Echoes of the Past
"Alright XJ-9, I called you here for a reason." Mrs. Wakeman said as she approached the couch to sit down beside her mechanical daughter. She was carrying a huge tome in her arms, which slammed into the coffee table with a monstrous thud when she set it down. Jenny sighed, knowing that she would probably have to hear everything in the book before her mom let her go.
"I know, to learn my family history." Jenny shook her head. "I don't get why I have to know what all of these people did. I mean, I'm sure they did some good stuff, but does it really matter TODAY?"
"XJ-9, I'm surprised at you." Mrs. Wakeman exclaimed. "Remembering the past is the best way to honor those who've made our lives what they are today. Besides, I had to sit through it as a little girl and so do you." Mrs. Wakeman opened the cover of the book. Jenny looked down at the shining pages, made with a material sturdier than the paper they used for normal things. This book was meant to last through the ages, and that it would.
"Let's see here... oh yes, Bruno Mcallister." Mrs. Wakeman laughed and shook her head. "Poor guy never saw that horse coming." Jenny sighed and leaned back, trying to tune out her mother's droning on about people who had no real significance to her. She wasn't even part of their bloodline really... being a robot.
"Sarah McGlee, poor girl never saw that cliff edge coming..." Mrs. Wakeman continued with her family history lesson, which mostly seemed to include a series of births followed by the tragic death of one or both of the parents. Jenny began to wonder about the veracity of the book around the time the second woman died from a freak juggling accident when Mrs. Wakeman suddenly fell silent and gave a small smile.
"Ah yes, here's what I've been wanting to get to..." She said. Jenny blinked and sat up, taking a sudden interest. So she'd been rushing through the book to get to her favorite part... that suited Jenny just fine. She could definitely live with a 'best of' view of her family history. "Professor Thomas Utonium... my great grandfather, and the most prominent man in the Wakeman family history."
"Professor Utonium? The man who created the chemical that became the basis for all of the clean, cheap fuel we use today?" Jenny asked in surprise. He'd been one of the first subject they'd covered in her history class at school. She'd never guessed he would be a relative of hers. It was kind of exciting.
"The very same." Mrs. Wakeman beamed proudly. "His blood runs through my veins... and yours, since it's his chemical that powers your systems." Jenny smiled at her, then looked down at the man's picture. He was a tall, kindly looking man with bright blue eyes and a very gentle smile.
"This is great... but... why did you have to take out the book to show me this?" Jenny asked. "I know everything about him from history class, about how he created the Chemical-X that became the modern primary power source, and invented the first working robot. You could have just told me his name and I would have known who you meant."
"Because there's more that they don't teach in school. And as his descendants, it's our job to keep their memory alive." Mrs. Wakeman turned the page again. On the next page was a picture of three little girls with dramatically deformed heads and huge eyes. Still, they had a cute quality to them, especially the one with the giddy grin and the bouncing pigtails. "These are the Powerpuff Girls."
"Powerpuff Girls?" Jenny blinked and read some of the page underneath the picture out loud. "They protected the City of Townsville... and ultimately the world, for four years from all attacks. Crime was completely obliterated, and from that crime-free society the current Earth utopia was formed..." Jenny blinked and looked at her mother. "But in history class they said it was the governments of the world working together that stopped crime."
"Yes well... a lot of people don't believe in the Powerpuff Girls anymore." Mrs. Wakeman sighed and slowly closed the book. "It sounds preposterous... superhero little girls created from a fuel source. But I believe it's true."
"How could people forget? What happened to them?" Jenny asked.
"Nobody knows. One day the news articles just stopped, and in time people slowly forgot they existed. There aren't even any journals of Professor Utonium's left." Mrs. Wakeman stood up, clutching the book in her hands. "It's as if the girls simply vanished off the face of the Earth..." She smiled down at Jenny. "But if nobody else remembers or believes, his family will."
Jenny smiled back up at her and stood up. "Right, we'll keep their memory alive." She blinked and looked down as her arm started beeping and flashing red. "Oops, it's time for school. I'll see you later mom!" She turned and ran out of the house, taking to the sky with her pigtail rockets. She reached the school soon after and landed out front amid the throng of students rushing to get into the building before the bell rang.
"Hey Jenny, you're a little late today." Jenny looked over to see her best friend Brad shoving his way through the crowd to get to her.
"Yeah..." Jenny turned silently to walk into the building with him. They walked companionably until Jenny turned to look over at him. "Brad, do you believe in the Powerpuff Girls?"
"Powerpuff Girls?" Brad laughed. "Sure I do, they hang out with Santa Claus on his off-days." He laughed and looked over at her. When he saw her morose expression he relented and rubbed his neck nervously. "Oh... you were serious..."
"My mom told me this morning that Professor Utonium was her great grandfather, and he was the one who created the Powerpuff Girls." Jenny said.
"Yeah, there are also people who believe in the Tribbles. Little fur balls that do nothing but multiply and get in your way all the time. They're all just fairy tales to tell little kids." He shook his head and gave her a slightly more solemn look. "Sorry to break it to you, but there were no Powerpuff Girls."
"Maybe..." Jenny said as they entered their first period, Geography, and took their seats. The lesson was a long boring one, and was compounded by the fact that Jenny already had a map of the entire solar system programmed straight into her CPU for world saving purposes. But as she thought about the revelations that morning, she realized something was missing.
"Now, does anyone have any questions?" Mr. McGregor asked. Jenny's hand shot up instantly. "Miss Wakeman? Is something wrong? Are you ill?"
"No sir, I just have a question." Jenny replied.
"Well this is a first... okay, what do you need?" Mr. McGregor asked kindly.
"Where is Townsville U.S.A. located?" Jenny asked. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brad slap himself in the forehead, and several other students around her started snickering devilishly. Mr. McGregor gestured harshly for them to shut up, which they did before he got really bad. He walked down the isle toward Jenny with a gentle smile on his face.
"Townsville hasn't existed for over a hundred and twenty-five years." He told her gently. "The place was turned into a parking lot by radioactive experiments. It is permanently quarantined by the United Earth Government." Jenny looked down, taking in all this information before she looked up again.
"But where WAS it?" She asked. "For completions sake... I have to know all about the world for my world-saving duties." Mr. McGregor stared at her for a moment, then nodded in understanding.
"Twenty-five miles due East of Citiesville." Mrs. McGregor looked around at the rest of his class, who all had quiet solemn looks on their faces. "Alright people, focus on the task at hand now." The teacher headed back for the front of the class while Jenny modified her internal map to include the location of Townsville. When she was done she looked over and noticed Brad staring at her.
The bell rang soon enough and Jenny turned to leave, with Brad catching up to her quickly. "Don't do it Jenny." He told her. Jenny blinked and looked over at him in surprise. "Don't go to Townsville. You heard him, the place is radioactive enough to roast cockroaches." He said.
"Don't worry about it Brad, I have no intention of getting myself melted down by radiation." Jenny replied as they moved on to their next classes. The rest of the school day faded into a memory, and finally Jenny was free to take to the sky. Overwhelmed by curiosity to find the truth, she activated her Butterfly jets and streaked over several cities to reach the coordinates Mr. McGregor had given her.
It looked like a smoldering crater, and what seemed like a legion of army personnel were positioned around the perimeter. She floated up to the line of guards, and one took notice of her. He approached her with a grim expression. "This place is off limits."
"Can you tell me just what happened to it?" Jenny asked curiously.
"Radiation happened to it." The guard smirked. "The last nuclear experiment on the planet wound up roasting this place. Just turn around and leave, there's no getting in." Jenny quirked one eyebrow and looked past him at the barren wasteland. Suddenly she lunged forward past the guard, but didn't get very far before an electric surge ran through her body.
"AAAARGH!" She screamed in pain until the energy flung her backwards, sending her slamming into the ground. The guard walked up to her and smirked.
"I told you. The radiation is intense." He leaned down to pick her up, but could only strain with no success to lift her heavy frame. Jenny shook her head... that had been no radiation. That was an electric surge... a shield around the perimeter. She pushed herself to her feet, looking over at the guard. "Now if you don't mind, please leave the area." He told her.
Jenny looked around at the other guards fingering their guns, then took to the sky again. They were hiding something... but it really wasn't her business. Her crusade to know the truth about the Powerpuff Girls wasn't important enough to go against world security. There had to be other ways to find out the truth...
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"And here we have the Tremorton Library. Kind of boring but a good place to come to cure insomnia." Brad grinned as his female companion flashed him an amused smile. "And if you'll follow me right inside here, we can see the rows of books that I've never read, but read reviews of that said that they were actually pretty good." He marched through the library to continue his potential girlfriend's tour of the town. "And here's the T section, where you can find everything from Tarnished reputations, to... Teenage robots..." He trailed off when he spotted Jenny sitting at a table, reading rapidly through a book.
"If you'll excuse me Francine." Brad smiled at her before walking over to his friend's table, sitting down beside her. "Jenny..."
"I've been reading for hours, and not one mention of a nuclear blast in Townsville." Jenny told him hurriedly. "They've got to be hiding something... but why would they want to hide the Powerpuff Girls?"
"Jenny!" Brad shouted in her ear. Jenny jumped in surprise and looked over at him. "Don't you think you're carrying this a little too far? I mean, you're sitting in a library! Reading books! All because of some fairy tale."
"Well what if they're real? They dedicated their lives to protecting the world, so we shouldn't just forget about them. My mom says that people who fight for others deserve to be remembered." Jenny retorted.
"She just says that so you'll keep saving the world." Brad remarked. Jenny growled and stood up, shoving him away from her.
"Whatever, there's obviously nothing in here, I'm going to have to look somewhere else." She turned to stomp out of the library with her fists clenched at her sides. She ignored Brad's cries of protest until she took to the sky again, easily outdistancing him. She landed in front of her house and marched inside, heading straight into the lab.
Her mom was out for the day, so she had her run of the place. Normally, that would mean party... but she was too distracted for that. She approached her mother's main computer and sat down in front of it. She hooked it up to the World Wide Network and opened a small compartment in hr forehead, pulling out a thin wire. She plugged it into the computer.
Information flooded through her processor. Thousands of books worth of information each second, all processed and packaged away inside of her memory banks. She discovered that tacos were considered a possible source of cancer in rats, and grass was more nutritional than lettuce in humans... but nothing about the Powerpuff Girls until she stumbled upon a collection of children's cartoons.
"What's this...?" Jenny asked herself softly. She drew one of the movies into her processor and let it run through her mind.
"Sugar, spice, and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girl! But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction. Chemical-X. Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born! Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil!"
"A child's cartoon?" Jenny sighed and turned off the cartoon. "Maybe mom is going senile... huh?" A strange power surge ran through her body from the connector wire, paralyzing her so that she couldn't even unplug herself. "Agh!" Jenny clenched her eyes shut in pain as the energy flooded through her, causing her limbs to twitch spastically.
"Help us..." A high-pitched voice spoke into her mind. It was soft at first, but it soon grew to an unbearable pitch. "Get us out of here! HELP US!" Suddenly the connector wire burst into flames from the strain, freeing Jenny. She caught the flaming wire and quickly put out the fire, standing up straight.
