Authoress's Notes: This was way, way longer than I intended it to be. I hope you people reading this still like my story and decide to keep up with it! If not, thanks for trying. Some announcements – 1) I've revised the first chapter a bit and added a few more details. You might want to reread it in case what you do remember conflicts with what you read here. 2) I reply to anonymous reviews at the bottom of my profile. If anyone gives me a review, I want to acknowledge and thank that person somehow. Well, I can't remember what else I wanted to type, so here goes Chapter 2!
Generation X
Music pounded into everybody's heads, but it only fueled the party atmosphere. Yes, tonight found plenty of students from Townsville High talking, chilling, or dancing at the house of the Powerpuff Girls. Under dimmed lights and scattered throughout the living room, kitchen, hallways, and backyard of the building were crowds of kids the girls knew from various classes and extracurricular activities, totaling over 200 students. Originally, they had only invited about 20 people over, but people just kept coming and coming. Luckily, they kept going, too, so overcrowding wasn't a big problem.
In the kitchen, a red head brought out two bowls of chips to the snack table set up in the living room. Wearing tight fitting jeans and a hot pink off-the-shoulders blouse, Blossom had let go of the pink dress she'd worn as a child, but she still kept the bright red bow in her hair. She paused and looked over the rest of the food on the table. Pretzels, dips, a fruit tray, cheeses, crackers, mini-wieners, pigs in blankets; this was definitely an assortment of appetizers. In the backyard, real food could be found on the buffet table of burgers and hotdogs grilled by the Professor.
Going back to her job, Blossom focused her eyes on the pitchers of soda at the end of the table. She was wondering if she should taste them again for anything funny, but Buttercup was on top of that. Blossom could hear her at the front door even now.
"Either no alcohol or no entry! What's it gonna be?"
That was Buttercup's charge: answering the door and making sure no one came in with questionable items. Blossom's job involved replenishing snacks in and outdoors. Lisa, a new friend they met freshman year, volunteered to help Blossom and take care of the music. Robin, an old friend from kindergarten, wanted to help Bubbles take care of the look of their house and backyard.
Blossom thought about it for a second and wondered, 'Where is Bubbles, anyways?'
"Lisa, do the food for me, please? I'm going to go look for Bubbles!" she called to Lisa, who was fixing more dip in the kitchen. She turned around, replying with a smile and a peace sign.
"Thanks!" With that, Blossom searched the living room. Some people were talking on the sofa, and some were dancing by the stereos, but Bubbles wasn't with them.
Lately, Bubbles had been disappearing for long periods of time, and quite often, too. She excused herself with cheerleading practices and shopping, so Buttercup hadn't noticed or cared. Blossom saw a difference in her personality, though. She'd seen the way Bubbles left them a little nervously and returned without a care in the world. At least until the Professor or her sisters questioned her for details on what exactly she'd been doing. Bubbles's cheeks would blush the faintest hue pinker and turn away.
Shaking her head, Blossom decided to head outside and check the backyard. Waving friendly to a countless number of her peers, she finally breathed in the sweet smell of the outdoors. Robin had decorated the area quite simply. She strung something akin to Christmas lights along the fence, and on the few tables that Bubbles assembled lay colored, spherical candles on flowery tablecloths. However, Blossom's pink eyes were looking for a certain blondie instead of admiring the embellishments.
"Oh, good, Blossom! Blossom!"
The Professor's calls and waving arms distracted her from her search. She made her way over to the grille, where he stood in an apron and his cooking hat.
"Yes, Professor?"
"I need some more burger patties. We're out and some kids are still looking for them," he informed her, nodding to a group of students waiting near the buffet table.
Blossom shook her head. "There aren't any left in the fridge, though."
"No? Well, I think I carried some down to the freezer in the lab. Get a few extra packs of hotdogs, too, please."
"All right, Professor." She turned away, but as an afterthought, added, "Have you seen Bubbles?"
