He’d forgotten that he’d dismantled it years ago and that it was all packed in boxes, which had managed to survive because they were down in the hold along with DyNaMo. After the girls brought everything up, he located some tools that still worked and set about trying to rebuild it.
"If I can only remember how…"
While he worked, he began to tell the story.
"When you didn’t come home, I panicked. You weren’t at school, the mayor said he hadn’t called you…no one knew where you were."
Bubbles sniffled, thinking how sad he must have been.
"Everyone started looking for you. Even Mojo."
"Mojo helped look for us? Really?" They were surprised to hear that.
"Yeah, I bet he really just wanted to make sure we were gone."
"Exactly right, Buttercup. But I’ll get to that in a minute. The day after you went missing, a monster attacked, but it left when it realized you weren’t going to show up to fight it. The next day, a dozen monsters came. They heard you were missing and offered to help search. After it was explained that that might get a little messy, they understood. A few of them even came to your funeral."
"Our funeral? Oh no!" Blossom cried, horrified. The other two looked the same.
"Girls, I didn’t want to lose hope, and I didn’t, for a long, long time. But I felt that Townsville needed closure."
"What happened then?" Bubbles asked.
"I’m sure you know."
"Mojo took over, right?"
"Right again, Buttercup. But it didn’t last that long. Yes, he ruled Townsville, just like he always dreamed about. Threw the mayor out but he kept Ms. Bellum around. He knew a good administrator when he saw one. Naturally, he could have any material possession he wanted and without anyone to stop him, he took what he wanted. But he soon got bored with that. And it wasn’t long before he ran into the same problems that existed before he took over. Crime increased. Since he basically controlled everything, he wasn’t about to destroy it, so his old standby, threatening, became useless. Suddenly, running the city became a big headache and he gave it back."
"That’s kinda funny, Professor." Blossom said. "He got what he wanted and found out it wasn’t what he thought it would be."
"Yes, Blossom. ‘Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.’ But it happens more often than you think, and it’s not fun when it does. This wasn’t either."
"What did he do? Go crazy and destroy Townsville anyway?" Buttercup wanted to know.
"Indirectly. Townsville is gone."
They gasped. "It’s…gone?"
"Yes, girls, the Townsville we knew. I haven’t been out for years, I have no idea what it looks like now…"
"What did Mojo do?" Bubbles asked.
"Girls, this may be difficult for you to hear…but no one knows what happened to him. He left what sounded a bit like a suicide note but he was never found…"
"But, why?" Bubbles cried, literally.
"Girls, once you were gone, I think he felt that he had nothing to live for. He was obsessed with you, with defeating you. But all the times he tried, I can’t think of one where he actually came close, can you?"
"Now that you mention it, Professor, I can’t." Blossom said.
Buttercup agreed. "Me either. He was really just a big pain in the tush most of the time."
"Poor Mojo…" Bubbles wept. "Poor Townsville!"
"And, you, Professor." Blossom said. "All this time, thinking we were…"
It was too horrible a thought to finish, so she asked, "You said you finally gave up hoping. What did you think happened to us?"
He stopped assembling for a moment. "Girls, it was the one thing I was always afraid of. I thought you had simply become unstable and broken down into your components. For months, I would go out every day, trying to detect traces of Chemical X. Never found any."
He suddenly smiled and resumed working. "But, now we know we don’t have to worry about that anymore. If you can make it through a time-rip without breaking apart, you don’t have to worry about anything!"
"Whew, that’s a relief." Buttercup breathed. "You had me goin’ there Professor!"
The other two were just as relieved, but wanted to know what had happened to their beloved home.
"I think you know the answer to that one, girls."
They looked at each other for several moments, thinking, and arrived at it together. "HIM!!"
"Yeah, if we weren’t there to stop him, he could do anything." Blossom said. "He just let Mojo have his fun first, and I bet it made him happy to see how that turned out."
"That creep!" Buttercup spat. "That means he’s behind us getting to the future, too!"
"Yeah!" Bubbles exclaimed. "I bet he thought we’d think it was all our fault Townsville got destroyed."
"That’s how he works, girls. But what’s out there is real. Once Mojo left, crime grew even worse. Neighbor began attacking neighbor. Anarchy ruled. And when HIM wasn’t amused by it anymore, he sent some of his possessed monsters in to finish the job. I locked myself down with DyNaMo until I couldn’t hear the sounds of destruction anymore. When I came out, I found this. I’ve been able to survive here just fine, but I haven’t dared leave."
