A Crayon Story (3/99 - 6/99)
Jomark Productions ©1999 All Rights Reserved.
Part 2 Back to Part 1 To the Afterthoughts page


At the Green and Yellow Chevrons Company, workers crated thousands of crayon boxes to send out to the children of the world. They looked up as the Powerpuff Girls and the Professor crashed through the roof. “Hi, Powerpuff Girls! Say, which one are you?” one of the workers asked Blossom. “Blanche?”


“I’m Blossom!” said Blossom, furious. “Which way is your boss?” The worker pointed mutely to his foreman, who pointed the way to the shipping manager, and so on up the chain of command until the Powerpuff family was speeding through miles of hallway to the plusher section of the building. After a nervous vice-president made a half-hearted leap towards the biggest, most ornate door, a small, thin man leaped up from his desk as Bubbles booted her way in. He turned as ashen as Blossom’s hair upon seeing them.

“Powerpuff Girls! What a pleasant surprise! So nice of you to drop by, so sorry you can’t stay.”

“Can it, Chevron,” snapped Buttercup. “Explain how this,” she held up the crayon, “sucked that white.” She pointed to Blossom’s hair.

The man rallied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Every one of our crayons is made with the highest quality ingredients and inspected carefully before it leaves the factory.  If you have a problem with er - hair color, I suggest you try dye before bursting in here and making wild accusations.”

Bubbles grabbed the crayon president by his lapels. “Listen, you,” she said, “I know crayons. And that ain’t no ordinary crayon! So talk, see?” She snatched a lamp from his desk and shone it in his face. “Oh, a wise guy, huh?”

“Professor,” whispered Blossom, “I don’t think you should have let Bubbles watch the last gangster movie marathon.”

Buttercup said, “Shh, Blossom! Look!” Under the heat of the lamp, the man was melting.

Bubbles dropped the wax-laden jacket and said, “I didn’t blast him, honest!”

“We know, baby,” said the Professor. He examined the wax puddle. “I would say this is a clear case of induced waxification virus. It isn’t contagious. This would have happened sooner rather than later. His condition was too far advanced for treatment.” He bowed his head soberly. The girls followed suit. He abruptly raised his head and said cheerfully, “Now let’s get to the bottom of this!”

In a stately meeting room, the Professor, armed with a laser pointer and lots of charts and slides, lectured away. “Now, given that the photochemical nature of the waxification virus has a relationship, however tenuous, with the pigmental reduction and hue fixation of the chromo-parasitical stylus, and that all share a five-carbon ring structure...” The girls listened in confusion.

Bubbles whispered in despair, “Why are we here?”

Buttercup nudged Blossom. “He’s on a roll! Let’s ditch ‘im and go looking for the cause ourselves!”

Blossom just looked at the Professor, dazed. She could barely understand one word in ten. She raised her hand. “Um, Professor? Does any of this get us closer to changing my hair back and maybe catching a crook?”

The Professor said firmly, “This is important, girls. This is a new form of photochemical engineering and I for one would be delighted to tour their lab. Now with the aforementioned nature of both the natural and the apparently supernatural polarization, requiring a formula that may appear to first glance as a meaningless or random incantation...”

Buttercup whispered, “The lab! That must be where it’s all taking place! Let’s go!” They floated quietly away as the Professor droned on.

“We’ll come back for him when we solve this caper,” Blossom decided.

“One thing I don’t understand,” said Buttercup. “Is turning people’s hair white a real, as in punishable, crime?”

“It is now,” said Blossom, her eyes narrow. They slammed open a pair of heavy glass doors. Vats of bubbling pigment filled the air with steam. “Spread out and search for clues! And be careful, so the Professor has something to look at later!” commanded Blossom. They sped off, each traveling along a maze of pipes and monitoring devices. Heat from the machinery made the air waver. Each little girl began to perspire. Blossom could only use the merest sigh of ice breath to cool herself, as she was afraid of the pipes’ freezing and shattering. After a fruitless search, they met in the center.

“I’m hot,” gasped Bubbles.

“I’m thirsty,” said Blossom.

“I’m hot AND I’m thirsty, and there’s nothin’ to drink around here!” complained Buttercup.

