JMJ
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Circus Freak Show
In the blink of an eye Blossom leapt to Buttercup's side. Bubbles tried to grab Bash's leg. Boomer snatched her back just before Bling was about to kick her in the face. Butch in turn kicked Bling in her face, but it only took a few kicks before Bling teleported away behind him and lasered his back. After a cry, he wasn't much hurt and bolted skyward out of the way. All this happened in seconds, but it was too long for Blossom.
"Stop!" snapped Blossom.
Everyone stopped including the sparkle babies.
Again Blossom looked down at Buttercup. She was not unconscious and for that at least Blossom sighed in relief as she touched her sister's shoulder.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," breathed Buttercup. "Pfft, I been worse."
Blossom grabbed her into her arms nonetheless.
"Mmph, Blossom," grumbled Buttercup, but she did not push away.
Wringing his hands unhappily Jojo looked at Blossom, but he did not have a chance to speak if he had planned to.
"Hey, sparkle babies? How do you expect us to make any sort of arrangement with a stunt like that?" Brick asked crossing his arms.
"We're not thparkle babieth we're Bling and Bath!" sputtered Bash.
"'Bath'?" snickered Butch.
Boomer grinned despite himself.
"Need some soap bombs to go with your body wash?" Butch shrugged throwing out his arms smugly.
Boomer laughed out loud this time.
"'Bath'!" whined Bash flailing his arms. "'Bath!'"
"Shut up, Bash, and let me handle this!" growled Bling throwing her brother behind her and quicker than light she kicked Butch in the face.
He flung down before he knew what had happened, much less anyone else, before rolling into the next wall and crashing through to a corridor on the other side.
"Butch!" cried Boomer.
"Hey!" Blossom snapped.
"Don't make fun of Bash!" shouted Bling, her bling sparkling and dancing about her passionate head and along her wrists and in her hair. "You know what he means! You're all so savage! I don't even understand the compassion that Shelby has for you all. It's the compassion greater than a angel!" She clasped her hands together in worship of a goddess.
"Oh, gimme a break," grumbled Buttercup.
"Well, you attacked first!" snapped Bling tossing her head with a snort. "What were we supposed to do?"
"Give us our dad back!" snapped Bubbles.
"Oh, that," yawned Bling falling onto her back still in midair in a fashion that reminded Blossom of HIM in fast-motion.
"Yeah, 'that'," Bash said rolling his eyes so that he spun, and it was difficult to say whether he was truly dizzy or just making fun.
"Lemme do the talking!" snarled Bling then smacking him in the face.
"Hey!" Bash whined.
"That's it," hissed Buttercup between her teeth and readied another fist to break through some teeth in front of her.
"No!" Blossom growled grabbing her by the arm.
"They're psycho lunatics!" sobbed Buttercup wrenching out of Blossom's grasp and falling onto the floor as she did.
"See, savage. Such name calling! You're so mean calling someone 'crazy'," said Bling. "How would you like it if someone said you belonged in an asylum?"
"That's rich," said Buttercup. "After what you pulled with the asylum!"
Bling smiled smugly. "It got your attention. You wouldn't've listened otherwise."
"How bout you tell us where Shelby is so we can have this meeting sometime before the next millennium?" shrugged Brick carelessly as he leaned against a shelf idly.
"Oh, like we'd really be talking for millionth of yearth," whined Bash and to Bling he continued, "They're tho rude exaggerating like that."
"I think he means before his power runs out anyway," said Bling matter-of-factly.
Brick raised a brow like the cocking of a weapon.
"Bling jutht wanted to talk to you before Thelby does," Bash explained. "It'th not like that would take long, you know. Why do people exaggerate like that?"
"Bash!" screamed Bling. "Shut up!"
Bash slapped his own mouth shut and looked away nonchalantly with arms swung behind his back. He began to whistle… or rather stick his tongue between his teeth and "ththththththth…."
"Oh, so you wanted to see us face to face?" mocked Blossom before Bling could take it out on her brother again.
She looked severely at Bling. Despite herself Bling suddenly looked a little insecure. The sparkle babies were very spazzy in movement and could switch from one emotion to the next quicker than they fought, but Bling slowed down just a little to behold the confidence and power in Blossom's face to contemplate it— leader girl to leader girl. Bling was afraid. Blossom had seen it before in the faces of so many enemies, but she felt pity for this one. She couldn't help it, but it only firmed her stance.
"Size us up for your own eyes instead through what Shelby told you about us," Blossom added.
Bling's sparkly lips twitched.
"Blossom, are you sure this is a good idea?" Jojo whispered just beneath her.
