This chapter contains references to trauma, child abuse, and dehumanization. Even without explicit descriptions, the psychological themes may be intense or difficult to process for younger readers. Please, read with care.
"This is actually quiet," Butch said softly.
"Shut up, Butch," Boomer muttered, his senses trying to adapt to the void and realize where they were, though he found the silence comforting.
Brick stared into the infinite darkness surrounding them. It couldn't be total since they could still see each other clearly enough. He looked down at his own hand; a dim, ghostly halo radiated around his skin, perhaps a faint reflection of the distant bristles of light?
"There must be some source…" Brick said, his voice barely a whisper in the vastness.
His brothers immediately began to scan the darkness, their tactical instincts kicking in, since if there was a source of light, there had to be an origin. Maybe an entrance—and every entrance can double as an exit.
But, without even a slight idea of a horizon or a ground to step on, tracing any progress seemed impossible. They may be moving, or maybe not. It was possible they were just suspended there, floating, as the darkness oppressed them with the mere illusion of advancing. As this thought built up in Boomer, he slowly drifted behind. The scorched data points he could gather were too fragmented, too alien to process. This sensory void overwhelmed him; the only real anchors in the infinite black were the strange, flickering halos surrounding them.
Butch moved to his side, noticing the way the blond was staring at his own hands in a daze. He nudged him, his voice unusually grounded in the silence.
"Yeah... I also think it comes from us," he said. He looked down at the olive-green shimmer radiating from his own skin. They noticed that the lights didn't reflect on each other as they should. There was no blending, not a single trace of orange where the deep blue met the olive. It was as if they were not only two different beings but entirely isolated in their own essence.
"Impossible. That's not how physics works," Brick snapped, bending closer. Even as he tried to sound angry, his voice carried a slight, betraying tremble.
"Oh, you little things! The humanity in your souls hasn't vanished yet".
The boys stiffened and spun in the void, but there was nothing to see. Instinct overrode logic; they regrouped instantly, back to back, forcing their breath to remain slow and steady.
"The voice... it isn't Him's, right?" Butch asked, his fists trembling against his will.
"Him?" a new voice rose from the infinity, vast and deep.
"Oh, you mean that little emperor of wrath and chaos from your universe? Since you are finally here, there is no longer use for him," explained a new voice, monotonous and devoid of any affection.
"You used Him?" The astonished question left Brick's lips before he could even consider the weight of it.
A short silence followed, broken by a new voice—this one light and jarringly joyful.
"Your fleshy shell didn't allow us to come nearer, no matter how much we tried. Dreams were too short, and the material world mixed with our voices when we tried to talk to you."
A feel of slime crawling over their spine hammered the boys, as they remembered all the moments when they thought a voice was trying to reach them, just to find some of the Ruffs asking something. They remembered the breath over their shoulders and the confusing dreams and illusions that had bugged them for the last few months.
"You're the stalkers," Boomer realized. Something mixed in him: the fury of finally meeting them, and the pride of proving to his brothers he was right about being watched.
"We needed a bridge," the joyful voice chirped, "and this universe demon provided us with it."
"Yes, and now we may need to fix the consequences of his childish plan," and something broke on the monotonous voice, sounding like an annoyed sigh.
"If not for that, we would still be trying to contact them! Besides, the Metatron allowed it. It could have stopped it any time".
"Besides, the multiverse chaos he had caused is nothing serious; in fact, pulling all your other versions here actually strengthens the bond we've been working on for so long. And now, he even dragged you into this limbo where we can finally take you away."
Another brief silence. This time, they noticed a slight vibration through the energy, something rhythmic, like giggles.
"Why…?" Brick couldn't decide the next part: why did you bring us? Why do you want to meet us? Or just why?
"For you to finally claim your place next to us, to become Death Bringers like us", said the annoyed and also impatient voice.
"Death Bringers?" For the first time, the boys felt a surge of genuine curiosity mixed with dread.