Just then, a giant red shape crashed through the wall. “Oh yeah!” it boomed. “Kool-Aid’s (tm) here and we’re going to have some fun!” It proffered them a small pitcher, filled with red liquid. The girls stared.

“Who are you?” asked Blossom. It looked like a giant pitcher with pipestem arms and legs.

“I’m Kool-Aid (tm),” it rumbled.

“No thanks,” said Bubbles, politely pushing the pitcher away. “I don’t want any fun right now.” The hole the creature had made revealed a sinister hidden lab. Dark smoke spewed upwards as masked and suited workers labored over the machines. Four massive tubes of red, yellow, green and blue lined the far wall. Bubbles floated towards the glowing colors, fascinated. Her sisters followed.

Buttercup and Blossom eyed the activity around them. Brightly colored crayons were sorted into various chutes, dropped into vats, and the melt was pumped into the four massive tubes. The laborers worked feverishly, as if afraid to miss a single step.

Blossom tapped one of the switch-pulling workers on the shoulder. “Pardon me, could you tell us what is going on here?” The worker’s nametag read “H. Spillthebeans.” He immediately pushed up his faceplate and began to whisper to Blossom.

Meanwhile, the bewildered Kool-Aid(tm) hesitated for a few minutes, then roller-bladed with some difficulty after them, sloshing its red interior as it rolled over the wall debris. “Hey, little chicks, wait! You called me and I came, so you gotta drink!” He shot H. Spillthebeans a vicious glance. The flustered worker clamped his jaws shut, slammed his faceplate down and turned back to his switch.

“I don’t ‘gotta’ nothing,” muttered Buttercup. Blossom and Buttercup exchanged glances and signals. Then they drifted over to Kool-Aid.

“Mister,” Blossom said in her best little-girl voice, “where do those tubes go?”

Kool-Aid(tm) beamed, hypnotized by their big, trusting, innocent eyes. “They go to my Kool-Aid (tm) factory, where these great FD & C - approved dyes go straight to making the wonderful drinks that kids of all ages have enjoyed for decades. Here, have some free samples!” It gave each of them a packet of powder.

“Wow, thanks, Kool-Aid (tm)!” they said. Blossom’s was Boogaloo Blueberry. Buttercup’s was Goodtime Lemon-Lime. The girls winked at each other.

“Mine’s better than yours,” taunted Blossom.

“Is not,” retorted Buttercup. Kool-Aid(tm) watched in bemusement as the argument turned into a fight. Nothing like this had ever happened to it before.

“Hey now,” it boomed. “Fightin’ ain’t cool. Now you two make up and drink some Kool-Aid(tm)!” It pulled Buttercup away and handed the pitcher to Blossom, who then stuck out her tongue. Buttercup made one last lunge at Blossom and then dumped the contents of her sample packet in the pitcher. The powder seeped out and turned the red liquid into rusty orange. Hauling her back, Kool-Aid(tm) rumbled ominously, “Now you let your little friend drink in peace right now, you hear?”

Buttercup yelled, “She’s not my friend, she’s my sister! And she can have her dumb drink!” She burst free and upended the pitcher over Blossom’s head.

Kool-Aid(tm)’s attention was distracted by the third little girl: Bubbles held a bunch of bright crayons directly in front of him. “Hey, mister,” she said, waving a mitt at the workers who were huddled by the giant tubes, “they said that you’re taking the colors out of the crayons and putting them into your drinks so that little kids like us will want to drink them. Is that true?” A dangerous light burned in her eyes.

“Well, now,” blustered Kool-Aid(tm), pipestem arms akimbo, “who’s gonna drink this sludge if it doesn’t have some eye appeal? And kids love bright colors!”

Bubbles began to tremble and wheeze with fury. Buttercup stepped up to her right side. Blossom, restored to her auburn glory, flew up and to her left.

Blossom said, “You enslaved and bullied those poor people. You’re also doing some way unfair business practice. And it’s YOUR fault my hair turned white!”

Buttercup said. “You tried to make me drink Kool-Aid(tm). And I don’t like your face very much.”

