JMJ

Chapter Six

Higher Consciousness

The delicate piano was as exquisite to look at as it as it was to hear. It was as crisp as real life because… it was. The pianist was one of the finest pianists this side of the Atlantic and she was paid the best too, so she did not complain of the fact that her audience consisting of one person was not really listening to the music she was playing in the other room. Nor was that one audience member listening to the accompaniment of the morning birds or the gentle wind in the perfectly shaped cherry blossom trees out the window. There was little attention to the scent of roses from the rose bushes behind a veil of ethereal curtains. The fireplace was not for warmth, but its ambience was also of such little importance that it looked a little lonely. Maybe a mysterious uncle telling stories to a favorite innocent niece and giving her a present made of wood that would conjure up in her young grateful mind a dance of sugarplum fairies and a rescue from giant rats would have helped.

Alas. The fireplace could only dream. Its sad company? A painting which may in itself have been lovely but it was in such a blank, pristine frame that it made its contents looked like a taxidermist's deer rather than a real deer frolicking with angelic maidens through a fairy forest.

The only thing the single audience member really noticed, though she would have noticed if any one of these things was absent from her morning, was her breakfast, and even this was only of mild interest. Her gourmet blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes with peach slices fresh from Florida from yesterday were as expected as the morning. Her hot chocolate from the finest tea shops in Paris as taken for granted as her lips she put them round the crystal glass for a sip.

The mail of child magazines and special offers were a pleasant way to get one prepped for the day of the decadent. It was fun to mock each one before tossing them into the hands of the maid who would in turn toss them into a recycling box somewhere out of sight, but at last Princess stopped as she came to a certain very plain, very white, and very unusual envelope.

"Normally I wouldn't open a letter from a nobody who doesn't even give a return address," admitted Princess out loud with a very loud obnoxious voice that contrasted horribly with the piano music.

As the pianist was wearing a pair of earplugs, she would only hear her if she yelled her loudest.

"But!" Princess exclaimed to herself as matter-of-factly. "I do have to give the person credit for using the blackest, thickest ink, the heaviest paper, and the scent of candy cane extract!"

Was it also because she was as curious as Ace?

The similarity and contrast was enough to evoke thoughts of the poetic majesty between the street rat and the palace fancy rat. Everything poetic that one might have thought about Princess was always ended in a wrong note, but perhaps this one comparison rang true enough to overlook it as she grinned wickedly from ear to ear as though indulging in some guilty pleasure of which she was the most proud. Like a model eating at a fast food restaurant just for the sake of it.

There was no decorum in her rip. She almost ripped the letter on the inside.

It was a sheet of paper glittering with sparkles, but that was boring. What was interesting was the penmanship. She had never seen such a spidery but intriguing scrawl as though the hand of a vampire prince was enticing her to a ball of immortality. She could barely read it in spots, but somehow that made it better.

"Dear Miss Princess Morbucks,

"I have oft admired your charm about the city and find it unfair how you are treated by the Powerpuff Girls who do not understand how much you would add to their publian outfit. You have the patrician's flair after all.

Already Princess huffed and slumped with an irritated yawn in her chair.

"I often wonder as I think of you, however, why do no do the most obvious of tactics. Sue them."

"Huh!?"

"Not for the money, but to immobilize them. Nothing stops a cause quicker than lawsuits. If they will not let you join, crush them to a pulp with the power you possess. Sue the living daylights out them. Instead of trying to defeat them head on, use the tactics of all the smartest warlords of power and might all through the centuries. At heart you are a true proof of Birka. As such use the tactics of the humble Sun Tzu, 'Appear weak when you are strong and strong when you are weak'. Simply put, allow them to hurt you and you then use your own weakness against them to reveal your true power.

"Signed, a tall, dark, and handsome secret admirer."

"WHAT!?" screamed Princess.

Immediately, the piano stopped, the birds stopped, even the fireplace snuffed out into a hissing silence. Princess hardly paid any attention to the fact that her hot chocolate had landed on the maid who immediately ran out of the room.

"What a moron! I can't believe someone would think I was stupid enough to fall for a tall, dark, and handsome stranger that could easily just be a short, pink, and a pig! This is an outrage! I demand that he be found and put in jail for something so stupid. I never been so insulted! Sue the Powerpuff Girls!? Appear weak when you're strong! That's so stupid! The people in this universe! Ug! It's enough to make me want to join a secret society and help brainwash an entire generation into a phase four hive-mind! What's he think I'm gunna do? Just let the Powerpuff Girls beat the snot out of me just so that I can sue them and…"

Pause.

Princess blinked.

Some of the birds went back to singing, but she did not hear them.

She blinked twice more.

"Kaycee Seenote!" she shrieked.

The Pianist turned to her audience with a frown.

"Play dark academia! The evil warlord sorceress kind!"

