friend out there. We've helped each other until it was necessary, and now, that time has ended."
Blossom narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth with the intention to argue… then she changed her idea and simply let out an exasperated, "FINE!"
She shook her head. "We're going to do it ourselves, then… hmph, and here I thought you'd actually be helpful for once."
As the girls left them to themselves, Brick was no more interested in whatever was happening in the lab. His main goal now was to get the heck out of here, without encountering more of those darn mutants.
"Brick, I'm sorry but I can't help but ask, are you-" Boomer's phrase was left unfinished as a slap silenced him. "Boomer, stop being an idiot! We're not helping the puffs or the dimwit. They're the heroes anyway, they will come out of whatever isn't us, and for today we've done enough."
While Butch was probably the only one out of the three that would have gladly stayed to break some additional heads, he agreed to an extent with Brick. He gave a glance to a pair of serious cuts on his arm, courtesy of the eagle-lizard abomination, and simply nodded.
Boomer would have wanted to discuss a bit more (not about helping the puffs, mind you, about Brick still hitting him after all that happened that day), but he had not the chance to talk more as something ran over him. But it was neither a projectile nor a metal or rock piece.
It was a momentarily knocked out Buttercup, who by now lied over a stunned Boomer. Brick and Butch, both of them startled, turned back towards the area where Decay and Donnie were fighting.
Blossom and Bubbles floated in the air, steadily, as Doctor Porter in person blocked their path, the right arm already transformed into his Hand Cannon.
The arm modified itself again to turn back into the robot hand, while Porter talked with absolute seriousness. "You are not going to stop my test, Powerpuff Girls. I may have worked on this one for a very limited amount of time, but this moment, I've waited years for it to come!"
Porter put himself in battle stance, both the mutant hand and the robotic one closing into fists, as he concluded his threat. "You aren't going to ruin this moment of mine. Listen to my words, infra-humans. Dare to move of another centimetre towards Donnie and Decay, and I will eradicate your irritating existence!"
Blossom and Bubbles were not afraid of him, not at all. He might have been strong… but what importance that had? If that mattered, they had fought far stronger giant monsters, not to mention the personification of Evil himself.
Donnie wasn't even visible at the moment. The turret had finally stopped to shoot its rays, collapsing onto itself and vanishing, but Decay had bombarded its supposed location with additional energy grenades. The teal eyed girl now waited in the air with a huge grin, ready to take on him as soon as he flew away from the smoke her attacks had resulted in. If he ever managed to do it.
He was in trouble.
And Doctor Porter was standing in their way.
Therefore, Doctor Porter needed to be defeated.
Porter frowned when he saw Blossom and Bubbles glare back at him with blood-freezing eyes. Even the blonde puff looked somewhat menacing despite the injury on her arm, the ice-based cauterization slowly melting off minute after minute. Soon they were joined by Buttercup, after she quickly said an awkward 'sorry' to the blue-eyed shocked ruff she found herself lying on, and she mimicked her sisters in their determined, hard glares.
He'd hoped that the infra-humans would have listened to him. After all, he was right, and to him it would have been perfectly logical for them to leave the premises. Furthermore, he would have gladly accepted a solution that ruled the fighting out, which Porter didn't like that much. He would've let them go, for all he cared! They would become Mojo Jojo and Decay's problem, afterwards.
Yet, it looked like these 'Powerpuff Girls' were more mentally deficient than he had previously imagined.
Well, the decision is theirs, he thought as he focused and waited for the girls to make the first move.
Boomer, Butch and Brick were dumbfounded and they remained unmoving for a few moments, staring at their counterparts and the mutated scientist. Only the noise of steps behind them managed to shook them away from their trance.
"What are you waiting for, boys? This is your chance to strike at the Powerpuff Girls when they least expect it!"
The Rowdyruff Boys turned towards Mojo Jojo, who was totally expecting them to say 'yeah!' at his proposal.
Except they didn't.
Mojo Jojo insisted when he realized the boys were moving to attack as he hoped, or even replying to him. "Boys, boys, can't you see it! The Powerpuff Girls are distracted, they have their backs turned to you! This is your chance to press the attack and do away with them for good, more so if Doctor Porter is going to help you do so!"