"They're real... and they need help..." Jenny turned away from the computer, clenching her fists. "I know where they are... and I WILL help them..."
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The scorched and blasted landscape that had once been the city of Townsville was smoldering under a massive heat wave the likes of which had never been recorded before. The ground itself almost seemed to be melting, and the soldiers who still stood their ground around the perimeter were sweating buckets. But they stood their ground, well trained and ready to do their job regardless of living conditions.
They looked up as something reflected the intense light of the sun, barreling towards them at breakneck speed. The officer near the front gate of the compound just outside of the city limits looked back at his commander. "Sir, Earth defense unit XJ-9 is approaching again."
"She must have left something here last time." The commander walked out of the base to join the other soldiers. XJ-9 flew close to the ground and barreled toward the base, leaving a trail of kicked up dust behind her. The commander's eyes widened when she raised his hands to her sides. Her fingers withdrew into her arms, to be replaced by two-foot long scimitars.
Her eyes glowed with barely contained electricity. "Something's wrong... she's not stopping! Put the base on aler-" before be could even finish the robot whipped past him and the lower ranking officer, streaking toward the bunker. The commander looked down in shock to see his own body beginning to slide apart...
XJ-9 landed in the middle of the bunker's surface, with the soldiers around her staring in shock. "All hands, open fire!" One officer screamed. Gun shots blared as bullets pelted the robot from all sides. Jenny leapt straight into the air, carried upward by her pigtails jets as her arms came together in front of her into a long tube with several barrels near the front.
A string of missiles flew from the barrel of the minigun, blowing chunks out of the bunker's fences and buildings. Bodies flew through the air, some mangled and burned beyond recognition while others were left wounded and in pain. When the barrage of fire and explosions finally ended, the entire surface level of the bunker was left in ruins. XJ-9 floated down to the ground as her legs reformed into a massive drill.
She dug deep into the ground, until she emerged into a central chamber. Her limbs reformed properly and she landed, approaching the massive computer in the middle of the room. She stopped when she heard a voice from behind her... a scientist shaking with fear.
"Don't do that, XJ-9... you have no idea what you're doing." He warned her shakily. Jenny turned to look back at him, her eyes pulsing with electricity until they were barely recognizable.
Her voice was higher than normal, as if being pushed out at too high a volume. Still, it sounded soft... almost flutelike. "The Powerpuff Girls WILL be free." XJ-9 turned back to the control console and raised one metallic arm high above her head.
"No! DON'T!" The scientist screamed. He was too late though. XJ=9's metal fist came down on the console, shattering the top with a screech of metal and sparks combined with her own grunt. The robot's arm touched the electrical wires and even more energy pumped through her. She screamed in pain before the console exploded, throwing her back against the steel wall hard enough to put a dent in it.
She collapsed to the ground, her systems fluctuating until finally her backup generators kicked in. "Ugh..." Jenny raised one hand to her head and opened her eyes. "What... where am I?" She pushed herself to her feet, looking around at the ruined control room. "I must have... come to talk to them about the girls. There must have been an attack!" Her pigtails turned upward and she streaked through the hole in the ceiling.
When she emerged she gasped in shock. The military bunker was filled with dead and dying soldiers... the ground was painted red with their blood and their cries of pain filled the air. "Who... wh..." Slowly Jenny looked down, seeing her own arms covered up to the elbows in blood. "No..." A dark laugh cut the air from behind her.
She whirled, shocked to see that where the smoldering crater had been, an entire city now lay. The buildings were decayed and crumbling from disrepair, but it was completely intact. Floating between her and the city was a crimson figure with crablike claws for hands and a dark laugh echoing from his throat. "Finally... someone was stupid enough to come looking for the Powerpuff Girls..." He grinned as his surprisingly dulcet tone faded.
"I... what..." Jenny stuttered, raising her own bloodstained hands in front of her. "What did you... what did I... do...?" Her hands shook before her eyes.
"Isn't it obvious?" The demonic figure let out a mocking laugh, floating up to her so that they were face-to-face. "You freed me after one hundred years of imprisonment within that accursed city." His voice melted into a dark growl. "Now the world will feel my anger!" His arm shot forward with such blinding speed even her sensors couldn't pick it up.
His claw gripped her throat tightly, holding her face close to his as he spoke in a soft tone. "As a reward... I will let you live..." He dark voice returned. "To watch the world BURN!" He whirled and threw her toward the city like a missile. She plowed through several buildings until she slammed into the street. She skidded along the pavement in a shower of sparks until finally coming to a stop.
"Ugh... I'm so confused..." Jenny pushed herself to her hands and knees, staring down at her bloodstained arms. She looked up in surprise when she heard a soft noise nearby, but she could see no source. Curiously she switched vision modes, changing to infrared so that she could see heat sources. The entire city was lit up by the heat wave, but there were patches of blue wandering around the streets... cold spots...
"Let us rest..." Her hypersensitive instruments amplified a barely audible whisper. "So tired..." Jenny stood up and looked around, watching as the blue spots moved around the street. She looked up toward one of the buildings, seeing a single blue spot sitting in a second story room. There were also three other spots, pitch black...
Jenny activated her pigtail engines and hovered up to one of the three windows, putting her hands on one of them to stare inside. The blue spot beside the bed seemed to be hovering over the others. "You just rest..." A whisper floated out to Jenny.
"There's something wrong with us..." A whisper emanated from one of the black auras. "Isn't there... Professor...?"
"Something you can't fix..." One of the other auras added.
Jenny tried to amplify the sharpness of her vision, and the blue aura took the glowing shape of a man with kind... but pained eyes. "Girls..." His whisper carried an emotion powerful enough for even the robot girl to understand perfectly. "I'm so sorry girls..."
The black auras had taken the shape of three round heads... the same ones she remembered from the book her mother showed her. "What will happen to Townsville... the world... once we're gone?" The shape in the middle whispered. Jenny climbed into the room and approached the bed cautiously.
"Don't you talk like that..." The blue aura replied. His arm reached down to stroke one of the black aura's cheeks, giving them a sad smile. "You just worry about getting better..." The whispers faded as the auras vanished, leaving Jenny staring down at the empty bed.
Her gaze shifted as they reappeared downstairs, so she ran out of the room and took the stairs two at a time to reach the living room. The black shapes were in front of the door, staring outside with the larger blue one hovering behind them. "Girls... please... no..." The large aura whispered.
"You have to leave Professor... please." One of the auras turned back toward the larger one. The large empty eyes stared up at the larger figure. "We have to do this... it's all we can do... get out..."
"Girls..." The large aura moved down and wrapped its arms around the small girls. "I'll always cherish you..." The larger figure stood again and moved through the door, staring back at the girls. They stared back until he was out of sight, then turned their gazes skyward.
Jenny moved up to the door and looked up, seeing a blood-red aura hovering above the city. Somehow, she knew this was the aura of the man she'd met before... "Come on girls... we can trap him... together." One of the small auras whispered, clasping hands with the two around it. Suddenly they all vanished, leaving Jenny standing alone in the small house.
Jenny deactivated her infrared vision, walking outside into the barren streets of Townsville. "They gave their lives to trap that thing here... but it also trapped them and everyone else in the city. How did they make the shield? They have to be somewhere... inside the city." She looked down in surprise when her chest plate opened and the communicator unfolded.
"XJ-9, I demand to know what..." Mrs. Wakeman's eyes went wide when she saw Jenny. It was then that the robot realized that she was still covered in blood from the military bunker. "It... it's true..."
"No mother, it's not what you think!" Jenny pleaded quickly. "At least I think it's not... but something big is happening! I-"
Mrs. Wakeman cut her off. "Stand down XJ-9. The authorities will be there momentarily... please accompany them back home immediately." She said. Jenny looked up when she heard a helicopter's blades approaching her position.
"Sorry mom... but I can't!" Jenny ripped the monitor out of her chest and threw it to the ground, darting back into the building for shelter. She hid behind the wall, listening to the soldiers rushing past in search of her. She sank to a sitting position on the floor, shaking violently. If she was able to dream, this would have been her worst nightmare...
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"So delicious..." A pair of crimson claws snapped together in satisfaction as the army swarmed through Townsville. It was a sight he'd been waiting to see... watching from the outside as the humans struggled in vain to find him. Now that he was free, there was nothing they could do to stop him. Unless they found those wretched girls... but even he hadn't been able to find them in all the time he'd been trapped.
He could remember the day they'd trapped him as if it had happened only moments ago. He'd had over a century to replay it all over and over in his mind. The day had finally come... they day he would eradicate Townsville, and then the world. The girls' inherent weakness was becoming clear, and their strength was waning... destiny was beginning to take hold.
Until they tricked him. They lured him into Townsville and vanished without a trace. Before he'd been able to act, the shield went up... a shield of such power that he could never get through it. He'd hunted for the girls, but when he could find no trace of them, he settled for those trapped with him...
Their deaths had been slow and agonizing. He'd made sure their desperation... their pain... was at its peak and never granted them the mercy of death until old age claimed them. In their desperation to trap Him, the Powerpuff Girls had doomed everyone they loved to suffer for their insult. He'd never thought the girls capable of such an act... it made the citizens' suffering even sweeter.
And now, after sacrificing all they held dear to keep him trapped, he was finally free. The world would feel his wrath once again, and with no Powerpuff Girls around to stop him, it was all at his mercy. But after one hundred years of isolation, he had no mercy left. Particularly for the blood of the one who caused him all of this aggravation... the blood of the man whose creations thwarted him so often.
He sensed that that blood now belonged to a woman...
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Jenny made her way down into the basement laboratory at the bottom of the house. The sound of tanks and helicopters aboveground drove her to seek refuge here in the relative quiet of the basement. It was dark, as the lights had failed long ago, but her night vision lit it up like daytime. She walked around the lab leisurely, examining the broken beakers and destroyed equipment.
She whirled when she heard a soft whisper behind her. "Back here..." It called. "This way." It sounded different from the auras up above. Jenny followed the direction of the voices, soon coming to another steel door in the back of the lab. She pushes it open, emerging into a dark mass of space... a hologram.
She activated her digital vision, seeing past the hologram to see a podium set in the middle of a large square room. Three beautiful women lay on it with snow-white hair draped down to the ground. All three wore white silken robes, and all three had their eyes closed in slumber.
"The Powerpuff Girls..." Jenny approached the mechanical podium, touching one of the girls lightly. That done, she switched back to normal vision. She could now see the girls normally in front of her. "Girls, you have to wake up..." She shook the arm she was touching lightly.
A pair of large eyes opened slowly. They were pure white, with just a hint of pink coloring the irises. The other two opened their eyes as well, turning to gaze at her with white surrounded by hints of green and blue.
Jenny stared down at her, running her hand along the woman's arm, almost not believing she was really one of them. "I still don't understand... what's happening? Who is that man who escaped? What did I do?" Jenny asked. She didn't expect them to have any answers, but answer they did.
