The Powerpuff Girls - L in R'lyeh Rising
[PPGZ][HPL]The Powerpuff Girls - L in R'lyeh Rising
By Henry J. Cobb
The Powerpuff Girls were created by Craig McCracken. Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z was produced by Cartoon Network, Toei Animation, and Aniplex. The L part is from H. P. Lovecraft rather than say an Aegean island.
This is my second story about the PPG-L, though they have doubtlessly had many adventures since their introduction.
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Miyako Gotokuji tossed in her sleep. She found herself floating in a strange dark place. It was too dark to see herself, but she could tell that somehow she wasn't really herself, but something horrible. And the worst part was that something was crying out something in the distance, some strange almost sound that somehow was her name, but it wasn't, it wasn't.
She awoke in convulsions, almost falling out of her bed, but then a cool calm settled on her and she knew that she was Bubbles, protector of the innocent. She could see that she was in her own room, but she didn't need the light of her Octi night light to see this, for she had super vision.
She lay back in her bed and closed her eyes, but she found no rest. There was something out there, something from the L-dimension. She sat up and her belt buckle buzzed. Why did she have to wear such a heavy belt over her nightie? Something about it offended her finely tuned fashion sense, but there was a reason for it, something important that she just couldn't put her finger on. But, at least this way it was easy to stay in touch.
Bubbles unclasped the transformation control disk from her belt buckle and opened it like a compact. She instantly recognized her teammate whose face appeared in the screen, "Hello Miss Blossom, did you feel it also?"
"Yes Bubbles, we're on our way now. Hurry up and get changed."
The screen went black so Bubbles folded the device and returned it to her belt. It was not like Blossom to be so abrupt. She also must be worried.
Bubbles stood and said her transformation phrase. Somehow she never could hear the words she spoke for it. She closed her eyes and felt her body unfold and refold again, like origami. She even had to stoop a bit for some reason, her room suddenly too small for comfort, but when she opened her eyes she could see that the ceiling was stillfar above her 11 year old body, but she was now in her superhero costume. It was something to figure out later, for now the Powerpuff Girls had a mission.
Bubbles crawled onto her bed, opened the window then flew outside, hanging for a moment in midair as she closed her window behind her then she was away, climbing slowly to a hundred meters above the ground. She turned in place then satisfied that she had found the right direction she sped off, leaving a blue streak behind her. Ahead she could see the green and red streaks of her teammates, she'd have to put on the speed to catch them.
Suddenly her teammates came to a halt just in front of New Townsville's city hall tower. Bubbles skidded a little ways forward, then floated back, between and slightly behind the other two.
There was a figure in the gloom. He stepped forwards towards the three girls who floated in midair and they could see as he came into the light that he was a man in a business suit. At over six feet tall he was much taller than the girls, but they had faced much larger foes. He was bald save his eyebrows and seemed to be of Egyptian descent.
The expression he wore, the air of unquestionable authority reminded Bubbles of the pictures she had seen of pharaohs. But this man could not be a man, for he had too much of the essence of the L-dimension about him. When he spoke his voice had that same unquestionable authority, but his delivery was a tiny bit flat, as if he had never spoken before.
"This is a marvelous dimension you three have found, but why have you not contacted me?"
"Who are you?" It was Blossom who asked. She always took the lead in such things. Buttercup would rather express herself with violence and as for Bubbles herself, she felt it was best to hang back for a bit and get to know new people better, the better to make a good first impression.
"How can you not know me? For I am your absolute lord and master, N-"
The man said something, but Bubbles could not catch it, "What was that, it was Gnarly-something?"
"You cannot even say my name? How extraordinary."
"That's because it's a stupid name!" Buttercup was as blunt as always.
"However shall you address me then?"
"Let's call him...." Buttercup turned to her teammates for support. She didn't like puzzles, better to rely on good old fashioned action to resolve difficult situations. "Him," There is was, a quick and easy resolution. "Him?" Blossom asked.
"Well you come up with something then," Buttercup made a small kicking motion at the ground that was far beneath her feet.
"Him is fine for now."
Satisfied with Bubbles' usual tie breaking vote, Buttercup turned back to the man, "So what do you want, Him?"
"Why the same thing I always want. To extend my dominion over this realm like all the others."
"We'll stop you."