"Not since she and Robin finished setting up the living room. Now, please, get that meat," he asked dismissively.
Blossom nodded and walked back to the house. She was headed for the lab when Buttercup walked over to her smiling and commented, "You won't believe how many people are trying to sneak in with beer! I even caught some losers trying to bring a keg in through the garage! You should've seen how angry those guys were when I chucked it!"
Blossom laughed. Jokingly, she asked, "Did you throw them out, too?"
"No, they turned around and left before I got to." Buttercup shrugged and sighed with disappointment.
"Well, there's always next time," Blossom offered, unsure if Buttercup was kidding. Then she remembered, "Oh, Buttercup, do you know where Bubbles is?"
"No. Hey, if she's looking at herself in a mirror again, pinch her for me! She's been doing that all night, while we've been working! No, never mind, I'd rather do it myself. Where've you looked?" Buttercup asked, wanting to join the hunt.
Unsure of what they might find, Blossom replied, "Thanks, but I've got this. What you could do, though, is get a few packages of burgers and hotdogs from the freezer down in the lab. The Professor needs them right away!"
Buttercup stared suspiciously at her for a second, but decided against questioning her about Bubbles, instead going for, "When'd we get a freezer down there? All I've ever seen are his scientific machines."
Blossom put on a smile and answered, "No idea, but let's hope he's not keeping any chemicals beside that food. Otherwise, we're no better than the school cafeteria."
Buttercup walked away with a chuckle, but to be safe, Blossom's eyes followed her path before resuming her search.
"Brie? Are you awake? Brie? Birch, I don't think she's getting up any time soon," whispered a nervous voice.
"You're not even trying, Bell. Brie! BRIE!!!"
"Wake up, Brie!" Bell was now trying to shake her awake. "What if she's dead, Birch? What are we going to do?" Bell backed up from the bodies, panicking.
"That's stupid. Listen, she's sleeping! Can't you hear her snoring? BRIE! WAKE UP, DANG IT!" Birch yelled.
The red head rolled over, muttering, "Please be quiet, girls. Leave me alone, I'm sleeping."
"See!" cried Birch in triumph.
"Oh, Brie! You're alive!" Bell exclaimed happily.
This confused Brie, getting her attention. "Of course, I'm alive. Why wouldn't I be?" Brie opened her eyes to see – well, nothing. "Bell? Birch? Are you there?"
"Good morning, sunshine! Now that you're up, would you please GET OFF ME!!!" a disgruntled Birch shouted. Brie had been sleeping perpendicularly across Birch's back.
"Oh! Sorry, Birch. Um, why is it so dark in here? What happened?"
Sitting up with pain, Birch chose to answer, "Well, Bell decided to play tea party in the dark using me as the table and you as the teapot. What do you think happened?!"
The moments before transportation flashed through Brie's mind. Alarms, shouts, tremors. "Right… Where's the control panel? Maybe we can fix this."
Standing up in the dark wasn't a problem, but moving around in that tight space presented itself as one. Brie put her hand to the wall and tried to feel for it.
"Ouch! That was my foot!" yelled Birch.
"Sorry!" Brie turned her head to Birch's direction and in the process -
"Ow!" cried Bell. The braid smacked her head again.
"Sorry, Bell!" Brie turned her head again, and this time –
Click!
The lights in the machine turned on and disoriented all of them. After a few seconds, they blinked it off and were able to see each other clearly. Birch leaned against the wall while massaging her pained foot, and Bell sat across from her in a fetal position. Still standing, Brie analyzed the control panel. The first time she saw it, she skimmed over it. Now, she was taking time to read everything.