Blossom ignored him.
"Bling, it's time to talk to Shelby, unless you feel that your curiosity against her wishes is more important than Shelby's charity towards us," said Blossom gently but at the same time very coldly.
Bling blinked in a daze several times, unused to such talk. Bash looked at Blossom and Bling and back again very rapidly before backing up a little in the air. Then turning around he pushed a button on the wall.
Irgh! sounded a quick noisy alarm.
Flash. Bling was in front of Bash so fast that even Bash was startled.
"Hey!" shouted Bling. "No one said that you—!"
"Shelby did," Buttercup reminded her accusingly.
Bling's jaw dropped to stare at Blossom rather than Buttercup.
The floor began to rumble. The walls began to rise and the ceiling came down with them. They were descending on a new elevator. Bash flung through the hole in the wall and brought Butch and Boomer to the center again.
"Should we…?" Bubbles began suddenly grabbing onto a blank-faced Jojo.
Blossom held up her hand for Bubbles to be quiet, but otherwise Blossom did not move as she continued to stare down the girl in front of her.
Tears formed in Bling's quivering eyes. As she held her breath, her body tightened as though leading everything to that pucker forming in her brow. Then just like that she vanished.
"Huh!?" squeaked Bash.
Then he vanished too.
"What was that about?" demanded Boomer rubbing his head.
"Showing whose boss," remarked Brick.
Blossom closed her eyes like blowing the smoke from a pair of pistols. She had won that duel, but there were far more to come and with more difficult opponents. She was not aiming for Brick to be one of them.
Not long afterwards, the floor shook and an echoing rumble of metal, earth, and stone came together as they reached their destination.
Opening her eyes Blossom looked at the screen suddenly flashing to life in an otherwise very dark and cavernous space. It was movie-theatre sized at least, but far more high-def, and despite herself, it was her own insides quivering when she saw the Professor suddenly there seated on a loveseat, not tied up or gagged but very frazzled and wide eyed. He remained unable to leave that chair for a very simple reason.
"Say 'cheese', Professor!" sang HIM throwing an arm around his captive's shoulder from where he was casually seated beside him.
He threw one leg over the other as a flash appeared on screen as though an old fashioned Victorian photo had just been shot.
"And say 'hello' to Daddy, kiddos!" HIM then growled shoving the Professor face into the camera so that he temporarily took up the whole screen.
"Dad!" squealed Bubbles throwing her hands over her mouth with a gasp as she floated back in shock.
"Girls!" the Professor cried. "Boys!"
"Professor!" cried Butch.
Wes hasn't found him, was the one thought that passed through Blossom's nearly numb mind first, but that first though woke others. But! But! But—! Blossom. Steady there. HIM doesn't know about Wes yet otherwise he'd be showing Wes off as prisoner too.
She sealed her teeth behind pursed lips. She couldn't let herself think about what Wes was doing or Princess or anyone else. She had to trust that that was going well. So maybe the Professor was not at Shelby's house, but they would find him, especially with a camera rolling and all of Jojo's and Princess' toys to pick it up.
"Oh, HIM! Why don't you come down and fight instead of this stupid game!" roared Buttercup.
The Professor's face was pulled out from the screen, and HIM took it up in full now. The Professor was trying to say more in the background but HIM had apparently gagged him with something.
"Let him go!" sobbed Bubbles.
"Girls," seethed Blossom. "Everyone—"
"'Be strong, be spirited, be yourselves'?" asked HIM blinking his eyes with long lush lashes. "That's what Mommy dearest would say, and unlike the Professor… she means it."
Theatrically, he waved his hand to one side. Another screen just as big as the first appeared. Blossom awaited the face of their enemy. She rolled her eyes when she just saw a huge arrow instead. Lo and behold! It pointed with a glorious fanfare down to a figure coming out of the dim green light of this subterranean lair. Then Blossom's eyes burned.
Shelby had come here after all. In person.
"Gutsy, isn't she?" whispered Brick directly to her as if he had read her thoughts.
Blossom felt rattlesnakes in her head, but she refused to look at Brick. Her face was burning as a red as a tomato, though.
"Blossom…" Jojo encouraged, but his voice was thin, and he was quite as shocked as she was.
She only clenched her fists.
"You're Shelby Warden? You look a lot more professional on TV," Boomer found himself uttering.
"Oh, finally, all things come together!" said Shelby whether she had heard her audience or not. "Though, HIM, the entrance theme was not all that necessary."
"Oh, nonsense," tittered HIM floating onto his back above the couch. "Nothing's too good for Mommy!"