"Everything that lives must die, that's the natural order: growth, then the withering of sickness, accident, or being eaten so another beings survive. That is the universal law." This was the warm and restful voice.
"But humans appeared. They created new ways for death—ways that do not exist in nature." The last voice jolted in.
"To keep the order, the existence needed siegers to cut lives by the dozen. We were created," continued the voice that was restful.
"War, epidemics, madness… we sickle handfuls of souls," said the energetic one.
"Just like you have done," the deep voice sentenced.
The Ghosts stiffened.
"We what? We've never…" They stopped. The denial died in their throats. In truth, they couldn't be sure. They had never stayed in a place long enough to count the casualties or see the aftermath of their strikes. Their orders had always been simple: Get in. Secure the target. Get out. No looking back. No consideration for the "collateral damage." To the world, they were already what these voices described.
"You've already wandered that yourselves, and in the end, you've always met the same conclusion: it was not up to you to decide who lives or dies, as it was not up to you if it was by your hand". The voice sounded sweet and mellow, almost compassionate.
Still, none of the boys moved.
"It is time for you to join us. To bring death by the millions."
"It is time to detach from your temporal anchors and become immortal."
"It is time to forget about being human."
Boomer crashed into his brothers' backs, his flight unsteady and his gaze vacant. When Brick and Butch turned to scold him, the words died in their throats. They saw it: the vibrant blue light at the tips of Boomer's fingers was beginning to fray, dissolving into the deep space like smoke in a halo gale. Terrified, they looked at their own hands, only to find the same darkness biting into them.
With each jagged bite of the void, a memory surged to the surface, bright and vivid, only to be swallowed whole. One second, they saw themselves a year ago, on their last mission. Up Beat was there, offering them a package of pao de queijo, and dancing happily as she munched on it. But when they tried to remember the context, if they had been fighting against her or teaming up with her, the memory disappeared under a black nova.
As this happened, a forgotten feeling surged from deep. It was panic. First, it was far and painless, but as the memories —from battles to training, from friends and games— it grew up, painful and hulking.
Butch fliched when a faded shadow of an Egypt ninetish boy appeared next to him: Amir. His gaze downcast and hollow. The voice of his trainer was still able to be heard as she argued with Mojo about the two boys.
"Well, if that information is so important, send your own boy! It's not as if he hasn't been prepared for a transaction like that, and the target already said he is prone. I'm not leaving Amir with him again!"
For a moment, the shadow of the monkey appeared again, before his words became incomprehensible.
"Nonsenses! Sending them, especially him, on this kind of mission this young would destroy all of my work! His legacy! We didn't work this hard for them to get broken! I am not allowing them to end like your boy… or you!"
A slight flicker of calm shone for a second, erasing those jagged memories, but it came with a price: the truth that a part of them, the little pieces that let them know compassion and unity, disappeared too.
"Don't tell my sisters about this".
The flashy memory of finding Buttercup in his bathroom, a pair of green blooms with bunnies draped over the towel bar, and the girl blushed, unable to get angry, instead of scared.
Brick had only sighed and turned away. Her obsession with secrecy was impossible for him to truly grasp, but she was the only one who wouldn't barge into his room without knocking. She was the least annoying—and somehow, the only one he felt comfortable around.
The darkness became oppressive again, and he recognized the weight. It was the same heavy shadow from when Boomer was lost after the volcano's explosion. Back then, Brick could barely feel him through their mental bond. It wasn't that Boomer was gone; it was that his blond brother was intentionally closing himself off.
"Why did you do that?" The question lingered in the infinite dark.
Boomer felt the void gnawing at his chest. He remembered hearing the mental link as Brick was searching for him and Butch, even before being discharged from the hospital. The blond had been wondering all this time if the redhead channeling his healing energy toward that search was the reason he now limped a little, and might continue to do so.