"What you unleashed is a demon..." The pink eyed one said. The green eyed one continued. "We trapped it a hundred years ago..." The blue one finished. "With our excess powers."
"But why do this? According to my mother, you defended the world from everything... including this guy. Why did you have to do this to yourselves?" Jenny asked.
The pink-eyed woman replied. "The Chemical-X in our bodies went out of control." The green-eyed woman continued. "It grew stronger than our physical forms could handle... it was tearing us apart." The blue-eyed woman continued. "So we used them to create the shield that trapped... Him... here." The pink-eyed woman finished this time with a smirk. "Now we can barely move... the Chemical-X in our bodies is drained..."
"But he tossed me aside like a doll... I can't fight this thing without you..." Jenny said.
"We need more pure Chemical-X..." The pink-eyed woman replied. "Without it, we're completely powerless..."
Jenny sighed in defeat. There was no Chemical-X left, it had been refined into engine fuel and the chemical itself was no longer in production. Maybe that would do... but it was too big a risk... if only... wait... 'His blood runs through my veins... and yours, since it's his chemical that powers your systems.' That was why she was so different from other robots... Mrs. Wakeman had used pure Chemical-X as her power source!
"Don't worry, I have an idea." Jenny marched up to the center of the podium, watched by the three woman around her. She raised her arm, opening a small hatch to reveal several different wires. She grabbed one and pulled it out carefully, using her jaw to sever it. Precious black liquid fell from her arm, falling into the empty tube in the middle of the podium.
The effect was immediate. All three girls gasped as it flooded through the podium's tubes and into their bodies. Their eyes glittered with light, the color of their irises sharpening as the large black centers became clear. Their hair flooded with color, pink, black, and blond flowing around their bodies like cloaks.
Jenny gripped her arm to stench the flow of her vital fluid as the women rose from the podium, moving to hover above the ground. Jenny carefully tied her vein back together and turned toward them. She marched up to the pink-eyed woman and held out her hand. "I'm Jenny..."
The one in the middle smiled and took the preferred handshake. "I'm Blossom... this is Bubbles, and Buttercup."
"We should get out there and find Him. Niceties can wait." Buttercup commented seriously.
"My mom should be able to help us find him. She's the smartest person I know." Jenny said.
Blossom nodded. "Let's get out of here then." The three Powerpuff Girls streaked from the ground, plunging through the roof of the hologram room with Jenny following close behind them. She caught up and passed them quickly however, to lead them in the direction of her house. They'd moved to fast the military hadn't even seen them pass by.
Jenny's eyes widened when her house hove into view... with thick black smoke rising from intense flames. "No... no mother!" Jenny screamed, flying straight toward the ground. She slammed into the street hard enough to send cracks running across the road as she rushed up to the officer. "What's happening!? Where's my mom!?"
The police officer turned to her in surprise, backing away from her. "X... XJ-9... wh... what are you doing here?" He asked fearfully. Apparently her mom had sent out a warning about her... the blood that's till covered her shell couldn't help either.
"We don't have time to explain." Blossom walked up behind Jenny. Her movements were so smooth and regal that it was easy to mistake her for a princess from a fairy tale. "Did anyone see what caused this fire?"
"And who exactly are you?" The officer demanded, looking her up and down. "I don't recognize your species... did you come to this planet illegally?" He shook his head. "Figures you'd be hanging around with illegal aliens... I thought you were good Jenny."
Before anyone could react Buttercup appeared between them, grabbing the officer's jacket and lifting him off the ground. "We're the Powerpuff Girls you little prick, and we're here to save your butts. Now tell us what you know about this fire!" She growled darkly.
"W... we don't know anything! It just... happened! Witnesses say it was like the fire just rose straight from the Earth itself!" The officer shouted in a panic, pulling at Buttercup's arm in a vain attempt to escape.
"Straight from the Earth itself eh?" Blossom looked down at the ground. "We should investigate..." she looked around. "Where did Bubbles go?" Jenny looked around with the two Powerpuffs to see that one of them was indeed missing.
"Damnit Bubbles, we can't take Him on without all three of us here." Buttercup growled darkly.
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Dreams... for the last hundred years dreams had dominated her consciousness. Now... suddenly... Bubbles was free. The feel of the sun on her flesh, the caress of the wind through her long flowing hair... the sounds of the birds chirping high in the sky... it was all real. The sights, the sounds, the colors... it was all finally real again.
"Hey! Watch it!" Bubbles looked down in surprise as a small boy glared up at her. Apparently she'd stepped on one of the back spokes of his big-wheel and snapped it right off. "This thing is very expensive!" The boy complained.
"I'm sorry." Bubbles got down on her knees. "I'll help you fix it." The boy climbed off of the bike and Bubbles grabbed it along with the spoke. She put them together again and fired her heat-vision, melting the plastic back together. The boy's eyes grew wide. "There... give it a few minutes to cool before you use it again." Bubbles set the toy vehicle on the ground again.
"Wow! That was cool!" The boy ignored the big wheel, staring up at her. "What else can you do? Huh?" The boy grabbed the hem of her robe and jumped up and down excitedly. Bubbles laughed and patted him on top of his head.
"I can do lots of things..." Bubbles replied with a small smile. "I'm Bubbles."
"Tuck." The boy replied off-handedly. "Can you turn your body into all sorts of cool gadgets like my other robot friend?"
"What, you think I'm a robot?" Bubbles asked amusedly.
"Sure, only robots have eye-beams. Well... I guess the Cyclonians do too, but theirs are a lot more disgusting..." He shuddered.
"Well I'm no robot." Bubbles replied. "I'm a Powerpuff Girl." Tuck stared up at her, then burst out laughing.
"P... Powerpuff! Yeah right!" He laughed holding his stomach. He turned back to his big-wheel and climbed on. "Hey, just because I'm a kid doesn't mean I'm stupid!" He laughed again and took off down the sidewalk. "Powerpuff Girl... that's a riot..." Bubbles stared after him as he rode away.
"I don't get it..." Bubbles said softly. She pushed herself slowly to her feet and continued down the street. She looked around as she entered a section of down dedicated to a string of small stores with vendors announcing their wares. She stopped when she saw a video store nearby, with a strange tape playing on the TV hanging in the corner.
"It... it's us..." Bubbles muttered under her breath, watching the cartoon version of herself on the TV screen. She approached the TV, watching intently. It was all there, the girls, the Professor, Him...
"Yeah, that one's a classic alright." Bubbles looked to the side to see the store clerk watching the monitor with her. "One of the last surviving products from the early twenty-first century. Its creator was a genius, its survived this long. Heck, some people insist the Powerpuff Girls were real." He chuckled and shook his head.
"W... we are..." Bubbles replied softly.
The clerk stared at her for a second, then chuckled and shook his head. "Yeah girl, they're real." He walked back toward his counter. After everything the girls had done... nobody remembered them. They were just a children's cartoon... an entertaining memory. Everything they'd really done was forgotten... after all the sacrifices they'd made...
"Bubbles, there you are." Bubbles turned around to see Blossom, Buttercup and Jenny watching her from the door. It was Blossom who spoke. "Come on, we have to find a way to stop Him."
"O... okay..." Bubbles gulped and walked away from the TV, making her way out to the street with her sisters and the teenage robot.
"Okay, if there are no more distractions..." Buttercup glared at Bubbles for a moment, then turned to look at Jenny. "We need to get underground, since that's where the cop said the fire came from."
"One tunnel, easy." Jenny floated into the air with her pigtail engines, her arms and legs all forming into drills. She threw herself at the ground and plunged into it, leaving a large tunnel behind her. The Powerpuff Girls floated in after her one at a time, following her deep into the Earth. They tunneled for a long time, searching for any sign of Him or Jenny's mother.
Why do this? Nobody remembered what they did before... nobody cared what they did now. If they were saved, they would simply go on with their lives. Nobody even knew she existed. What was the point of this? Why... why was she thinking this way? Because it was true... they wouldn't care even if they knew... they were all ungrateful... because she didn't deserve their gratitude...
"Found something!" Jenny's echoing voice snapped Bubbles out of her contemplative state. The robot had broken through into a small cavern deep under the earth's surface. The Powerpuff Girls emerged to find magma streams running across most of the floor, with droplets of piping hot magma falling from the ceiling. "We're pretty far down."
"And yet you found us nonetheless." A soft, taunting voice told them. The girls whirled to see him hovering near a far wall with a gray-haired woman strapped to the wall by bands of dirt and roots. "And with the Powerpuff Girls no less... it seems we're just fated to meet again, and again, and again. The battlefield has changed... but the struggle has not it seems."
"Give back the woman, and for once, just give it up." Blossom demanded, floating ahead of the others with her arms crossed over her chest. "It doesn't matter what you do, you will never succeed now that we're back. So you'd might as well just give it up."
"So you can be the heroes again. Heroes that the world forgot?" The demon grinned, his eyes turning to stare straight into Bubbles'. "Those people don't care about your heroics... they care that they're alive. That's all... they don't care who saves them." Bubbles stared at him blankly, the voice echoing through her mind. It was true... they were nothing more than children's entertainment to them...
"It... it's..." Bubbles squeezed her eyes shut as tears slid down her cheeks. "It's true... no matter what we do... they don't care!" Bubbles shouted, clutching her head in pain. It was all becoming garbled...
"Bubbles, don't listen to him!" Blossom's arms wrapped around her shoulders. "He's trying to mess with you!"
"You leave Bubbles alone!" Buttercup shouted angrily. She and Jenny floated toward the crimson demon.
"Go ahead... save them... they will only forget about you again once you're gone." Him growled. Bubbles couldn't take it anymore, the pressure in her mind was unbearable. She jerked her head back and let out a piercing scream, powerful enough to send a shockwave rippling through the magmatic chamber.
"Bubbles no!" Blossom clasped her hand over Bubbles' mouth to muffle the noise, but the damage was done. A shuddering moan echoed through the cavern as the echoes began to cave-in the entire place.
"Farewell Powerpuff Girls. We'll see how an eternity of imprisonment alone suits you." Him vanished into a cloud of smoke, disappearing into thin air.
"Mother! I'm coming!" " Jenny took off across the magma, weaving through the falling boulders and splashing lava. A bit splashed onto her stomach, eating through the metal shell quickly and leaving a hole the size of a baseball. Mrs. Wakeman was still unconscious and strapped to the far wall.
"Jenny! Hurry up! We have to get out of here!" Buttercup shouted after her. Bubbles blinked in confusion, watching the spectacle before her. She caused this... but Blossom gave her a gentle smile before turning to Buttercup.
"I'm getting Bubbles out of here. Make sure Jenny and her mom get out!" Blossom whirled and streaked up through the tunnel they'd made before. The cave-in had already blocked parts of the tunnel, but the two Powerpuff Girls punched through them with such force that they were barely slowed down at all. Bubbles just clung to her sister, still too confused to do much.
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"I've got you mom..." Jenny sliced through the earthy bonds with one of her many blades and pulled her unconscious mom off of the wall. Buttercup floated up to them quickly as the magma rose around them. "We've got to get back to the exit!"
