Hello! Thank you guys so much for all of the responses and support for the last chapter, you guys are the best. Here's the next chapter!

As you'll soon find out, the answers to what the girls and boys are going through are revealed, and there will be no going back.

Also, you guys will find out who all of these mystery POVs are soon enough. Sit tight.

Disclaimer: I do not own any characters, settings, or properties from The Powerpuff Girls.

Sorry for any errors!


Chapter Fifteen

-Unknown POV-

It was happening. It was happening now. Just like I knew it would. Just like I told them.

They should have listened.


-Blossom's POV-

When I woke up, the first thing I heard was the distinct beeping of three heart monitors.

Where was I?

I had no idea where I was, or how I'd even gotten there in the first place. Or how long I had been there. I blinked, eyes bleary as they adjusted to the strange white fluorescent light that shone across the plain white ceiling above me.

I turned my eyes downward, looking down at myself. I was lying on a hospital bed, and I wore a hospital gown. The environment around me smelled sterile, and the air was cold.

Finally, the individual pieces were coming together now; I was in the small hospital ward in Professor's laboratory in the basement. I hadn't been down here in years. What was I doing down here? Turning my head slightly, I saw a heart monitor next to my bed. The red line flashed across it with each beep. It beeped slower than the heartbeat I used to have—the pace of my heart was slower once again.

Another wave of remembrance hit me—the confusing, chaotic battle of illusions with Him, and beforehand, the use of the emergency Chemical X shots. The way the pace of my heart had sprinted after using it, the supercharged chemical singing in my veins like dynamite. The emergency shot I had taken had long worn off by now, and it was once more like the heartbeat of a human's heart.

Then I had rushed here to our childhood home to tell him about the way the shots had worn off—the mental image of seeing Buttercup on the concrete ground, after falling straight out of the sky by no choice of her own, flashed in my mind. Then Brick and I had gone upstairs and…

I couldn't remember anything after that.

I wondered what time it was. The small bit of space around my bed was surrounded by a tall white curtain, floor to ceiling, and there was no natural light coming in. There was no way to tell what time of day it was. Or what time of night. Because clearly I had fallen asleep. And I didn't know how or why I'd fallen asleep before getting back to my dorm room, let alone how long I had been out.

Inhaling, immediately I realized that there were oxygen tubes in my nose. Alarmed, I began to sit up. A hand stopped me, and I jumped.

A deep, soothing voice said to me, "No, don't get up." Brick. I turned my head. He was sitting in a chair next to my bed, looking down at me with scared, tired eyes. I hadn't seen him there. His hand tightened on my shoulder. "Stay here. You're too weak. Professor needs to examine you more."

I stared at him. "What happened?" I asked. When I spoke, my voice sounded brittle—and it lead me to believe that I had been out for much long than I'd thought.

He still held onto my shoulder, but his grip loosened slightly. "Your nose started bleeding Chemical X, and then you collapsed. I brought you here while you were passed out. You've been out for a while."

I didn't remember that at all. My nose had bled Chemical X. How? And why? That had never happened to me before. I started to nod at my fear at something being wrong confirmed, and then with a wince, I stopped. My head hurt. With a pause, something occurred to me, and I jumped to ask, "Where are Bubbles and Buttercup? Are they okay?"

Brick looked down at me in a way that told me he was trying very hard to stay calm. "No, baby. They're not. They collapsed like you did."

Oh no. No.

I started getting up again, my head swimming. He didn't stop me this time. My heart rate increased, making the heart monitor beep recklessly. "I have to go see them." As I yanked the covers off of my body, I noticed that there was an IV in my arm. I stopped. Slowly, I looked at my bedside again, and for the first time noticed a drip. The bag had black liquid inside of it, and a tube from it ran down and into my right arm, where it was taped down tightly.

My eyes turned to Brick again, wary, and I asked him, "What is this?" I knew what it was, of course. It went without saying that I was actually asking what it was doing in my arm.

My boyfriend's mouth worked for a few drawn out moments, looking like he was trying to find the right words to say. He was never afraid to be frank with me, even in the worst of situations. Seeing his hesitation scared me.

"Blossom," Brick said finally, his face looking strained. His voice sounded that way, too. "Things have gotten worse. You're not well. None of us are."

The weight and sheer size of his words descended on me all at once, like a shower of boulders raining down on my head. At that very moment, I knew that things were bad. Very bad. In almost the same way that I could instinctively feel crimes happening when I still had my powers, I could feel the negative energy of what was to come looming and surrounding us in that room like heavy storm clouds. It throbbed like a living thing, ominous and hopeless.

