I'm baaack!

Guys. This is it. This is the end.

I've been working on this for so long that it feels weird to post this now. Sorry for such a long wait! I have been working tirelessly on this last chapter + epilogue because I wanted it to be as perfect as possible, with very little mistakes. Also, I wanted the last blog entry on my lj and the last playlist songs to be ready to go up at the same time as when I updated. Sooo, yeah. It took me a much longer than usual!

I have once again found myself needing to split another final chapter in half, for readability. This thing is MONSTER sized, you guys. Well over 50,000 words. I joked about that happening last time, but it actually happened. This last chapter is so dang long that I wanted to split it into two parts, so that it's not such a marathon to read through, haha. So, I hope that helps you guys digest this entire ending!

This is my last author's note for this story, so I have a lot to say. Ready for my sappy, huge author's note? Here it comes!

(If you want to, you guys can skip this. Just make sure to scroll down to the playlist songs listed at the end of this author's note if you want to listen to them as you read!)

I've put my heart and soul into this story. Writing this story fulfilled me unlike anything else I've ever written so far, and it helped me heal some trauma I'd faced in my past. I owe so much to this story, and to these characters.

From first starting Hard to Control Myself, to ending this companion story now as an adult, it's been 10 years. Isn't that insane? A whole decade. That's such a long time. These versions—my versions—of the PPG and RRB have been in my head for so long, livin' it up, delivering clever one-liners and having dramatic arguments and makeout sessions.

These girls and boys feel like my children. I've given them 2 full chaptered stories, and given each of their individual stories all that I've got. And now, with the ending of this story, I release them. And I will now bow out into fanfic semi-retirement.

This probably won't be a surprise to those who read my lj, but to those who don't: Losing Control is my very last chaptered fanfic. For good.

Fret not! I'll be sticking around. If ya'll miss me, I'll always be ranting and typing away on my livejournal about the things I'm working on! Something tells me that I may even contribute some one-shot stories once in a while, for PPG or other fandoms.

It's just that chaptered fanfiction is so demanding, emotion-wise and time-wise, and I would like to devote most of my time and dedication to my multiple original novel-length stories from now on. They've been somewhat neglected, and I'd like to give them everything I've got now. (Also, now I'll actually have time to, ahem, regularly read fanfiction again. Hooray! So many great stories out there, and I really need to catch up on As Time Goes By. Hehe.)

I'll miss writing the reds, blues, and greens a great deal. No promises, but maybe there'll be some one-shots, or maybe a small flash fiction collection in the eventual future. They would be totally unrelated to the HTCM/LC (the Control duology) universe, though.

I've made my peace with this story universe. It is now complete, and there won't be any continuations to it. But exploring with these characters with some different, separate story lines might be fun, so we'll see! Fingers crossed, right?

Now that I've said all that, let me get a little sappier.

The support that I've received for this story has meant a great deal to me. I realize that this story wasn't typical for me. This story was dark, and strange, and complicated. But it has and will always mean the world to me, and I hope that it was worth the journey for all of you, too.

Every single one of you that has reviewed, favorited, shared and followed this story: Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Your enthusiasm and support for this story means everything. Even those lurkers out there, I see you too! And you are so, so appreciated. I cannot emphasize enough how thankful I am.

If you've enjoyed this story, I would love it if you left some words behind. Even if it's just a word or two, seeing your responses, no matter what they say, fills me with so much gratitude and happiness, like the Grinch when his heart grows three sizes. Don't be shy!

And lastly, but never in any capacity the least: to TeenQueen661, beta reader rock star extraordinaire. My partner in crime throughout the last 6 chapters of this story. We did it! As I told you before, you will do great things in the future. It was an honor to have your input as I finished this crazy story to the end. Thank you so much. Everyone, please give her stories a read if you haven't already. They're well written, and they're imaginative and awesome, just like she is!

Wow, this is long. I can sense your eyes glazing over, haha. Just a couple more things, I promise!

Stop right there! Ready for the playlist songs for this monster of an ending of this story? It's quite a few.

Part 1 of Future: Qi by Phildel, Put it Behind You by Keane, Nothing Where Something Used to Be by Vanessa Carlton, Forget by Marina & The Diamonds.

Part 2 of Future: Anything Could Happen by Ellie Goulding, Unforgettable by Sia, 'Til Kingdom Come by Coldplay, How Long Will I Love You by Ellie Goulding, The Only Exception by Paramore, First Day of My Life by Bright Eyes, Sing for Absolution by Muse, Invincible by Muse, Forever by Julianna Barwick, Wants What It Wants by Andrew Bell, Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine, Can't Help Falling in Love by Haley Reinhart, Exogenesis: Symphony Part 3 [Redemption] by Muse.

Epilogue: Shadow by Birdy, Speak Up by POP ETC, Somewhere Only We Know by Lily Allen.

Phew. That's a ton, huh? Well, guess what? I have a surprise for you guys. On the playlist post on my livejournal, I finally posted A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST WITH ALL THE SONGS ON IT. Yeah! Woohoo!

So, if you want to listen to the songs for the chapter as you read the end of the story, and you have a Spotify account, then go over to my livejournal right the heck now!

Well, you guys. It's been real. See you around. Goodbye for now.

Without further ado, I present: the last chapter of Losing Control. (And don't forget to read the epilogue afterwards!)

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters or settings from the Powerpuff Girls. Also, I don't own Google.


Chapter Twenty-One

(Part 1)

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, […] I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

-Blossom's POV-

Late June.

Summer.

Something so magnificent that I recognized it even without any specific memories returning to me.