"You will? You'll even try?" Him smiled at Buttercup, or at least Bubbles thought it was a smile, put on a face not through a lifetime's experience, but rather a few minutes study on the science of smiles.
"To think I have known you all this time and beyond time and yet you still manage to surprise me, my dear sweet --"
This time not even the first syllable registered with Bubbles, but to Buttercup it was infuriating. It wasn't that she truly heard or understood the word, but she could feel the precise meaning of it. It was somehow a claim deeper than any intimacy and more mocking that the cruelest joke. It was the name of a cherished, loving, content and ever obedient slave, "That's it, you're going down."
"But what sort of father would I be, if I did not bring a gift for my daughters?" The thing the girls called Him pointed at the bay and the waters roared and parted as a strange shape emerged. It was darker than the night and had irregular shapes on it. Perhaps buildings, huge trees or small mountains, but these shapes twisted in the distance as if they were alive, or perhaps it was the space that twisted around them, unwilling to lie quietly in the presence of such things, "Behold R'lyeh, where Cthulhu stirs from long slumber. The poor thing seems to be hungry. Whatever shall he have for breakfast? Perhaps the bodies and souls of the humans living here will be enough to sate his appetite," Him laughed.
The laughter was also unpracticed and the inhumanity of it settled in Bubble's stomach like bad sushi. As the laughter faded away a strange phrase came unbidden to her lips, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," She didn't know what it meant, but she knew it wasn't anything nice.
"Why you!" Buttercup turned back to Him, but the thing that wore the shape of a man had faded with the laughter and even her so-called X-ray vision could not find Him anywhere near, even behind or inside other things.
The beltbuckles on the three girl's belts buzzed, but Blossom was the first to answer, "Professor, is this about that thing in the bay? Yes, we're on it. Come on girls, let's stop him!" Blossom put her transformation control disk back on her belt then rushed towards the new island, leaving a red streak glowing briefly behind her in the air. The other two followed, leaving green and blue streaks.
The girls circled the island, but were unable to see even a door, then Bubbles saw something emerge from the waters on the shore of the bay, "What's that?" Bubbles pointed towards the strange dark shape that had lumbered to the shore. It was larger than Fuzzy and clearly no animal they had ever heard of, but it was hard to tell as the air seemed to waver around it in the night.
Buttercup flew towards it and took advantage of the longer range of her special attack to strike before the other girls could. Her green eyes glowed red as she directed two intense beams of infrared laser light at the shape. The beams struck near the feet of the shape, causing the ground to explode as if it had been hit by an artillery shell. The shape continued to lumber on towards the towers of downtown.
"I missed! How could I miss?" Buttercup was no expert in any field of science, but she knew instinctively that no object could move faster than light. Perhaps in another decade she could learn in college that while General Relativity prohibits the movement of anything through space faster than light, space itself can be warped much faster than that. Assuming that there still were colleges by then, or even the Earth for that matter.
Buttercup closed to a hundred meters, fired again and missed again. She stopped just in front of it and prepared to fire again, but it grabbed her with a massive claw, breaking her concentration, "Ow! That hurts!"
"Let her go!" Bubbles punched rapid fire at the claw, to no effect. Then the thing reached with its other claw and grabbed her too.
Blossom studied the creature for a moment. It was vaguely humanoid, with two legs, two arms that ended in claws instead of hands, two bat like wings, and a head with two eyes and many tentacles. She counted again, only two claws. She turned and flew away.
"Blossom, you coward!" Buttercup screamed at her teammate, then turned her head as she felt a rancid, slimy breath on her face. The creature had lifted her closer to its eyes and was reaching for her skirt with its tentacles. This was exactly the sort of situation that made Buttercup hate skirts.
Not only did Bubbles have her arms pinned to her side, but the pressure of the thing's claw prevented her from taking a deep breath to use her power.
Out of sight, Blossom turned around a building and broke the sound barrier. Cutting a tight turn at what should have been immense G-forces, she accelerated in the turn. Her hands were outstretched in front of her, her fingers forming shockwaves that passed around her. She completed the circle and came up behind the beast. At the last moment she formed her hands into fists to strike, but somehow the beast was off to the side. With immense effort she shifted course to hit it, settling for a shoulder ram rather than the two handed punch she had intended.