I stared at Brick for a long few seconds, seconds that felt like minutes, trying to find my voice. Finding it, I asked, "What do you mean?" My voice was quiet. "What's wrong with us?"

He looked away, turning his gaze straight to the floor and swallowing hard. "I'm sorry, I can't say anything. Professor made me promise not to tell you. He has to tell you."

"Where is he?" I asked immediately, gripping the sides of my bed to start to get up again.

Brick stood up from his chair, gesturing for me to stay lying down. "No, stay there. Rest. I'll get him." He began to walk towards the curtain that surrounded my bed. Just as he was leaving through it, he looked back at me one more time, anxiety in his eyes. He didn't smile.

After he disappeared through the curtain, I heard the creak of a door opening, then shutting again.

I sat very still, listening to my surroundings. I heard the sound of soft breathing somewhere beyond the curtain to my left—or was it two people breathing? —and then breathing far across the room. It was clear that I wasn't alone in the hospital ward, and it was clear that my sisters were in hospital beds too, but it was also clear that I was the only one that had woken up so far.

Despite the rolling ache in my head, I started to scoot up in my bed. The movement jarred my head, and it ached to the point of nearly stinging, but I had to prop my back up against the pillow behind me. It helped me feel less like a dead fish just lying there.

Almost right after I had finished struggling to sit up, all the while huffing and puffing, there was the sound of the door to the hospital ward opening up again.

My curtain opened, and Professor came over to me, Brick following closely after him. Professor looked like he had barely gotten any rest, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His face was calm, but there was something else boiling just underneath that calmness that I couldn't place. He gazed down at me for a moment, just examining me. Then he asked, "How are you feeling, sweetheart?"

"Head hurts," I said in a soft voice. "And I feel pretty weak." I glanced over at Brick, who had come to stand by my bed again. He remained silent, just stared down at me with the same quiet anxiousness on his face.

Professor nodded, lips pressed together tightly. "As I expected."

Even knowing the answer but feeling the need to ask anyway, I asked, "Have Bubbles and Buttercup woken up yet?"

Professor shook his head. "No." Then he turned briskly, continuing over his shoulder, "but I'm going to wake them for this. This is important, and I would rather have all of you hear this at once." He glanced at Brick. "Help me open the curtains, please?"

Wordlessly, Brick detached from my bedside, leaving through the curtains around my bed and then immediately drawing them back. Through my renewed view, I saw Professor opening the curtains which surrounded Bubbles' hospital bed across the large room. Boomer was next to her bed in a chair, stirring awake from slumber in his uncomfortable upward position. Then, to my left, I saw Brick opening the curtains surrounding Buttercup's bed. Next to her bedside was a pallid Butch, wide awake with torment in his eyes.

Gently, Professor woke each of my sisters. Bubbles woke quietly, confusion and slight fear on her face. Buttercup woke up groaning and complaining about her head aching. Bubbles bed was wheeled over to the side of the room that Buttercup and I were on, and then Professor pulled up a chair, adjusting it so that it openly faced all three of our beds.

Professor turned to the boys and asked them calmly, "Could you boys please step out of the room for ten minutes or so while I tell them? I need this moment alone with my girls."

None of them argued. After one more look at each of us, all three of them left, closing the door behind them.

A beat of silence went by as I exchanged questioning and apprehensive glances with my sisters. Professor then sat heavily on his chair. "Well," he paused, wistful look on his face, "there's no need to put this off any longer. The sooner you girls know what is happening, the better."

My sisters were quiet. I shifted in discomfort, my head throbbing in answer. "Okay, Professor." He looked over at me, and I looked him in the eye, courageous only because I had to be. "We're ready."

After a succinct nod, Professor took in a deep breath and began. "Blossom, you already know this. Bubbles, Buttercup…you lost consciousness hours ago. After your noses started to bleed Chemical X."

Shock rippled. Buttercup spoke first. "What?"

"Your noses did not bleed blood, but Chemical X alone." Professor looked at her evenly. "And then you blacked out. Butch brought you here immediately after it happened." Her turned his gaze to our blonde sister. "And likewise, Bubbles, Boomer brought you here."

Bubbles was staring at him, quiet, face pale, eyes wide in her face. It seemed like she couldn't say anything at all. Buttercup launched right into a demand. "Tell us what happened to us."