"I dunno," he confessed, "I just liked the silence at Parra's. And you knew I was safe".
Brick struggled to organize his feelings—especially the creeping terror that, in any second, he might forget this conversation.
"I guess so", for a moment, he heard the zumming warm silence at the Utonium, nothing like the deep, absolute silence at the volcano. "Though it's nice when they're not that noisy".
Butch chuckled.
"Yeah, they're noisy."
He remembered the first day after school. He had prepared himself for a possible encounter, since there were only two middle schools in all of Townsville, but he hadn't expected to end up in the same class on the very first morning. A year had barely passed since the explosion, and he had just moved in with the Thorntons, trying not to think about the possibilities of keeping the life he had known up until then, or trying this new one where he was just a normal kid. Until that moment, the couple knew nothing about him—totally unaware of his powers or his previous life.
Then, the Powerpuff Girls decided to storm in. Driven by the need to "protect" the adults, they revealed everything.
"He can't just stay here! What if someone finds him and wants to take revenge?"
The couple didn't say anything. They just looked at him. Butch saw a kind of fear in their eyes that he had never encountered before. It wasn't the fear of a soldier going into a losing battle, nor was it the fear of facing a savage animal. With a flickering voice, they simply asked him:
"What do you want to do?"
He had never been confronted with such a simple question. So he shrugged. "Whatever is fine."
Blossom shrieked, her voice sharp with disbelief. "What do you mean by 'whatever'? We're talking about protecting these people! Can't you really get it?"
Butch gave her a brief look.
"You're too noisy," he said. He turned his back on her and walked into his room.
In the infinite darkness of the void, the three little lights flickered again, growing steadier, more solid.
"You know," Butch's voice resonated in the silence, no longer trembling. "I think I have had enough."
"Right." Since Brick couldn't light his fire yet, he held a fist tight, ready for physical combat. "These are our memories; it's not up to you to decide what to do with them."
"Or to judge us because of them," Boomer completed, his blue halo sparking back to life, sharper and brighter than before.
A hot breeze overflew everything, and something like white fire feathers surrounded them.
"My, my. Death can be so stubborn. After all, no one can escape it," said the Metatron, "But even Death had to fight the will of life. And these boys have a will bigger than what they can imagine".
The void retreated, forced by a power just below the will of existence itself.
"But these… humans… they can't really exist in their world. It will bring them nothing," complained the sweet voice.
"Or any others. Their abilities shall not be wasted like that. They'll be better bringing death around the universes," was the angry voice's answer.
"There is no urge. When the time comes, they meet here again," it turned its eyes to the boys, and sounded surprised. "Oh, are you still here? How silly that you can't just open a portal, since you are allowed to go back. Your presence or disappearance as the so call Rowdy Ruffs doesn't really change a thing in the universal order. Live as you want".
Before any of the boys could even understand what was happening, a reversed vortex sucked them off. And the silence was invaded by the noise of cries and the smell of burnt wood. They felt the air expanding their lungs with a savage, blistering push that finally forced them back to life, where the Puffs and Ruffs were staring at them, a concerned look on their faces.
"Oh, Good heavens, you're alive". Bloom pulled off from Butch, and knucked him "Don't do that again."
"Roger, I'll remember that next time I get killed", was Butch's answer.
Mili ignored the no-hugs policy and pulled her blond sister away from the RPC to hang on Brick's neck, who was still too dizzy to push her away.
"You made us worry sick!"
"Yeah, so don't do it again," Green scolded them as she slapped Boomer's shoulder and immediately helped him to sit up. "What happened? What did you do down there? One moment, you were sucked into hell, and the next one, you opened it back just to fade out!"
Thornton muttered a "Bite me" as he tried to stop the spinning visions in his head.
Blue Boom glanced at his red head brother, just as confused as them.
"Brick?" He asked, hoping at least the oldest had got to a conclusion. So Red Uto just dropped:
"Damn deus ex Machinas…"