The intoxicating, hazy way the balmy air enveloped me, the way it brought with it fresh, vivid colors and breathed exuberance and newfound energy into everything that lived was something that I would know anyway—as if the golden warmth had carved itself into my very soul. Drums crashing, horns blaring, soaring voices; summer was here, and it demanded to be revered.

With its' arrival, the clock on all of the surrounding life seemed to reset and then burst, thrumming and undulating and igniting into vibrancy —and with it, so did I.

Familiar aromas filled the atmosphere, clipped grass and charcoal and sunscreen and the metallic smell of light rain. Daylight stretched on almost endlessly, reaching into the hours of the early evening, melting into popsicle colored sunsets unto starry, clear nights set to the tune of the cricket's song.

I had already been living once again for many weeks now. But when summer began, that was when I had begun to feel truly alive. I welcomed summertime back to me like an old friend, beckoning it to wrap me in its' bewitching embrace and never let me go.

And with summer's arrival, the process of finding who I was began to seem to come easier to me.

As we showed more positive signs of healing and feeling at home within our home again, and after a couple of weeks of private family counseling, Professor began to give us more leeway. I think seeing us returning to our normal behaviors again was enough to reassure him that we could have more time out of the house without him, and more time to pursue what we liked to do without him having to hover over us and worry.

So in turn, during my summer days, I spent much of my time reading. I read in the kitchen in the mornings as I ate breakfast. Then I would grab my book and sit out in the backyard in one of the lawn chairs, reading for hours.

And then I would come back inside for lunch, reading as I ate, and I would return to the backyard lawn chair, playing the indie radio station on my portable mini radio with a cold drink by my side—which often was forgotten for long periods of time, resulting in all of the ice melting and turning my drink watery. I tried a handful of times to revive the cold drinks by using my ice breath on them, but it only resulted in the whole thing getting frozen solid, rendering it completely undrinkable unless I licked it like a giant ice pop.

Sometimes I would even decide to take a break here and there and cat nap outside with the book over my face like a little face tent. But sometimes the heat on the rest of my body would get to be mildly uncomfortable, even though I wore breezy maxi dresses every day.

Thankfully I was invulnerable to sunburn, and the worst I ended up with were weird tan lines. But then I would go inside, get a bowl of ice cream and see what one of the others were doing.

Most days, Bubbles was either sunbathing on the roof or out shopping in small suburban shopping centers, and Buttercup was either binge watching her favorite cable show filled with her three favorite things—violence, gore, and sex—or she was working out, or napping in her dark cave room.

These days were wonderful. But summer nights—those were my favorite.

My favorite thing to do during warm summer nights was to fly to the top of the house, sitting on top of the roof, and looking out at the stars. Sometimes I would grab Bubbles, too, and we would stargaze together.

"This reminds me of something," Bubbles would tell me without fail every single time. And every time, I would look over at her, analyze her face. She always looked like she was deep in thought, frowning.

Every time, I would respond, "Have you remembered what it is yet?"

Every time, Bubbles would sigh. A sigh that sounded sad and frustrated. And then she would say, shaking her head, "Not yet."

And then I would look up at the sky too, and the many, many stars, wondering what it was that stargazing reminded her of. Wondering why I, too, felt like there was something the night sky reminded me of.

#

I stared hard at the boy in the photo. That red-eyed boy I met in the basement that Professor had said was so important to me.

I still regularly thought about that strange moment, meeting those boys. Even though it had been almost four weeks since it happened. I played that meeting over and over in my head, several times a day.

Admittedly, I had become sort of consumed by thinking of it. I couldn't get over how unsettling it had been.

The weirdest part, though, had been after the boys had been escorted out of the house. Professor had come back, letting us out of the containment chamber, and he had begun asking us questions. Questions like, "Did any of you recognize them?" and, "Have any of you had memories with those faces in them? At all?" And when we'd answered in the negative, he'd looked…dismayed.

After that, when it was our turn to ask questions, the only thing he told us was that they were called the Rowdyruff brothers. And then, looking distressed, he had locked himself in his office the rest of the evening.

The next day, though, he'd brought us the old magazines and tabloids. Stacks and stacks of them bound together with long rubber bands.

Professor said, vaguely, that we would find pictures of these Rowdyruff brothers in them. He said that these brothers were very important to us and very important to remember. He then told my sisters and I that, as a part of our daily memory-refreshing therapy with the VHS tapes, we were to also go through a few of the magazines and tabloids at least once a day—and so once a day, I did.

And every day I sat and looked at photos of this strange red-eyed boy on random pages of these old tabloids and magazines—except for the pages that, oddly enough, had been removed. Professor hadn't even tried to hide that he had removed a large volume of them—whole chunks of articles and entire pages were neatly cut out. Even parts of some pictures were cut out, some even cut straight down the middle, right in half.

After four weeks of staring down at half-complete pictures of three strange boys that I didn't remember, along with staring with dissatisfaction and suspicion at the multiple pages that should have been there, I eventually decided I'd had enough. I had spent enough time wondering what it was that Professor had tried to hide from us.

So today, I had decided to go on the Internet and search all three brothers' names to see what came up.

We had been somewhat barred from the Internet for the past couple months—Professor had claimed that the media still hadn't let up and that the Internet comments about us were horrifying. He also said that our social media accounts were still a mess, even mentioning that apparently Buttercup's had been hacked weeks ago. I had taken his word for it, considering I hadn't even remembered that we had social media accounts.

I didn't think I was supposed to be Googling things either, but I figured that Professor would get over it eventually. After all, what would I possibly find?

So in the end, I'd typed in 'Rowdyruff boys' and hit Enter.