Professor looked down at his lap, hands fiddling. He cut straight to the chase. "I've done some analyzations of you girls while you were unconscious. And what I found was…not what I expected." He paused heavily. "When I made the emergency supercharged Chemical X shots—well, they were as close to perfect as I could make them. But there was one thing I didn't consider. I didn't consider how the shots would fade out of your systems, and how the already faded Chemical X would react to the supercharged Chemical X." He stopped again, shaking his head. "I was in such a rush to make them perfect that I wasn't thinking about what their possible consequences would be. That was my mistake."

"How did it react?" I prompted him. Dread was starting to boil in my stomach.

"Badly." Professor sighed, bringing a hand to rub harshly against his forehead, then his temple. "Very badly."

My stomach heaved, then clenched. All three of us stared at him in horror, waiting for him to continue on his own because we were afraid to ask anything more.

Far off in the distance, there was the sound of a siren—an ambulance siren. It wailed, growing louder, louder still, then began to fade as it continued its journey beyond our street. The basement became quiet once more, so quiet that the slightest shift seemed loud.

Finally, Professor went on. "The supercharged chemical seems to have…accelerated the degradation process. The shots worked as they were supposed to at first. But the shot burned so quickly in your systems that what was left of the structure of the original Chemical X in your bloodstreams is…well." He stopped for so long this time that I was afraid that he wasn't going to continue. But something worse happened. He did continue. "It's falling apart."

"Falling apart?" My voice shook as I echoed him.

He nodded. Slowly. "That's what was going to happen eventually. When your powers started to fade, I had suspected that things would lead to this. I had hoped so strongly that it wouldn't, but…" He trailed off, adjusting his glasses and swallowing hard. The previous sentence went unfinished as he started another one. "And so as I developed the emergency shot, I continued researching. Because I knew that beyond the chemical falling apart, things would get even worse. Things would be unfixable."

Buttercup blurted, her voice burning, "What do you mean, unfixable?" The confusion had long left her face. And an unstable fear had taken the place of it. Bubbles remained silent, terrified.

Professor paused, then turned wide, sad eyes to her. He looked miserable and scared. More than the day that he had told us about our powers going away. Seeing him—our rock, our creator—be so fearful and vulnerable, almost like a lost child, was probably the most terrifying thing that I had ever seen. His voice quiet, he said, "I thought the vitamins and shots would help it last longer. I've been looking endlessly for a permanent solution; I've been searching everywhere. I was hoping those would extend things, give me more time. I thought I would have more time…" His voice trailed off when his tone had taken an uncharacteristically panicked turn. He leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and bringing his face down into his open hands.

For about a minute, the three of us watched him try to calm his breathing. On my blonde sister, I saw her breathing the way that she did when she tried to keep from crying, her brow furrowed, lips wobbling and her eyes wide. On my brunette sister was untethered, trembling horror.

Each of us had figured out what was coming. But we still needed to hear it ourselves, to hear it confirmed.

My voice was only a whisper. "Professor?"

Painstakingly, Professor finally lifted his face from his hands. Even slower, he raised his vulnerable, red-rimmed gaze to mine. After taking in a shaking breath, he spoke clearly. "Girls, I wish that there was something else that I could do. There may be, and I'm going to give it all I've got to find whatever that is, with whatever time we have left. But no matter what, you have to know that I'm sorry." He looked at each of us, one by one, sad brown eyes meeting ours. None of us answered.

Cautiously, eyes squeezed shut, he continued. "Over time, over years, the Chemical X in your bloodstream has been…consuming your regular blood. Bit by bit. Replacing it. So gradually that the total loss of blood was unnoticeable until now. And now…" He opened his eyes again. They were full of darkness. "Now it's falling apart. Just like the cloned chemical in those monsters all those months ago…it's not just losing potency. It's destroying itself. And once your Chemical X sputters out completely…"

There was a very long pause. It was the merciful moment of cease-fire before he delivered the crushing blow. "Your Chemical X is the only thing that has been keeping you alive. And once it goes out, you will die."

#

Professor had long left the room.

My sisters and I sat up on our hard, uncomfortable hospital beds in desolate, empty silence. The silence stretched on and on, with none of us able to even say a word, let alone look each other in the eye. Because if we saw each other's unguarded, raw pain, that would make what we just heard real.

Because that was just it. This didn't feel real. Not yet.

I couldn't comprehend the words I'd heard Professor say. They couldn't possibly be true. It felt like some horrible nightmare. I prayed that I would wake at any moment.

There was no way this was real. He wouldn't let this happen.

Professor always had a solution for everything. Always had some invention, some insight, bringing in a miracle at the last minute. He always did. He did for battles, for school projects that we ran into problems with, for attempts at making a meal that had gone sour in some way. He always knew how to fix things. I thought he could fix anything—prevent anything.