"No time, become a drill or something and get us out of here!" Buttercup shouted.
"I can't push through the rock fast enough, the lava's rising too fast." Jenny replied, floating up against the ceiling as the magma bubbles up at her. Buttercup's feet dipped into the white-hot liquid, but she barely seemed to notice.
"Just get a drill out!" Buttercup shouted. Jenny nodded and wrapped her arms around her unconscious mother. Her legs formed together into one massive drill.
"I can't fly upside down..." Jenny said.
"Fine, just turn it on." Buttercup surprised the robot girl by grabbing her and turning her upside down, thrusting her legs up toward the ceiling. Jenny turned the drill on to bore through the rock, carried forward by Buttercup's massive strength. Jenny stared back at the magma, which was rising up after them at an alarming rate.
"Ow!" Jenny yelped in pain when she felt something hit her arm. She looked down to see a drop of water had splashed onto her. Soon the walls around them were dripping with moisture. "We're under a lake! I don't handle water very well..." Jenny confessed.
"Geeze, I thought you were a superhero." Buttercup halted, pulling Jenny's unconscious mother out of her arms. "Just hold on." With Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman clutched under each arm Buttercup hurled herself upward, punching through the last layer of rock between them and the lake. Jenny screamed as the water flooded into the body through the hole in her side. She twitched spastically as her systems went ballistic. Her senses soon went dark, plunging her CPU into a barely active state.
"XJ-9..." Finally she could hear a voice... her senses had been reactivated. And she heard a comfortingly familiar voice hovering over her. "XJ-9 wake up, your systems are fully repaired." Jenny opened her eyes to look up at her mother, staring down at her worriedly. She was lying on a cold steel table in her mother's laboratory.
"Mom..." Jenny wrapped her arms around her mother smiling happily. "You're alive! We're both alive!" She stopped suddenly, pulling back to stare at her worriedly. "You... don't still think I..."
"Of course not, the girls explained everything." Mrs. Wakeman gestured to the Powerpuff Girls, who were gathered around the TV. There was a news report on, in which a reporter was speaking frantically.
"We repeat, all citizens are advised to stay indoors and avoid travel at all costs. We are under attack. Repeat. We are under at-" The reporter was cut off by a surge of static as an explosion send shockwaves through the ground beneath their feet.
"Apparently he decided to drop the subtle approach." Blossom walked up to the window near the front of the house and pulled the curtain aside. The sky outside was crimson, but the sun was clearly outlined in the red haze. It was still noon, but it looked more like sunset. "We have to take Him out, once and for all... somehow..."
"All we can do is trap him." Buttercup moved to stand beside her redheaded sister, staring out at the crimson sky. "I say we do it."
Blossom stared at her, then turned her eyes back toward Bubbles, who was sitting on the couch with a blank look on her face. "Bubbles." Blossom called. The blond Powerpuff looked over at her. "We can't do this without you... we can trap Him, but you know what it would mean..." she trailed off. Bubbles stared at her, then looked down at the ground.
"If we did... would anybody care?" Bubbles muttered.
"Bubbles, we don't do this for recognition." Blossom walked up to her, chiding her gently. Bubbles looked up at her in surprise. "We do this because it's right. It doesn't matter who remembers what a hundred years from now. What matters is that they are safe. It's our responsibility to see that they are, so let's go do it." She held out her hand.
Bubbles blinked, then smiled and took her hand. "Okay." Blossom pulled Bubbles to her feet quickly. "Let's trap Him..."
"I'm coming with you." Jenny pushed herself off of the steel table, approaching the girls. "It's my fault this is all happening... I want to make it right." Mrs. Wakeman walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm so proud of you XJ-9." She smiled slightly. "Now go, hurry all of you." Jenny nodded and powered up her jets as a pair of steel butterfly wings spread out from her back. The Powerpuff Girls took off through the air in streaks of white, followed by Jenny.
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"This world has lasted long enough." Him's dark growl penetrated the noise of screams and explosions. "It's time for it to end. And my world... will be born!" He raised his claws, drawing two streams of white-hot magma out of the Earth. They surged into the sky and spread out against the clouds like a liquid shield. The entire city was bathed in a blood-red glow.
"Not so fast." Blossom's voice challenged Him. He turned slowly to stare at the Powerpuff Girls, floating just a few yards away from him. The robot girl was behind them, with her butterfly-wing jets keeping her afloat in the air. Blossom smirked. "Like you said... again, and again, and again. So you had might as well give up, because you'll never get rid of us."
"This stalemate has continued for a long time." One of his claws snapped shut with an audible click, and he slowly started moving it about in the air. "But I have no intention of letting it continue any longer. It was fun girls, but it will not last forever."
"What are you doing?" Blossom demanded, watching his claw maneuver deftly through the air. It almost looked like a subtle twitch, but it moved with too much purpose and direction for it to be random. The demon grinned letting out a barking laugh.
"The heroes of today have no room for the relics of a bygone age." He told them. Blossom blinked in confusion, then shrieked when a metallic arm wrapped around her. A long blade pressed into her throat hard enough to draw a droplet of blood.
"Gck..." Blossom grunted, gripping Jenny's arm to try to loosen her grip. "Jenny no..."
"She's being controlled by Him again!" Buttercup growled and lunged forward. The robot whirled, thrusting her arm out and sending Blossom spiraling away as her blade came around in a silver arc. Buttercup caught it between her hands, thrusting her legs forward to slam them into Jenny's stomach. Jenny lunged forward again, knocking her leg aside and punching her in the face. Buttercup hurtled backward painfully. "Geeze... she's just a robot, why is she so strong!?"
Blossom reached up to feel her neck, with her hand coming away bloody. She blinked when she saw some black liquid mixed in with the crimson. "Her body is powered by Chemical-X. It must give her some kind of immunity to the full extent of our powers."
"Fantastic..." Buttercup muttered sarcastically as Jenny's fingers all withdrew into her palms to be replaced by two-foot blades. "Well? Any bright ideas Miss Idea? Because I'm open at this point."
"If she's anything like the computers back in our time, if we get enough of a power surge into her, it should reboot her systems to normal-mode. But it could also wipe out her mind..." Blossom ducked as the blades whizzed toward her. She lunged up and over the robot, doing a vertical flip to kick her in the back of the head.
"Here's hoping advanced technology protects against power-surges then." Bubbles threw her body forward, slamming shoulder-first into Jenny's chest. Jenny grabbed her shoulders and whirled just before they hit a nearby building, sending Bubbles plunging through the solid steel wall. She turned toward the other two Powerpuff Girls.
Buttercup streaked down to meet her, throwing a barrage of precision strikes at the robot's steel frame. Jenny's blades flashed around the Powerpuff Girl, but not one struck her as she danced through them to wrap her hand around the robot's throat. She thrust her back into the steel wall of a building, but the robot brought one of her legs up. The toe was sharp enough to dig into Buttercup's jaw and send her hurtling back through the sky.
Blossom sucked in a deep breath and let it all out in a rush of frozen air. A pair of massive fans erected themselves from the top of Jenny's head, turning toward the cold wave and activated in time to blow back at it. The two air-surges collided with a sound no different from a thunderclap and began swirling around each other dangerously.
The wind-streams combined to create a single spinning point, from which a tornado rapidly began to spread outward. Jenny threw herself into the tornado, streaking through it to grab Blossom and knee her in the stomach. Buttercup and Bubbles converged on them, slamming into Jenny from either side and wrapping their arms around her.
The tornado engulfed them all, roaring in anger as Jenny struggled to bring her blades around to plunge them into Blossom. Buttercup and Bubbles held onto her arms to keep her from bringing them forward, but her legs were still wrapped around Blossom, trapping her. A lightning strike lit up the sky outside the whirling walls of wind. Lightning... that meant it was probably raining...
Buttercup howled and threw herself forward, holding onto Jenny's arm. This caught everyone else off-guard, and she was yanked away from the other two Powerpuffs. "Come on Jenny, it's bath time!" She hurled the robot forward, sending her clear outside the tornado walls. The robot slammed into the building outside the tornado, rolling quickly to her feet.
The rain washed over her in sheets, pummeling her steel frame and dripping into her circuits. Her body began to twitch spastically even as she took to the air again to come toward them. The Powerpuff Girls readied themselves for another fight, but the robot girl didn't make it to them. Her eyes faded to pure white as she began to fall toward the ground.
Bubbles streaked down to catch her before she shattered against the street far below. She carried the robot up and set her gently on a nearby rooftop. She stood and floated up to join her sister again, who were floating outside the roaring tornado.
A clapping sound broke through the roaring winds and pounding rain as the demon appeared in front of them. "Congratulations, you've just beaten a fellow hero." He laughed wickedly. "It's funny how those distinctions vanish when one is faced with death. Everyone becomes an enemy."
"Enough of your banter." Blossom growled. "You've caused enough trouble for everyone. It's time to take you out of the picture."
Him laughed, putting his claws over his stomach. "That's a good one Blossom... if you could trap me, you would have done it over a century ago."
Blossom smirked "When you're dreaming for a hundred years, you have plenty of time to come up with new ways to use your powers." The girls lunged forward without warning snapping to a stop in a triangle around Him. Him started to vanish, but he reformed right where he was without going anywhere.
"Hey... what..." The demon blinked as the Powerpuff Girls' bodies began to glow.
"Say goodbye to the world, because it's the last time you'll ever see it." Blossom grinned. The girls' bodies grew even brighter, and their robes fluttered toward the street, with nothing but pure energy to lie against.
Jenny groaned and sat up, twitching from the rain. The top of her head opened up into a massive umbrella, shielding her form the pounding rain. "What's going on...?" She looked up to see the glowing girls surrounding the crimson demon. "Girls..." The Powerpuff Girls' bodies grew to a dangerously bright level, before suddenly the light faded.
A single pearl-white sphere dropped toward the ground like a stone. Jenny used her butterfly-wing jets to catch it before it hit the ground, landing nearby amid a crowd of startled onlookers. She set the sphere down and looked around at the confused faces.
Brad broke through the crowd and walked up to her, his bright red hair matted to his head. "Jenny, what just happened?" He asked in confusion. Jenny looked around slowly at the crowd...
________________________________________________________________________________
"That was the greatest battle of all time... with the greatest heroes in the world."
Sparks and debris flew in every direction as the mountain outside of Tremorton was reshaped by a pair of wildly flailing chainsaws. A crowd of onlookers watched as the robot worked tirelessly, forgoing school and world-saving duties. She had a more important duty right now.
"After one hundred years, they finally did what they always wanted to do..."
Jenny finished with the chainsaws and reformed her hands into a pair of pray cans. She flew around the mountains, spraying over every inch of the mountain with a water-proof shine.
"And this time, they will get what they've always deserved."
That done, Jenny flew down to the ground and hefted the pearl-white sphere. She flew up to the top of the mountain and placed it there, flying back down to the ground. The statue stood against the cliff face, depicting three women in white robes holding up the sphere that was all that remained from the battle in the middle of the city.
"This time... they will be remembered."
