GENRES: Xena: Warrior Princess, The Powerpuff Girls, crossover, parody.  VIOLENCE: Yes; it’s a toon.  SEX: None. Eww!  LANGUAGE: Squeaky clean.  RATING: G.  SUBTEXT: None. Double eww!  SPOILERS:  Nothing important.  NOTICE TO JOXERPHOBES: You get to go out on a date with Scrappy-Doo.  Ha-HA!

                                        citizens of Townsville

          The city of Townsville!
          Here the happy citizens enjoy blue skies, fluffy white clouds – and a purple interdimensional vortex crackling with lightning!
          From inside this extraordinary, otherworldly phenomenon a pair of gauntleted hands emerged, pushing at the edges of the vortex and accompanied by the high-pitched grunting of a woman exerting all her strength.  The astonished – but still happy – citizens watched and pointed as the vortex slowly expanded.  The woman’s head appeared, a heart-shaped face crowned by long blonde hair.  Her icy eyes shone with the light of madness.
          Even before the now unhappy citizens of Townsville heard her earsplitting screech like the sound of fingernails on a hundred blackboards, they scattered before her crazed gaze.  Bit by bit her trim body clad in studded black leather armor clawed its way out of the vortex: now the bare midriff, now the wicked sword slung at her back, now the dancer’s legs.  The vortex closed behind her heels with a final “pop.”
          “What is this place?” the woman screamed.
          The citizens only scurried faster.  Some yelled, “Run!  It’s Britney Spears!”
          “You drive me crazy!  I’m not Britney Spears!” she cried out.  “Run, piggies, run from CALLISTO!”  She gestured at a building, and a fireball shot from her hand, knocking a gigantic hole in the concrete and setting the building ablaze.  This prompted more scurrying and shouting.  Callisto laughed and leveled three more buildings just for fun.

          Meanwhile, in the happy residential neighborhood that is home to the Powerpuff Girls, our pint-sized heroines were arguing.  Blossom and Bubbles each had their hands on the same long stick, trying to take it away from the other.
          “I want to be her!” Bubbles wailed.
          “So do I!” Blossom countered.
          You see, when the girls play ‘Xena: Warrior Princess,’ they don’t fight over who gets to be Xena.  That’s always Buttercup.  No, they fight over who gets to be Gabrielle.
          “You were Gabrielle last time!” Bubbles complained.
          “So what?  I called it,” Blossom replied.
          “You can’t call Gabrielle!”
          “Yes, I can.”
          “But I’m cuter, like Gabrielle!”
          “No, you aren’t!”
          “Yes, I am!”
          “Are not!”
          “Am, too!”
          “And I’ve got long hair like Gabrielle!” Blossom pointed out.
          “But I’m a blonde, like Gabrielle!” Bubbles parried.
          “Yeah, but short-haired Gabby threw away her staff, so there!”
          Buttercup floated about two feet off the ground, fists on her hips.  A toy chakram hung from her belt.  “Will you two quit it?” she demanded.  “Or do I make you be ‘Hope’ and ‘Callisto’ again?”
          At that moment, inside the house, the girls’ hot line buzzed.  Leaving a pink blur behind her, Blossom flew through the window and answered the red-and-white phone with its smiling face that replaced the dial.
          “Yes, Mister Mayor?”

          Inside his office, the Mayor was hysterical as usual.
          “Help, Powerpuff Girls!” he shouted into the phone.  “Britney Spears is dressed up like a warrior woman and she’s burning down the city!”
          A fireball sailed through an open window, across the Mayor’s desk, past his shapely redheaded assistant Miss Bellum and out another open window, exploding the building next door.
          “I’m not Britney Spears!” they heard Callisto screech.  “I’m not even Steven L. Sears!”
          “You’ve gotta come right away!” the Mayor moaned.

