JMJ
Chapter Three
The Best Kind of Secrets
"Oh, that was close," said Mojo Jojo. "Too close, and there was not even a sufficient amount of the type of metal I require for the plan that I have planned after my reviewing of my other plans."
He tapped his chin.
In his main lab, he sat in a chair thinking over his latest schemes. It had to be good. It had to be the last. There was no compromising this time. He was supposed to defeat the Powerpuff Girls or he would die trying, and already he had almost been caught. What luck it had been— pure dumb luck— that the Rowdyrough Boys had stopped to get ice cream where and when they did and had worn the Powerpuff Girls out. It might have been the most helpful the boys had ever been, and he had not even told them to do it.
Taking advantage of other people without their knowing was the best way to get a person to do something they might not otherwise do and Mojo Jojo had certainly been good at such manipulation in the past. Was there a way to get the boys involved this time again, and not by accident? It had already been on his mind to enlist help.
"It still stands to reason," he muttered, enjoying the ambience of the purposely dimmed lighting for the atmospheric affect surrounded by buttons, wires, blinking bulbs, and an assortment of contraptions each more extravagant than the last, "that if I take all the best parts of all my plans into the best collaboration plan between myself— as all the previous plans I've enacted were planned by me— that together they will make one big plan. A robot army is part of the plan. As I already discussed with Com. An AI may not be good for one's psychological boost of mental health, but it is good when you need mindless drones. Nothing is more a mindless drone than a drone, but they are so unreliable at the same time when dealing with non-AI spontaneous little girls with Chemical X."
He stood up throwing his arms behind his back and began to pace.
Getting the metal right away was only step one. At least he needed a reserve, and yet it was not the whole thing. He needed more. He needed distractions. He needed chaos. He needed to be omnipresent about the city, or at least his plan must be going on in more than three places at once to outmatch the Powerpuff Girls and in way in which he was still in control of it all.
"Yes!" he declared. "That is the problem. I need to be in more than one place at once, but that is impossible as I can only be me, and my mind cannot be duplicated for a single purpose. I have already made the mistakes of thinking that a simian army would obey me, that clones of the Powerpuff Girls would obey me, that the citizens of Townsville can be brainwashed into doing my bidding while still maintaining sufficient decision-making abilities that can outsmart the Powerpuff Girls, that a robot army in itself can think independently enough not to be trashed within seconds by the Powerpuff Girls. I need chaos that does not have on single solution that the Powerpuff Girls can simply thwart with the throw of a switch. Hmm…"
The gears began spinning wild again in that already very fast-paced thinking machine that was Mojo Jojo's brain. He began pacing again, but slower and more methodical as his mind-power chugged faster and faster until it had gained the momentum of a bullet train.
Then he stopped altogether any physical movement as a light bulb finally revealed a dark corner that had never been brought to light before. As his mind stopped to circle that one light, he bolted down the steps again. Down, down, down, down, down until he opened the door to Com's bunker, and he roared between breaths, "Com, I am promoting you!"
"…Mmm?" the gentle voice asked genuinely confused as Com's brain woke from the induced doze it had been in. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that you are no longer going to be taking up valuable electric energy to my lair. You are going to be helpful for once and do your part. After all these months I finally figured out a real use for you, and I knew this day would come. How befitting that it be on the anniversary of my first accursed failure! The anniversary of the day in which I was humiliated and lying on the street in the wake of my enemies' victory as they scoffed at my pain and embraced each other with revolting hugs and kisses and the citizens of Townsville worshiped the little titans in a way that I am surprised that the Mayor has not erected a statue in their honor. I felt so low and so miserable just as you did when I found you, but it does not matter. You will now perform the reason why you have been brought here: to help me defeat the Powerpuff Girls."
Silence. Somehow the built-up suspense failed him. It sometimes happened. Mojo frowned.
"In what way would I be useful in stopping the Powerpuff Girls?" asked Com. "You have the mental capacity and the body to match full of Chemical X. I fear there is very little a brain in jar can do in this case."
"Oh, don't be so modest!" Mojo scoffed. "You know perfectly well the power of a computer."
He leapt into the swivel chair and began to type, push, crank, and tap at all the keys, buttons and levers at his disposal.
"Perhaps in your present state you are useless, but if I extend your reach to the ends of the earth, you could be unstoppable. As I am not stupid enough to give you that much power, I will tell you that your digital arm will be extended for this plan. With many safeguards. I am taking no chances in this plan."
"As you advised me to advise, Mojo Jojo."
"Yes. You will be in charge of the manufacturing of the robot army. You will be in charge of seeing through the security of Townsville. You will be in charge of locating more metal. You will be a general. I may also use you to recruit others in a way that can make my part in this secret to the very end, and only at the end will I reveal myself. This would be when I know for sure that the Powerpuff Girls are unable to fight me."
