Disclaimer: The characters and locations depicted in "The Powerpuff Girls" belong to Craig McCracken and Cartoon Network. This is a not-for-profit derivative work.
No fictional characters were harmed in the making of this fan fiction.
The following morning, after everyone had washed and dressed - and Rocketman had said a tearful goodbye to Blossom and left to go back home - Gregory led the girls (still in their teenage forms) up to the console room.
"Are we going home then, Gregory?" asked Bubbles. Gregory activated the console before turning to look at her and her sisters.
"After a fashion, yes", he said. Speaking up to be heard over the roar of the quantum singularity drive, he said "First we're going somewhere else though."
"Where?" asked Blososom (not the typos again - argh!).
The grinding sounds of the time travel capsule's engines came to a halt, and Gregory pulled the lever that opened the door, revealing...a gigantic library.
"To... size=1 width=100% noshade>
Gregory lead the girls up to the front door, where they were stopped by a stereotypical bouncer-type person - tall, big, wearing a black suit and sunglasses and carrying a clipboard.
"Stop", the guy said, booming in his loud, deep voice. "You members?"
"I am", said Gregory, and gave the bouncer his username - Hairy Gregory - and his password. Then he added "The Powerpuff Girls aren't members though."
"Oh, right," the bouncer said, and handed them each a nametag that had their name and GUEST printed on it in big letters. "Here's the terms of service, ladies", he said, handing them a massive book, most of which was filled with blank pages. "You have to abide by these rules at all times, or you'll be thrown out and barred from ever returning.". Blossom and Bubbles' eyes widened in surprise at this statement, while Buttercup's narrowed as she calculated just how easily she could whoop this guy's ass.
"What's with all the blank pages?" Buttercup asked, skimming quickly through the book.
"That's just in case we decide to add any more rules - never hurts to be prepared", said the bouncer, and waved them through the double doors of the imposingly large building.
Inside, it was massive. Aisle upon aisle of books, from floor to twenty-foot high ceiling, stretching as far as the human eye could see. Thousands of people were milling about, picking up copies of books and taking them to a quiet corner in which to read, and the girls could clearly see that most of them wore similar GUEST tags. A relative few, like Gregory, has members tags instead, and some of these were going through a door marked "Authors only beyond this point".
"What's through there?" asked Bubbles, pointing to the door.
"There?" Bubbles nodded. "Ah, well that's where I'm taking you. That's where we authors place the master copies of our stories, so that they can be accessed from the template books out here in the library. Now be quiet - you shouldn't be in there", he said, and lead them over towards the Author's special area.
They entered, and Gregory headed over to a desk and logged onto check his email momentarily. While the girls waited by the door, they noticed a boy of no older than fourteen years heading towards them. It was clear that he was a boy, yet his face was strangely indistinct, much as when a person's face is obscured on the news or in a TV documentary. He saw the Powerpuff Girls and moved faster, waving a greeting.
"Hi Powerpuff Girls - my name's Scott Boyo"
"Oh, hello Scotty Boyo, how do you know us?"
"I watch your show all the time", he answered, as though this should be patently obvious.
"Why are you being guarded by that big man, Scotty Boyo?" asked Bubbles, feeling a little intimidated by the size of the man standing behind the boy.
"Oh, I've just been kicked out again", Scotty Boyo said, as the bouncer standing directly behind him glowered at the scene transpiring. This bouncer looked exactly like the one at the main entrance, insofar as one could tell, as the sunglasses made it difficult to recognise them facially. "And it's not Scotty Boyo, it's Scott Boyo - I've had to change my name twice already."
"But why?" Buttercup asked. "Why have you been kicked out?" The bouncer grunted.
"Someone doesn't like my stories - thinks there perverted or some such. No sooner than I post my fics here, there removed. It sucks."
"What sort of stories do you write?" Blossom asked, vaguely interested.
"Actually, I mostly write Powerpuff Girls stories", said Scott Boyo. This really perked the girls' interest.
"What sort?" Bubbles said. Scott Boyo both got an extremely alarmed look on his face as he knew the answer to this question might not appeal to the girls, and really didn't want to end up in hospital. Thankfully (almost), the bouncer grunted and prodded SB in the back with a baseball bat he was carrying, and the boy was walked out of the front entrance, his name also being added to the blacklist of ex-authors.
"What was that all about?" asked Blossom curiously, looking to Gregory for an answer as he walked back over to them. As all three girls looked up inquisitively at him, he bit the bullet so to speak.
"Well...his stories are a bit...mature."
"Mature how? Like lots of violence and killing an' stuff?" asked Buttercup, jumping up and down with excitement.
"No...", Gregory averred, "Mature as in kinky." That stopped the girls dead for a moment.
A tumbleweed rolled by.
"...Anyway...shall we continue?" he asked, pointing the way as the girls floated ahead of him a little.
As they walked down between the rows of computers where various authors sat and typed their stories, sent emails, did their shopping online, all the usual stuff. At once, all the computers shut down and a massive groan of protest went up from all the assembled authors as a loudspeaker system went into work.