          “We’re on it!” Blossom promised.  She flew back out of the house.  “Come on!” the pink Powerpuff Girl called to her sisters.  “A warrior woman who thinks she’s Britney Spears is burning down the city!”
          “I’m not Britney Spears!” came a faint shriek in the distance.
          “Oooh, it’s Callisto,” Buttercup said.  “I get to be Xena for real!”
          Bubbles stayed on the ground.  Her arms were folded.  “I’m not going unless I’m Gabrielle,” she declared in her voice so highly pitched that it sometimes attracted dogs.
          “This is no time to be stubborn, Bubbles,” declared Blossom.
          “I don’t care,” the blue-eyed Bubbles replied.  “I wanna be Gabrielle!”
          “You can both be Gabrielle,” Buttercup suggested.  “Blossom, you take the staff.  Bubbles…”  Buttercup flew to a nearby lamp post and knocked two projecting pieces of metal off it.  “These can be your sais.”
          “My size?  But we’re all little.”
          “No, Bubbles, your sais.  You use them to disarm bad guys with swords.”
          “Oh.  Okay,” Bubbles agreed.
          And so, cutting the sky with streaks in pastel shades of pink, blue and green, the Powerpuff Girls flew toward the source of the disturbance: the evil, maniacal Britney –
          “I’M NOT BRITNEY SPEARS!”
          – sorry, Callisto, Warrior Queen!

          The aforementioned Callisto began to enjoy herself as the red glow of a firestorm engulfed a good chunk of the city.  When frightened citizens encountered her, she sent them on their way with mini-fireballs to their posteriors.
          “Come on out and play, Xena,” she said in a singsong voice.  “I know you’re here somewhere.”
          “AI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI!” came the familiar war cry, but in a lower-pitched, girlish voice, followed by a plastic chakram.  Callisto caught the toy weapon, which broke in her hand.
          “You’re not Xena!” Callisto spat.
          “Yes, I am,” Buttercup asserted, and she punched the Warrior Queen in the jaw, knocking her backwards into a crumbling wall, which collapsed but did not bury Callisto under the rubble.
          “Go away, little girl, you bother me,” the Warrior Queen replied.  She stood up.
          “Bother this!” said Bubbles, who kicked Callisto back into the pile of bricks.
          “Way to go, Gabrielle!” Blossom applauded.  She bonked Callisto on the head with her staff.
          “She’s not Gabrielle!  Neither are you!” screamed Callisto.  She shot fireballs at Bubbles and Blossom, knocking them both into high arcs that ended with them landing splat into the sandbox at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten.  Laughing maniacally, the Warrior Queen drew her sword and swung it at the oncoming Buttercup.
          The tough little fighter ducked under the blow, however, and planted another one on Callisto’s jaw.  Once again, Callisto sailed backwards into a building, her arms and legs splayed.  Peeling herself off, the Warrior Queen resumed the attack, leaving a Callisto-shaped indentation in the concrete behind her.
          “OW!” she squeaked.  “That’s it, kid!  Auntie Callisto is not a happy camper!”  With that, Callisto knocked Buttercup for a loop – several, in fact, causing the Powerpuff Girl to become dizzy before she, too, landed splat in the sandbox.
          “Callisto plays mean,” Blossom said, rubbing her aching head.
          “Callisto is mean,” Bubbles amended.  “She likes to hurt people.”
          “No kidding,” Buttercup groaned.  “Let’s hurt her instead.”
          “But how?” Bubbles wondered.  “Isn’t she a goddess?”
          “The jail won’t hold her,” agreed Blossom.  “We need the real Xena.  Sorry, Buttercup.”
          “That’s okay,” Buttercup replied.  “Maybe the Professor can help.  He’s seen all the episodes, even the ones he won’t let us watch ’cause they stink.”
          “Even ‘Destiny’ and ‘The Ides of March’?” Bubbles marveled.
          “Yep, even ‘Legacy’ and the rest of the sixth season,” Buttercup confirmed.
          “Wow!” Bubbles and Blossom exclaimed, impressed.