Even death. So much that it, in all honesty, had never seemed like something I would ever have to dread.

But he was only human, after all.

I could feel it coming back. Like an old familiar friend, there it was, dark and thick and viscous inside of me—rising up and consuming me for the first time in years, bubbling up and filling my veins and the orifices between my organs and bones and muscles and making them all impossibly heavy. Only this time I knew that it was more unrelenting than it had ever been before, taking a form so bitter and malicious that it sucked everything else out of me.

Like a shadowy part of my past, depression began to make its way back to me, wrapping its arms and legs around me and tying weights to my feet. Heavy, thick, cold—beckoning me to sleep forever.

It was coming. And I couldn't stop it.

My chest felt so heavy that I thought I wouldn't be able to speak. But after quite some time of silence, somewhere inside of me, I found the words, and my mouth opened, and I said them. "You know I would do anything for the both of you," I lifted my gaze slowly, then looked between my sisters. Neither of them looked at me. I finished, "Right?"

No response. They only stared sightlessly, grief spread all over their faces.

I continued on, even knowing I still wouldn't get an answer. My voice was brittle, and it came out as a mere whisper this time. "I would trade my soul for the both of you to live."

As I watched, I saw Bubbles' bottom lip quiver. But still she said nothing. She didn't even cry. Just sat with her eyes closed, face screwed up in pain.

When I was least expecting a reply, Buttercup's empty voice came, stating simply, "No point."

I turned my eyes to gaze at her. Her face was blank—the grief gone. Just slate clean, the way that her face looked just before a battle. I recognized it. It was the way she cleared her expression of any emotion at all, to keep enemies from being able to read her.

I also saw it that one time. The time that Butch broke her heart.

And there, in that moment, that's how I knew—there was a storm ahead. A hurricane of proportions we had never known before. Perhaps the last storm we would ever know.


-Another Unknown POV-

I awoke on the cold tiles of my makeshift underground lair. Vision blurry, I blinked, then I blinked again.

Around me, I heard the sounds of my machinery and computers running, but the sound of them dragged thickly like they were coming to me through long tunnels. My head throbbed sharply, like explosions of thunder inside of my skull. It was another blasted headache.

Only this time I had passed out. How long had I been unconscious, just lying here on the floor? What had caused the unconsciousness in the first place?

I reached up to my head with one long clawed hand, willing the throbbing to go away on its own. I'd been getting them for nearly a month and a half now. Nothing except limiting my movement and sleeping would help them, and they always came back. But I'd never fainted like this before.

Just as I began to sit up, my hand still glued to my forehead, I felt something leak from my nose. I glanced down, irritated. Then I noticed some peculiar spots of black on my shirt. I frowned, squinting down at them. I couldn't place what they were at first.

I felt more leaking out of both sides of my nose. I touched my hand to my upper lip, drawing it back after a moment to peer at it. Black liquid, all over my hand. Dripping out of my nose and off of my face.

An abrupt, fierce wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere, and quickly, I sat up further, scrambling over to the nearby trash bucket. I barely made it in time before the vomit came up and out of me as I squeezed my eyes shut.

When I was finished, reluctantly, I opened my eyes. At what I saw before me, uncontrollably, I began to tremble. Peering down into the waste bucket, I saw it.

Black liquid. Blacker than midnight. All over the inside of the bucket, dripping down my chin.

Blackness. Nothing but blackness.


"You only live twice: / Once when you are born / And once when you look death in the face." -Ian Fleming


GASP.

So, as I had brought up months ago, I had contemplated changing the rating of this story to an M rating. As you guys can probably tell by now, the themes in this story are super mature and dark, and I think that from this point on in the story, Teen might be too light of a rating. On AO3, one of the tags I have for this story is Existentialism and, well...now you know why.

Do you guys still think I should keep the T rating, or should I maybe change the rating with the next update? Let me know your opinions!

I'm already working vigorously on chapter 16, and at this rate, it might be up this month. Especially since this chapter is on the shorter end (especially compared to the last chapter's monster-sized length), I thought it might be nice if I updated twice this month. No promises, but we'll see how soon I finish it up!

I'll be updating the playlist post with the two songs for this chapter: Karma Police by Radiohead, and Funeral Bell by Phildel. For the songs for previous chapters, check out my livejournal for the whole post! Also, if you're in the mood for some rage, check out my lj for a ranting post about how Hard to Control Myself got stolen by someone recently. HAH.

Whew. All right, that's it. Until next update!

-MsButterFingers