THE END
"Alright XJ-9, I called you here for a reason." Mrs. Wakeman said as she approached the couch to sit down beside her mechanical daughter. She was carrying a huge tome in her arms, which slammed into the coffee table with a monstrous thud when she set it down. Jenny sighed, knowing that she would probably have to hear everything in the book before her mom let her go.
"I know, to learn my family history." Jenny shook her head. "I don't get why I have to know what all of these people did. I mean, I'm sure they did some good stuff, but does it really matter TODAY?"
"XJ-9, I'm surprised at you." Mrs. Wakeman exclaimed. "Remembering the past is the best way to honor those who've made our lives what they are today. Besides, I had to sit through it as a little girl and so do you." Mrs. Wakeman opened the cover of the book. Jenny looked down at the shining pages, made with a material sturdier than the paper they used for normal things. This book was meant to last through the ages, and that it would.
"Let's see here... oh yes, Bruno Mcallister." Mrs. Wakeman laughed and shook her head. "Poor guy never saw that horse coming." Jenny sighed and leaned back, trying to tune out her mother's droning on about people who had no real significance to her. She wasn't even part of their bloodline really... being a robot.
"Sarah McGlee, poor girl never saw that cliff edge coming..." Mrs. Wakeman continued with her family history lesson, which mostly seemed to include a series of births followed by the tragic death of one or both of the parents. Jenny began to wonder about the veracity of the book around the time the second woman died from a freak juggling accident when Mrs. Wakeman suddenly fell silent and gave a small smile.
"Ah yes, here's what I've been wanting to get to..." She said. Jenny blinked and sat up, taking a sudden interest. So she'd been rushing through the book to get to her favorite part... that suited Jenny just fine. She could definitely live with a 'best of' view of her family history. "Professor Thomas Utonium... my great grandfather, and the most prominent man in the Wakeman family history."
"Professor Utonium? The man who created the chemical that became the basis for all of the clean, cheap fuel we use today?" Jenny asked in surprise. He'd been one of the first subject they'd covered in her history class at school. She'd never guessed he would be a relative of hers. It was kind of exciting.
"The very same." Mrs. Wakeman beamed proudly. "His blood runs through my veins... and yours, since it's his chemical that powers your systems." Jenny smiled at her, then looked down at the man's picture. He was a tall, kindly looking man with bright blue eyes and a very gentle smile.
"This is great... but... why did you have to take out the book to show me this?" Jenny asked. "I know everything about him from history class, about how he created the Chemical-X that became the modern primary power source, and invented the first working robot. You could have just told me his name and I would have known who you meant."
"Because there's more that they don't teach in school. And as his descendants, it's our job to keep their memory alive." Mrs. Wakeman turned the page again. On the next page was a picture of three little girls with dramatically deformed heads and huge eyes. Still, they had a cute quality to them, especially the one with the giddy grin and the bouncing pigtails. "These are the Powerpuff Girls."
"Powerpuff Girls?" Jenny blinked and read some of the page underneath the picture out loud. "They protected the City of Townsville... and ultimately the world, for four years from all attacks. Crime was completely obliterated, and from that crime-free society the current Earth utopia was formed..." Jenny blinked and looked at her mother. "But in history class they said it was the governments of the world working together that stopped crime."
"Yes well... a lot of people don't believe in the Powerpuff Girls anymore." Mrs. Wakeman sighed and slowly closed the book. "It sounds preposterous... superhero little girls created from a fuel source. But I believe it's true."
"How could people forget? What happened to them?" Jenny asked.
"Nobody knows. One day the news articles just stopped, and in time people slowly forgot they existed. There aren't even any journals of Professor Utonium's left." Mrs. Wakeman stood up, clutching the book in her hands. "It's as if the girls simply vanished off the face of the Earth..." She smiled down at Jenny. "But if nobody else remembers or believes, his family will."
Jenny smiled back up at her and stood up. "Right, we'll keep their memory alive." She blinked and looked down as her arm started beeping and flashing red. "Oops, it's time for school. I'll see you later mom!" She turned and ran out of the house, taking to the sky with her pigtail rockets. She reached the school soon after and landed out front amid the throng of students rushing to get into the building before the bell rang.
"Hey Jenny, you're a little late today." Jenny looked over to see her best friend Brad shoving his way through the crowd to get to her.
"Yeah..." Jenny turned silently to walk into the building with him. They walked companionably until Jenny turned to look over at him. "Brad, do you believe in the Powerpuff Girls?"
"Powerpuff Girls?" Brad laughed. "Sure I do, they hang out with Santa Claus on his off-days." He laughed and looked over at her. When he saw her morose expression he relented and rubbed his neck nervously. "Oh... you were serious..."
"My mom told me this morning that Professor Utonium was her great grandfather, and he was the one who created the Powerpuff Girls." Jenny said.
"Yeah, there are also people who believe in the Tribbles. Little fur balls that do nothing but multiply and get in your way all the time. They're all just fairy tales to tell little kids." He shook his head and gave her a slightly more solemn look. "Sorry to break it to you, but there were no Powerpuff Girls."
"Maybe..." Jenny said as they entered their first period, Geography, and took their seats. The lesson was a long boring one, and was compounded by the fact that Jenny already had a map of the entire solar system programmed straight into her CPU for world saving purposes. But as she thought about the revelations that morning, she realized something was missing.
"Now, does anyone have any questions?" Mr. McGregor asked. Jenny's hand shot up instantly. "Miss Wakeman? Is something wrong? Are you ill?"
"No sir, I just have a question." Jenny replied.
"Well this is a first... okay, what do you need?" Mr. McGregor asked kindly.
"Where is Townsville U.S.A. located?" Jenny asked. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Brad slap himself in the forehead, and several other students around her started snickering devilishly. Mr. McGregor gestured harshly for them to shut up, which they did before he got really bad. He walked down the isle toward Jenny with a gentle smile on his face.
"Townsville hasn't existed for over a hundred and twenty-five years." He told her gently. "The place was turned into a parking lot by radioactive experiments. It is permanently quarantined by the United Earth Government." Jenny looked down, taking in all this information before she looked up again.
"But where WAS it?" She asked. "For completions sake... I have to know all about the world for my world-saving duties." Mr. McGregor stared at her for a moment, then nodded in understanding.
"Twenty-five miles due East of Citiesville." Mrs. McGregor looked around at the rest of his class, who all had quiet solemn looks on their faces. "Alright people, focus on the task at hand now." The teacher headed back for the front of the class while Jenny modified her internal map to include the location of Townsville. When she was done she looked over and noticed Brad staring at her.
The bell rang soon enough and Jenny turned to leave, with Brad catching up to her quickly. "Don't do it Jenny." He told her. Jenny blinked and looked over at him in surprise. "Don't go to Townsville. You heard him, the place is radioactive enough to roast cockroaches." He said.
"Don't worry about it Brad, I have no intention of getting myself melted down by radiation." Jenny replied as they moved on to their next classes. The rest of the school day faded into a memory, and finally Jenny was free to take to the sky. Overwhelmed by curiosity to find the truth, she activated her Butterfly jets and streaked over several cities to reach the coordinates Mr. McGregor had given her.
It looked like a smoldering crater, and what seemed like a legion of army personnel were positioned around the perimeter. She floated up to the line of guards, and one took notice of her. He approached her with a grim expression. "This place is off limits."
"Can you tell me just what happened to it?" Jenny asked curiously.
"Radiation happened to it." The guard smirked. "The last nuclear experiment on the planet wound up roasting this place. Just turn around and leave, there's no getting in." Jenny quirked one eyebrow and looked past him at the barren wasteland. Suddenly she lunged forward past the guard, but didn't get very far before an electric surge ran through her body.
"AAAARGH!" She screamed in pain until the energy flung her backwards, sending her slamming into the ground. The guard walked up to her and smirked.
"I told you. The radiation is intense." He leaned down to pick her up, but could only strain with no success to lift her heavy frame. Jenny shook her head... that had been no radiation. That was an electric surge... a shield around the perimeter. She pushed herself to her feet, looking over at the guard. "Now if you don't mind, please leave the area." He told her.
Jenny looked around at the other guards fingering their guns, then took to the sky again. They were hiding something... but it really wasn't her business. Her crusade to know the truth about the Powerpuff Girls wasn't important enough to go against world security. There had to be other ways to find out the truth...
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"And here we have the Tremorton Library. Kind of boring but a good place to come to cure insomnia." Brad grinned as his female companion flashed him an amused smile. "And if you'll follow me right inside here, we can see the rows of books that I've never read, but read reviews of that said that they were actually pretty good." He marched through the library to continue his potential girlfriend's tour of the town. "And here's the T section, where you can find everything from Tarnished reputations, to... Teenage robots..." He trailed off when he spotted Jenny sitting at a table, reading rapidly through a book.
"If you'll excuse me Francine." Brad smiled at her before walking over to his friend's table, sitting down beside her. "Jenny..."
"I've been reading for hours, and not one mention of a nuclear blast in Townsville." Jenny told him hurriedly. "They've got to be hiding something... but why would they want to hide the Powerpuff Girls?"
"Jenny!" Brad shouted in her ear. Jenny jumped in surprise and looked over at him. "Don't you think you're carrying this a little too far? I mean, you're sitting in a library! Reading books! All because of some fairy tale."
"Well what if they're real? They dedicated their lives to protecting the world, so we shouldn't just forget about them. My mom says that people who fight for others deserve to be remembered." Jenny retorted.
"She just says that so you'll keep saving the world." Brad remarked. Jenny growled and stood up, shoving him away from her.
"Whatever, there's obviously nothing in here, I'm going to have to look somewhere else." She turned to stomp out of the library with her fists clenched at her sides. She ignored Brad's cries of protest until she took to the sky again, easily outdistancing him. She landed in front of her house and marched inside, heading straight into the lab.
Her mom was out for the day, so she had her run of the place. Normally, that would mean party... but she was too distracted for that. She approached her mother's main computer and sat down in front of it. She hooked it up to the World Wide Network and opened a small compartment in hr forehead, pulling out a thin wire. She plugged it into the computer.
Information flooded through her processor. Thousands of books worth of information each second, all processed and packaged away inside of her memory banks. She discovered that tacos were considered a possible source of cancer in rats, and grass was more nutritional than lettuce in humans... but nothing about the Powerpuff Girls until she stumbled upon a collection of children's cartoons.
"What's this...?" Jenny asked herself softly. She drew one of the movies into her processor and let it run through her mind.
"Sugar, spice, and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girl! But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction. Chemical-X. Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born! Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil!"
"A child's cartoon?" Jenny sighed and turned off the cartoon. "Maybe mom is going senile... huh?" A strange power surge ran through her body from the connector wire, paralyzing her so that she couldn't even unplug herself. "Agh!" Jenny clenched her eyes shut in pain as the energy flooded through her, causing her limbs to twitch spastically.
"Help us..." A high-pitched voice spoke into her mind. It was soft at first, but it soon grew to an unbearable pitch. "Get us out of here! HELP US!" Suddenly the connector wire burst into flames from the strain, freeing Jenny. She caught the flaming wire and quickly put out the fire, standing up straight.