          Her sisters having been detailed to distract Callisto, Blossom raced home, where she knocked on the door of Professor Utonium’s lab.
          “Come in,” the Professor invited.  “Hello, Blossom.  Are you upset because Bubbles is playing Gabrielle this time?  Let me give you a hug.”
          “It’s okay, Professor,” Blossom said, accepting the hug.  “We worked it out.  But we have a little problem, and we need your help.”
          “All right.  What is it?”
          “Callisto is burning down the city and we need Xena to show us how to beat her.”
          “That’s cute, Blossom.  I’d like to play with you girls, but I have an experiment to run.  Besides, Buttercup can handle it.”
          Blossom frowned.  “Professor, it’s the real Callisto!”
          Professor Utonium was not moved.  “What did I tell you about the difference between fantasy and reality?”
          “That fantasy is something we pretend, and reality is something we don’t have to make up.  It just is.”
          “And what is Xena: Warrior Princess?”
          “It’s just a television show,” Blossom recited unhappily.
          “And there isn’t a real Callisto, right?”
          “Wrong!”
          Shock appeared on the Professor’s face, quickly replaced by disappointment.
          “We fought her,” Blossom explained.  “She’s got wavy blonde hair and bright black leather armor, except her belly button is showing, and high boots and gauntlets –”
          “Blossom, Blossom, Blossom.”  The Professor smiled indulgently.  “That’s not Callisto, that’s Britney Spears.”
          The telephone in the laboratory rang.
          “Hello, Professor Utonium here,” he said.
          “I’M NOT BRITNEY SPEARS!” cried the voice at the other end.  A scream followed, loud enough for Blossom to hear.  Next came an electronic squeal; Callisto had melted the phone on her end with one of her fireballs.
          The Professor hung up the phone and placed a hand over his ear.  “That didn’t sound like either one of your sisters.  Let’s see: Sedusa…no, she’s not a blonde.  Femme Fatale is a blonde…but her voice is too low.  Princess…she screams like that, and she’s not Britney Spears…no, she’d rather buy Townsville than burn it down.  I don’t suppose your teacher Miss Keane is playing a trick on us?”
          “Professor!”
          “But that means we have an Undesirable Xenaverse Element!  And Creation Entertainment isn’t scheduled to do a convention in Townsville.”
          “Yeah, and Callisto doesn’t belong here either!”
          “You’re right, Blossom.  I’ll start working right away on an Undesirable Xenaverse Element Remover.  You help your sisters keep Callisto from destroying the rest of the city.  All I need is time.”
          “Okay, Professor!”  In a pink blur, Blossom was gone.

          Blossom’s sisters had not been faring well.  They did maintain one advantage: mortal habits die hard.  Callisto tended to stay on the ground, swatting at the two Powerpuff Girls with her sword as if they were a pair of annoying flies.  The Warrior Queen varied the action by taking the occasional potshot with her fireballs.  While the girls easily avoided these, the surrounding buildings, or such as were left of them, suffered the proverbial collateral damage.
          “Oops,” Callisto giggled as a building went up in flames.  Then another crashed to the ground.  “Oops, I did it again.”
          “Well, stop doing it!” Buttercup declared, and knocked Callisto’s legs out from under her.
          “Stand still so I can hit you!” complained Callisto.
          “No, you stand still so we can hit you,” countered Bubbles.
          “Okay,” Callisto agreed, and stood her ground.  However, when Bubbles flew at her, the ex-Warrior Queen sidestepped and caught the Powerpuff Girl by the scruff of the neck.  “I lied,” Callisto said.  “Now I’m going to spank you.”
          Suddenly, she no longer held Bubbles.  A pink streak shot past her, taking Bubbles with it.
          “Oh, so the third one came back to play.  Sometimes you run, sometimes you hide, but none of it does you any good,” she addressed Blossom.  “Why don’t you just tell me where Xena is so you can all go back to your drab mortal lives?”
          “We keep telling you, she’s not here!” the exasperated Buttercup replied.  “Are we gonna have to kick your butt from Hanna to Barbera before you believe us?”
          Before Callisto could answer, a tall, redheaded woman in a red dress approached.  Her face was obscured by the random plumes of smoke from assorted random fires.  It was Miss Bellum.
          “Girls,” The Mayor’s executive secretary announced in her alto voice, “the Professor called and said you should go home right away.  He also said something about an invention.”
          “Thanks, Miss Bellum!” Blossom said cheerfully.  “Come on, girls, there’s no time to lose!”
          The Powerpuff Girls departed the scene, leaving a confused Callisto behind them.
          “Silly babies,” she remarked.  “How come you’re not running away, too?  Aren’t you afraid of me?”
          “Of course I am,” Miss Bellum replied.  “Oh, help, Callisto is attacking again,” she added in flat tones.
          “At least you got my name right.”
          “Naturally.  You’re not Britney Spears.”