Princess forked half a pancake and shoved it into her mouth as the music instantly began to play. She reached for her hot chocolate but found that it was gone.

"Where's my chocolate!?" she whined. "And get the harpsichord into it."

A small man scuttled from nowhere to play the nearby instrument so-ordered.

The crystal glass magically emerged, and she sucked it down so hot that steam came out of her mouth as from the mouth of a plotting dragon lusting for treasure while already hefty horde.

"Yes! It's all coming to me now! The first year after kindergarten and my whole LIFE is now reaching the pinnacle moment!" Princess screamed. "I'll… SUE THE POWERPUFF GIRLS! I'm so glad I thought of this all on my own!"

Princess beamed and went back to her breakfast quite merrily.

#

"Ah! Things seem to be going well with my master plan in which I have those tentacles in every corner of Townsville like an octopus after which the saying comes. Everything is going according to my own ideas, which will in turn help me to take over that world that resisted my genius for all this time. What better way than to slowly work one's power behind everyone's knowing until by the time they understand what I understand it will already be too late because the suction cups attached to said-tentacles will already have been secure with no manner for those in my grasp to escape them."

Steam curled like a ghostly tentacle now, dancing with snakelike enchantment over a scene of the sun shining brilliantly over the park. Its guests enjoyed themselves completely unaware of the cackling that erupted after the small monologue of Mojo Jojo. The steam was strong enough between the scene and Mojo's head that it fogged up the screen in between, because naturally Mojo was looking out no window but before a set of many computer captured images from all over Townsville.

His voice crooned thickly and smoothly like it had once long ago in deceitful triumph over three little girls oblivious to his true intentions. He no longer felt old and brittle but timeless, powerful and ready.

He looked over Town Hall, the home and lab of Pr. Ex, including the secret lair of his, the home of Pr. Utonium, the elementary school where the girls now had entered first grade, the known hideouts of many of the most common criminals. He approved of the work of Pr. Ex. It was amusing more than concerning that Ex seemed ready to betray Mojo when the chance struck, but Mojo was quite prepared for that— so prepared that Com had nothing to add.

Slowly, leisurely, with a smile that curled viler than the steam from a finely crafted tea bowl, he gently took the most profound sip of his ceremonial-grade organic matcha. It was green and rich, invigorating and powerful, just like Chemical X in a way. It was the drink of warriors and thinkers, poets and emperors. Good thing Mojo was all these things in one, and he was pleased to have this tea ceremony with Townsville— a ceremony to toast its future as capital of Mojo's dominion over all creatures of the earth.

Rather than being seated in a swivel chair, he was now kneeling in socks instead of boots on an elevated platform upon which he could spread out his tea service in true ceremonial style. His cushion was upon a bamboo mat. Another mat held the accessories of the kettle, the bowl, the matcha powder in the tea caddy, the bowl cloth and the whisk in its holder.

He set the cup gently onto the mat.

"It's so nice to have real and supportive underlings working under a person to help with your plans for world domination, wouldn't you agree, Com?"

"As long as they are under control."

"Ah, but tight control is an illusion," remarked Mojo sagely. "It is the downfall of many fools, and I Mojo Jojo, am no fool. I may have been slipping down the slippery path of foolishness recently before this time. I may have nearly lost myself to passions from which I may never have overcome, to emotionalism's cage in which one's emotions are one's warden and keeper and bars, but now I am master. One must allow for small fluctuations with calm serenity to the curves of life. The earth is not a square but a sphere. Round like this bowl— smooth, earthy edges. Round like the flawless curves of the whisk from which all are crafted from the same stick of bamboo— not scattered haphazard pieces of scrap put together in chaotic panic and stress. The contours of life are violent but roll in waves like that of the sea… a thick, green, seamless sea full of more life than a single life can comprehend. It is so much like the power of Chemical X, as though Chemical X is the source of life itself."

"…" Com's unmoved silence only made Mojo's smile broaden.

He took another sip.

"Observe!" commanded Mojo spreading a hand out like a general to one of the screens. "The Powerpuff Girls suspect me of some treachery, but I remain composed— serene as water in a garden pool safe within my own house. Observe the puckers in the brows. Observe the way they try to concentrate on the teacher's lesson and cannot. They wait for the Powerpuff Hotline which the new teacher is not as accepting of as Miss Keen had been. There is a pucker in the teacher's brow too as she observes our girls' restless spirits. They are stressed. I am calm.

"Now, observe how they do not notice the anticipation of an enemy far closer in being physically seated in a desk to the left in the shadow under the window. Observe her tense desires. Observe her obsessions whirl in her head making her very repulsive creepy little eyes like hot dry coals in her repulsive creepy little face— right there they sit above her repulsive creepy gigantic mouth. She will sue them as Pr. Ex desires. He is not a fool, but he is only unaware of what I know."

"Because he is unaware of me?" asked Com innocently.