"Forget it, Mojo!"
He thought he had heard it wrong at first. But then, Brick continued talking.
"We're not going to fight the Powerpuff Girls anymore today. Especially not if that means helping that freak you love to consider your ally!" he affirmed.
"As well as his jerk of a daughter!" Boomer threw in.
"…and most of all his darn, stinky mutants!" Butch completed.
"Have you lost your mind!?" Mojo bellowed in anger, forgetting about his previous idea to go unnoticed. "How can you not see the bigger picture, the possibility to take out the Powerpuff Girls once and for all?"
"We aren't intereste, simple as that. We fight them when we like to… and by now, no, we don't. I'd rather beat the heck out of Methuselah to be honest!" Brick's tone was firm. He wasn't changing his idea, and neither were his brothers.
For a second, Mojo Jojo looked like he was going to explode, judging from the glare he fired at the Rowdyruffs. Then, he made a long breath, before replying with a calm enough tone. "So be it. After all, why should I, Mojo Jojo, continue to waste my precious time listening to you?"
Boomer was confused. Butch was bored. Brick was uninterested.
The primate went on. "If you three are that scared and too weak to march along with me towards world domination, you're free to go and loiter around as you usually do… the lack of your help won't stop me!"
That said, he drew out his laser rifle, charged the weapon up, and retreated back into the shadows, no doubt in wait for the right moment to attack the Powerpuffs.
"He's so much pathetic sometimes… C'mon boys, let's go before-"
Brick silenced himself when he saw what was blocking their way out.
The Chimaera. Again.
With a large group of porcupine and dragoon mutants following right behind it. Again.
All eager to devour them. Again.
This time though, the Rowdyruff Boys knew what they were going against. They were taken aback before, but now they had a good knowledge of their enemy. And most of all, they had managed to defeat them, even though that had been with the help of the girls.
But most of all, the Rowdyruff Boys were sick. They utterly had had it with the creatures.
"THAT'S IT!" the Rowdyruff Boys shouted angrily before charging together the mutants' group in a red, dark green and dark blue rotating drill.
The Chimaera, while able to regenerate certain parts of its body and cure its injuries to an extent, was still weakened by now compared to its standard state and had come back only by the call of its predatory instincts and after retrieving a few additional mutants to follow it in its quest to kill its prey. It was confident enough to go for another attack.
Yet now the creature suddenly felt that of all the body parts it was composed of, maybe the brain wasn't working very well.
Am I dead?
Donnie wasn't sure what the answer to that question was. Well… he didn't until he began to feel the pain again.
Unfortunately, not.
He forced himself to open his eyes, only to see nothing but smoke in front of his eyelids. He coughed the dust away before sitting up and making a fast self-check of his conditions.
Burns were all around his body, there was one which hurt like nothing else before on his chest in particular, enough that his shirt had been completely obliterated over it. He also smelled the odour of burnt hair, which he guessed was his. Aches from his limbs were tell-tale on the presence of bruises courtesy of his adversary.
I've been better… But I cannot stop. Not now.
Donnie stood up, ignoring his weakened state, prepared his fists, and waited for the smoke cloud to clear itself out.
And soon enough, the smoke did disperse, and the silhouette of his opponent came into his view. To which he only reacted by tensing up his muscles even more.
"By golly, you seem like you can actually take some hits and still stand!" Decay said, persisting with her cursed smile, "I might actually have to do some actual work to take you down."
Donnie didn't reply, and the lack of a response left Decay unamused. "What, nothing to say? Cat stole your tongue, little one? Too bad if that's the case, I was just thinking about cutting your vocal chords!"
And the threat was soon followed by action. Decay darted forward, ready to strike again, and Donnie braced himself.
But there was something else, something that caught his attention. He heard the laments of mutants getting their butt kicked, which was not too much interesting. The darn monsters had returned, but he knew that the Powerpuff Girls could take on them, and even the Rowdyruffs could help out since they weren't exactly friends with the monsters from what he understood. It might even have been them fighting Porter's creations.
Donnie's actual concern was with Doctor Porter. When his eyes moved for the fraction of a second away from his foe, he saw the Powerpuff Girls' streaks bright in the air, the girls circling around an area centred on the doctor, who waited for them to make their move.