Now, 20 minutes after beginning my search, I was still staring open mouthed at the results.

The red eyed one, he seemed to be a bad guy—or maybe he used to be. All the articles about him and his brothers destroying things or robbing things, or whatever else they'd gotten busted for—by my sisters and I, of course—they were all old.

I'd skimmed through as many as I could. The newest ones about them of the villainous nature were from about 4 years ago. They seemed to have turned over a new leaf more recently, though I hadn't looked into why yet.

The old articles rang some bells for me. I did recall constant fights with some kids who had superpowers just like ours—that was them, I realized. They also, I realized after reading one particular article, had belonged to Him and Mojo Jojo, who of course I remembered, considering one of the two lived as Professor's laboratory chimp permanently now.

I was a little more informed now. But aside from the pages and pictures Professor ripped out of the magazines about them, there was one more thing I couldn't quite understand. Why had Professor said they were important to us?

If they were just more run-of-the-mill bad guys with super powers that we protected ordinary people from, why on Earth would that give them any real importance to us whatsoever?

I studied more pictures of them. Pictures of one of them, the one with black hair—Butch?—as he held up a police officer by the collar of his uniform, his own feet levitating several feet off of the ground. Butch had malicious laughter on his face as he looked with amusement at the terrified officer's fear.

I clicked through to the next picture. This time it was the blond one, Boomer, looking several years younger than he had in other pictures, maybe 13 or 14, flying away from whoever took the picture on a cell phone, pockets overflowing with dollar bills and each hand clenched around a wallet that I seriously doubted were his.

I clicked through to the next few pictures, and they varied—one was a very distant, low-resolution picture of the three of them flying over downtown after another heist, burning streaks of red, dark blue, and dark green following them.

Next were a collection of three of their mugshots, only three of many I guessed, and they looked very young in them—eleven, maybe? The age would explain why they looked like wacky school photos, with mischievous toothy grins and mid-raspberries and pig noses.

The next one I clicked to was an up-close paparazzi shot of the leader of the Rowdyruff Boys himself, the one I had sought to find out more about in the first place—Brick. His red eyes were locked directly onto the camera lens, fiery and angry, and front and center in the picture was his middle finger. His eyes felt like they were staring me down directly. Something deep in my chest shifted. Fear, surely. Or something very like it.

And just as every other time I looked at a picture of him, I felt a tug in my mind. A tug of recognition.

But aside from my very few, very fuzzy memories returning of battling him as a child, I could never figure out where that feeling of strong familiarity came from. Or why, inexplicably, the sight of him made me immediately feel something akin to… intense sorrow. It even felt like loss.

I had gotten that feeling when I had stood behind the glass of the containment chamber and we were face to face as he asked me, with zero recognition, who I was. And I got that feeling every time I saw a new picture of him, every time I noticed the white scar that slashed through his right eyebrow, wondering how he got it.

But why? Why would the sight of some ex-supervillain make me feel sad?

What, besides being supervillains that we were constantly battling and arresting in the past, did these guys have to do with us? What significance could they have had in our lives beyond that? If that was really all he was to me, logically, he meant nothing to me.

I shook my head, trying to snap myself out of these circling thoughts.

Perhaps they were just false memories trying to confuse me. Professor said that could happen once in a while as we remembered things. Maybe my brain was just playing tricks on me again.

Before I knew it, I had scrolled down to the bottom of the search results page. For a moment or two, I thought of closing out of the page. But as I did, my eyes caught on something peculiar.

Under a 'Related Searches' column, it was full of phrases such as: 'Blossom powerpuff girls Brick rowdyruff boys', 'Blossom Utonium and Brick Jojo kissing', 'Blossom PPG Brick RRB dating', 'Bubbles Utonium Boomer Jojo going out', 'Buttercup Butch dating', 'Powerpuff girls Rowdyruff boys team up', 'Powerpuff Rowdyruff lost battle with monsters', 'Powerpuff girls disappearance', 'PPG RRB relationships'.

My eyes locked on all those strange words as my stomach did a somersault. The 'disappearance' one I understood. That one was probably from when we were sick. But the rest of them…what on Earth? I wondered if search engines could make up fake searches. Those couldn't have been real. Could they have?

Aside from my bewilderment, though, I couldn't help but notice that tugging in my mind again. It had returned, and more insistently this time. Some sort of recognition at these words.

Feeling antsy, and unable to deny my piqued curiosity, reluctantly, I moved the mouse pointer over 'Blossom Powerpuff Girls Brick Rowdyruff Boys'. That seemed to be the safest and least creepy one out of them all. I took a deep breath, paused for one more moment, then I clicked with a grimace.

The new search results loaded, and as soon as my eyes took in what was on the page, shock struck me in the gut. My eyes widened.

The image results were listed before the web results, so they were the first that I noticed. An image of myself looked back at me—an image of myself with him.

I hastily clicked on it, making its' size grow to full screen so that I could see every detail and make sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. There I was, with the charismatic and harrowing leader of the Rowdyruff Boys. The both of us were looking for traffic as we crossed the street, respective red hair tousled by breeze, both of us wearing sunglasses and holding hands.

But wait. The picture…it looked somewhat familiar. Where had I seen that background before?

I froze. Realization hitting me, I jumped up from my desk and hurried toward my bedside table where I had left the magazines I'd been looking at earlier. I skimmed through all of them until I found it—ah hah! One of the pictures that had a big hole cut in it. I rushed back to my desk. Open magazine in hand, I held it up to my face, and then to the picture on the computer screen. The Brick in each picture lined up perfectly—the way his head was angled, the shirt he wore, the same expression.