"They're real... and they need help..." Jenny turned away from the computer, clenching her fists. "I know where they are... and I WILL help them..."
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The scorched and blasted landscape that had once been the city of Townsville was smoldering under a massive heat wave the likes of which had never been recorded before. The ground itself almost seemed to be melting, and the soldiers who still stood their ground around the perimeter were sweating buckets. But they stood their ground, well trained and ready to do their job regardless of living conditions.
They looked up as something reflected the intense light of the sun, barreling towards them at breakneck speed. The officer near the front gate of the compound just outside of the city limits looked back at his commander. "Sir, Earth defense unit XJ-9 is approaching again."
"She must have left something here last time." The commander walked out of the base to join the other soldiers. XJ-9 flew close to the ground and barreled toward the base, leaving a trail of kicked up dust behind her. The commander's eyes widened when she raised his hands to her sides. Her fingers withdrew into her arms, to be replaced by two-foot long scimitars.
Her eyes glowed with barely contained electricity. "Something's wrong... she's not stopping! Put the base on aler-" before be could even finish the robot whipped past him and the lower ranking officer, streaking toward the bunker. The commander looked down in shock to see his own body beginning to slide apart...
XJ-9 landed in the middle of the bunker's surface, with the soldiers around her staring in shock. "All hands, open fire!" One officer screamed. Gun shots blared as bullets pelted the robot from all sides. Jenny leapt straight into the air, carried upward by her pigtails jets as her arms came together in front of her into a long tube with several barrels near the front.
A string of missiles flew from the barrel of the minigun, blowing chunks out of the bunker's fences and buildings. Bodies flew through the air, some mangled and burned beyond recognition while others were left wounded and in pain. When the barrage of fire and explosions finally ended, the entire surface level of the bunker was left in ruins. XJ-9 floated down to the ground as her legs reformed into a massive drill.
She dug deep into the ground, until she emerged into a central chamber. Her limbs reformed properly and she landed, approaching the massive computer in the middle of the room. She stopped when she heard a voice from behind her... a scientist shaking with fear.
"Don't do that, XJ-9... you have no idea what you're doing." He warned her shakily. Jenny turned to look back at him, her eyes pulsing with electricity until they were barely recognizable.
Her voice was higher than normal, as if being pushed out at too high a volume. Still, it sounded soft... almost flutelike. "The Powerpuff Girls WILL be free." XJ-9 turned back to the control console and raised one metallic arm high above her head.
"No! DON'T!" The scientist screamed. He was too late though. XJ=9's metal fist came down on the console, shattering the top with a screech of metal and sparks combined with her own grunt. The robot's arm touched the electrical wires and even more energy pumped through her. She screamed in pain before the console exploded, throwing her back against the steel wall hard enough to put a dent in it.
She collapsed to the ground, her systems fluctuating until finally her backup generators kicked in. "Ugh..." Jenny raised one hand to her head and opened her eyes. "What... where am I?" She pushed herself to her feet, looking around at the ruined control room. "I must have... come to talk to them about the girls. There must have been an attack!" Her pigtails turned upward and she streaked through the hole in the ceiling.
When she emerged she gasped in shock. The military bunker was filled with dead and dying soldiers... the ground was painted red with their blood and their cries of pain filled the air. "Who... wh..." Slowly Jenny looked down, seeing her own arms covered up to the elbows in blood. "No..." A dark laugh cut the air from behind her.
She whirled, shocked to see that where the smoldering crater had been, an entire city now lay. The buildings were decayed and crumbling from disrepair, but it was completely intact. Floating between her and the city was a crimson figure with crablike claws for hands and a dark laugh echoing from his throat. "Finally... someone was stupid enough to come looking for the Powerpuff Girls..." He grinned as his surprisingly dulcet tone faded.
"I... what..." Jenny stuttered, raising her own bloodstained hands in front of her. "What did you... what did I... do...?" Her hands shook before her eyes.
"Isn't it obvious?" The demonic figure let out a mocking laugh, floating up to her so that they were face-to-face. "You freed me after one hundred years of imprisonment within that accursed city." His voice melted into a dark growl. "Now the world will feel my anger!" His arm shot forward with such blinding speed even her sensors couldn't pick it up.
His claw gripped her throat tightly, holding her face close to his as he spoke in a soft tone. "As a reward... I will let you live..." He dark voice returned. "To watch the world BURN!" He whirled and threw her toward the city like a missile. She plowed through several buildings until she slammed into the street. She skidded along the pavement in a shower of sparks until finally coming to a stop.
"Ugh... I'm so confused..." Jenny pushed herself to her hands and knees, staring down at her bloodstained arms. She looked up in surprise when she heard a soft noise nearby, but she could see no source. Curiously she switched vision modes, changing to infrared so that she could see heat sources. The entire city was lit up by the heat wave, but there were patches of blue wandering around the streets... cold spots...
"Let us rest..." Her hypersensitive instruments amplified a barely audible whisper. "So tired..." Jenny stood up and looked around, watching as the blue spots moved around the street. She looked up toward one of the buildings, seeing a single blue spot sitting in a second story room. There were also three other spots, pitch black...
Jenny activated her pigtail engines and hovered up to one of the three windows, putting her hands on one of them to stare inside. The blue spot beside the bed seemed to be hovering over the others. "You just rest..." A whisper floated out to Jenny.
"There's something wrong with us..." A whisper emanated from one of the black auras. "Isn't there... Professor...?"
"Something you can't fix..." One of the other auras added.
Jenny tried to amplify the sharpness of her vision, and the blue aura took the glowing shape of a man with kind... but pained eyes. "Girls..." His whisper carried an emotion powerful enough for even the robot girl to understand perfectly. "I'm so sorry girls..."
The black auras had taken the shape of three round heads... the same ones she remembered from the book her mother showed her. "What will happen to Townsville... the world... once we're gone?" The shape in the middle whispered. Jenny climbed into the room and approached the bed cautiously.
"Don't you talk like that..." The blue aura replied. His arm reached down to stroke one of the black aura's cheeks, giving them a sad smile. "You just worry about getting better..." The whispers faded as the auras vanished, leaving Jenny staring down at the empty bed.
Her gaze shifted as they reappeared downstairs, so she ran out of the room and took the stairs two at a time to reach the living room. The black shapes were in front of the door, staring outside with the larger blue one hovering behind them. "Girls... please... no..." The large aura whispered.
"You have to leave Professor... please." One of the auras turned back toward the larger one. The large empty eyes stared up at the larger figure. "We have to do this... it's all we can do... get out..."
"Girls..." The large aura moved down and wrapped its arms around the small girls. "I'll always cherish you..." The larger figure stood again and moved through the door, staring back at the girls. They stared back until he was out of sight, then turned their gazes skyward.
Jenny moved up to the door and looked up, seeing a blood-red aura hovering above the city. Somehow, she knew this was the aura of the man she'd met before... "Come on girls... we can trap him... together." One of the small auras whispered, clasping hands with the two around it. Suddenly they all vanished, leaving Jenny standing alone in the small house.
Jenny deactivated her infrared vision, walking outside into the barren streets of Townsville. "They gave their lives to trap that thing here... but it also trapped them and everyone else in the city. How did they make the shield? They have to be somewhere... inside the city." She looked down in surprise when her chest plate opened and the communicator unfolded.
"XJ-9, I demand to know what..." Mrs. Wakeman's eyes went wide when she saw Jenny. It was then that the robot realized that she was still covered in blood from the military bunker. "It... it's true..."
"No mother, it's not what you think!" Jenny pleaded quickly. "At least I think it's not... but something big is happening! I-"
Mrs. Wakeman cut her off. "Stand down XJ-9. The authorities will be there momentarily... please accompany them back home immediately." She said. Jenny looked up when she heard a helicopter's blades approaching her position.
"Sorry mom... but I can't!" Jenny ripped the monitor out of her chest and threw it to the ground, darting back into the building for shelter. She hid behind the wall, listening to the soldiers rushing past in search of her. She sank to a sitting position on the floor, shaking violently. If she was able to dream, this would have been her worst nightmare...
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"So delicious..." A pair of crimson claws snapped together in satisfaction as the army swarmed through Townsville. It was a sight he'd been waiting to see... watching from the outside as the humans struggled in vain to find him. Now that he was free, there was nothing they could do to stop him. Unless they found those wretched girls... but even he hadn't been able to find them in all the time he'd been trapped.
He could remember the day they'd trapped him as if it had happened only moments ago. He'd had over a century to replay it all over and over in his mind. The day had finally come... they day he would eradicate Townsville, and then the world. The girls' inherent weakness was becoming clear, and their strength was waning... destiny was beginning to take hold.
Until they tricked him. They lured him into Townsville and vanished without a trace. Before he'd been able to act, the shield went up... a shield of such power that he could never get through it. He'd hunted for the girls, but when he could find no trace of them, he settled for those trapped with him...
Their deaths had been slow and agonizing. He'd made sure their desperation... their pain... was at its peak and never granted them the mercy of death until old age claimed them. In their desperation to trap Him, the Powerpuff Girls had doomed everyone they loved to suffer for their insult. He'd never thought the girls capable of such an act... it made the citizens' suffering even sweeter.
And now, after sacrificing all they held dear to keep him trapped, he was finally free. The world would feel his wrath once again, and with no Powerpuff Girls around to stop him, it was all at his mercy. But after one hundred years of isolation, he had no mercy left. Particularly for the blood of the one who caused him all of this aggravation... the blood of the man whose creations thwarted him so often.
He sensed that that blood now belonged to a woman...
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Jenny made her way down into the basement laboratory at the bottom of the house. The sound of tanks and helicopters aboveground drove her to seek refuge here in the relative quiet of the basement. It was dark, as the lights had failed long ago, but her night vision lit it up like daytime. She walked around the lab leisurely, examining the broken beakers and destroyed equipment.
She whirled when she heard a soft whisper behind her. "Back here..." It called. "This way." It sounded different from the auras up above. Jenny followed the direction of the voices, soon coming to another steel door in the back of the lab. She pushes it open, emerging into a dark mass of space... a hologram.
She activated her digital vision, seeing past the hologram to see a podium set in the middle of a large square room. Three beautiful women lay on it with snow-white hair draped down to the ground. All three wore white silken robes, and all three had their eyes closed in slumber.
"The Powerpuff Girls..." Jenny approached the mechanical podium, touching one of the girls lightly. That done, she switched back to normal vision. She could now see the girls normally in front of her. "Girls, you have to wake up..." She shook the arm she was touching lightly.
A pair of large eyes opened slowly. They were pure white, with just a hint of pink coloring the irises. The other two opened their eyes as well, turning to gaze at her with white surrounded by hints of green and blue.
Jenny stared down at her, running her hand along the woman's arm, almost not believing she was really one of them. "I still don't understand... what's happening? Who is that man who escaped? What did I do?" Jenny asked. She didn't expect them to have any answers, but answer they did.