"Perhaps you should also take the advice that you told me to remind you of, that taking time to gloat is not ever worth it."
"Yes, yes, yes," said Mojo waving his hand away. "Noted. I understand that. But I still have a right to witness their demise."
With a gleam in his reddening eyes, he smashed his fist into a very classic shiny red button— the kind of button that was made for such happy endings as the one Mojo had panned. The angry whine of the alert echoed in the dark subterranean void. Then there erupted the sound of power running loudly in the computer systems, roaring with the authentic black and white melodrama of Dr. Frankenstein's success.
Mojo laughed as Com for the first time since he had come to live in the clutches of an inhuman scientist used the computerized voice to moan. It was unearthly as Mojo had never given the voice the quality of pain or anguish. It distorted and jumbled itself like audio files skipping or pitches leaping. He was in no serious pain, though. As far as Mojo knew Com's moan was the moan of someone flexing a muscle that had not been used for ages.
The screens flashed with digital numbers and primitive but accurate displays of blueprints and specs of things not only in the observatory, but in the entire city. These were mingled with images of very human scenes of a life mostly forgotten. Infancy, boyhood, school tests, scolding fingers, winning smiles, but they were never truly decipherable enough to figure out a complete life of the man who existed before Com came to be.
"Success!" affirmed Mojo. "Do you feel it all, Com? You are now capable of accessing any computer. Accessing, but not interfering, except those which I have allowed. That is part of the safeguards, which you cannot override and which I have prepared, but all knowledge is at your disposal and mine."
"I do," said Com, the screens calming, though not completely ending their occasional switching to different specs and maps.
Mojo could almost sense the tentacles of Com's digital touch feeling around his new environment.
"I'm experiencing... breathable space. I no longer feel like an organic organism trapped in a dark computerized world. I feel like a computerized being that has evolved from flesh."
"Good," said Mojo leaping from his chair. "So, now that I have you at my command in a way in which you have more capacity in serving me and my purpose, I will give you the commands that will secure my plan into a reality. First I need you to locate any of the type of metal I require to make the best robots compatible with chemical X, and…" He paused.
"You don't have Chemical X at the moment," said Com.
"Yes, I was just thinking that," said Mojo irritably. "That means I must visit Pr. Utonium, which could be detrimental to my plan before it can begin."
"There is a second option."
"Giving up is not an option."
"That is not the option I had in mind."
"Taking it from the girls is more dangerous than taking it from Pr. Utonium. This has to be a secret," Mojo huffed, "and if you're going to get snarky about taking some from myself I might think of siphoning from you again, and I—"
"There is a third location from which Chemical X may be sourced aside from Utonium's home and your lair."
Mojo winced. He spun around, looking right up at the main eye camera above the head monitor where he knew that now Com could see him as distinctly as Mojo saw Com. For a prickling few seconds, Mojo went through plans A-C for protocols about how to override Com in case of emergency. He was feeling more paranoid than usual and yet also just as willing to take necessary risks for his cause than usual. He did not trust Com and never had. The chill went through his spine enough to make his fur stand on end along it. He breathed.
"What is the third location?"
"The hidden underground laboratory of a certain Pr. Xylon Ex."
Wincing one eye further, Mojo widened the other. "That name sounds familiar."
"Not unsurprising. It is perhaps because your former self heard the name spoken by Pr. Utonium before he forgot everything that happened— well, before his pet project became a reality beyond his wildest dreams."
"Perhaps. Or it could simply be because he is the most well-known and renowned scientist in the country and that he is given more grants and funding than anyone in the scientific world. But what has he to do with Pr. Utonium and Chemical X?"
"He helped to discover it and is the chemical's namesake," said Com. "He was crucial in the release of Pr. Utonium from jail for the malpractice of using it to make three little destructive girls, allowing him to assist them in defeating you both as emotional motivation and with the antidote for Chemical X, which was also designed with the help of Pr. Ex."
Again Mojo felt his fur rise. "Did you just figure all this out now?"
"Some of it," Com answered truthfully.
"What did you already know?"
"That Pr. Ex had Chemical X."
"And you did not tell me?"
"You never asked."
"But you knew that—!"
"My job was to go over plans that you already thought of yourself and for me to only give the most straightforward of suggestions."
"Pr. Ex, by any chance, is not the one responsible for you, is he?"
Com did not answer.
"He was very secretive about his work with Chemical X, wasn't he?" mused Mojo.
"Do you think he has not labored on his secret work since then?"
"What about all his grants for what he is supposedly doing with biological discovery in medicine or whatever he is supposedly working on? He is a devious undermining fink."
"Truly."
"But he does have Chemical X?"
"Plenty. He uses it all the time."