Except in the Internet version of the picture, there wasn't a gaping hole where I was standing. Like the hole Professor had made to deliberately remove me from the entire picture.

Hands shaking with shock and disbelief, I threw the magazine away from me and onto the floor. I dropped back into my desk chair and stared at the computer screen, frantically clicking through more pictures in the image results.

Pictures of us flying high over the photographers' head, hands linked, red and pink streaks tailing us. Pictures of us sitting together on the other side of a café window, heads ducked down into books or mid-sip from a mug of coffee. A shot of us from several feet behind on a sidewalk, his arm around my shoulders as he guided me through what looked like a mob of reporters. Some shots of us at night, coming out of different restaurants, where I was wearing heels and pretty evening dresses.

A series of shots of us at a park, some with us sitting on a picnic blanket and enjoying lunch from a basket—and a few of Brick spotting the photographer, glaring at the camera. And then, more shots from seemingly the same day, of us hiding in a tree. We stood on a thick branch in a large tree at the park, partially shrouded by the leaves. Brick seemed to have a finger pressed to his own lips, smiling down at me playfully as he held me against him with his other hand, and I was staring up at him, laughing so hard that my whole face was flushed.

I clicked through more, and there were some more repeats until another unfamiliar one popped up—this one was taken in some parking lot somewhere, at night, and the two of us were locked in an embrace.

And we were kissing.

Eyes widened, I touched my lips with the tips of my fingers, staring ahead at the picture. My stomach churned and twisted.

I could barely process what I was seeing with my own two eyes. The familiarity, the recognition, the feeling was still there—but why couldn't I remember any of this? All of this should've been bringing back some memories for me, or at least some semblance of a memory. But all I felt was confusion. It felt like I was looking at two strangers in these pictures.

Clicking onto the next series of pictures, I beheld the two of us at an outdoor ice skating rink that had a 20-foot-tall, festively decorated Christmas tree smack in the middle of it. Dressed in winter clothes, a pink coat and a red coat with scarves and hats and gloves, we gripped each other's forearms as we balanced on skates—I looked uneasy, looking as if I were losing my balance, and Brick looked as if he were steadying me, his face amused and cheerful with encouragement.

I stared at the smile on his face. His smile was the kind that was transformative. I could barely recognize him as that once evil little boy when he looked such a way—when he looked so happy that he was illuminated from the inside.

Looking at the picture's caption, I immediately saw the date these pictures were uploaded—December 31st of last year. This was recent.

With empty uncertainty, I clicked through more of the image results, now barely pausing long enough to take them in.

There were hundreds upon hundreds of them.

Thousands.

Finally somewhat snapping back to my senses, on impulse, I clicked the back arrow, going all the way back to the page where I had seen all the strange 'related searches', and when I made it back there, I clicked next on 'PPG RRB relationships', without any hesitation this time.

There must have been millions of results now.

Eyes even wider, I took in everything. There weren't just couple shots of me and Brick this time. I saw multiple pictures of Bubbles with the blond brother, Boomer, and shots of Buttercup with the one called Butch. Countless pictures.

But not just pictures. Articles, too.

'Are they, aren't they' types of articles. Pure news articles about some battle that we'd lost sometime last year. Gossip articles containing more paparazzi pictures, including a picture of a casually-dressed Bubbles walking alongside Boomer with a tall cup of coffee in her hand and large, glamorous sunglasses on her face. There was another article with another picture taken at night of Bubbles, dressed in glitzy evening wear and bashfully turning her face from the camera, Boomer holding her hand and leading her past the photographers protectively with a hardened look on his face. More articles that seemed more like think pieces.

I kept scrolling through the web results. Fan blogs. Fan blogs everywhere, containing blog posts about how cute the Powerpuff girls' and Rowdyruff boys' relationships were, and how we were the picture of perfection and that we're all meant to be together. Entire image blogs dedicated to pictures of us.

All of it went on and on, spiraling into infinity.

This wasn't some elaborate hoax. It wasn't some joke. This was real.

My sisters and I had dated the Rowdyruff brothers.

Adrenaline sailed through me as I abruptly reached and turned on my desktop printer, making sure I had plenty of printer paper inside of it. I clicked back to the results page that contained just the images, and I quickly got to work, compiling and printing any and everything.

Candid pictures, press conference pictures, anything I needed as evidence, I printed them. Then I printed news articles, as many as I could copy and paste from the most credible sources. I printed all of these things for two hours at the least, until I ran out of paper completely. And then I gathered all of my evidence, marching straight out of my room.

I heard my sisters in the living room, and I flew down the hallway and down the stairs to the main level of the house.

I stormed straight into the living room, not even bothering to glance at the television screen to see what they were watching before I reached for the power button and turned it off.

"Hey!" Buttercup exclaimed, predictably. "We were watching that!"

"Too bad!" I said, marching right over to the other side of the empty coffee table and slamming down my heavy, thick stack of evidence. The loud wham it made echoed off of the ceiling.

My sisters jumped, staring down at the pile of papers I had thrown down. Alarmed, Bubbles asked, "What is that?"

"What, indeed," I said, spreading the pile apart over the surface of the table so that the pages were displayed better. I snatched up a picture of Bubbles and Boomer—Boomer was hugging her from behind as Bubbles was laughing—and held it up for her to see. "Behold, Professor's secret."

Immediately, Bubbles grabbed the picture from my hands, disbelief on her face. "What…" she trailed off, frowning as her eyes grew wider. "What is this?"