The flat-against-the-wall rectangle was about 1.5 feet wide and 1 foot high. Every gadget had a colored glow to it. On the far left were two gauges, one above another. The top one, labeled "Power", had an incredibly low, flashing red bar. The bottom one, labeled "Speed", showed a bar filling up way over ¾ of the meter. The middle section comprised entirely of buttons, four rows of them. The top row had four, square buttons. First to last, they read "OFF", "ON", "GO", and "STOP", colors respectively being black, white, green, and red. At the end of the line came a digital clock reading 9:35PM. Above that row were the dials for day, month, and year of destination. Together they stated the date "10th of February 2012". On the right end of the panel was a small, black screen with white text and a keyboard under it. She had just reached it when she heard –
"Hey, Red Head, you've been looking at that thing for a while now. Figured out how to get us home yet?" called Birch.
"I think so, but I'm not sure it'll work. This power gauge says that we have less than seven percent left, and it's still decreasing. Who knows how much we used getting here," answered Brie unsurely.
"Can we at least try?" asked Bell.
Brie shook her head. "Better not. We might overheat this system and break it. As of now, girls, we're stuck here on February 10th, in the year of 2012."
There could only be one reason for Bubbles's behavior. She was spending all her time with a boy. It was fine that she didn't want to tell her sisters yet, but that was two years ago, and Bubbles still hadn't said anything. That prompted Blossom to figure out exactly what was going on.
If she still hadn't told her sisters about it, she wasn't going to. First question: Why? Blossom's first answer: She didn't want to hear her sister's reactions. Second question: How bad would the relationship be if they did find out? Second answer: Pretty bad. Third and most important question: Who was the boy?
Blossom grimaced with the answer. 'A villain.'
She had just reached the second story when she heard a certain high-pitched voice whisper, "I love you."
Blossom quickly turned left and bypassed a whole group of classmates. She hoped their chatter would cover the sound of her enormously loud steps to anyone with enhanced hearing capability. Unfortunately, the hushed and rushed reply confirmed her qualms.
"I love you, too, but our siblings are coming."
Blossom gagged at the sound of kissing. 'What has Bubbles gotten herself into?' she thought. She reached the door blocking her sister and the mysterious boy from view, and she immediately burst into the bedroom.
"BUBBLES!"
"What?" came a most innocent-sounding reply. Bubbles stood in front of a full-length mirror. Her pigtails had grown all the way down to her elbows, and tonight she'd put blue bows in her light yellow hair.
"What are you doing, Bubbles?" Blossom questioned.
"Making sure I'm still the prettiest girl at the party." She adjusted her white halter-top and her blue ruffled mini-skirt. A stylish black belt around her waist coordinated with her black skinny heels. Taking a final glance, she turned on the spot and walked straight past Blossom and out the door.
"Really? Well, then this is from Buttercup." Blossom pinched her arm. Hard.
"OW! What was that for?!" protested Bubbles, rubbing her arm.
"Like I said, that was from Buttercup. This is from me!" Blossom smacked her upside the head.
"Quit it!" Bubbles climbed down the stairs quickly, trying to get away from Blossom. No luck, though, since Blossom followed right behind her.
"Bubbles, you need to be more careful. I don't know whom you've been with, but I came this close," Blossom held her fingers up very close together for emphasis, "to walking in on you two. I don't approve of you seeing a bad guy, but nothing terrible has happened to you, yet. Just, please, watch out for yourself! And for crying out loud, do a better job at keeping it a secret!" Blossom warned her. Bubbles stopped moving, so Blossom sidestepped her and kept going, only to have her arm held back by Bubbles's hand.
"So, you haven't told anyone?" she asked quietly. Blossom shook her head.
"And you're not trying to figure out who it is?"
Blossom ignored the fact that she was and merely shook her head again.
Bubbles smiled. "Thank-you, Blossom."
"Blossom! Bubbles!" Robin yelled and ran up to them, breaking the moment. The brunette bent over and panted, her long hair falling over her face after the run. "Buttercup" pant "wanted me to" gasp "find you and tell you" air "to get your – uh – selves down to the basement. Immediately."