Shelby blushed and shook her head. "Alright, alright. Now!" She clapped her hands and returned to the audience like a deranged kindergarten teacher to her class. "This is about you all. It warms my heart to see your loyalty however misguided."
It surprised Blossom further somehow that she reminded Blossom of an actress at a reunion special.
Had she miscalculated? Maybe Shelby Warden was crazier than they all had thought. She looked back at HIM, but HIM was just smiling lazily with claws beneath his chin and watching the show. It would not have surprised her in the least if he had started popping some popcorn for himself and the Professor, but for now he did not move much.
There was only one ringmaster in a circus, and a circus was definitely what Blossom had led her team into. Blossom was more confident than ever that Shelby was more of a sideshow, and she hardly cared about Shelby now that the shock was over. Too bad HIM just batted his eyelashes and looked down at his adopted "mother". It was part of the game. For now, Blossom would have to attend, if only to understand the clues to the boss fight later.
"I think it's Bling and Bash who are misguided," said Jojo with a glower meanwhile.
"Yeah, the Professor's done nothing but sacrifice his whole life for us," agreed Boomer promptly.
"What? The girls aren't first to defend?" Shelby asked as though sincerely disappointed.
"Oh, how 'bout new plan," muttered Butch.
"Butch!" snapped Blossom, but Butch wouldn't listen.
Buttercup was right with him, but even the pair together only hit a wall before they came within a couple yards from Shelby. Blossom had figured they would not be able to get at Shelby easily. It was an invisible shield and the ghostly tittering of the unseen Bling and Bash was unnecessary to understand its origin.
Buttercup moaned as she and Butch lifted themselves up off of the floor. After blowing a strand of messy black hair from her face, she gritted her teeth as she returned her glare to Shelby.
"If you think the Professor is so lame, what do you think you have that's better!?" Buttercup snarled.
"Oh, Buttercup…" sighed Shelby gently.
Buttercup's eyes widened at being singled out. Or was something else going on? She was frozen. Blossom tried to step towards her but found that she was unable to move much in any direction. A Hum echoed. Shielding against power children had sprung up not just around Shelby but around every X-fighter. Blossom could see the glow of her own barrier now.
Could she break through? She was not sure. She could not be sure if it was a scientific barrier, a barrier truly made by Bling and Bash or if it was HIM's doing. She glared at HIM again, but he was looking further down than at Blossom and her team. He saw that beneath the screen Bling and Bash were nearly pressed up against the wall with discomfort.
They apparently did not want to be in range of HIM's glare. No matter what HIM had planned for the Utonium family, he could certainly aim without hitting the children, but Blossom had a stronger feeling that was simply tension that just existed between HIM and the sparkle babies. They were afraid of HIM, and HIM likely found it amusing. He was like that. Could Blossom use this knowledge for some good?
She looked back at Buttercup, but though she tried to call out, she found that it was difficult to motivate herself for something so loud. Weakness drained her dry. Tired and almost sore, her brain fogged into a sluggish crawl. Maybe it was the power of HIM, Bling, and Bash mixed with a scientific invention of Shelby's all rolled into one, but to fight her near sedation was so hard that she sunk to her knees on the floor. The others aside from Buttercup did the same.
Buttercup's beam was brightest now. Light creamy green.
Was it Buttercup's own power being pulled from her or was it just an illusion of HIM's. What was real? What was a broken reflection of reality?
Dizzy, Blossom closed her eyes and tried to force herself to concentrate, but all she felt was regret. She should not have brought everyone here. This was not what she had expected. It was far more planned out than anything she had faced as a child leading the Powerpuff Girls, and she had jumped into it despite everything.
HIM's eyes were on Shelby and Buttercup now and Bling and Bash sighed in relief to be free from his searching eyes.
#
Buttercup wanted to fight back more if only verbally, but she suddenly felt so tired that even to speak felt like work not worth the effort. Swallowing on her suddenly swollen throat, Buttercup glowered heavily with a storm's brew culminating in her exhausted but thundering eyes like a neon green sea slowly boiling. She had no choice but to look at that woman— that creature— as she began to speak with words like the spell of a sorceress.
"You've always been held back from your true potential," sighed Shelby like a spirit of the sea luring pirates to their deaths. "You always wanted more. You have so much fight in you, so much power in you, but the Professor forced you into the mold of a stereotype, the stereotype of a perfect little girl. In the days of the Powerpuff Girls your very uniform was a little doll's dress and a pair of Mary Janes. It was this sort of oppression that made you desire to join the Gangreen Gang."
"But I didn't—!" Buttercup croaked.