"We're sorry for the technical difficulties folks, but our primary server and both of its backups just went down. We think we've contracted a bug, but we're not sure. This site will then, unfortunately, be out of action for at least the next two days. Thanks for bearing with us." Another collective groan, even louder than the first if that's possible.
Buttercup quickly realised that this meant that there was nothing to do here. "So whadda we do now?" she asked. Gregory tapped the side of his nose in a secretive fashion, and lead them towards the back of the massive room, past all the computers where authors were now playing computer games or surfing other sites, or, in some cases, still typing away at their fics. Right at the very back of the room, Gregory opened a door saying "Admittance to FicFactory staff only; keep out under pain of death!", and motioning for the girls to stay there and keep lookout, he slipped silently through the door.
A few minutes later, while the girls waited for Gregory to reappear, a boy wearing a bad wig and equally fake beard strolled down from the front of the room, and said, "Hello again girls." The girls, having only met one author in here - really, I just don't want to be accused of bad characterisation - gasped at the realisation of who it was.
"Scott Boyo?" Blossom asked, startled. "B-b-b-but how?"
"Simple really." He motioned to the bad disguise. "They didn't recognise me, so I rejoined as a new author. And the names not Scott Boyo - I'm "Another Scott kid" this time." They mouthed "oh".
"So, what ARE your stories about anyway?" asked Blossom. "We are sixteen after all."
"I'm not sure I should tell you - I fear for my life", he said, half-jokingly. Bubbles and Blossom gave him their cutest possible looks, and finally his resolve cracked. "Well, why don't I show you instead?" he said, and lead them over to a nearby vacant terminal. "They removed my fics from their site, but my own site is still up", and so saying he opened it to the front page of his site.
"You're not very artistic are ya?" Buttercup said, scornfully. Blossom disagreed.
"I think the simplistic design is much better; less eye-strain."
Bubbles had already found the one picture on the site - a picture of her, looking absolutely adorable. "I love it!" she exclaimed, while Buttercup made puking noises behind her. Then she backed up and headed into the fan fiction, and...
"Tickling? That's why they keep throwing you out?"
"Yeah", Another Scott kid said, distastefully. "Some tosspots figure that it's paedophilic or some such crap, but it's just harmless fun."
"Of course it is" Bubbles agreed, and grab Buttercup's waist, instantly wiping the scowl of her face. While they calmed down (and Buttercup bonked Bubbles lightly on the head in retaliation), Blossom had been reading the other PPG story on the small site. Her mouth hung open and her breathing was heavy as she finished reading it.
"...Whoa..." she said, licking her dry lips. "That was...amazingly written, Another Scott kid."
"Thanks Bloss. But I'd better be off for now, before they notice I'm back in here." And he waved goodbye before walking back out into the public area of the library and switching to a GUEST tag. Then Gregory snuck back out from the staff area, grinning happily.
"What did you just do in there?" asked Bubbles, worried they'd get in trouble.
"Not much; just gave their systems a virus that will insure uninterrupted service of FicFactory for years to come", he said, gleefully, as a whirring sound started up in the background, followed by another announcement.
"Well folks", the announcer said, bemused, "whatever we were doing just now it worked, and the site is back up and shouldn't experience any more problems for the time being. Happy reading, writing and reviewing then, and y'all have a nice day now!"
As they left the building and headed back to the TARDIS across the road, Gregory gave a terrifyingly evil laugh; not like your average 2-dimensional TV or film villain, but a laugh that actually chilled right to the core everyone who heard it as they passed...
In one of the locked rooms in the building, some tech nerds were lounging in front of a mainframe. Most of them were probably in their early twenties, and they were drinking, smoking and playing cards. A junior tech nerd came running into the room, shouting, "It's back up already!"
Everybody at once scrambled to their stations, and found that it was absolutely true.
"But how? We pulled the plug and said we wouldn't do anything for 3 days at least; even better, a week. Who did this?"
"Don't look at me", another nerd said, "I just come up with the semi-plausible reasons for why the site is temporarily out of order", at which everyone sniggered. "My best work was when I said we were moving to faster and more reliable servers," he said, and kicked the side of the antique server the site was hosted on - bought way back in 1958, with 1TB space and never having had Defrag run on it; EVER.
The server whirred angrily for a second, and then shut down. The nerds smiled, before flashes of bright green light began emitting once every two seconds, followed about a minute later by the systems coming back to life of their own accord.
"What the fuckl" they all screamed as one, and began beating the equipment with whatever came to hand; in one guy's case, the nerd standing next to him. Each time, the computers cut out, but started up again less than a minute later. Finally, they all stopped, exhausted, and took puffs of their inhalers.
"Why are we...puff...doing this?" asked the one who was obviously the head nerd. He bent down and pulled the main plug out of the wall, stopping all activity instantly. They all gave a huge sigh of relief.
BEEP!