Blossom and Bubbles looked at each other in alarm. "Thanks, Robin!" They barely said before flying down to join Buttercup.
The girls were silent for a few minutes. The pause was broken by Birch's questions.
"So, we've traveled 15 years backwards. That means our parents are 18, right?"
Brie nodded.
Bell managed to smile. "Valentine's Day is in 4 days."
"Let's hope we're not here long enough to celebrate it," frowned Birch.
"We don't know how long we'll be here. Anyway, let's not focus on that and rather what we're going to do now. Look at these other functions." Brie pointed to the third line of buttons consisting of a round, orange one with "EMERGENCY" written on it and three violet ones saying "CLOSE", "OPEN", and "DOUBLE", all under the word window. "This one says emergency. I think our situation qualifies as one," so saying, Brie tapped it lightly. A small metal door next to the big metal door opened next to Bell. She crawled over and pulled out a small backpack.
"Look! Food! We won't starve!" Bell opened the sack to the other girls, showing the different types of dry snacks. Then she withdrew a granola bar, tore it open, and ravenously chewed on it.
Birch grabbed another bag from the tiny cargo hold and opened it. "This one has flashlights, flares, more emergency equipment pieces," she announced.
As soon as she did, a small beeping came from the control panel's screen. Brie turned around, read the text, and commanded, "Keep the flashlights out. This machine is losing power, so we'll turn off the lights and hopefully conserve some energy." The second line of buttons had only two: a clear button saying "CAMOFLAUGE" and a yellow button marked "LIGHTS". Patting the yellow one, the fluorescent-lit lines shut down, and Birch promptly turned on the flashlights. "Bell, put the food back. We're trapped in our parents' days, not the Mesozoic Era. I'm sure we'll find food we like."
Another window popped up on screen, and Brie pushed a corresponding button on the keypad. A second later, a long sheet of paper slid out from beneath the panel. Brie tore it off and hit another key, turning off the monitor. A humming that the girls hadn't entirely noticed until now disappeared, too. It was replaced by the sound of…
"Is that music?" asked Birch.
Listening further, Bell added, "And voices. Right outside."
Brie whispered, "Birch, shine that flashlight over here."
Birch complied and illuminated the fourth row of buttons. Little blue arrows pointing left and right were beside the bottom gauge, with the letters "MPS" above them. Next to them were three brown circles tagged "OPEN", "CLOSE", and "LOCK" under the word "DOOR", and two pink circles with the words "TALK" and "LISTEN" on them. Brie hit the last one, as well as the "DOUBLE" from the third line. A section of the metal wall lowered quietly, revealing the silhouettes of three figures merely yards away from the machine.
"Buttercup! What's going on?" demanded Blossom. She was worried that there was some sort of trouble in the basement, but everything seemed fine.
"Shhh!" Buttercup whispered. "Quiet! Look over there!" She pointed to a corner of the lab.
"I don't see anything," Bubbles said, puzzled as to what was happening.
"Ugh, use your X-Ray vision!"
Blossom and Bubbles shrugged at each other and took a glance on a different spectrum. Their eyes passed machine after machine until hitting the one Buttercup meant. They gasped.
"Are those…" Bubbles began.
"Yup. Three people hiding in our basement," Buttercup finished. "I think they're bad guys waiting to ambush. I mean, no one would try and sneak alcohol in or out of here. It's a basement!"
Bubbles interrupted, "They look like kids, though. Look how small they are!"
Blossom turned to Buttercup and asked, "What happened?"
"I don't know!" she answered. "I came down here to get the food like you said, and then I saw that machine. It wasn't here earlier, so I got the meat and brought it to the Professor. I asked, and he said hasn't built anything recently, so I told Robin to go get you two and had a look myself. That reminds me, where were you, Bubbles?"
Bubbles faced the floor while Blossom answered, "I pinched her."
Grinning, Buttercup pinched Bubbles arm, too, coincidentally where Blossom got her.