"But the desire was there, wasn't it?" said Shelby, her face sagging with remorse, pity, something more, and the more Buttercup looked at it, the more she felt her own face sag. The more she felt her own throat choke, the more she felt her own chest heave, the more Shelby's question became a statement.
Buttercup shook her head. "But Alex was the one who disbanded the Gangreen Gang… If it wasn't for the Professor…"
"But even now in school you never have fit in," Shelby insisted in full earnestness. "Always miserable, always lost. Even Ace found happiness, but you, the Professor's daughter? A child should not be bound by a parent's ideal for her. That makes you a slave."
Buttercup's face fell deeper, but her eyes suddenly hardened. It did not matter the pressure she was under, she suddenly felt rage resurge, but it was not directed at the Professor. It was not even directed at Shelby… it was directed at herself.
Her eyes widened with that realization. It was the realization that the words she hated were something that had truly been spoken also by her own thoughts. They sounded so gross in Shelby's mouth no matter how much Buttercup had occasionally entertained such notions when she was sulky, but didn't everyone feel such things from time to time when sulky? It did not make them a person's true feelings. Just thoughts when a person was upset.
Right?
#
"And then poor Bubbles forced to be a superhero against her will," said Shelby with a gasp of distress.
Bubbles shivered. She felt so small, smaller than small. Overwhelmed by everything around her. Lost and helpless, chained even before Shelby could barely begin.
"No, no, no, no, no!" wheezed Bubbles, throwing her arms over her head and falling from the exertion nearly flat on her fact. "I wanted to be a hero! I did! I did!"
"Did you? Or did you just wish to please the Professor?" asked Shelby with a coo.
Tears streamed down Bubbles' cheeks. She wanted to scream, but weakness was overcoming her. She wanted nothing more than to dissolve into nothing. Her mind still had responses, but as her hands fell to her sides, she felt numb and stared into nothingness.
"You wished to please him so much, that you lost who you were in the process," said Shelby wringing her hands and wiping a tear from her cheek. "A gentle soul, but strong nonetheless in ways that were beyond a stupid man like him could understand. It's a grace of birdlike wonder, the kind that makes ice into a mirror and snow into magic. Not something that strangles the necks of grizzly old souls burdened so much by the blackness surrounding them that they do not understand anymore their actions. Your poetic soul understands this only too well, and it wounds you so much…"
Bubbles squeezed her eyes shut but no tears fell.
"The trauma of your childhood made you cling to a shallowness in school that you even now regret. My poor little girl."
"I don't belong to you…" whispered Bubbles, but it was so soft despite its firmness that she knew that Shelby did not hear it.
She was not sure for a moment who she was, but…
#
"Boomer… Butch… Brick," choked Shelby imploring for all she was worth; it was pretty disgusting. "All three of you have suffered the same fate. You were tamed. More than tamed. Your fight was beaten out of you. Once you were so strong and wild, but the Professor took you, broke you like feral stallions! Like, like— lions in cages. You could have stormed the world, been warriors of all things untamed for ages to come. Immortal. You could have brought back the days of the gods."
Boomer dropped his head. Why was part of him moved, and what did the movement mean? He did not know. He had no voice. Neither did his brothers say anything. Not even Brick. The other two stared, but Boomer could not look at anyone in the face. He felt sick. Woozy. For the first time ever he considered that candy skull on his shirt a psychological manifestation of a desire to die.
All he knew was that he had felt those things before, though most of them a long time ago, and most them provoked by Brick. He did not blame Brick. He did not deny his childhood whining. He did not even deny how wonderful it felt to leave gravity beneath his feet. It had been such a freeing feeling it was almost truly as if he had been in chains before this.
"The Professor did not save you, and you all know this. He caged you, chained you, clipped your wings!" sobbed Shelby.
Butch audibly sighed.
Brick was a statue.
"You were meant for so much more! So—"
#
"No," snorted Jojo; it came out as more of a cough.
Shelby's tear-glazed eyes turned to him with trembling lips. Her look was that of such confusion and such hurt that Jojo found himself suddenly feeling strangely guilty.
"You love those boys, don't you," she breathed with such melodrama Jojo felt his stomach churn. "You were so lonely. All you wanted was love in return— from someone."
He felt so old, frail, and dry like something that would shatter or crumble into dust if blown the wrong way. His throat squeaked.
"It is just a trick. All of this is nonsense," wheezed Jojo glancing up briefly at HIM. "It is HIM."
Just looking at that face grinning so widely and his eyelids lazily drooping over his creepy eyes so piercingly and mockingly. He know it, and yet— And yet he could not fight it. He swallowed hard, but there was no liquid.
