And Everything Nice
3.
Astro was the first student to arrive in the homeroom class. Blossom and Bubbles showed up a few minutes later, and once again Buttercup barely made it into the classroom before the tardy bell sounded.
"I overslept!" the green eyed teenager told her friends.
"Up late watching anime reruns on Adult Swim again?" Blossom asked.
"None of your business, but yeah!" Buttercup said. "So what classes do we have today?"
"Looks like Miss Keane's history class, Mr. Stein for science, and Dr. Mattac's Algebra class." Astro said, looking at his schedule. "First thing this morning is P.E. I think it's going to be indoors today though, looks like rain outside."
"Too bad." Buttercup said, "I was looking forward to embarrassing you again on the soccer field!"
"That ain't going to happen twice!" Astro replied.
Maxx Bidd, theowner of the downtown auction house arrived with his partners early to setup the display area for prospective customers. Most of the items that would be placed on the block were already in their display cases or on the stage in the main auditorium on the fourth floor. Only the Morebucks collection wasn't present, it being locked in the basement safe. Maxx and his two partners took the elevator down to the basement level, where they found the door to the vault had been opened and the alarm panel tampered with. The safe had been broken into and its contents were lying all over the floor of the vault room. Maxx quickly called the police to report the robbery.
Inspector Gumshoe arrived within twenty minutes with two other officers. "Looks like the work of Acetylene Lamp," the inspector said. "What's missing?"
"Looks like the thieves were only after the Morebucks collection." Maxx Bidd said. "All the other jewelry in the safe wasn't touched. Of course, that was the most valuable set in there."
"We'll dust for prints, but this Lamp character knows his business. He always wears gloves." The inspector said. "We'll be gone in about ten minutes, you can open for business as usual. I'll call you if I have any news."
Sighing, Maxx took the elevator back upstairs and started to prepare for the pre-bid inspection. The crowd would be disappointed with the Morebucks collection missing, but there was still a sizable amount of other items that would be going up for bids later in the late afternoon.
The morning P.E. class was restricted to an indoor session in the gymnasium due to a constant drizzle that kept the outdoor play field damp. Buttercup voiced her complaint about the situation to Mr. Gehrig, who just shrugged his shoulders and cited school regulations. He gave the class a choice of activities which included basket ball. Buttercup grabbed one of the balls and started dribbling across the gym, taking long shots at the basket, making most of them. Before he knew what was happening, Astro found himself involved in a one on one game against the green eyed tomboy. Buttercup zigzagged back and forth, her reflexes somehow faster than Astro's. Before he knew what had happened, she was two goals ahead of him, and not even winded.
Astro recovered a rebound, and made his way across the court with Buttercup blocking him from taking a shot at the goal. Finally Astro saw an opening and jumped to shot. Buttercup jumped up in front of him and grabbed the ball about ten feet in the air! 'No way!' Astro thought to himself. The only way that she could have done that was to fly!
Across town the auction house had just opened to the public. Several dozen people were inspecting the items for sale up on the auditorium stage. The pre-auction showing was on the fourth floor of the building. One of the two elevators in the old building was down for repairs, and the one in service was the smaller one that ran slowly. The patrons complained about having to crowd into the small lift to get upstairs, but the crowd slowly grew as the morning went on.
Down in the basement Skunk's cigar still smoldered. Across the alley, the work crews had just started to load more of the combustible dirt into the waiting trucks to be hauled away. The back hoe driver began to dig at a new location to uncover one of the remaining 10,000 gallon fuel tanks still buried under the former gas station.
"CRAP!" The heavy machine operator muttered.
The foreman waked over to the excavation site and looked into the hole. "Looks like you punctured that old tank with the power shovel," he said. "I think the tank split open, we're going to have a big mess on our hands!"
About a thousand gallons of fuel poured out of the old tank. The stream of liquid followed gravity downhill and poured under the alley into the basement of the building on the other side. The concrete floor of the basement, already crumbling in the corner from years of underground moisture seepage, started to bubble with the flow of gasoline. The advancing vapors reached the glowing cigar butt and ignited.
Lamps two gas cylinders were not quite as empty as he had thought. They had been slowly out venting while sitting in the corner of the basement forming an explosive bubble near the ceiling.
Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup sat in the back of Miss Keane's history class, while Astro had been assigned a seat near the front of the room near the window which faced towards downtown. The girls were half paying attention to their teacher, while passing notes back and forth about some cute boy in another class. Astro stood up to answer a question when he thought he heard something. He cupped his hands to his ears and cranked his hearing up to 1000 times power to hear the rumble of an explosion. Astro turned to face the window and could barely make out a mushroom shaped cloud of smoke rising in the sky in the direction of downtown. He zoomed his eyes into telephoto mode and saw the flames shooting high into the air.
"Er Miss Keane?" Astro said in a panic.
