JMJ

Chapter Twenty-One

The Final Solution

"Blossom, are you out of your ever-living mind!" cried Buttercup.

She can't be serious! Mojo thought in desperation, but he was too frozen in his shock to address her.

"It's the only way," said Blossom firmly.

"But, Blossom!" cried Buttercup. "If Mojo's got all the Chemical X then all of it in his lair would disappear too!"

"Oh, it would be far more complete than that!" said the Professor. "If we managed to get the volcano to let off that kind of steam for us, the vapors' effects would reach for miles. It could possibly mean the end of Chemical X forever, since most of the world's supply of X is right here in Townsville. Everything that has ever been affected by Chemical X will go back to its original state."

"Everything?" asked Boomer very much confused.

"Everything," said the Professor solemnly, and he closed his eyes with the magnitude of such totality. "If this is the only course of action left to us, it will mean the end of everything bad that has ever been done with Chemical X, but in the process, of course, it will mean the end of everything good that has been done with it."

"Would we still be okay?!" squeaked Bubbles in fright.

"Oh, of course!" said the Professor smiling now, though still quite serious. "You just wouldn't have your powers anymore. Antidote X is the safest way to remove the affects of Chemical X as it doesn't actually destroy it, in all technicality. It only removes said-affects, so you would remain yourselves other than the powers."

"I don't think there is any other way, Professor," Blossom admitted.

Everyone was then compressed in silence. The magnitude of Blossom's suggestion deepened in the hearts of all present, and Mojo Jojo at last broke free from his stupor as this magnitude reached its zenith within his mind— his very Chemical X-enhanced mind. His could almost feel it sweating as though it was a separate entity from himself beneath the shielding helmet, fearing for its fate. Com's words about Mojo's shame in that horrendously magnificent brain were like prickling needles sticking it like a pincushion.

"No!" he snapped. "Then there will be no deal!"

Like an angry squirrel hording winter's nuts, he snatched up his paper in an uncontrollable fluster and was about to tear it up into teeny tiny pieces, but the Professor, very suddenly snatched it away. Only a corner was torn from it and left profoundly in Mojo's fingers. The blueprint was left otherwise quite intact, and Mojo bristled ready to leap rabidly at the Professor.

"Boomer!" snapped Blossom.

Boomer understood this time and knocked the enraged creature clean out of his chair onto the floor where he let out a true monkey's scream.

"Hold him down!" Blossom ordered.

A chair or two shook beneath them, and Mojo's chair fell over and fell on both fighters with little influence aside from a growl or two.

"But, Blossom!" Buttercup threw out her arms meanwhile.

Blossom held up her hand, and continued with the mutineer.

"We're not taking any chances, Mojo. You said so yourself that we have to do this fast and we have to be exact and we have to be complete. Right?"

He stopped trying to pry Boomer's face out of his for a moment and turned to Blossom in miserably appeal. His burning eyes bulging with hope he knew deep down was futile.

"Blossom, please, be reasonable!" he said. "There has to be another way! We just need to think about this in a rational manner. Boomer could just crash through the lair to the precise location of Com and destroy his casing and his connection all at one time."

"And give you time to retake the plan?" offered Blossom.

"No, give everyone else the opportunity to douse him with Antidote X and destroy him!" snapped Mojo. "Make Boomer do it! He can do it."

Blossom looked at Boomer.

"I could do it," said Boomer blinking.

Mojo almost got loose as the boy paused to consider this.

"Boomer!" cried Buttercup and Bubbles.

"Oh!" Boomer reclaimed his hold banging Mojo's head into the floor.

They couldn't rely on Boomer. Mojo and Blossom both knew that. He was too easily distracted, too unreliable to do exactly what they needed him to do. They couldn't even use a comlink to speak to him through with Com able to pick up anything like that within the vicinity of the observatory. Even using him as a distraction to save his brothers was a risk in itself.

"Blossom, please! I'm begging you!" sobbed Mojo. "I know that look in your eyes. I know what you're thinking, but please!"

"No," said Blossom, and she leapt from her chair to get closer to him. "We don't have time! Even Butch and Brick might be in danger if Com won't be as kind to them as you have been. We don't know what Com's plans really even are."

Boomer almost lost hold again, but as Mojo almost squirmed free again, he regained total focus with a third slamming of Mojo's head against the cold tiles.

The Professor looked nervous about letting his unflinching child so close even with Boomer doing a very good job of keeping him pinned.

"You've always known there were consequences to your actions, Mojo Jojo," said Blossom darkly, "and now you have to face them. Even the robots are infused with Chemical X. You've always been using it like a toy worse than Pr. Ex. Now because of everything you've ever done to destroy with Chemical X, your own criminal career is at a close no matter what!"

"It's not my fault! It could have happened to anyone, Blossom!" Mojo continued to implore.