"Jojo, I can honestly say," sighed Shelby folding her hands in prayerful homage. "That your fate is the most tragic— the most unforgivable."
All Jojo could respond to that with was a glower, but he felt sickly prone. His heart already could not bear her, and she had not even started.
"The way you were neglected, mistreated, and hated by all those who did not understand you. Your anger was not your fault. Even your hatred was pure. It was the hatred of one unloved, misunderstood, and completely dealt with the wrong way."
This was not the first time some idiot had taken erroneous pity on Mojo Jojo. Even when he was Mojo Jojo he had considered such behavior banal at best, and yet now as his eyes rested on Shelby's he felt more like a ghost than a living thing. It was as though at last his soul departed from his dried-out shell of a body like these idiotic words had truly cut him at the quick and sliced him through— as though this was the first time he had heard them. And when was the first time?
The first time he had heard them was from his own lips.
A broken record stuck in the same spot all the years of his life had returned from a realm beyond the grave. He could hear his own words more than hers.
What were his lies to the girls, to himself, to everyone else?
I have been lashed by harsh tongues for too long. …my pain is not for you to understand… How could you know what it's like for people to fear and despise you for the very things that make you special…? Because you are…
Barf! Gag! Spew! Choke! Blek!
"No matter how 'good' you might try to be, there is nothing for you, especially from the Professor, who is the cause of all your grief," that miserable women went on. "The one who you sought to destroy in bouts of madness beyond your control, the one you felt had betrayed you, because he had betrayed you… Poor, poor Jojo. I can't stand what he did to you. Instead of rejoicing as he had with the beautiful girls, he rejected you, because you are—"
"A freak?" Jojo offered raising an aggravated brow.
"Because he's shallow," Shelby insisted after a moment of gaping astonishment. "His greed may not by monetary, but his greed is deep nonetheless. He wants to keep all the power he finds valuable for himself instead of sharing it with others, but you and your brain are just as amazing, and of great value even if he did not think so."
'Amazing'. That was the word that Blossom had just used.
Jojo frowned grimly at his bare toes sticking out from beneath his thick coat so very reminiscent of the one he had found to dress in as a homeless hobo all those years ago to trick those girls against the Professor just as Shelby desired to do now, but it was so pathetic. It was so pathetic it hurt more than anything. It was like not only listening to a broken record but watching a replay of his actions on a television program dramatizing his efforts at that time as heroic.
He was doomed to eat what he made, to spiral round in his own filth never to escape it. His sins would never be forgiven. His fur bristled and his heart melted.
Blossom should not have had pity on him.
And was that the point of all this? Not to make them all want to join Shelby Warden but to despair?
#
"And wait! Lemme guess!" snapped Blossom so suddenly that Jojo jumped out of his brooding thoughts, and then she mocked at Shelby's blinking eyes directly at hers: "'Join me! And don't make me destroy you?' Right?"
Blossom still felt weary, she still felt sick, and even old somehow like the beam she was trapped in was sucking her very life force, but hey! It was not the first time. Perhaps it would not the last, but if there was one thing she was tired of the most, it was this woman trying doing everything she possibly could to make everyone hate the Professor in this disgusting manner. Had HIM played tricks on them one too many times and they had just grown numb to such things? It felt like this was doing the opposite of Shelby's intended purpose, but it was probably what HIM wanted.
"No!" gasped Shelby quite horrified by the suggestion. "To save you from the Professor destroying you."
"Ri-hi-hi-ight," Blossom sniffed rolling her eyes. "Look, Warden, you may think we're stupid, but we all know all you really want is our powers under your control, so stop hiding behind all this sobbing violin crap and start saying what you really want or go back to being a crazy cat lady. Your game ain't working, got it? And we got lives to live. With the Professor whether you like it or not."
"You poor thing," sobbed Shelby. "To think that this… this… this…"
"What?" dared Blossom staring Shelby down just as she had to Bling.
Shelby's eyes trembled as she stared back at Blossom. She was almost more a child than the Sparkle Babies. Who was in charge again? Did Shelby adopt HIM or did HIM adopt Shelby? Maybe HIM was even one hundred percent responsible for Bling and Bash.
HIM was grinning like a horror Cheshire Cat.
"What is the Professor?" Blossom inquired as calmly and coldly as she could. "You already ran out of lies to say about him, haven't you? You're the one who feels betrayed, because the Professor said 'no' to your little science project. You know your feelings are wrong, so you have to project them onto us to validate your hatred of him. Admit it."