"With life, there is no 'tomorrow morning'. When night arrives, it all ends." She looked down at her hands, holding them up in front of her, "Except for me. Thanks to the professor, I have been given another morning…and I know the truth."
A Powerpuff Girls Dark Fic written back in 2001 by Mark J. "Parsec" Hadley. Despite being only four chapters long, it's very memorable and absolutely chilling.
The basic premise is that Mojo Jojo, fed up with always losing, ambushes the Powerpuffs outside their own house with his Robo Jojo. He proves to be a Not-So-Harmless Villain this time and actually succeeds in killing one of the girls.
Mojo Jojo is beaten to a pulp and thrown into jail, leaving the survivors to deal with the death. The Professor, however, figures out a way to bring the fallen girl back... but at what cost?
Can be found here
. Proved to be so popular that it spawned two sequels that are included on this page as a single entry Immortality Relapse and Solitary Vigil.
The entire series contains examples of:
- After the End: The premise of Solitary Vigil.
- Always with You: Bubbles finds that, in a way, Blossom had been by her side through the events of Solitary Vigil, as Bulba, the sole white flower to survive the World-Wrecking Wave at the end of Relapse, was actually one of her original ingredients.
- Anyone Can Die: It's not a Dark Fic for nothing. The story begins with Mojo managing to kill Blossom after all and only gets worse from there.
- Apocalypse How: Relapse ends with a Class 6, as Boomer's doomsday device destroys all life on Earth.
- Back from the Dead: The main premise of the series. Blossom, Buttercup, and later, the Rowdyruff Boys are brought back from the dead. But apparently seeing The Nothing After Death convinces them that all life is meaningless and must be destroyed.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- Immortality Syndrome: Bubbles manages to stop Blossom and Buttercup's rampage but at the cost of killing them. The Professor decides it'll be better to let them go than try to revive them again and the two scatter their remains to the wind.
- Solitary Vigil: Bubbles, now an adult, manages to fix the Professor's time machine and heads back into the past though she knows it's a one-way trip. She manages to destroy Mojo's plans for the sawblades and doomsday machine that caused the end of the world in Relapse, but a miscalculation on the portal places her right on the very day Mojo attacked her and her sisters, and races to the PPG house to stop Mojo from killing Blossom. She succeeds but is killed in the process. As she dies, she gives the Professor a journal of what happened, begging him not to make the mistakes that went on in her timeline before expiring. The Professor promises, giving her remains a burial in their backyard.
- Body Horror: Bubbles learns the hard way that putting an insufficient amount of the ingredients to revive Buttercup does not end well - the result is notably missing limbs and organs. In the end, she can only reluctantly Mercy Kill what was once her sister.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Bubbles goes through so much in the series. It's really hard not to feel for her by the end of it.
- Came Back Wrong: The entire premise of the series. It leans towards the Damaged Soul end. Though Relapse reveals that Antidote X can allow them to regain their right mind once again.
- Corrupt the Cutie: The immortality syndrome can cause this in even innocent and good souls, turning them into mass-murdering psychopaths.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Relapse has Boomer's relapse triggering the death of the world.
- Downer Ending: Relapse ends with Bubbles dying trying to stop Butch and Boomer and thinks she succeeds, with the Professor set to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, Boomer remains alive long enough to activate the doomsday device, killing everyone on the planet. Bubbles is only brought back due to the fact that the bottle of Chemical X nearby managed to spill on her remains, but by then, she's the only living being on the planet. She starts to despair but finds a single flower that survived the destruction and resolves to take care of it.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Bubbles manages to do just that at the end of Solitary Vigil. Even though preventing the Bad Future from happening comes at the cost of her own life, she dies happily with the knowledge that she succeeded in changing the past.
- "Eureka!" Moment: In the Solitary Vigil chapter "Guilt", while HIM torments Bubbles with the fact that her trip to the past was a Stable Time Loop due to the flaws in how Professor Utonium's time portal works, she then realizes that she can find a way to fix those flaws and truly change things.
