And the plot finally starts... if you want to call it a plot.
I forgot to mention it previously, but every chapter tries to replicate the KND intro. It gets tiresome to scroll through them after the first few.
So how does this chapter open? With mundanity:
'''The City of Townsville.
Sunday, 8 AM.
Where in the suburbs, the Tiny Titans of Townsville were having breakfast – a disappointing one at that.
Usually on Sundays, the Professor would knock himself out to make a great breakfast – but today he had to leave early to make a speech at Townsville University that some nut had scheduled for 10 AM. The girls were stuck with cold cereal and toast.'''
Oh, suck it up, girls. That's the sort of breakfast I had every Sunday growing up. Brian then raises a good point:
'''Often they wondered what would happen when they got older and went from kindergarten, to grade school, to high school, and finally to college. And they often wonder what life would be like when they were full-grown crime fighters, rather than kids.
Seeing that they were "born" as five-year-olds, the prospect of aging was scarier for them than it was for most people.'''
That's something that's served as fodder for more than a few fanfics. In this one... this is the only time it will come up. We'll see more good ideas that go nowhere in future Corvello stories.
Buttercup can't find the grape jelly, but that's because it's in the middle of the pile of stuff in her arms. As soon as she sits down, the Hotline goes off:
'''"Who's robbing the First National?" said Bubbles.
"I'll give you a hint," said Blossom. "He's about four feet tall, has green skin, hair all over, wears a dumb costume with a helmet and cape, and his breath smells like these things!"
She lifted up a bunch of bananas.'''
I knew it! Biscuit Dough Hands Man strikes again!
Buttercup unnecessarily throws the jelly jar down, and our heroes spring into action... after Buttercup writes an apology note for getting the floor dirty in her unnecessary dramatic outburst.
SCENE CHANGE! Mojo Jojo pilots a giant robot into the First National Bank, vacuuming the money into itself. But he has an ulterior motive:
"Hmm," he said, looking at his watch. "They're late. I do hope the call didn't come when they were in the shower."
"Do hope"? Kind of poncey for Mojo. On actually seeing the PPG, he reverts to proper form.
The girls are a bit surprised by the giant robot, but they know better than to worry about it, since Mojo Jojo has a long history of failing badly at the whole "evil mastermind" business. After some redundancy-laced taunting that I won't bore you with (seriously, reading Mojo Jojo dialogue should come with danger pay), he hits a lever that triggers the robot's jets (Brian writes "jetpack", but that doesn't sound right in reference to a giant robot) and flees. The girls follow.
SCENE CHANGE! I considered complaining about this, since we change to the same characters, but it's used to indicate a passage of time, so I can give Brian a pass. Notably, his scene transistion is different for "same characters but later" than "different characters".
Fifteen minutes into the chase, the girls are bored:
'''"This just isn't like Mojo!" said Blossom. "Usually he fights tooth and nail, taking out half of Townsville in the process, not lead us on a chase halfway across the state!"
"We crossed the state line seven minutes ago!" said Bubbles.'''
That raises a question: do superheroes have jurisdiction?
Either way, another block of Mojo Jojo dialogue indicates it's a trap.
SCENE CHANGE! The KND are awaiting breakfast at the treehouse.
...Wait, why aren't they eating with their families? They're kids, after all.
'''"Ugh, I'm starving," said Numbah Four, walking in. "When's breakfast?"
"Ask Numbah Three," said Numbah One. "She's cooking."
"Um, in that case," said Numbah Four, "when's lunch?"'''
Okay, my lack of familiarity with KND canon is showing, but is Numbah Three really a bad chef? She doesn't show up on our Lethal Chef page, and we've got a pretty tight lock on the subject. Also: Numbah Four seems surprisingly reluctant to eat his love interest's cooking.
After she threatens to use the pressure cooker, Numbah Four asks whose idea it was to let her cook. On being told it's his, he slaps himself.
'''"Hey," said Five. "It can't be any worse than the barbecued tuna salad she made two weeks ago."
"Or those homemade octopus dumplings she made the week before that," said Four. "You'd think someone like her could have made that right..."
"Actually," said Two, "I think she DID make those right..."'''
That reminds me, I always wanted to try takoyaki. Sounds more like a case of Foreign Queasine than her being a bad chef.
Numbah Three sets off the smoke alarm, a noise which is followed by the priority alert. One more food joke later, Numbah 65.3 contacts them.
"What's the trouble chief?" said Two.
Presumably a chief who tells you when there's trouble.
Turns out Mojo Jojo's robot is headed in their general direction, and judging by the shape, the KND is acting on the assumption it's Mr. Wink and Mr. Kidd, so Our Heroes jump into action!