“YOU’RE DESTROYING CRAYONS!” Bubbles roared, and proceeded to pummel it. She swarmed around it like a malignant electron around a bulbous red nucleus. Blossom gave it a flying downwards punch while Buttercup gave it a boot in the rear, sending it skidding several feet, face down in the concrete. Miraculously, its liquid remained in its glassy body.

“Hey Kool-Aid!” whimpered Kool-Aid(tm), his expression as crazed as his surface. Four monstrous figures broke out from behind the four tubes. The first seemed like a dwarf with an enormous cherry for a head. The second looked something like an animated yellow beaker, with detached eyes. The third appeared to be a giant, fanged two-headed citrus fruit, dragging itself on spidery legs. The fourth resembled a loose collection of blue globules, each with a manic face. They stomped toward their fallen leader, shoving or stepping on any worker unlucky enough to get in their way.

“The Fruit of the Loom(tm) guys?” gasped Blossom incredulously.

“They’re the Kool-Aid(tm) drink mascots,” Bubbles said importantly. “I saw their commercials yesterday. They are, um, wait, I know! Chilly Cherry Bomb, Super Seven Punch, Goodtime Lemon-Lime, a-a-and Boogaloo Berry.” She smiled proudly.

“They’re gonna be mush soon!” snarled Buttercup, and the Powerpuff Girls hurled themselves at their foes.

Cherry Bomb swung at the Girls with his stem. Bubbles and Buttercup dodged it, jumping upwards. Blossom darted under it and gave the Cherry an uppercut that shot him to the ceiling, where he hung by his stem. Bubbles hit Super Seven with an laser eyeblast, roiling the fluid in his beaker before she knocked him over with a flying jab at the bottleneck. Goodtime Lemon-Lime jumped Buttercup from behind, and they tumbled over and over in a violent kicking, punching ball of green and yellow. The bottom-heavy Super Seven easily rocked back upright and flailed at Blossom overhead. Facing him, she flew backwards into Boogaloo Berry, who bit her with a dozen mouths.

“OW!” Blossom hollered, more in surprise than hurt. Bubbles freed Buttercup by chopping Lemon-Lime in both of his necks and flew to Blossom’s aid. Super Seven grabbed Bubbles and stuffed her down his top. Buttercup gave Lemon-Lime a final kick and attacked Boogaloo Berry, her arms a blur as she punched each of his faces. Blossom hauled Super Seven over a vat of boiling wax. The resulting pressure blew Bubbles out of his top in a burst of steam. Blossom tossed Super Seven away. Buttercup caught him by the top, and, swinging over, slammed her heels in his eyes. With a war cry, Cherry Bomb dropped from the ceiling, aiming for Bubbles, who was knocking all the heads of Lemon-Lime and Boogaloo Berry together. Blossom swung Cherry Bomb around and around by his stem, finally throwing him against the vat. He exploded, sending several tons of wax spattering.

******

The Powerpuff Girls were in the living room, coloring. The Professor was on the couch, watching TV. On the coffee table was a bowl of waxed fruit and an empty glass bottle.

The voice from the TV intoned, “Kool-Aid(tm) is still behind bars, but could it happen again? When Company Spokesthings Go Bad. At six.”

Blossom, a box marked “64 Crayons” by her side, said, “Hey, Professor! Look what I drew!” She held up a picture of herself receiving accolades from a cheering crowd.

Buttercup, also with a box marked “64 Crayons,” said, “Professor, look what I drew!” She had drawn a still life of the objects on the table, and put horrified faces on the bottle and pieces of fruit.

“Very nice, girls,” smiled the Professor. “Bubbles? Come and see the pretty pictures your sisters have drawn!”

Off to one side, Bubbles hugged her knees in an igloo built of boxes of crayons. “Gee,” she said to her stuffed animals, “It sure was nice of the Green and Yellow Chevrons Company to give us all these crayons. Coming, Professor!” she called. She burst out of the top, sending boxes tumbling, and landed in the Professor’s lap, laughing joyously. Her sisters started to laugh as well.

On the TV, the newscaster said, “And once again, the day is saved, thanks to THE POWERPUFF GIRLS!”

The End
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