Buttercup had leaned over to stare at the picture too, slack-jawed, and then she bent over the piles of pages, leafing through until a picture of her and Butch was exposed—his arm was slung over her shoulders, bringing her in close as he kissed the top of her head. Her hands froze momentarily. Then she grasped the picture in both hands, glaring at it in stunned silence.

I folded my arms, nodding. "Remember how we were wondering all this time why those magazines had a bunch of pages cut out of them?" I pointed down to all of my evidence. "This. This is why." I picked up another picture Buttercup was in—it was a grainy, far away shot of the two facing each other, Butch lifting Buttercup up above him, his arms wrapped tightly around her hips, and Buttercup looking down at him, laughing and trying to wiggle out of his grasp. The very picture of bliss, it was the glaring opposite of that picture of him and that cop. I handed it to Buttercup. "Look for yourselves."

Buttercup snatched the picture from my hand. "Is this for real?" Once again, she glared down at the picture as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing with her own eyes. "Tell me this is a joke."

"It's not a joke," I said with a sigh.

"Why," Bubbles paused. Her voice shook, just as her hands were shaking. "Why wouldn't Professor tell us about any of this?"

"I wanted you to find out on your own," Professor's voice suddenly came from the kitchen doorway. All three of us whirled to look at him. His arms were folded, and he had the decency to look guilty. "I was honestly hoping that you would remember on your own first, instead of finding all of those trashy articles written about all of you."

My feelings of betrayal were quelled at his admission and were immediately buried by more shock. "So is it true, then?" I asked him. "About them, and us?"

Professor began to walk into the living room, and then he gestured to the couch. "Have a seat next to your sisters. I'll explain everything."

Quickly, I made my way over to the couch, sitting between my sisters. Then I looked up at him, nodding as a signal that he'd better start explaining.

To his credit, he started right away. "Girls, the Rowdyruff brothers are not just your ex-enemies. They're your ex-teammates. And, yes—you were all romantically involved for about three years."

My sisters and I quietly processed this. Bubbles had leaned forward, picking up more pictures of her and Boomer and emptily staring at them. Buttercup had her head in her hands. It seemed as though neither of them was going to speak, so I had to ask. "So…are we all broken up now?"

"Well, that's where it gets complicated." Professor blew air out. "When I reintroduced you all to each other weeks ago…well, I suppose I had hoped that upon sight, your memories would be jogged, and all would be well. But obviously, that wasn't what happened. And it seems that it still hasn't happened. Even with the sight of these pictures and articles," he swept his hand over the piles of papers, "you still don't seem to remember this level of involvement with them."

I shook my head. Bubbles said, "I don't remember any of this." Her eyes were still full of slight fear and confusion.

"Neither do I," Buttercup added. She looked frustrated and creeped out.

"It's so peculiar," Professor said to us, looking flummoxed. "I don't understand why the home videos helped jog your memory, but these have done nothing for you all to remember the boys. It doesn't make sense to me. Not at all."

None of this made any sense to me.

How had I forgotten this?

There was so much that didn't make sense to me. So many pieces that were missing. How had someone that had been my sworn enemy as a child become my…boyfriend? How had his brothers dated my sisters? How did something like that even come to be?

Had we been brainwashed? Did we forget all of the horrible things they had done before? The horrible people that they were?

How could we have possibly forgotten what they were?

In the days that followed, my sisters and I kept returning to those pictures that I had printed out. But despite our persistence, those pictures remained empty and meaningless to us. No memories of them restored.

None at all.

#

Days after the discovery I'd made, my sisters and I had done our best to go about our days like we had been doing before, trying to go back to our peaceful summer routines.

And it didn't take long before that peace was rudely interrupted with a detonation of reality that we didn't have the privilege of overlooking.

"Morbucks has been apprehended."

Morbucks? Apprehended? My head snapped up, the passing news story on the television catching my attention at once, snatching my eyes away from the novel that I'd been comfortably reading on the couch.

The news anchor on the television went on, "This morning, the young former heiress was arrested on the charges of conspiring with the supervillain Him and the missing ex-supervillain Mojo Jojo on multiple counts of attempting to destroy the city with mutant monsters. She is also charged with illegal possession of the now-defunct Chemical X and possibly using corrupt means to attain it. The Townsville Police Department is investigating further on this count. While she has had questionable behavior in the past, as well as a history of trying to destroy the city before, her father's status in the city always protected her from ever being properly charged. But the recent, sudden death of her billionaire father is what lead to her arrest, and it seems things will be very different for the polarizing ex-heiress from this point forward. With her current charges, after spending her time in court, she could spend up to 30 years in prison for her federal crimes."

I had been sitting there listening to the unexpected news story in a dazed shock, and then it occurred to me that my sisters and Professor should be hearing this news. I snatched up the remote, rewinding the live TV feed and then pausing it to quickly leave and gather everybody into the living room.

Once I had everybody gathered in the room, I played the breaking news segment once again, looking over at the amazement and shock on all of their faces as it played.

"She's actually…in jail?" Bubbles asked, though it seemed to be rhetorical.

"And we're not the ones who put her there," Buttercup commented, folding her arms. She'd been squinting at the TV screen in disbelief. "Well, I'll be damned."

"The monsters," I started, shaking my head. "Those monsters we fought last fall. She'd been the one that made them? With Mojo and Him?"

Professor nodded. "Yes. It…certainly appears that way."

"Who'd have thought she would be behind it?" Buttercup turned away from the TV as the news segment finished. "From the high school queen bee to being a felon again. I knew she was horrible, but…" she trailed off, at a loss for words.