'''"Aw, nuts," said Numbah Three. "And I was making okonomiyaki!"
"What is that?" said Four.
"Japanese cabbage pancakes," said Three.
Ugh, thought Four. Saved by the bell.'''
Okonomiyaki can have a large number of fillings, actually. Brian appears to have done his research via Google and not gone any deeper. This will be a trend, though not all of the topics his knowledge is shallow on are of the sort that can be solved with a few chapters of Ranma One Half.
SCENE CHANGE! Mojo Jojo has led the girls into an area four miles from the treehouse, and informs the audience that he is almost too low on fuel for his plans. He crashes the robot and awaits the PPG.
"What's the idea of leading us across three state lines!" said Blossom. "Do you know how many FAA violations you've committed?"
About as many as you have, since I'm pretty sure neither giant robots nor superheroines are covered by FAA regulations.
Mojo challenges the girls to a fight, and once they attack, he hits a button.
And then, a second before the Powerpuff Girls' fists connected with the giant mecha, it seemed like they were struck by lightning. Very painful lightning.
As opposed to the pleasant, tingly kind of lightning.
In another block of Mojo Jojo dialogue I had to read thrice to get the meaning of, Mojo lays out his plan in its entirety - steal money to get the PPG's attention, piss them off via an overly long chase to make sure they attack, and then hit them with the "X-ecutor Field", an energy field designed to make the Chemical X in their blood into a paralytic toxin. The girls are down for the count.
Brian shows that he's actually pretty well-versed in PPG canon by having Mojo note that he had to be very careful when he built the robot, because he also has Chemical X in his blood and was in danger of being affected by the field. Nicely done, sir.
And with that, the robot slowly raised its foot...
As opposed to, say, spraying them with bullets.
SCENE CHANGE! The KND fly into the field of battle and are surprised to see it's not one of their enemies present, but rather... a monkey:
'''"Ooh, a monkey?" said Numbah Three. "Let me see!"
She pushed Four aside and looked through. Numbah Three's fondness for monkeys, especially the ever-popular Rainbow Monkey toys, was well known to the team. But when she looked through the periscope, even she was surprised.
"Hey!" she said. "That is one ugly monkey!"'''
I know a lot of people who'd disagree with you, Kuki. And he makes a surprisingly cute plushie, too.
Numbah One takes the periscope:
'''"Oh for the love of," he said in fear.
"Forget who he is for now!" he shouted. "There are three kids in danger!
"Numbah Five, fire a shot to get him to back off! Numbah Two, set the ship on autopilot! Everyone get ready to engage the enemy on the ground!
"Kids Next Door, battle stations!"'''
First of all, those first two paragraphs did not need to be split up, and the second dialogue attribution was needless. In fact, all of this (save perhaps the last line) could have served just as well done as a single paragraph. I can see the last line being its own paragraph for emphasis, but otherwise this is sloppy writing.
Brian Corvello was in his late twenties-to-early thirties when he wrote this. He is a college graduate. Somehow he never realized that you don't do this.
SCENE CHANGE back to the PPG about to be stepped on:
'''"You're going to..." gasped Buttercup. "Smash us with that foot...? Isn't that... a little crude... for a genius like you?"
Mojo paused.
"Huh, I guess it is," he said. "Well, if anyone asks, I'll lie."'''
BLATANT THEFT ALERT! We've all seen the episode of The Simpsons he took that line from.
The KND pull a Big Damn Heroes and shoot the robot in the chest, knocking it out of range to stomp. The kids deploy via drop pod and tell Mojo Jojo to back away:
'''"You runts obviously do not know whom you are messing with!" he said. "It will be a very cold day when the great Mojo Jojo is ever defeated by a bunch of playground punks with pop-guns!"
"Mojo Jojo?" said Numbah Three. "That's a silly name!"'''
Says the girl named "Kuki".
Also, by now you've probably noticed that Brian Corvello never puts his dialogue attribution at the start of sentences, but always in the middle or at the end. I suppose it's a valid stylistic choice, but it wears on the eyes after a while.
Mojo Jojo exposits some more, informing us that he has a time limit before the field expires, and battle begins... or at least gets as close to beginning as it ever will. I'll spare you most of it.
Numbah Two disables the robot's arm, and then hits the windshield with mustard:
'''"I knew I should have sprung for the deluxe wipers!" he said. "But I didn't intend to do this on a rainy day, nor was I expecting the cockpit to be covered with THIS! Huh?"
He peered through what he could see, just in time to see Numbah Three flying at him with her bottle blaster.
"Hi, ugly, scary monkey!" she said. She fired.
Mojo screamed, as the dome shattered and glass covered him.'''