Mojo closed his eyes and took another long and patronizing sip from the ancient-styled bowl.

"Because I have kept most of my cards from his tense sight. He believes I am a fool, a wild card, an insane unpredictable beast of scientific turmoil. Observe Pr. Ex's beaded brow in his office to which he must continue to go to keep his cover. But his uncovered head is turning red with worry. He has not slept well, has he?" Mojo chuckled. "I am waiting for his oncoming email to report to me what he does not know that I already know in this fortress of knowledge like the fountain of wisdom."

"Then what is your next move, o wise Mojo Jojo?"

"I will, in my present state of higher consciousness, which is high indeed in the mind of Mojo Jojo, do one thing which I have ever been unable to do since a certain creation of mine was created. I have within my possession something which I have possessed for a long time, but which I failed, until this point in which I succeeded, to see a use for other than randomly capturing Powerpuff Girls. I have the containment ray against those super-powered bodies which are comprised of Chemical X."

"Is not capturing against this calm flow of reality you speak of?" asked Com.

"One captures the sap of the maple tree to make maple syrup. It is the order of the sentient powers of the earth."

"And the 'non-sentient' sap?" asked Com.

"My wayward sons from whose power I will create my army more powerful in number than three boys together, more in-unison than the monkeys of my coming-out party, and more reliable than my previous robots against the Powerpuff Girls. They will spread out from my power like veins of my own being and will therefore have the muscles and tendons of my own power of self. They will be of my own mind and spirit as one with me and not lesser copies set out to rival me."

"Attaching that much electrical thought to a biological being, even Chemical X induced as your mind is, might be a mistake. A single mind is not meant to control more than the body it is given."

"Wisdom enough from one who no longer possesses a true biological body," said Mojo taking one last sip, "but do not think me so unwise as to do what other intellectuals before me have done in mistaking that the mind can spread its power over more than one activity at once. All the truly wise know that multitasking is a myth. A mind can only move quickly from one object to the next. There is no simultaneousness in one's concentration. These robots will be programmed by me through you with the power of the boys and I will control you."

"Your faith in me is… humbling. Humbling and baffling, Master."

"I have no faith in your loyalty, but it is easier to control that which is already under one's control than to try to control that which is not yet."

Com went silent to meditate upon these as upon the words of a prophet. Perhaps he was trying to discern whether or not the prophet was false.

But for Mojo the meditation was at an end. The doorbell suddenly rang. He glanced idly at one of the screens and saw it was the mailman at his front door.

"Ah! My packages!" he exclaimed, and without another word he slipped from the chamber of deep reflections and communing with the earthen volcanic depths.

He bounced with eager vitality, his checklist in one hand and pen in the other in orderly fashion.

"Boxes. Numerous!" he said once he signed for the mail, and the mailman had left. "Packages… mmm, average. Metal. Good. Chemical X…"

He opened what was not metal and sniffed the chemical stronger and sweeter than any tea.

"Excellent!" He grinned and rubbed his grubby paws together with evil glee. "Oooh! This is so good. Somebody stop me. Oh, wait! They can't! Ha, ha, ha! Not even the Powerpuff Girls, right Com?"

"Actually, they aren't being sued yet," said a speaker in his living room.

Mojo paused with a pout.

"How 'bout now?"

"Nope."

"This is really killing the mood."

A slightly longer pause.

"Now?" Mojo asked.

"Patience, Mojo Jojo."

Mojo bristled. "Well, how 'bout—"

"Now."

Mojo blinked in disbelief. "What? Really? The Powerpuff Girls are being sued?"

A screen appeared from the floor and showed Com's words to be exact. "As we speak they are already in court with the full-body-casted Princess Morbucks."

"She really let them kick her butt that bad?" asked Mojo doubtfully despite the glowering little white block of a cast with little eyes and a poof of orange curls coming out of it before him on screen.

"It's mostly fake, of course, but I believe that Pr. Ex sent someone to make sure it was more authentic against her wishes by sending paper airplanes into the Powerpuff Girls' heads that promised vengeance, called names, and threatened weapons enough to make sure they hurt her more than they meant to."

"Ah, well, that's what you get for taunting Powerpuff Girls," said Mojo with a careless shrug.

"Yes, you would know much about that."

Mojo crossed his arms. "You are never to speak of that. That is forbidden along with so many other topics that is against my liking and which will be forgotten and deleted from history once Mojo Jojo is in charge of history and all written works and many other things upon this earth."

"Yes, Mojo Jojo."

"Yes!" laughed Mojo, and he made it good and long and final. Lightning might have been striking behind him in ultimate evil triumph. "The Powerpuff Girls are now trapped. Time for a road trip with my dear naughty boys! Meanwhile, the metal is to be used to start on the army to whom the boys will soon be linked! Hear me, Com?"

"I hear you, Mojo Jojo."

Off Mojo went.