"I guess I never thought she would go back to a life of crime," I said, building off of where Buttercup had left off. "I just thought she was done with it. That she had more interest in being Internet famous and getting promotional modeling deals on her social media. I didn't think she would be capable of this type of thing again." Grudgingly, hating that I even had to admit that I'd been wrong about something, I admitted, "I underestimated her."

"I think we all underestimated what she was capable of, Blossom," Professor said to me. After pressing his lips together in thought, he added, as if he had been thinking it all along, "But I think that's what she wanted."

'The element of surprise,' I thought. It was the best move for the large-scale comeback she and Mojo would have wanted, I had to admit. And she had almost gotten away with it, which had made the plan all the more powerful. But things don't always go as planned. And the time that had ruined our lives had ruined everything for them, too. Mojo reduced to a mere chimp. Princess's money shield taken away for good.

But there was one thing that made me wonder.

"What about Him?" I asked the room suddenly, breaking the silence. I was frowning. "What would he have gained from working with them at all? Why would he stoop to their levels when he could do whatever he wanted?"

My sisters took my words into consideration, and they looked as dumbfounded as I felt. As for Professor, he had broken eye contact with us, moving away like he was about to go back down into the lab.

He lingered in the kitchen doorway, gripping one side of the archway with one hand. "Something tells me," he said, with a peculiar tone to his voice, "that in the end, he might've gained from it more than we might think." Then he shrugged in a 'who knows' sort of manner and turned, making his way into the kitchen toward the basement door. "If you'll excuse me, girls, I have a thesis calling my name."

All of us watched him go, and once again, I had the conviction that Professor knew more than he was letting on. But just as the last time I asked, I knew he would decline to tell me, so I wouldn't ask again. Not until he was ready to tell us. I still trusted him regardless.

"Hey," Buttercup interrupted the silence, turning to us and thrusting a thumb toward the direction Professor had left in. "Is it me, or did he sound like a fortune cookie just now?"

#

"Jojo," I said to the chimp as I picked up a new flashcard, which had a picture of an inflatable ball on it. "What is this one?"

Jojo sat, looking at the card and lifting his hand into the air. Then, slowly, he signed the letters. B-A-L-L.

"Yes, that's right! Very good, Jojo!" I exclaimed holding my other hand out, palm out. "High five!"

Jojo met my palm with his, giving me five as his lips pulled back from his teeth, grinning in his chimp-y way.

Sometimes I liked to come down to Jojo's room in the lab. It was fun to watch him play, or wander around, or help him with his sign language vocabulary. It was times like this when I barely remembered what he used to be, and what we used to be to each other.

But today, I intended on not forgetting. Today I wanted to try something new. An experiment.

I flipped through more of the flash cards, looking for the particular one I had seen the last time I'd practiced this with him. Finding it, I said to Jojo, "Okay, ready for another one?" Jojo blinked. I held up the new flash card on it. It had a cartoon drawing of a stereotypical family on it. Two parents and two kids. "What's this one, Jojo? Spell it for me."

Jojo held up his hand. F-A-M-I-L-Y.

"Very good, Jojo. That's a family. Very good," I said. I pondered for a moment if he truly knew what the picture meant, or if he had just memorized its' meaning.

Behind my back, tucked into the waistband of my sundress, I took out a picture from the Internet that I had printed out the night before. I brought it in front of me, adding it to the stack of flash cards in my hand. "One more for today," I said. "Are you ready?"

Moment of truth. I turned the picture on the flimsy printer paper to face him. "Who is this, Jojo?"

The picture, containing the image of all three of the Rowdyruff Boys standing together, shook between my hands. I had purposely chosen a picture of them when they were much younger when they had still worked enthusiastically alongside Mojo.

Jojo stared at it for a long time. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. He really seemed to be taking it in, truly absorbing it, and it made my stomach flip flop.

Then, very slowly, he raised his hand. But instead of signing with it, he pointed to the picture. Then he poked it with his finger as if it were going to poke him back.

"Do you remember them, Jojo?" I whispered now, so I wouldn't startle him out of his intense concentration. "You created them. Don't you remember?"

Jojo lowered his hand from the picture, staring at the picture for a few more moments. He blinked. Then, without a care, Jojo stood and turned around. He wandered away from me, making his way over to his monkey bars, climbing up with his hands and feet and beginning to swing in between them. My stomach dropped sourly, though I wasn't terribly surprised. I and my flashcards had been forgotten.

"Yeah," I said, dissatisfied. Nodding slowly, I watched him play as I gathered up the flash cards from the floor, getting ready to exit. "Me neither."

#

Even with all the progress my sisters and I had made over the last couple of months, some days, progress still felt as if it moved at a snail's pace.

The more that our memories had returned to us, which had improved much faster than Professor had originally predicted, the more the existential agony had set in.

Some days, it felt as if I was walking around as an impostor, pretending to be okay. Pretending as each heartbeat ached. Pretending as if my own mind weren't screaming at me, 'What's the point? What are you even doing?' Pretending as if my life hadn't once been so full and that I hadn't lost it all. Like death hadn't still become this constant, overhanging, horrifying reality for all of us ever since we'd managed the inconceivable and defeated it.

I still had flashes of memory that triggered bouts of panic, and nightmares about extreme dehydration that made me ache down to my muscles, roiling nausea that made it impossible to move, or about headaches that split my brain into two.

I knew this event would never be something I would get over. One doesn't simply get over death. It leaves its' mark on someone in one way or another. The biggest challenge was dealing with this new weight on my shoulders—the reminder of what I had gone through would always be there. And the reminder would either build me up and keep me going or break me down into nothing.