So he builds a giant killer robot with a powerful death field and jetpacks, and then builds the window of out regular glass? He covered three state lines in twenty minutes! How'd the window hold at that sort of speed?
Sorry, Willing Suspension of Disbelief fail again. But this is the sort of hiccup I notice when I read stuff like this.
Meanwhile, One and Five had been blasting at the robots armored shell, and slowly the huge contraption started to crack.
Nobody told me Mojo built more than one robot.
Numbah Five sees the jetpack fuel tanks and turns her fire on them. While she's doing so, it turns out the X-ecutor Field is worthless, because after what couldn't be more than five minutes, it's worn off and the girls are back to normal:
'''"Should we go help them?" said Bubbles.
"Why?" said Blossom. "Whoever these kids are, their doing a bang-up job on their own!"
"Yeah!" said Buttercup. "This might be fun to watch!"'''
How heroic. Also: homonym fail.
The fuel tanks blow, and the robot explodes. Mojo lands, and when the KND move in to capture him, he goes for kung fu:
'''He whipped out from behind him a weapon – a pair of nunchaku!
He twirled them around his head and leapt forth with a scream. The team's five weapons flew from their hands.'''
Waitwaitwait... He took all five weapons in one shot? How close together were they standing? Nunchaku aren't that long! (Okay, it's possible he attacked several times, but that's not the way it reads.)
Four and Five, being the unarmed combat experts of the time, attack Mojo in a fight scene that, again, I'll spare you.
'''"Well done, team!" said Numbah One.
"Yeah," said a voice behind them. "You really clobbered him!"
The team turned to face the Girls. "Glad to be of service," said Numbah One. "The Kids Next Door are always..."
He stopped short.
"Say..." he said. "Why are... you girls... floating?"'''
Numbah One seems remarkably slow on the draw here. We saw in the last chapter that the PPG are world-famous.
The girls introduce themselves, and Numbah Four has a cute moment of fanboyism. They chat for a bit (both sides noting Mojo Jojo's dialogue is as annoying to them as it is to me), and Blossom asks a question:
'''"So then," said Blossom. "The Kids Next Door really exist? How many of you are there?"
"Several hundred, situated around the world," said Numbah One, "but the exact number is classified information."
The Girls looked at each other strangely. They gave a nervous chuckle.
"Well," said Blossom, "wish we could stay and chat, but we have a crook who's due for an appointment at the Townsville City Jail."
"Yeah," said Bubbles, hefting up Mojo. "Maybe we'll see each other again..."
They flew off, waving goodbye. The KND waved back.
"The exact number is classified?" said Numbah Two. "That isn't true."
"Yes, but frankly, I don't know the exact number," said Numbah One.
Numbah Five sighed. Foolish pride strikes again.'''
If I may be allowed another moment of slipped disbelief: why isn't it? Exact numbers of agents are generally not open information with undercover agencies (even partially-open ones like the Kids Next Door).
SCENE CHANGE! The girls drop Mojo Jojo off and ponder whether or not the KND would make good allies. Their experiences with Major Glory have made them wary of other heroic organizations, but this one seems different:
'''"You think we'll see them again?" said Buttercup.
"Call it premonition," said Blossom. "But I feel that this is only the beginning of something big..."'''
As Tom Servo would say, "Foreshadowing!"
SCENE CHANGE! Numbah One can't sleep, so he decides to investigate the Powerpuff Girls and Mojo Jojo via the treehouse's database. We get a really long infodump about Mojo Jojo's abilities, goals, and general background.
I'm going to guess this is for KND fans who aren't that familiar with PPG, but this smells suspiciously like padding. This is not something Brian is adverse to - once I start sporking his Yu-Gi-Oh fics, we'll see many, many instances of song-lyric padding.
There's a portion of Mojo's file that's Stage Three Classified, but Numbah One has clearance for that. He reads it, and sees that the Powerpuff Girls are mentioned. Their file, however, is Stage One Classified, which Numbah One can't access. This bothers him, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it - there's another Priority Alarm.
Numbah 86 pops up, and this time we're told that Cree Lincoln's been spotted - and then we get this (emphasis mine):
"I'll make this simple," said Numbah 86. "Find her and attempt a capture... if that fails, you are fully authorized to use lethal force. We aren't letting her get away this time!"
...
We WILL get back to that.
Our heroes set out to confront Ms. Lincoln, and here's the last line:
As the huge aircraft blasted into the morning sky on the search and engage mission, the Kids Next Door had little means of knowing that in a place somewhere just next door to them, evil plans were afoot...
Just like last time, if I gave you two guesses, you'd only need one.
We're on the verge of the really good (or bad) stuff, folks. Stay frosty.