Blossom bounced back from the impact and took twenty meters to come to a halt in midair. The beast released the other two girls and tumbled to the ground.
Blossom took a deep breath and blew towards the beast. She did not know how such a mighty wind could be generated by her small lungs nor where all the water molecules came from, but as the fog from her super breath faded away the beast was revealed to be trapped under a meter thick layer of crystal clear ice. Using the last of her super breath Blossom formed snow in her right hand to rub on her left shoulder, which stung from the impact she had made on the beast.
"Miss Blossom, you did it!" Bubbles flew up, but stopped short of Blossom. Buttercup shook her head clear then flew up to join formation with her teammates and study the creature.
Under the ice Cthulhu stirred. It did not move much in the confined space around it, but the space itself warped around its presence and the critical spacing and angles that defined the geometry of ice failed.
The girls covered their faces as the ice exploded off of Cthulhu in a shower of tiny crystals.
"How strong is this thing?" Blossom turned to Bubbles, "You try it."
Bubbles nodded and took a deep breath while her two teammates plugged fingers into their ears, for they knew that while Bubbles' special attack might lack the raw power of theirs, it was far more painful to bystanders.
Bubbles opened her mouth wide and an intense dull roar of 300 Hz came forth. She could not explain how she could generate such a loud sound, any more than she could explain any of her other superpowers, but with her perfect sense of pitch she searched for a resonance in her target, her frequency going up and up. Her teammates were not spared when she reached ultrasonics, for they had superhearing also, if not Bubbles' musical talent. As she passed 30 KHz Bubbles thought she heard a response and moved back an octave and intensified her attack.
In the distance dogs and cats howled and the other two Powerpuffs felt like howling themselves.
There was something tricky about the echos. Bubbles put all of her strength into her shout and had it reflected back at her. She clutched her hands to her head and fell from the air.
Cthulhu reached out a claw towards her, but Blossom was faster. She swooped down and snatched her teammate then dropped her off on top of a nearby building, "Are you okay?"
Bubbles couldn't hear anything, but she could read Blossom's concern, so she nodded.
"Wait right here. We'll handle this," Blossom dove down at the monster again.
Bubbles watched the battle from where she sat as her hearing slowly returned.
The other two girls tried repeating Blossom's high speed ram by diving in from opposite directions, but Cthulhu suddenly was a little ways off to the side so they knocked heads with a clunk. They were stunned for a moment, but recovered just in time to fly away before Cthulhu could grab them.
Something was off about the entire situation. Bubbles considered everything that had happened that night then decided to put her theory to to test. She flew down and landed in front of the creature.
"Bubbles, no!"
Bubbles ignored Blossom and addressed the creature, "Excuse me, Mr. Cthulhu? We like our city the way it is. So could you please go back to where you came from?"
Her two teammates stopped in midair as Cthulhu looked down at Bubbles.
The monster stood for several seconds then seemed to nod. It turned and shambled back the way it had came.
Bubbles took to the air and watched it from a few hundred meters back. Her teammates flying behind her.
All three girls watched as Cthulhu reached the water, then swam across to his island. The waters churned around the island as it submerged and then the bay was still again.
Blossom was the first to speak, "How did you. How did you know it spoke Japanese?"
Bubbles released that she had not been breathing as she took a deep lungful, "I don't think it does."
"Then how did you?" Buttercup pointed to the undisturbed moonlit waters.
"It was a matter of tone I think."
"But why would it listen to you?"
"Mr. Him is the total master of his domain, right?"
"Yes, if he's telling the truth," Blossom considered, "But we don't know where that is? Somewhere in the L Dimension?"
"And the way Mr. Him spoke. It was like Mr. Cthulhu was some sort of pet."
"But why would it obey you?"
"Mr. Him called us his daughters. That puts us on a higher rank."
"So you're saying we are Him's monsters?" Buttercup grabbed Bubbles' forearm.
Bubbles shrugged out of her teammate's grip, "Of course not, but if Mr. Him wants to play his game he has to follow his own rules. Otherwise he undermines his own case."
"But what made you so sure that you could land in front of Cthulhu and he wouldn't hurt you?"
Bubbles turned to look Blossom in the eye as she made her reply, "Because he hadn't so far. He hadn't been fighting us, not for real. Each time he let us get away and waited to see what new game we'd try."
-HJC