"Well, that means he’s probably out there right now, waiting for us." Buttercup said, her fury growing. "I say we go give ‘im what he wants!"
"What he wants, Buttercup, is to ruin our minds." Blossom pointed out.
"Exactly!" Bubbles snarled, her brows knitting together. "We’ll make him think we’re all falling to pieces and just when he thinks he won, that’s when we rearrange his face!"
Blossom blinked. Bubbles came up with some good ideas sometimes. "Works for me! Let’s go!"
"No, girls." He held up his hands and they screeched to a halt. "That’s not how you’re going to beat him. We have to send you back. That will undo everything."
Buttercup frowned briefly, then brightened. "Okay. We’ll kick his fanny when we get back, then."
"But Professor, won’t we remember everything? People will think we’re crazy!"
He tightened a few bolts and laid down his wrench, grinning broadly. "Well, Blossom, that’s always a possibility."
"Aw, who cares, Blossom?" Buttercup nudged her sister.
"Yeah, Blossom!" Bubbles added, brightly. "We can write a book about it and we’ll all get rich!"
"Nah, time-travel stories are overdone." Blossom countered. "But we’ll think of something."
The professor stood back from the finished portal. "That should do it. Let’s give it a test run. I don’t want to risk sending you too far back, and if I don’t send you back far enough, you’d have already been sent into the future at that point and I have NO idea what might happen to you then. We have to get this right the first time."
He turned it on and it hummed to life.
"So far so good." Buttercup muttered, her hands and legs crossed.
He made adjustments to the levers sticking out from its sides. "Uh, I’m not sure of the exact date anymore…"
"I think it was the 8th…" Bubbles said. "But I’m not sure."
"I should know, Professor." Blossom seemed confused. "It was only a few hours ago that we left. But that time-traveling made me forget."
"We’ll try the eighth." He set the time, then took the pincers and carefully reached into the portal’s open chamber. "Ah. Got something!"
He slowly pulled the extended device back out, and a newspaper came into view.
"POWERPUFF GIRLS MISSING!!", the headlines screamed. It was dated the 9th.
"Oops. You had the right day, girls, but the calibration’s off just a hair. Only take a min- hey, don’t read that!"
He grabbed the paper away from Buttercup, who had taken it and opened it up.
"The less you know about the future, the better."
"But, I only wanted to see what Michael Jordan did! Fooey! I was gonna bet Mitch for his lunch money!"
He frowned while he made the additional adjustment. "Blossom, remind me when you get back to have a little talk with Buttercup about cheating…and her stash of Slim Jims under the floorboards in your closet."
Her sisters whirled on her. "So that’s where they’ve been going!"
"Hee hee hee…"
"Okay, that’s it." he broke in. "Girls, this time we’re going to the Bahamas, no matter what!"
He gave them each a hug. Blossom wrinkled her face.
"What’s the matter, honey?"
"Professor, do you smell something burning?"
He sniffed. "Omigosh!"
They couldn’t see anything wrong, no smoke anywhere, but he grabbed his wrench and worked frantically at the left side panel of the device.
"It’s one of the spatial transducers!"
He tore open the panel and yanked out the coiled piece of glass tubing. It was black and smoking and he dropped it.
"Whew! Looks like I got it out of there just in time! The power grid looks OK."
"Whoa, good thing!" Buttercup exclaimed. "Pop another one of them things in there and let’s go!"
"Uh…" his face fell and his shoulders slumped. "I can’t." He indicated the wrecked laboratory. "I salvaged everything I could, and a spatial transducer wasn’t on the list."
"Oh no!" Bubbles gasped.
Buttercup gave a cheery, "Great! Now what?"
"Professor?" Blossom said. "I think I know where we can find one."
He sighed. "So do I, Blossom. I should have gone there and taken everything I could when I had the chance. It might be worse off than this place, but now it’s our only hope."
He picked up the burned-out component and Blossom studied it to know what to look for.
"But Blossom, girls…you have to promise me…just go there and come straight back. If you should see HIM, avoid him if you can. You might see some horrible things. If you do, keep telling yourself they aren’t real. Because if we can get you back home, they won’t be."
"We promise, Professor." Blossom promised.
"Hey!" Buttercup protested. "How can you promise for us when we don’t even know where we’re going?"
"Shut up, Buttercup, and just remember what we just got told. We’re going to Mojo’s."