"What you unleashed is a demon..." The pink eyed one said. The green eyed one continued. "We trapped it a hundred years ago..." The blue one finished. "With our excess powers."
"But why do this? According to my mother, you defended the world from everything... including this guy. Why did you have to do this to yourselves?" Jenny asked.
The pink-eyed woman replied. "The Chemical-X in our bodies went out of control." The green-eyed woman continued. "It grew stronger than our physical forms could handle... it was tearing us apart." The blue-eyed woman continued. "So we used them to create the shield that trapped... Him... here." The pink-eyed woman finished this time with a smirk. "Now we can barely move... the Chemical-X in our bodies is drained..."
"But he tossed me aside like a doll... I can't fight this thing without you..." Jenny said.
"We need more pure Chemical-X..." The pink-eyed woman replied. "Without it, we're completely powerless..."
Jenny sighed in defeat. There was no Chemical-X left, it had been refined into engine fuel and the chemical itself was no longer in production. Maybe that would do... but it was too big a risk... if only... wait... 'His blood runs through my veins... and yours, since it's his chemical that powers your systems.' That was why she was so different from other robots... Mrs. Wakeman had used pure Chemical-X as her power source!
"Don't worry, I have an idea." Jenny marched up to the center of the podium, watched by the three woman around her. She raised her arm, opening a small hatch to reveal several different wires. She grabbed one and pulled it out carefully, using her jaw to sever it. Precious black liquid fell from her arm, falling into the empty tube in the middle of the podium.
The effect was immediate. All three girls gasped as it flooded through the podium's tubes and into their bodies. Their eyes glittered with light, the color of their irises sharpening as the large black centers became clear. Their hair flooded with color, pink, black, and blond flowing around their bodies like cloaks.
Jenny gripped her arm to stench the flow of her vital fluid as the women rose from the podium, moving to hover above the ground. Jenny carefully tied her vein back together and turned toward them. She marched up to the pink-eyed woman and held out her hand. "I'm Jenny..."
The one in the middle smiled and took the preferred handshake. "I'm Blossom... this is Bubbles, and Buttercup."
"We should get out there and find Him. Niceties can wait." Buttercup commented seriously.
"My mom should be able to help us find him. She's the smartest person I know." Jenny said.
Blossom nodded. "Let's get out of here then." The three Powerpuff Girls streaked from the ground, plunging through the roof of the hologram room with Jenny following close behind them. She caught up and passed them quickly however, to lead them in the direction of her house. They'd moved to fast the military hadn't even seen them pass by.
Jenny's eyes widened when her house hove into view... with thick black smoke rising from intense flames. "No... no mother!" Jenny screamed, flying straight toward the ground. She slammed into the street hard enough to send cracks running across the road as she rushed up to the officer. "What's happening!? Where's my mom!?"
The police officer turned to her in surprise, backing away from her. "X... XJ-9... wh... what are you doing here?" He asked fearfully. Apparently her mom had sent out a warning about her... the blood that's till covered her shell couldn't help either.
"We don't have time to explain." Blossom walked up behind Jenny. Her movements were so smooth and regal that it was easy to mistake her for a princess from a fairy tale. "Did anyone see what caused this fire?"
"And who exactly are you?" The officer demanded, looking her up and down. "I don't recognize your species... did you come to this planet illegally?" He shook his head. "Figures you'd be hanging around with illegal aliens... I thought you were good Jenny."
Before anyone could react Buttercup appeared between them, grabbing the officer's jacket and lifting him off the ground. "We're the Powerpuff Girls you little prick, and we're here to save your butts. Now tell us what you know about this fire!" She growled darkly.
"W... we don't know anything! It just... happened! Witnesses say it was like the fire just rose straight from the Earth itself!" The officer shouted in a panic, pulling at Buttercup's arm in a vain attempt to escape.
"Straight from the Earth itself eh?" Blossom looked down at the ground. "We should investigate..." she looked around. "Where did Bubbles go?" Jenny looked around with the two Powerpuffs to see that one of them was indeed missing.
"Damnit Bubbles, we can't take Him on without all three of us here." Buttercup growled darkly.
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Dreams... for the last hundred years dreams had dominated her consciousness. Now... suddenly... Bubbles was free. The feel of the sun on her flesh, the caress of the wind through her long flowing hair... the sounds of the birds chirping high in the sky... it was all real. The sights, the sounds, the colors... it was all finally real again.
"Hey! Watch it!" Bubbles looked down in surprise as a small boy glared up at her. Apparently she'd stepped on one of the back spokes of his big-wheel and snapped it right off. "This thing is very expensive!" The boy complained.
"I'm sorry." Bubbles got down on her knees. "I'll help you fix it." The boy climbed off of the bike and Bubbles grabbed it along with the spoke. She put them together again and fired her heat-vision, melting the plastic back together. The boy's eyes grew wide. "There... give it a few minutes to cool before you use it again." Bubbles set the toy vehicle on the ground again.
"Wow! That was cool!" The boy ignored the big wheel, staring up at her. "What else can you do? Huh?" The boy grabbed the hem of her robe and jumped up and down excitedly. Bubbles laughed and patted him on top of his head.
"I can do lots of things..." Bubbles replied with a small smile. "I'm Bubbles."
"Tuck." The boy replied off-handedly. "Can you turn your body into all sorts of cool gadgets like my other robot friend?"
"What, you think I'm a robot?" Bubbles asked amusedly.
"Sure, only robots have eye-beams. Well... I guess the Cyclonians do too, but theirs are a lot more disgusting..." He shuddered.
"Well I'm no robot." Bubbles replied. "I'm a Powerpuff Girl." Tuck stared up at her, then burst out laughing.
"P... Powerpuff! Yeah right!" He laughed holding his stomach. He turned back to his big-wheel and climbed on. "Hey, just because I'm a kid doesn't mean I'm stupid!" He laughed again and took off down the sidewalk. "Powerpuff Girl... that's a riot..." Bubbles stared after him as he rode away.
"I don't get it..." Bubbles said softly. She pushed herself slowly to her feet and continued down the street. She looked around as she entered a section of down dedicated to a string of small stores with vendors announcing their wares. She stopped when she saw a video store nearby, with a strange tape playing on the TV hanging in the corner.
"It... it's us..." Bubbles muttered under her breath, watching the cartoon version of herself on the TV screen. She approached the TV, watching intently. It was all there, the girls, the Professor, Him...
"Yeah, that one's a classic alright." Bubbles looked to the side to see the store clerk watching the monitor with her. "One of the last surviving products from the early twenty-first century. Its creator was a genius, its survived this long. Heck, some people insist the Powerpuff Girls were real." He chuckled and shook his head.
"W... we are..." Bubbles replied softly.
The clerk stared at her for a second, then chuckled and shook his head. "Yeah girl, they're real." He walked back toward his counter. After everything the girls had done... nobody remembered them. They were just a children's cartoon... an entertaining memory. Everything they'd really done was forgotten... after all the sacrifices they'd made...
"Bubbles, there you are." Bubbles turned around to see Blossom, Buttercup and Jenny watching her from the door. It was Blossom who spoke. "Come on, we have to find a way to stop Him."
"O... okay..." Bubbles gulped and walked away from the TV, making her way out to the street with her sisters and the teenage robot.
"Okay, if there are no more distractions..." Buttercup glared at Bubbles for a moment, then turned to look at Jenny. "We need to get underground, since that's where the cop said the fire came from."
"One tunnel, easy." Jenny floated into the air with her pigtail engines, her arms and legs all forming into drills. She threw herself at the ground and plunged into it, leaving a large tunnel behind her. The Powerpuff Girls floated in after her one at a time, following her deep into the Earth. They tunneled for a long time, searching for any sign of Him or Jenny's mother.
Why do this? Nobody remembered what they did before... nobody cared what they did now. If they were saved, they would simply go on with their lives. Nobody even knew she existed. What was the point of this? Why... why was she thinking this way? Because it was true... they wouldn't care even if they knew... they were all ungrateful... because she didn't deserve their gratitude...
"Found something!" Jenny's echoing voice snapped Bubbles out of her contemplative state. The robot had broken through into a small cavern deep under the earth's surface. The Powerpuff Girls emerged to find magma streams running across most of the floor, with droplets of piping hot magma falling from the ceiling. "We're pretty far down."
"And yet you found us nonetheless." A soft, taunting voice told them. The girls whirled to see him hovering near a far wall with a gray-haired woman strapped to the wall by bands of dirt and roots. "And with the Powerpuff Girls no less... it seems we're just fated to meet again, and again, and again. The battlefield has changed... but the struggle has not it seems."
"Give back the woman, and for once, just give it up." Blossom demanded, floating ahead of the others with her arms crossed over her chest. "It doesn't matter what you do, you will never succeed now that we're back. So you'd might as well just give it up."
"So you can be the heroes again. Heroes that the world forgot?" The demon grinned, his eyes turning to stare straight into Bubbles'. "Those people don't care about your heroics... they care that they're alive. That's all... they don't care who saves them." Bubbles stared at him blankly, the voice echoing through her mind. It was true... they were nothing more than children's entertainment to them...
"It... it's..." Bubbles squeezed her eyes shut as tears slid down her cheeks. "It's true... no matter what we do... they don't care!" Bubbles shouted, clutching her head in pain. It was all becoming garbled...
"Bubbles, don't listen to him!" Blossom's arms wrapped around her shoulders. "He's trying to mess with you!"
"You leave Bubbles alone!" Buttercup shouted angrily. She and Jenny floated toward the crimson demon.
"Go ahead... save them... they will only forget about you again once you're gone." Him growled. Bubbles couldn't take it anymore, the pressure in her mind was unbearable. She jerked her head back and let out a piercing scream, powerful enough to send a shockwave rippling through the magmatic chamber.
"Bubbles no!" Blossom clasped her hand over Bubbles' mouth to muffle the noise, but the damage was done. A shuddering moan echoed through the cavern as the echoes began to cave-in the entire place.
"Farewell Powerpuff Girls. We'll see how an eternity of imprisonment alone suits you." Him vanished into a cloud of smoke, disappearing into thin air.
"Mother! I'm coming!" " Jenny took off across the magma, weaving through the falling boulders and splashing lava. A bit splashed onto her stomach, eating through the metal shell quickly and leaving a hole the size of a baseball. Mrs. Wakeman was still unconscious and strapped to the far wall.
"Jenny! Hurry up! We have to get out of here!" Buttercup shouted after her. Bubbles blinked in confusion, watching the spectacle before her. She caused this... but Blossom gave her a gentle smile before turning to Buttercup.
"I'm getting Bubbles out of here. Make sure Jenny and her mom get out!" Blossom whirled and streaked up through the tunnel they'd made before. The cave-in had already blocked parts of the tunnel, but the two Powerpuff Girls punched through them with such force that they were barely slowed down at all. Bubbles just clung to her sister, still too confused to do much.
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"I've got you mom..." Jenny sliced through the earthy bonds with one of her many blades and pulled her unconscious mom off of the wall. Buttercup floated up to them quickly as the magma rose around them. "We've got to get back to the exit!"