- Face–Heel Turn: The titular immortality syndrome causes this. Averted with Bubbles however; Blossom and Buttercup do manage to kill her and bring her back from the dead as well, but unlike her sisters, she's got the resolve and purity of heart to resist its corruption without the need for Antidote X.
- Heel–Face Turn: Butch in Immortality Relapse, and later, Boomer.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Both Butch and Boomer.
- Heroic BSoD: Poor Bubbles suffers several of these in Relapse, including a Trauma Conga Line version upon realizing Antidote X can cure the immortality syndrome, and she'd used it on Blossom right before killing her for the final time, which is then followed immediately by the realization that they'd let their ingredients go, meaning they can't be brought back and cured now that they know how to do it.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Bubbles pulls one in the final chapter of Solitary Vigil, saving the Past Blossom from being killed by Mojo's sawblade and preventing the events of the series from coming to be.
- Heroic Willpower: Bubbles was able to resist the corrupting effects of the titular immortality syndrome due to possessing the resolve and purity of heart necessary.
- It's All My Fault: Bubbles, during her aforementioned Heroic BSoD.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Upgrade, another story by the same author, appears to operate on similar rules as this story by having the Professor Take a Third Option by temporarily transferring Buttercup's mind into a robot body so that it doesn't go through the psychological shock of experiencing her death and rebirth firsthand.
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- In Relapse, after discovering that Antidote X could have snapped her sisters back to normal, Bubbles becomes horrified at having thrown out her sisters' remains at the end of Immortality Syndrome, as she thought there was no way to restore them to the way they once were. Worse, at one point in the first story, Buttercup had been exposed to Antidote X and even briefly tried to tell Bubbles and the Professor, but she was almost immediately knocked out and euthanized in the hopes of remixing her ingredients immediately in hopes that would have changed her back, without realizing it had already happened.
- Bubbles goes through this again in the Solitary Vigil chapter "Guilt" after finding out her trip to the past using the Professor's time portal was part of a Stable Time Loop, so everything that has led to the Bad Future she's now residing in was basically, in large part, her fault. She gets better after a "Eureka!" Moment though.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: One chapter in Solitary Vigil has Bubbles inadvertently inspiring Mojo to create the duraunium blades during her first ill-fated trip into the past.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: HIM winds up inadvertently inspiring Bubbles to truly Set Right What Once Went Wrong in Solitary Vigil.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Mojo Jojo in the first story, given he successfully kills Blossom and then inadvertently causes the end of the world in Relapse.
- The Nothing After Death: Apparently seeing it is enough to switch Blossom into a "Kill Everything" mode. Buttercup follows suit after Blossom kills and revives her and Mojo bringing back the Rowdyruffs likewise causes this reaction.
- Psycho Serum: Possibly Chemical X itself.
- Resurrection Sickness: The eponymous syndrome is basically Came Back Wrong with a Damaged Soul.
- Sole Survivor: By the end of Immortality Relapse, Bubbles has become this, along with a single white flower.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: What Bubbles sets out to do at the midpoint of Solitary Vigil. She succeeds, albeit at the cost of her own life.
- Stable Time Loop: In Solitary Vigil, Bubbles find out from HIM that her first trip to the past using the Professor's time portal resulted in the Bad Future as she accidentally gave Mojo Jojo the idea to make the duranium blades that killed Blossom and kicked off this whole mess in the first place. Thus she has to figure out a way to avert this and truly change the past.
- Straw Nihilist: Sufferers of Immortality Syndrome tend to turn into this.
- Survivor Guilt: Bubbles must cope with this in Relapse and Solitary Vigil.
- Taking the Bullet: Or blade rather. This is how Bubbles manages to save Blossom's life and avert the Bad Future.
- Taking You with Me: Boomer does this to every living being on the planet at the end of Relapse.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Mojo Jojo in both Syndrome and Relapse. His killing Blossom in the first story is what sets off her and Buttercup's rampage and all the death and destruction accompanying it. Him reviving the Rowdyruff Boys in the second has even worse results, as it almost immediately leads to his death, and eventually, the extinction of all life on the entire planet.
- World-Wrecking Wave: The Rowdyruff Boys' doomsday device sets off a wave that instantly kills everything around the world.