          Professor Utonium emerged from his house.  He held in his hands a black box surmounted by a short antenna that glowed at its tip.  The box, which was marked ‘UNDESIRABLE XENAVERSE ELEMENT REMOVER,’ bore several buttons with labels such as ‘Gratuitous Subtext,’ ‘Joxerphobes,’ ‘Rob Tapert’s Story Lines,’ ‘Sixth Season,’ ‘Karma Girl Gabrielle’ and ‘Callisto Rampaging Through Wrong Dimension.’
          “I’ve got it, girls!” he announced.  “All you have to do is keep Callisto in one spot long enough so I can open the dimensional vortex next to her.”
          “How hard can that be?” Buttercup wondered.  “Xena’s always burying her in rocks.”
          “Yeah, but Callisto knows that,” replied Bubbles.  “She’s been moving around too much.  And we don’t have any rocks.”
          “We could use some of the rubble from downtown,” Buttercup suggested.
          “No, I have a better idea,” Blossom said.  “You two get Callisto to chase you here.  I’ll be right back.”  The leader of the Powerpuff Girls took off, leaving the inevitable pink streak behind.
          “Be careful!” the Professor called as Bubbles and Buttercup returned to the center of Townsville, trailing their own blue and green streaks.

          Callisto took a break from senseless destruction by engaging in a little purposeful destruction.  Having demolished Corky’s Convenience Store, she sat atop the ruins of the canopy, roasting pork sausages over the flames from the wrecked gas pumps.
          “I just love well-cooked piggies,” the fiery goddess giggled, her mad eyes gleaming bright.
          “Cook this!” Bubbles announced, turning her heat vision on Callisto.  Neither her ultra-super power nor her taunt appeared to have any effect.
          “Oooh, that tickles,” the Warrior Queen replied.  “Keep it up, and there’s a nice sausage in it for each of you.”
          “Forget it, Psycho Doll™!” Buttercup scoffed.  “You still owe me for a chakram!”
          “Ha!  When are you going to stop playing Xena, little girl?”
          “I’m not a little girl!”
          “Um, yes, you are,” Bubbles pointed out.
          “Oh,” Buttercup conceded.  Then she snarled at Callisto: “At least Xena’s a better role model than Britney Spears!”
          “I AM NOT BRITNEY SPEARS!”
          “Britney Spears, Britney Spears, Britney Spears!” Bubbles taunted.
          Callisto hurled a ball of energy at the sweetest Powerpuff Girl, but it missed and exploded into a shower of harmless sparks high in the sky.  Bubbles flew off, joined by Buttercup.
          “You’d better fly, fly away!” Callisto shouted at the retreating girls.
          “Catch us if you can,” challenged Bubbles.
          “Yeah!  Mojo Jojo has more Sodo Mojo than you do, you dodo!”  Buttercup added.
          “Oh, yeah?  I’m gonna knock you two so far into Area 51 that even Ichiro won’t catch you!” Callisto declared, and began to pursue her tormentors.