I refused to let it break me down. Even letting it win for one second would be one second too long—it would wrap around me and pull me down and swallow me up like quicksand and suffocate me. So, I would learn to run with this new weight on me. Maybe some days I would walk—or maybe sometimes that walk would be more like a crawl, or like dragging myself forward by my fingertips.

But no matter what, I would keep moving. No matter what.

One thing I couldn't help, though, was this persistent feeling of loss. This aching emptiness in my life.

Not quite like a hole. More like a Grand Canyon. A throbbing, screaming Grand Canyon of emptiness in my life.

Sometimes I felt this loss and grief and terror stronger than anything else. And these particular days, it felt almost impossible to even move my limbs, let alone even act normally as I went about my daily routines.

It was even worse at night, as if the darkness closed in on me and brought forth every horrifying thought it could manage. Often it kept me tossing and turning in a half-awake half-asleep fever nightmare.

These feelings were imperceptible on the outside. I wrestled with it ceaselessly, and yet my sisters and father had no idea. How could something that felt so overpowering be so invisible?

But I tried my best to live with it—to breathe through the relentless ache.

I knew I was missing something. And I longed—ached—for those carefree, happy parts of my past to return to me. The fulfillment, the belonging I must have felt—why didn't I feel that way now? Aside from our trauma, what had changed?

Though, it wasn't as if I completely lacked belonging. Of course, I belonged to my sisters. That was one of the only things I was sure of these days.

My sisters and I were of the same kind—three of a kind. And if anything, I knew I would always belong to them, and they would always belong to me, without any doubt.

Though truly, we weren't three of a kind—there were technically three more. Those ex-criminal brothers. The Rowdyruffs.

But as many memories that had returned to me since meeting them, none of my newly recalled memories were of them. I still had those very fuzzy childhood memories of them as rivals, as did my sisters.

But the actual events that we had witnessed concrete evidence of in those pictures I had found on the Internet…it was as if they had never happened. It was like a giant blind spot in my brain. Perhaps if I had never found those pictures and articles, and had never seen the brothers in person with my very eyes, I would think that they didn't even exist anymore.

If they were so important, wouldn't we have remembered them that way by now? What was keeping those memories from coming back?

Part of me wished that I had kept some sort of record. A journal, or a blog, or something. Something that would help jog any memories.

Even as I wondered this, though, another part of me wondered if it was better that I couldn't remember them that way. Pictures were just pictures. Pictures couldn't capture everything within a relationship. Who's to say that we might not have actually been happy with them?

Furthermore, what if it was fake? After all, it's not like we could've ever loved them for real.

Maybe it was just that we had become a super team, and to look more united, we staged fake relationships with them so that the public would trust them—a public relations type of arrangement. Actors did those all the time with costars so that their movies would be more popular.

It had to be something like that. It had to be. Why else would they have been so forgettable to us? Maybe they were just coworkers to us after all.

The more I thought of this theory, the more it made sense to me. So much that over several days, this is what I began to suspect was the truth.

I even told my sisters about my theory, and they agreed, telling me that it made sense to them, too. That I had to be right. That maybe not even Professor knew of this secret arrangement we'd made with those brothers.

So, after I told them this, our discussions about those brothers went from frequent to none at all.

The Rowdyruff brothers, as a topic of memory conversations, held no more weight in our home any more than occasional talk of small local crime, or what the temperature outside would be the following Tuesday.

Despite everything, there was more for us to think about now—the future was now our oyster. We had so much ahead of us, so much to accomplish.

Next week, all three of us would go with Professor to Warner University. We would re-enroll for the following fall semester, and prepare to make our grand return to campus. I was so excited about it that every time I thought of it I had to keep myself from somersaulting into the air with joy.

In a few months, I would be back on my way to earning my biochemical engineering degree. We would live at home during our first fall semester back, just to be safe—but that didn't matter. I would still be back at my beloved college soon. I would be back at my second home in just a few months' time.

I could hardly wait.

#

One night the following week, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

I'd remembered. Steven. That was the name of a boy that I dated in high school. I couldn't remember for how long I'd dated him.

I'd had a dream about him—no, maybe it was a memory. A memory of us sitting at the dining room table downstairs, quietly doing homework together. Once in a while I'd look up, see him staring at me. It made me uncomfortable, but I would smile at him anyway.

Then, the dream cut ahead through some unknown time frame. I was standing in our living room, dressed in a pretty dress. I had seen this dress somewhere before—perhaps in another memory. I was facing Steven, and I was utterly devastated—I was crying. And it felt like something had been ripped out of me.

Steven was glaring past me at something or someone, and then he looked straight at me. His grey eyes were so sad—he looked inconsolable. He looked at me like his entire world had been crushed.

As I had jolted awake in bed after the dream ended, I'd had the urge to call him. I looked at the clock. It was just past 1 AM. I suddenly had the very distinct feeling that I had called him this late before, but likely not for a very long time.

I picked up my cell phone, which Professor had just given back to me within past week or so. He'd had to change our numbers because the press had gotten a hold of our old numbers. And with the return of our phones, we were also allowed back on our social media accounts, officially. He had figured from my whole exposé I'd done behind his back that keeping us off the Internet any longer was doing us more harm than help—and at this point, we were going to get curious anyway.

Days earlier, I had looked at my long-abandoned public social media accounts, and it seemed like I had always kept the posts professional. There were no posts or hints of my private life at all. That was so like me, so I wasn't terribly surprised by that. But it was too bad—if there had been pictures I hadn't seen on there before, or specific status updates or anything like that, it could've helped me remember more long-term memories.

In my phone, I opened my contacts and scrolled through them, all the way down. There was no Steven in my phone. No Steven at all.