"All the time?" gasped Mojo. "Wouldn't there be evidence of such messing with Chemical X. Once something has been tampered with it cannot go unnoticed without instantly using Antidote X to cancel it out."
"The evidence is all around us," Com answered. "Why do you think that Townsville is the only town that has a fresh supply of monsters?"
"The island that—"
"Yes, and I suppose every body of water has a monster island."
"Quit interrupting me, Com."
"I apologize. It is difficult for me to keep up with the speed of my accelerated intake even for good manners."
He was enjoying it too much in Mojo's opinion. He certainly enjoyed this secret he had been keeping. Perhaps he should not have given Com this power and yet… regardless Mojo now knew of Pr. Ex's involvement. Mojo felt he had always known there was a piece to the puzzle that was missing. It was as eye-opening as what Com likely felt emerging into a much bigger world. He felt a little lightheaded. It was like suddenly discovering that the world was made of ice cream.
Mojo had to sit down, which he did, falling back into his swivel chair. As it swung to one side Mojo rubbed his temples and up under his helmet just a little until the gloved fingertips graced the surface of his temporal lobe, but it did not seem to help him think past the emotion of shock.
"They all have Chemical X?!" wailed Mojo.
He bit his lip in agony.
"A form of it, no doubt… more or less," said Com. "He's more creative with it than Utonium who believed in their agreement that it was to be kept safe rather than to be used. He still believes it is not a toy. Ex was using it on people for years before Utonium splashed his baking ingredients. I was to be the living proof of his finest work after testing one of his many variants of Chemical X on backstreet scum, but then… he decided to create from scratch as Pr. Utonium did by accident. That is the extent of my knowledge of his doings."
But by this point Mojo was only half listening. Again he stood up and began to pace like a rat in a maze.
"Pr. Ex is responsible for all of the monsters that have ever attacked Townsville and yet Pr. Utonium is the one who is acknowledged as the man who uses Chemical X. The irony is baffling, Com. That Pr. Ex has all of the good reputation as an ethical man of science and Utonium as an eccentric at best even if his daughters save the day again and again…"
He almost forgot about his own plans as his mind spun the new information. It was not fair that he had not known before. How he could have used this knowledge to his advantage all this time! How Ex must have laughed at him… but not for long.
"Why does he do this? To take over the world?"
"I don't think quite in the same way that you desire it," said Com, "but he does lust for power as men of his capacity often do. He started out ethical, but then in my experience those who begin good but turn out bad are worse than those who have always been bad. He meant to be ethical and more so than Utonium even, but the power of his scientific discoveries was… too tempting for him to handle. I believe at first it began as a way to help humanity— this messing with Chemical X. He saw that its near invulnerable properties could render man potentially immortal. Once one thing led to another… well, he is a driven man. He always has been."
"Yes. But so am I driven."
"Yes."
"And so are you, I suppose. You are not defending him?"
"I am only stating the facts."
"You want revenge upon him," said Mojo. "To make him pay for what he did to you just as I want revenge for the pain that was caused to me! You cannot lie to me. You have waited for the right opportunity when I was at my best, at the pinnacle of my career, and the moment at which you were at your own best. Then at that point you knew that you had a chance to strike against him with the elemental of complete and utter surprise."
"… It is up to my benefactor to decide what he deems worthwhile in his plans for world domination."
As always Com's voice was calm, gentle even, but Mojo could hear that tinge of hatred behind the digital voice— deep and all-consuming like the geothermal tension always brewing in the heart of a volcano, waiting for the time to erupt.
Mojo smiled.
Com had no doubt been filled with pride at being the first immortal man, but he had been discarded just before he could reveal himself to the world. Mojo could picture it now, the dark and sister shadow of Pr. Ex watching monkeys drop like a rain of flies from his office window before the mighty bug-spray that was the Powerpuff Girls. How could he not expect the same to happen to his own creation? He no doubt tried to kill the beast. Perhaps the beast tried to kill him and escaped? But instead of dying he was rescued by the most unlikely of creatures… the genius, though naïve as Mojo had been at the time, who created the defeated army!
Green, though Mojo still was, he was no longer a creature born yesterday. The master of Townsville was Mojo Jojo. No monsters created by some mad scientist hypocrite who feared to show his true iniquitous nature was going to outdo him. This Pr. Ex had one thing that he was afraid of that Mojo had no need to fear— losing his reputation. Everyone knew and feared Mojo Jojo, but everyone respected Ex even when envy made them dislike him.
"If it plays into my favor, I will not disappoint you, Com, for all the citizens of Townsville will face me. No one will be excluded from my reign of complete control. Pr. Ex is no exception nor will he be left out, and now I believe that I have the best plan I have ever brainstormed. The best kind of secrets, Com, are those which I can use for my own secrets!"