"Yes Astro, what is it?" the teacher asked.
Astro left his seat and walked up to the teachers desk. He whispered something into her ear.
"Why yes, I guess you'd better get going then." Miss Keane said, "You're excused."
Not too far away in Professor Utonium's laboratory the computer control panel started buzzing. Ken quickly ran over to the monitor to see what the alarm was all about. "Dad!" he yelled, "Look at this!"
A map image had formed on the screen showing a blinking red icon in the downtown New Townsville area. "Looks like a large explosion and a fire." The professor said. He zoomed a web cam view and saw flames shooting out of a building with people hanging out the window. "I don't know if the fire department will get there in time."
"Right," Ken said, knowing what he had to do. "Poochi, call the girls!" he said.
The robot dog stood up and put his paws to his mouth. "POWER PUFF GIRLS WE NEED YOU!"
In the back of Miss Keane's history class the belt buckles worn by Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup began to beep and glow. "Oh no not again!" Buttercup moaned. She stood up waving her hand "Miss Keane, my head hurts!" Bubbles followed her yelling "My ears are ringing!", Blossom added "And I have a splitting tooth ache!"
"I guess you'd better go see the nurse again!" Miss Keane said.
The three girls ran out of the class room and took the stairway up to the roof. They got there just in time to see Astro jumping off the roof and flying away. They quickly transformed themselves into the Power Puff's and blasted skyward in the same direction that Astro had just gone.
"Wow, I've been beating a robot kid at sports?" Buttercup yelled. "I bet that Uran kid is his little sister."
"Makes sense." Bubbles replied, grabbing the blinking compact on her belt. "Looks like there's a huge fire in the downtown area. That must be the emergency Ken and the professor called us for."
"Right!" Blossom cried out. "Now just how are we going to save the day today?"
After the pool of gasoline in the basement had ignited, the flames touched off a secondary fireball as the cloud of oxygen and acetylene near the ceiling exploded forming a fireball that engulfed the two gas tanks which were not completely empty. They went off like a bomb, sending a column of flame upward through the wooden floors above the basement. A tongue of flame shot back under the alley returning to the source of the fuel. The remaining fuel in the two tanks still buried underground detonated, sending a secondary fireball high into the sky. The blast blew both tanks skyward out of the ground like intercontinental ballistic missiles, they came crashing back to earth across the street setting two other tall buildings on fire. The backhoe was also blasted across the street, smashing into yet another building, its operator now trapped under a pile of rubble. Two large propane tanks in another part of the auction house basement blew up from the heat, feeding the flames.
Panic filled the fourth floor as smoke blocked the staircases and the remaining elevator refused to operate. The auction patrons leaned out the windows for some air, scanning the view around them hoping that the fire department would get there before they burned to death.
Astro hovered over the scene and quickly looked around. There were now several large buildings damaged and burning. He could see people trapped in the burning buildings at many of the windows. Before he could decide what to do first his three classmates arrived and hovered in the air around him.
"There are people trapped in the rubble in several of the buildings!" Blossom yelled to him. "Go rescue them! I'll take care of the people who can get out of the high story windows. Bubbles, you and Buttercup see about putting out the fires!"
Astro was greatly surprised to see the Power Puff girls, but he was glad to have help. He nodded his approval of the plan and dove into the building where the backhoe had been blown into the basement trapping the operator. He rapidly dug out the machine from the ton of bricks and steel that lay on top of it, then he pried open the machines cab to get the operator out. The man had a broken leg which Astro splinted using a board and cloth from the mans clothes.
Buttercup flew over the fire raging in the middle of the former gas station, which now looked like an erupting volcano. She swung her gigantic hammer to create a shock wave that blew out the fire in much the same way that Red Adair once extinguished oil well fires using nitroglycerin.
Bubbles waved her huge bubble wand to send a shower of bubbles that extinguished many smaller fires burning in the streets and the buildings.
Blossom used her yoyo as a rescue line to lower several people at a time from the windows of the buildings to safety.
By the time the New Townsville fire department finally reached the scene, most of the fires had been put out and the trapped victims were out of harms way. Astro and the Power Puff girls hovered over the scene. "Looks like our work is done here!" Blossom said.
"Yeah time for a high five!" Buttercup cried out. The four of them stuck out their right hands for a mutual high five. "Hey guys, I think we need to get back to class." Bubbles said.
"I'll race you back, robot boy!" Buttercup laughed at Astro.
"This is one race you are going to loose!" Astro said with a sneer.
"OK, you're on!" Buttercup replied, "On the count of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, BLASTOFF!"
Astro went hypersonic using his leg and arm rockets, causing a sonic boom that blew out windows along his route. Buttercup left a green ion trail wake in the sky as she tried to keep up with him, with Blossom and Bubbles way behind with their orange and blue vapor trails.