JMJ

Chapter Ten

From Rumbling to Crumbling

"Ngh, Princess…" wheezed Blossom.

Woozily, weakly, Blossom got to her knees from where she had fallen. Even her eyelids felt weak as she blinked them up towards the girl before her. Hardly could one call Princess a normal little girl. One could not even call her a normal stupidly rich little girl. She was on another level of abnormality, and yet, she was human. She had proved that before. She was human and a little girl just like Blossom and her sisters.

She was reaching now for the button that would put all the girls' superpowers into her. The very fact that her parents named her 'Princess' had been a bad idea to begin with, Blossom supposed. Princess felt she was royalty, that she deserved this. More than a queen, more than an empress, but a goddess!

Blossom's head felt heavy. As it rolled forward, she held out her hands to it in an attempt to keep it steady. Even thinking was sluggish right now. In fact she felt her thoughts to be half formed even as she thought them. But she hoped beyond hope that she could reason with this girl.

All she really wanted deep down was to make a difference, right? Even if it was buried under bratty upbringing, Princess really did just want to help the world, right? Even if it was muddled by selfishness, could it not be that she just wanted to be good? She may be spoiled rotten, but was it rotten to the core? These thoughts weren't new. In fact, she felt she was repeating herself as bad as Mojo, but it was hard to press all this to the surface of deciding what to do.

Reaching out her hand just as Princess' finger was about to push the button, Blossom said, "Princess, don't!"

It was not loud, but the clarity was perfect. It was not demanding, but it was not begging. It was as simple and straightforward as the sun shining, and somehow that beam of light in word-form stopped Princess' hand, if only for a moment. She looked at Blossom in surprise. Her sisters blinked in skepticism but still gave her the moment of silence.

As her eyes met steadily with Princess', Blossom held her breath. They exchanged something in that look that even Blossom did not rightly understand. Had she truly imparted something to her as a fellow soul? Then Princess closed her eyes somberly.

"Oh, it's too late now," she sniffed regally.

Blossom felt bile in her throat.

"WAY too late!" Princess snapped, but she was trembling as she went on. "All this time, all I ever wanted was to be one of you. All I ever wanted was to fight like a Powerpuff Girl. Beat up the bad guys and the monsters! I wanted to fly over the buildings at high speed! I wanted to have the courage and to never say die! Go berserk! You wanna hear me say we gotta make a better day?! I wanted to make a better day! Mojo Jojo's on the rage again, and I just wanted to be your sister!"*

Silence.

Well, except for Princess' heavy panting, tensely between her teeth.

What was a girl supposed to say to that? Even a Powerpuff Girl. Not even Buttercup had a quip.

But slowly, steadily, angrily, spitefully… Blossom… did.

Her brow puckered, her lips trembled, her eyelid twitched, and she could feel the boiling bubbles in her heart raging to frothing over.

"Princess," said Blossom calmly and darkly, "you're 'just hurtin' and searchin' for a place to deliver', cuz you're not okay, and there's nothing anyone or any Chemical X could do to fix what's wrong with you."+

Silence.

For real this time.

Maybe that had been too harsh?

Princess' face went completely white as she stared blank as a sheet at Blossom. Hurt was next. Searching followed. Her eyes quavered as though about to cry like a lost soul.

Blossom's eyes softened if only for a few seconds. She had been right. Deep down Princess was still a little girl who got everything but the need of every human being to feel wanted. Sometimes that poor girl must feel like more of a freak than Mojo Jojo ever had— more of a freak than even Blossom and her sisters had felt wandering alone the streets of Townsville after accidently ruining it playing tag in their first few days of life, because she did not even have sisters to comfort her or even the fact that she was a talking monkey to explain it away.

Blossom felt herself move with pity towards that pathetic child, but as Blossom wondered at the level of the true pit of wretchedness in which Princess truly lived she suddenly resented these gentle feelings of her heart.

Blossom could see now that Princess wanted to argue that she was okay, but had no words to say. All villains were the same, weren't they? They weren't okay. Deep down, they didn't want to be okay.

After all the crap that little megalomaniac had done to them, how dare Blossom feel pity for her! In fact she almost felt she'd say it all again if she had to. In fact, again, those words had been too kind. Princess was worse than Mojo Jojo ever had been, she felt.

Simultaneously with these thoughts, Princess' tremulous and empty expression full of bewilderment and even the rare glint of remorse also hardened— with hatred.

Forcefully, she bolted up her finger again as though to strike lightning from it with the power of a daughter of Zeus.

"No!" cried Bubbles and Buttercup.

Blossom only gulped.

Princess pushed the button and the three sisters braced themselves squeezing their eyes shut as for an explosion. Indeed it was abrasive in its affect. Light flashed like a flare, but there was not a literal explosion so much as an implosion into Princess. As Blossom dared to open her eyes between her hands, she saw that Princess shook with the sudden power.

Wires zipped out of the machine before her, they attached instantly to her body, and she let out a shriek.

"Princess!" pleaded Blossom.

Oh, she should not have said those words against her! She had just been so angry! Why was it so hard sometimes to be a real heroine and to know when to strike hard and when to strike gentle? Even if Princess in the end would not have reformed, Blossom should have kept her own caustic thoughts to herself long enough to try to talk Princess out of this!

It was not like the time in Mojo's lab when the two had been in cahoots. This was more comparable to the power surge in Dick Hardly. All three girls were near expecting a similar monstrous transformation too, but it was a bit more elegant than that. If elegant it could be called. She glowed strangely. Her eyes went blank. It was more like electrocution if anything. Her hair was on end. Her fingers were outstretched as she dropped the weapon. She looked in serious pain, and it looked horrible.