But Brick's number was there.

It took me a while to realize it was him because he wasn't under his actual name—there was a picture of him set as the contact picture, one that I seemingly took of him as he was reading something, his head dipped downward and his forehead furrowed in concentration. The contact name was, simply, 'My Love'.

That contact name was something that I couldn't understand. Because if the whole dating thing between us had been a fake Public Relations setup like I had thought, why would his name in my phone contacts be something so affectionate? In a place that only I would see it? Who had I done it for?

It didn't make any sense to me. And it was the one thing that had exposed a giant, gaping flaw in my theory. And I didn't like this feeling at all—doubting myself.

I sat awake in my bed, staring at his contact entry in my phone for what felt like half an hour. Then, as my eyelids began to droop with sleep again, I pressed the 'Delete' button.

'Are you sure you want to delete 'My Love' from your contacts?' My phone prompted me. I frowned, hesitating.

Then slowly, I moved my thumb with finality to select 'Yes'.

I did the same with his brothers' numbers. And then it was done.

Erased. Forever.

My purpose, as I now knew for a fact, was to help this world. I was meant to protect with my super abilities, to share my intellect, to be someone for the girls and women of Townsville and beyond to admire and look up to. And to lead my sisters.

My role was so complex, so important. And why would I ever risk all of that to possibly fake date, or at least collaborate with, an ex-supervillain? To possibly, I assumed, agree to improve his image to the public by tarnishing my own?

It was irresponsible, and so unlike me. And I could not even begin to fathom why I had ever done such a thing.

All I wanted to do now was to erase what I had done. Go on as if it never happened. Unlike other parts of my past that had come back to me, I wanted to forget this.

And now, with determination, I would. I would.

I had to.

#

One day, several days after I had deleted those three numbers from my phone, we got an unexpected call at the house.

After he answered the phone in the living room and exchanged a few sentences with whoever was on the other end of the line, Professor came through the kitchen entrance and over to me.

He was still holding the phone, and his hand was pressed over the phone's receiver. "It's the Townsville district attorney's office. The prosecution lawyer wants to know if you and your sisters would be willing to testify against Princess Morbucks in court."

My eyebrows shot up. I had decided to peruse school supplies online for our semester back, and much earlier than I really had to, just to get the best ones before they sold out. But this unexpected development now had my full attention. "Against?" I echoed.

"Yes." Professor's tone was serious. "He would like to speak to you."

Now my eyes widened. "To me?" I pointed to myself. "Right now?"

He nodded, then I heard a tiny voice come from the phone's tiny speaker. He pressed it to his ear again and spoke into the phone. "No, that won't be necessary. Just one moment, please." He covered the receiver with his hand once again. "He said they could call someone else if you're not willing to do it."

I hesitated, my throat tight. Then, lips pressed together, I shook my head. I held my hand out. "Let me talk to him."

Professor said into the phone, "Blossom wants to speak to you. Here she is." Then he handed me the home phone.

I took a deep breath, then released it. I pressed the phone to my ear, sitting back against the hard wooden back of the chair I sat in. "Hello?"

The voice on the other end was deep and professional sounding. "Ms. Blossom Utonium, good afternoon. I'm so glad I could get a hold of you. My name is Ben Jones, I'm the chosen prosecution for the Princess Morbucks court case. Thank you for sparing a moment to speak with me."

"It's no problem at all," I said, shaking my head even though he couldn't see it. "What can I help you with?"

"Here's the thing," Mr. Jones started, "I'm up a creek, here. There are so few people willing to testify against Princess in court. Good old fashioned intimidation, you know? I mean, she's a Morbucks. Very few people have been willing to go against them."

"I see," I said. I got it, I really did. I had seen plenty of that intimidation with my own eyes.

He went on. "And to be frank with you, if you and your sisters testified against her…it would basically be a guaranteed win. You're superheroes, and you have a long past with her. And you're partly the reason she's finally been caught. If anyone could help us finally send her behind bars, it would be you guys. So, if you could just take some time to consider doing this, it would mean the worl—"

"Okay."

He paused. Then politely, he asked, "Excuse me?"

I clarified, "Okay. We'll do it." I looked up to see Professor nodding down at me in approval. Tentatively, I smiled. "We'll testify against her."

"Excellent," Mr. Jones said on the other end. He sounded so relieved. "Wow. This is great. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Ms. Utonium. You won't regret this, I promise you."

"I'm sure I won't," I replied. This was our last chance to take Princess down, and possibly for good. Something told me Bubbles and Buttercup wouldn't be opposed to this whatsoever.

"The court date is July 20th," said Mr. Jones, sounding as if he were frantically typing something. "At 11 A.M. If you'll give me your email address, I'll email you all of the finer details."

After briefly giving him my email, we hung up. Then, wordlessly, I offered the phone back to Professor. Professor reached to grab it from my hand. "This will be your first official public appearance since…" his voice trailed off.

"Yeah," I said, swallowing hard. "I know."

Professor went to put the phone back where it belonged, then he came back over to me, sitting next to me at the kitchen table. "How does it feel?"

I closed my eyes tightly. My fists clenched. "Terrifying," I said.

T-minus one week. One week until facing the public, the world, for the first time in what felt like decades. One week until facing one of our old opponents for what might be—for what would hopefully be—the last time for a very long time. This felt like diving headfirst into a vortex.

I clenched my fists tighter, and I opened my eyes. I turned to look at the calendar on the far wall of the kitchen. My eyes narrowed on July 20th.

One week to prepare myself and my sisters for this day, which would really be a battle of a different kind in and of itself. And when it came?

We would be ready.