"You have only two choices!" Blossom told him. "Either you go along with this plan that ends the suffering of Townsville including the monsters made by Pr. Ex; or you watch Com take over the world, maybe even the whole universe, using everything you own and everything you've planned and everything you've ever been and worked for as Mojo Jojo. You'll have to watch that and then live with that for the rest of your life! Maybe you'll even end up in a monkey cage for his amusement for all I know, and he can gloat at you forever about it."

Mojo opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The picture she had vividly painted was something difficult to fight, but the idea of never being able to use his mind to see anything vividly again other than the appeal of a bowl of nuts was also tearing at Mojo from the other side.

Blossom simply crossed her arms with one mind and purpose. Even her sisters forgot to be distressed for the moment in awe. It was a sacrifice beyond sacrifices that she was suggesting. The sacrifice of a true hero. Buttercup dropped her head in defeat. Bubbles closed her eyes and pressed into the Professor's side with all her little might as she held back some tears.

"Yeah, the rest of your life, booger face!" snapped Boomer suddenly.

It was difficult to tell how much Boomer was paying attention to all this, but his focus was still on his brothers for now.

"Don't anger him more, Boomer," warned Blossom.

"Actually," laughed Mojo humorlessly, "I was thinking more about bursting his own little bubble about Chemical—"

"—I want him to really think about this with a clear head," Blossom cut in and glared even harder at the monkey.

Bubbles and Buttercup held their breaths.

But Mojo was not releasing anymore uncontrollable wrath despite his tight brow and his shaking shoulders of prickling green-black fur.

Blossom was right, and he knew it. She usually was. The one time he had made his plan foolproof was the time his plan was usurped and used entirely against him. And what a fate it brought. He dared not think of it hard, but they could not waste anymore time. Blossom's stare was somehow more powerful to him now than a beam from her eyes or an icy blow from her mouth. That stare from the small round face was a spotlight upon him in an otherwise black and empty void— possibly that same void that Com had left him in since he took over Mojo's plan…

His body relaxed.

No, he thought miserably. The plan that Com had conceived of all along. The plan that Com had made to get Mojo Jojo, the circus monkey of Townsville, to perform an act that would get the ringmaster exactly what he wanted…You should have just kept the world when you had it with that whole key incident. You knew it was over after surrendering it then to blow up Townsville instead… Maybe I am a doo-doo brain after all as Bubbles once so sassily put it.

"He's not answering!" snapped Boomer. "Should I beat him up again?"

"No," said Blossom, her powerful eyes never leaving Mojo's bulging red but hollow stare. "I think it's safe to let him go. He understands perfectly well."

"Are you sure?" whispered Wes.

"It would do no good to kill the one person I need or any of his loved ones," remarked Mojo with a sniff, and then he turned to the man who had once been his owner, who had once been his family. "Professor, it seems that one last time, we shall work together. The only time when our goals shall be united into one goal."

"So it seems," agreed Pr. Utonium.

"So…" said Mojo after a moment of dramatic pause. "Is Boomer going to let me go or isn't he?!"

"I'm just making sure!" declared Boomer.

"You can let him go, Boomer," said Bubbles quietly.

And just like that, Boomer bobbed up into the air and floated gently back. As Mojo stood up brushing himself off, he closed his eyes importantly for a moment, and then said, "Let us get this plan into action before I change my mind, anyway."

"Agreed!" said Blossom, she held out her hand, Mojo took it and they shook on it properly. "But you won't change your mind."

"How can you be so sure?" asked Mojo dangerously, and he smiled reminiscent of a smile he graced her with once long ago before she had known his wicked schemes against the Utonium family and the world.

"Because," said Blossom simply. "I won't let you."

His eyes bounced. He frowned and cocked his head. He could have crushed her round little nub of a hand flat and right into jelly had he wanted to, but the thought sickened him. Somehow without the girls' powers it didn't seem right even if he had not been in a room surrounded by all those who opposed him. Even if they were by themselves, he and this brave little girl, he would have thought himself wrong to have so much as blown one strand of orange hair out of place from her tidy little ponytail.

Gently, almost tenderly, he released that hand as he stared at her in thought so deep that when he came-to he did not recall what he had seen in that deep well of his mind. Why was he more afraid of Blossom now than he ever had been?

She did not need to stop him physically this time. He simply knew that she was right about this whole situation, and that was enough to defeat him. He could have gone on whining about the fact that Chemical X was waiting for them right in his own living room, but his front door was the most guarded of all. Even if they made it up all the steps in the Professor's bubble without falling back down, Com would have had ample time to notice something unusual even if he couldn't actually see them. Just a simple opening of the door would have them fried into dust by the security system Com would have full access to. It was almost comedic to think of how foolhardy such a venture would be, except for their demise at the end of the road.