"What was that?" one asked, and then noticed a cursor still flashing on one screen. Moments later, all the computers were once more running at full power, although the powerpoint was still switched off and unplugged. When a random tech nerd wearing a facsimile red shirt from the original Star Trek gave a single solitary scream, electricity arced out from a nearby hard drive and killed him instantaneously. The door locked, and the computer spoke up.
"I am the voice of Hairy Gregory," it said, "and I have decreed that from this day forth, your hitherto crappy and unreliable site will be freed from all future technical faults, accidental or otherwise." The last part was said with a certain menace that was not lost on the assemblage of nerds. The computers began to absorb the geeks at the quantum-mechanical level...
Blossom was the first to open her eyes, and looked around to ascertain her surroundings. She appeared to be lying strapped down on a medical examination table, with Bubbles on her left and Buttercup on her right. She moaned slightly, and shortly a vision of Professor Utonium was hovering above her face, upside down from her field of view.
"Unngh...where am I?" she asked, as Bubbles and then Buttercup began to awaken also. They similarly looked to their dad for an answer. At this point, they also noticed...
"And why are we still kids?" Bubbles asked in her once more high, almost squeaky voice. The Professor laughed good-naturedly.
"STILL kids? It's only been a few hours since you were knocked unconscious, Bubbles", he said, indicating the clock and the calendar on the wall behind him. He unstrapped the girls and followed them upstairs and into the lounge, where they all took seats. The girls wisely decided to keep their adventures a secret, figuring they were a joint hallucination brought on by whatever accident knocked them out.
"Why were we unconscious, Professor?" Blossom asked, and felt the bandage around her head gingerly.
"You don't remember?" The girls shook "no" and winced at the throbbing feeling it caused. "The infinicannon blew out - a power overload, it seems. With you three still inside it - thank god you have superpowers, or you'd be toast by now."
The next Monday, on their usual flight to school, Blossom finally decided someone should talk about all the weird things that had happened. Her sisters agreed on every detail, so they knew it wasn't just THEIR OWN imagination, for they all remembered it; but still, had any of it been REAL?
They were still discussing this while they were seated in third form registration, when the teacher walked in followed by five boys, all of whom looked familiar.
"Class, we have five new students joining us; I hope you'll make them all feel very welcome", she said, and then muttered, "I don't know how they expect us to pack all these kids in, really."
She then introduced the boys in the order they were standing in a line by the board. "They are: Rocketman", everyone laughed at the name, "Boomer, Brick, Butch, and finally Gregory." Gregory noticed the Powerpuff Girls looking at them and thought Yes! I've done it now! Alas, not.
Blossom said, "I like that Rocketman. He looks quite the hunk", then blushed furiously when he gave her a flirtatious wink. If she hadn't already been sitting down, she would've fallen down because her knees went weak at the mere sight of him. She fanned herself with her maths textbook.
Buttercup was busily arm-wrestling with Mitch, and hadn't noticed anything the teacher or the new boys had said, or that they even existed.
Bubbles was being chatted up by Mike, who was sitting directly behind her.
At the front of the class, Rocketman did a celebration dance, and shouted "Score!" Gregory and the Rowdyruff Boys all looked at each other and said, "WTF was that?" They were all subsequently put in detention for talking in netspeak.
And so endeth this story...which many I'm sure are glad of, as it was completely ludicrous throughout (and hurt a lot of heads in certain places).
Fin.
Review responses:
PinkPuff: No, I understood that; it's quite easy to understand something without knowing what the hell it's on about. Reading it in chronological order probably would be best - if you can figure out where everything goes in time. My suggestion would be to draw a timeline for each of the five characters (that's a LOT of line though). :)
No, the necklace was stuck in the loop; outside of it, it doesn't exist. Buttercup merely went back in time by thirty seconds that she then lived through again, making her 30 seconds older than she should be (although she is occasionally loopy. :P)
Ivygreen: Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I did actually start that alt. Chapter 9, but chose to wipe it. Hope this non-time-travel chappie is more to your (and everyone else's too) liking.
Ud the Imp: I already put your nuggets in the post - you mean you haven't received them yet? Damn those postmen...I'll keep trying, I swear. :D I thought of doing an Xover with Buffy (the only other show I know well enough), but then decided that my last chapter should have an actual point, hence Scotty Boyo's appearance and the commando attack on :D
Lynx Sarnage: Puts out the fire in Lynx Sarnage's brain I solemnly swear, from this day forward, never to write another time travel fic. And I'll pay for the surgery to repair the fire damage in your head. :) Prefer the less hectic pace of this chapter?
Dooly: My mind didn't implode (though it did hurt like hell...). But I can understand - this is the last chapter anyway, so your safe from further time meddling.
DHSer89: I dunno - I've read a lot of good SF (inc. time travel stuff) and thought "I can do better!" and created something that in no way produced a paradox (hence logical), while being totally insane (hence illogical). This is more aimed at certain aspects of FF...er, I mean, (not a real site).