"OUCH!"
"Shut up!" her sisters scolded. Silently, Blossom motioned for them to sneakily approach the mysterious apparatus, but the girls inside were already aware of this. The panel that had moved acted sort of like a double mirror. People on the outside saw reflections of themselves without seeing the people inside seeing them, too. And the people inside saw the people outside coming towards them.
"Brie! What are we gonna do? They're coming!" Bell panicked. She was shaking.
"Calm down, Bell! First things first: Don't show your powers. I'll do the talking. We don't know what's about to happen, and we don't want to risk changing the future."
Birch stared at her. "Hasn't us being here already changed the future? And why do you get to do the talking?"
Brie looked at her. "Because I'm our leader! That's why!"
"When did we vote on this?"
"Why vote? Doesn't it just make sense?"
"Well, that's not egotistical! Just because your mom leads their team doesn't mean you lead ours! And come to think of it, we're not even a team! Anyway, if we were, we'd need to decide fairly!" Birch argued.
"Fine! Bell, who'd make a better leader?"
Avoiding that answer, Bell brought back the attention to, "THEY ARE RIGHT OUTSIDE! STOP FIGHTING AND LEAD, SOMEBODY!"
Surprised by her outburst, Brie faltered for a moment before hitting another button. The heavy metal door opened, and they heard –
"Stand back and be ready for anything, girls!" Blossom commanded, taking on a sort of diplomatic pose. Buttercup and Bubbles were in fighting stances behind her. After a few seconds, Blossom shouted loudly, "Who's there? Realize that you've infiltrated our house during our party. Come out in peace, and we might be able to sort out this business. If you attack, get ready for a humiliating defeat!"
Brie looked at her cousins and beckoned. "Follow me." She walked boldly out of the contraption. Shouting back evenly, she said, "My name is Brie! My sisters and I have been accidentally transported here, and we need your help!"
Bell and Birch looked confusedly at each other. Why was Brie lying to them? That didn't seem like a good first action. They shrugged before coming out and joining her.
The Powerpuff Girls froze and watched them carefully for a few seconds. This was not what they had been expecting. Before they did anything, though, Lisa threw opened the door and screamed from the top of the stairs.
"Hey, girls! You still down there? Guess who's come to crash your party!"
Blossom was the first to shake off her shock and respond. "When's Mojo Jojo going to learn that he can't ruin one of our parties and get away with it?"
"Uh, I don't know, but he's not your problem right now. The Rowdyruff Boys are here, and half of the guests are running away!"
Something clicked in Blossom's mind. She turned to Bubbles shouting, "Him? HIM?"
Buttercup stared at Blossom weirdly. "No, didn't you just hear her? Lisa said the Rowdyruff Boys! Ugh, those guys! I'm going to go up there and teach them that they can't crash our parties, either!" She was already half way up the stairs before remembering about those girls. Buttercup backtracked, keeping her eyes on the girls and missing the bafflement on Blossom's face and the intense blush on Bubbles's.
"Blossom, what are we going to do about them?" she nudged her side.
Tearing her gaze from Bubbles, Blossom asked the girls, "Can we trust you to stay here?"
Brie nodded furiously with a smile. "Yes, you can!"
Too uncertain but left with no other choices, Blossom nodded to her sisters. "Let's go, girls!" she commanded. Her pink streak bounded out of the lab.
Buttercup wasn't sure about this decision, but the urge to hit Butch really overrode the urge to figure out this mystery right then. A green streak followed right after the pink one.
Bubbles finally looked up from the floor. She walked over to Bell and whispered, "I trust you," before making her own blue streak alongside her sisters', leaving the three newcomers to themselves in that familiar basement.
Authoress: I'm telling you right now, my next chapter probably won't be this long. Once again, reviews, encouragements, and constructive criticism are really appreciated! Still, I'm just thankful you're reading this story, and I hope you enjoy it!