For the first time it pained him to think that he was a simpering coward compared to this helpless little being ready to take on his stolen observatory single-handed if her father had allowed it. There was no other way that he could think of other than the way Blossom planned. As a sentient creature he had to help to defeat Com or truly fall into an eternal abyss of psychosomatic woe.

And this undeniably is the most logical course of action, said the meticulous and unemotional part of his mind for an extra push out of his futile stalling. The sacrifice is indeed necessary despite the greatness of the loss. The great dream of Mojo Jojo is over.

"Currrrrrrrrses…" he growled as deeply as he did quietly so that the reverberations rumbled through his chest and up through his huge deformed brain.

He rubbed the hand he had been holding Blossom's with in an awkward absent manner.

"Okay!" said Blossom returning to far more chipper spirits. "Glad we got that settled! Now let's get this plan organized!"

#

"First we need the Professor and Mojo to gather up all the Antidote X. Then they need to figure out the best way to get the volcano to cooperate without it overflowing with lava all over Townsville. Meanwhile, Boomer will get through to his brothers. You better be taking care to remember where to go with the blueprint, Boomer."

"I'm not stupid," huffed Boomer.

"But you're really hard to teach," said Bubbles who had been the one to go over the blueprint with him. "And it's a purple-print." She giggled.

Blossom smiled. They needed all the lightheartedness they could get right now.

"Once Butch and Brick are released," Blossom went on, "it will stop the robots from being as organically intelligent and they'll be more like Mojo's usual stupid robots—"

"Hey!" Mojo grumped.

"—so it should be easy for the Rowdyruff Boys to keep them at bay. Of course, Com will be there with other Mojo Jojo toys to throw at us if he discovers we're all in cahoots!"

"Which he probably will," shrugged Buttercup.

"That's why we have to be quick while the diversion from the boys is underway. Mojo and the Professor will be going down to the lowest levels of the observatory to where the volcanic shaft begins and the lair ends. By that time we'll have the machines necessary to make this work, and with no digital components, right?"

"That's right, Blossom," agreed the Professor wiping his brow from the machine he was even now working on with Wes as an assistant and Mojo as a co-builder.

"And the girls and I," said Blossom, "will manually use the push-button portion of the lair with a little help from Wes to coordinate the backup system that Mojo has that supposedly would have stopped Com from overriding Mojo's systems had Mojo had the opportunity earlier to get to them. Of course, it's too late to stop Com completely, but we'll have just enough time to rewire the ventilation system for the best Antidote X plumes to stifle Com right out of his brain tube."

"Like a steamy, steamy cup of hot chocolate under a bowl," said Bubbles happily.

"Once this eruption starts, we'll have a limited time to escape before the entire base is destroyed from the steam force and the rumbling of some seismic activity caused by the volcano. That park will probably have to be redeveloped after that, but the city will have to forgive us. Any questions and/or last minute suggestions?"

"I still don't like your part in the plan," the Professor had to admit.

"We'll be fine, Professor!" said Blossom. "Don't worry about that."

"He does have a point, though, Blossom," Mojo remarked. "If one little thing is out of place, then such a wrench will be devastating mostly to you being in the tight vents and you being the most physically vulnerable despite your mental resilience."

Blossom lowered her head. Even though she knew that Mojo was doing this partly out of pettiness, he was also making sure the plan worked the whole way through. He had already mentioned the possibility of Com simply putting the whole base on self destruct if he thought things were going awry for him.

"We can do this!"

Blossom blinked. "Bubbles?"

Bubbles was suddenly right at her side stubborn and very hardcore in determination.

"Yeah, we may not have powers but we know all about Mojo's lair," said Buttercup with a grin on the other side of Blossom, "almost as much as Mojo knows about our house."

"Oh, girls…" said the Professor holding his hands together; how he loved them and how he feared for them and how he was so proud of them.

"Give it up, Professor," said Mojo dryly. "With or without Chemical X, they're who they were born to be: the Powerpuff Girls."

"Yeah!" said Buttercup eyeing Mojo. "And don't you forget it."

"You should be who you were born to be," chirped Bubbles suddenly.

"What do you mean by that?" snorted Mojo.

The girls laughed.

Mojo pressed. "No, seriously, what?"

But none of them answered him.

"Come on," whined Mojo.

Bubbles walked right up to him and pulled him towards her as though to whisper it in secret.

Mojo leaned down with wide blinking eyes and a small curious "o" in his lips.

But all she did was kiss him.

"Mph!?"

To be a part of the Utonium family? thought Blossom wryly.

"Let's quit monkeying around, you guys!" snapped Boomer as though trying to sound like Brick in that aggressive brother's absence.

"Right," giggled Blossom.

Buttercup got into a ninja stance and grinned dangerously. "It's battle time!"