"No time, become a drill or something and get us out of here!" Buttercup shouted.
"I can't push through the rock fast enough, the lava's rising too fast." Jenny replied, floating up against the ceiling as the magma bubbles up at her. Buttercup's feet dipped into the white-hot liquid, but she barely seemed to notice.
"Just get a drill out!" Buttercup shouted. Jenny nodded and wrapped her arms around her unconscious mother. Her legs formed together into one massive drill.
"I can't fly upside down..." Jenny said.
"Fine, just turn it on." Buttercup surprised the robot girl by grabbing her and turning her upside down, thrusting her legs up toward the ceiling. Jenny turned the drill on to bore through the rock, carried forward by Buttercup's massive strength. Jenny stared back at the magma, which was rising up after them at an alarming rate.
"Ow!" Jenny yelped in pain when she felt something hit her arm. She looked down to see a drop of water had splashed onto her. Soon the walls around them were dripping with moisture. "We're under a lake! I don't handle water very well..." Jenny confessed.
"Geeze, I thought you were a superhero." Buttercup halted, pulling Jenny's unconscious mother out of her arms. "Just hold on." With Jenny and Mrs. Wakeman clutched under each arm Buttercup hurled herself upward, punching through the last layer of rock between them and the lake. Jenny screamed as the water flooded into the body through the hole in her side. She twitched spastically as her systems went ballistic. Her senses soon went dark, plunging her CPU into a barely active state.
"XJ-9..." Finally she could hear a voice... her senses had been reactivated. And she heard a comfortingly familiar voice hovering over her. "XJ-9 wake up, your systems are fully repaired." Jenny opened her eyes to look up at her mother, staring down at her worriedly. She was lying on a cold steel table in her mother's laboratory.
"Mom..." Jenny wrapped her arms around her mother smiling happily. "You're alive! We're both alive!" She stopped suddenly, pulling back to stare at her worriedly. "You... don't still think I..."
"Of course not, the girls explained everything." Mrs. Wakeman gestured to the Powerpuff Girls, who were gathered around the TV. There was a news report on, in which a reporter was speaking frantically.
"We repeat, all citizens are advised to stay indoors and avoid travel at all costs. We are under attack. Repeat. We are under at-" The reporter was cut off by a surge of static as an explosion send shockwaves through the ground beneath their feet.
"Apparently he decided to drop the subtle approach." Blossom walked up to the window near the front of the house and pulled the curtain aside. The sky outside was crimson, but the sun was clearly outlined in the red haze. It was still noon, but it looked more like sunset. "We have to take Him out, once and for all... somehow..."
"All we can do is trap him." Buttercup moved to stand beside her redheaded sister, staring out at the crimson sky. "I say we do it."
Blossom stared at her, then turned her eyes back toward Bubbles, who was sitting on the couch with a blank look on her face. "Bubbles." Blossom called. The blond Powerpuff looked over at her. "We can't do this without you... we can trap Him, but you know what it would mean..." she trailed off. Bubbles stared at her, then looked down at the ground.
"If we did... would anybody care?" Bubbles muttered.
"Bubbles, we don't do this for recognition." Blossom walked up to her, chiding her gently. Bubbles looked up at her in surprise. "We do this because it's right. It doesn't matter who remembers what a hundred years from now. What matters is that they are safe. It's our responsibility to see that they are, so let's go do it." She held out her hand.
Bubbles blinked, then smiled and took her hand. "Okay." Blossom pulled Bubbles to her feet quickly. "Let's trap Him..."
"I'm coming with you." Jenny pushed herself off of the steel table, approaching the girls. "It's my fault this is all happening... I want to make it right." Mrs. Wakeman walked up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder.
"I'm so proud of you XJ-9." She smiled slightly. "Now go, hurry all of you." Jenny nodded and powered up her jets as a pair of steel butterfly wings spread out from her back. The Powerpuff Girls took off through the air in streaks of white, followed by Jenny.
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"This world has lasted long enough." Him's dark growl penetrated the noise of screams and explosions. "It's time for it to end. And my world... will be born!" He raised his claws, drawing two streams of white-hot magma out of the Earth. They surged into the sky and spread out against the clouds like a liquid shield. The entire city was bathed in a blood-red glow.
"Not so fast." Blossom's voice challenged Him. He turned slowly to stare at the Powerpuff Girls, floating just a few yards away from him. The robot girl was behind them, with her butterfly-wing jets keeping her afloat in the air. Blossom smirked. "Like you said... again, and again, and again. So you had might as well give up, because you'll never get rid of us."
"This stalemate has continued for a long time." One of his claws snapped shut with an audible click, and he slowly started moving it about in the air. "But I have no intention of letting it continue any longer. It was fun girls, but it will not last forever."
"What are you doing?" Blossom demanded, watching his claw maneuver deftly through the air. It almost looked like a subtle twitch, but it moved with too much purpose and direction for it to be random. The demon grinned letting out a barking laugh.
"The heroes of today have no room for the relics of a bygone age." He told them. Blossom blinked in confusion, then shrieked when a metallic arm wrapped around her. A long blade pressed into her throat hard enough to draw a droplet of blood.
"Gck..." Blossom grunted, gripping Jenny's arm to try to loosen her grip. "Jenny no..."
"She's being controlled by Him again!" Buttercup growled and lunged forward. The robot whirled, thrusting her arm out and sending Blossom spiraling away as her blade came around in a silver arc. Buttercup caught it between her hands, thrusting her legs forward to slam them into Jenny's stomach. Jenny lunged forward again, knocking her leg aside and punching her in the face. Buttercup hurtled backward painfully. "Geeze... she's just a robot, why is she so strong!?"
Blossom reached up to feel her neck, with her hand coming away bloody. She blinked when she saw some black liquid mixed in with the crimson. "Her body is powered by Chemical-X. It must give her some kind of immunity to the full extent of our powers."
"Fantastic..." Buttercup muttered sarcastically as Jenny's fingers all withdrew into her palms to be replaced by two-foot blades. "Well? Any bright ideas Miss Idea? Because I'm open at this point."
"If she's anything like the computers back in our time, if we get enough of a power surge into her, it should reboot her systems to normal-mode. But it could also wipe out her mind..." Blossom ducked as the blades whizzed toward her. She lunged up and over the robot, doing a vertical flip to kick her in the back of the head.
"Here's hoping advanced technology protects against power-surges then." Bubbles threw her body forward, slamming shoulder-first into Jenny's chest. Jenny grabbed her shoulders and whirled just before they hit a nearby building, sending Bubbles plunging through the solid steel wall. She turned toward the other two Powerpuff Girls.
Buttercup streaked down to meet her, throwing a barrage of precision strikes at the robot's steel frame. Jenny's blades flashed around the Powerpuff Girl, but not one struck her as she danced through them to wrap her hand around the robot's throat. She thrust her back into the steel wall of a building, but the robot brought one of her legs up. The toe was sharp enough to dig into Buttercup's jaw and send her hurtling back through the sky.
Blossom sucked in a deep breath and let it all out in a rush of frozen air. A pair of massive fans erected themselves from the top of Jenny's head, turning toward the cold wave and activated in time to blow back at it. The two air-surges collided with a sound no different from a thunderclap and began swirling around each other dangerously.
The wind-streams combined to create a single spinning point, from which a tornado rapidly began to spread outward. Jenny threw herself into the tornado, streaking through it to grab Blossom and knee her in the stomach. Buttercup and Bubbles converged on them, slamming into Jenny from either side and wrapping their arms around her.
The tornado engulfed them all, roaring in anger as Jenny struggled to bring her blades around to plunge them into Blossom. Buttercup and Bubbles held onto her arms to keep her from bringing them forward, but her legs were still wrapped around Blossom, trapping her. A lightning strike lit up the sky outside the whirling walls of wind. Lightning... that meant it was probably raining...
Buttercup howled and threw herself forward, holding onto Jenny's arm. This caught everyone else off-guard, and she was yanked away from the other two Powerpuffs. "Come on Jenny, it's bath time!" She hurled the robot forward, sending her clear outside the tornado walls. The robot slammed into the building outside the tornado, rolling quickly to her feet.
The rain washed over her in sheets, pummeling her steel frame and dripping into her circuits. Her body began to twitch spastically even as she took to the air again to come toward them. The Powerpuff Girls readied themselves for another fight, but the robot girl didn't make it to them. Her eyes faded to pure white as she began to fall toward the ground.
Bubbles streaked down to catch her before she shattered against the street far below. She carried the robot up and set her gently on a nearby rooftop. She stood and floated up to join her sister again, who were floating outside the roaring tornado.
A clapping sound broke through the roaring winds and pounding rain as the demon appeared in front of them. "Congratulations, you've just beaten a fellow hero." He laughed wickedly. "It's funny how those distinctions vanish when one is faced with death. Everyone becomes an enemy."
"Enough of your banter." Blossom growled. "You've caused enough trouble for everyone. It's time to take you out of the picture."
Him laughed, putting his claws over his stomach. "That's a good one Blossom... if you could trap me, you would have done it over a century ago."
Blossom smirked "When you're dreaming for a hundred years, you have plenty of time to come up with new ways to use your powers." The girls lunged forward without warning snapping to a stop in a triangle around Him. Him started to vanish, but he reformed right where he was without going anywhere.
"Hey... what..." The demon blinked as the Powerpuff Girls' bodies began to glow.
"Say goodbye to the world, because it's the last time you'll ever see it." Blossom grinned. The girls' bodies grew even brighter, and their robes fluttered toward the street, with nothing but pure energy to lie against.
Jenny groaned and sat up, twitching from the rain. The top of her head opened up into a massive umbrella, shielding her form the pounding rain. "What's going on...?" She looked up to see the glowing girls surrounding the crimson demon. "Girls..." The Powerpuff Girls' bodies grew to a dangerously bright level, before suddenly the light faded.
A single pearl-white sphere dropped toward the ground like a stone. Jenny used her butterfly-wing jets to catch it before it hit the ground, landing nearby amid a crowd of startled onlookers. She set the sphere down and looked around at the confused faces.
Brad broke through the crowd and walked up to her, his bright red hair matted to his head. "Jenny, what just happened?" He asked in confusion. Jenny looked around slowly at the crowd...
________________________________________________________________________________
"That was the greatest battle of all time... with the greatest heroes in the world."
Sparks and debris flew in every direction as the mountain outside of Tremorton was reshaped by a pair of wildly flailing chainsaws. A crowd of onlookers watched as the robot worked tirelessly, forgoing school and world-saving duties. She had a more important duty right now.
"After one hundred years, they finally did what they always wanted to do..."
Jenny finished with the chainsaws and reformed her hands into a pair of pray cans. She flew around the mountains, spraying over every inch of the mountain with a water-proof shine.
"And this time, they will get what they've always deserved."
That done, Jenny flew down to the ground and hefted the pearl-white sphere. She flew up to the top of the mountain and placed it there, flying back down to the ground. The statue stood against the cliff face, depicting three women in white robes holding up the sphere that was all that remained from the battle in the middle of the city.
"This time... they will be remembered."
THE END