Blossom was not sure what in the world she was going to do, but despite herself, she managed to get to her feet, her heart drumming wildly in her little body. She half ran half stumbled a few paces towards the girl.

Maybe she was going to rip out the wires, but had she even the strength to do that? Probably not.

Blossom stopped and staggered as she saw Princess' grin.

"Ah!" gasped Princess tears welling in her crazed eyes. "This is the power! I feel it! The power of all three Powerpuff Girls in an all-in-one package!"

Was she still in pain? Was she still partly regretting this? Was it despair? Was it triumph? There was another thing different from last time too. Princess was glowing brighter green than the Gangreen Gang, her eyes pierced like emerald jewels and her hair glossed with a blackish-green sheen stronger than the fur of Mojo Jojo!

Zipping up she flew with a loop-de-loop. As on most dangerous sugar rush of the Rowdyruff Boys, she spun and squealed. She blew a breath that froze the humid air around her and snow fell down in a dump upon the girls below. Then she flew higher still and shrieked so that windows shattered.

"Wait!" begged Bubbles chocking on a sob.

"Oh, no you don't!" snapped Princess wildly as she zipped downwards with the full vengeance of an angry hornet ready for the sting. "There's nothing you can do or say to stop me now! I'm the hero! I'M the amazing one! Me, me MEEEEE! I'll do whatever I want and you can't stop me!"

And Princess laughed a hollow, wicked sort of laugh as she looked down with her piercing eyes and zapped the ground with laser vision.

The sisters screamed and scrambled away. Blossom felt the heat of the laser almost strike her foot, but its line of power went on right up into the next building which happened to be some sort of warehouse. It was starting on fire. The wall was crumbling hot and molten. Blossom shrieked as she just barely missed being hit from the falling debris. Within seconds the smoke thickened like being submerged into a murky swamp, and Blossom felt the dizzy confusion of a nightmare not even knowing which way was up or down as she choked and gagged on toxic fumes.

She remembered suddenly enough to duck low to get below the smoke. Princess' laugh echoed like that of a crazed fairy as it sailed off into the distance with the flying lunatic.

No…

She couldn't let her get away. She couldn't.

"C'mon, girls!" Blossom wheezed, and stumbled forward.

Then she felt empty air.

A crack that Princess had made?

Her fist instinct was to fly upward like a bird, but she couldn't. The empty buzz sailed through her like a painful electric shock as went down instead of up. She screamed, certain she was falling to her death.

SPLASH!

The shock was so great that she almost sucked in, but she quickly got into survival mode enough to instead kick off the bottom for the surface of the water— water she knew could be only one thing. As she broke free, she saw that her assumption was correct. The sewer! She was sailing off into darkness, but at least she could swim and keep herself aloft. It was harder than flying ever had been as the current kept trying to shove her under, but at last she latched onto a ledge.

Collapsed onto the cement on her back, she breathed in great gulps of air. Only then did she pause to feel the grossness of it. Shivering, she moaned. Once her lungs were satisfied with oxygen, her sense of smell kicked in with repugnance at the horrid stench in her hair, in the air, all around her like claws of some evil beast, but all the true evil was above ground at the moment.

That was what motivated her to open her eyes.

Something was not right. She knew it in her heart as well as her mind.

There was more to this than Princess Morbucks. Who had given her that weapon? Who had helped her to think of that trial? Where was Mojo Jojo with all that metal he had stolen? Were they in cahoots again? Not alone. This was more than the Beat-alls too. It was more like Beat-alls 2.0. But how? Who? Where?

Mojo's lair?

He was key she knew with ever fiber of her marrow, but could she simply go to his lair as she was to find out?

"Wait!?" she suddenly cried.

Where were Bubbles and Buttercup?

She bolted into a seated position.

They were nowhere to be found.

Drowned!?

No, no, she would not let herself panic. There had been no screams alongside hers when she had fallen down here. They were still probably where she had left them in the alley. With Princess gone they would probably be alright.

She had to get back there, but as she got to her knees her head swam. She was in no condition to help anyone. Tears stung her eyes, but before she could cry she heard a new sound. Very mechanical. Very drone-like. It came from the grate above her. Then she heard a real scream. More echoed in chorus.

Princess attacking the city? She couldn't possibly be on a rampage enough to actually be hurting people up there on purpose, could she?

The mechanical sound came again like a whizz of a giant bee. Another joined. Another. Another. A horde!?

With all the strength she had, Blossom forced herself onto her feet. Then she reached for a ladder and climbed with every ounce of energy left to her, but she could not hope to push the manhole cover out of the way.

You're still a heroine with or without Chemical X, she tried to tell herself.

Gritting her teeth, she looked around quickly for another solution, but as calmly and calculatingly as she could. There was a ledge to the grate, and she was just small enough that she was sure she could fit through it. Sure enough, she could, and out into the blinding ethereal evening city streets she emerged.

The lights of the setting sun and the neons and the streetlamps were splattered out with the silhouettes of moving things. Drones? No. Robots. Robots every which way, flying here and there, were shooting with laser vision after the fashion of Princess. They were the same size and same relative shape but without the hair. They were not robot clones of her, however. They were more like the Powerpuff Girls. As she squinted as hard as should could with now normal human vision, she could still make it out. They looked like replicas in robot colorless form of the Rowdyruff Boys, actually.

And one of them noticed her now!

She gasped as it prepared to fire, and she lunged away as hard as she could, rolling under a city mailbox. The blast reverberated behind her, but she was safe. The robot did not fire again. But what in the world was she going to do now?!

* a Reference to the song "I'm a Super Girl" in case you didn't know ;P

+ a Reference to the song "Go Monkey Go"