          “My, oh, my!” remarked the Professor when he saw Callisto hot on the heels of Buttercup and Bubbles.  “Where’s Blossom?”
          “Right here,” replied Blossom’s voice.  At first, she could not be seen beneath what she was carrying, or rather whom…on second thought, what.  And what she carried was a large, square-jawed man with a heavily muscled chest and arms to match, a black T-shirt, blue jeans and dark sunglasses.  His blonde hair was done up in a stiff pompadour that Joxer’s brother Jace would not envy.  In fact, the hair had been nominated for ‘best performance by an inanimate object in a cartoon’ but lost to a plank.
          The man did not wait for Blossom to set him down but sped with a whoosh to Callisto’s side the moment he saw her.
          “Oooh, mama!” he declared.  “Hoo!”  With a sound like a whip cracking, he balled his fists, extending one arm out and placing the other fist on his hip.  “Ha!”  Both hands went up in the air in a karate defensive stance, to the sound of a rubber band snapping.  “Hungh!”  Now one arm stretched straight up, index finger pointing, and the other arm went down and behind his back, the imaginary whip cracking again.  Before the goddess could react, he had her in his arms.  He leaned over and dipped her, to the sound of another crack.  It was not Callisto’s back, however.  “How about you and me go back to my place for a hot cup of Johnny Bravo?” he invited.
          Callisto proceeded to sweep Johnny off his feet with a low kick.  She jumped away and struck him with a full-force blast, leaving him completely blackened and disheveled except for his hair, which was protected by the massive amounts of hair gel it contained.
          “Fiery,” remarked Johnny Bravo before he collapsed, unconscious.
          “What are you trying to do, little girls, disgust me to death?” Callisto complained.  “I have a city to destroy and Xena to fight.”
          “Quick, Professor!” Blossom cried.
          With a very deliberate motion, Professor Utonium pressed the button marked ‘Callisto Rampaging Through Wrong Dimension.’  The antenna began to crackle with increased energy.
          Callisto tried to get away from the device, but Johnny Bravo (who has amazing powers of recovery) was back in her face, and back to what passes as normal for him.
          “Hey, pyro mama, you’re not my date, Gabrielle!  But you’ll do.  You know, you kinda look like that Britney Spears chick.”
          The Warrior Queen erupted.  Flames encircled her trim form.
          “For the last time, you idiots, I am NOT Britney Spears!  And I am not that irritating little blonde bard Gabrielle, either!  I’m going to roast you and EAT you!”
          At that moment, the interdimensional vortex opened behind Callisto’s back.
          “NOOOOO!!!” she screamed, and fought against the sudden winds that threatened to suck her into the boiling, crackling pool of purple light.
          “Here’s a present for you, ‘Auntie’ Callisto,” Bubbles said, and kicked the goddess in the midriff, forcing her further into the mouth of the vortex.
          “And here’s another,” Buttercup added, catching Callisto in the jaw again, snapping her head to one side.
          Blossom said nothing, but put her two lips together and blew.  Instead of a whistle, she produced an arctic blast that quickly encased Callisto in a block of blue-tinted ice.  Forced to choose between maintaining the difficult struggle or melting the ice and losing that much more time, Callisto tried both, and failed.  As the ice cracked and melted away from her body, the Warrior Queen clutched at the edges of the portal.
          “I can’t believe a bunch of babies is beating me!” Callisto wailed.  “It’s ridiculous!”
          “We’re not babies, we’re the Powerpuff Girls!” Buttercup asserted.
          “Uh, girls, could you help me here?” the Professor asked.  The vortex was beginning to pull him in, too.
          “Yeah, like he said,” Johnny Bravo added.
          The girls’ first thought was for the Professor, and so all three of them caught him up and flew him to safety.
          Being a mere mortal, and even that is perhaps an overstatement, Johnny Bravo could not resist the vortex.  Before he fell headlong into it, however, he managed to wrap his arms around Callisto.
          “Yeah, baby, you and me for all eternity!” he exulted.
          Callisto could only scream one last time, partly because the impact of Johnny’s body caused her to lose her final grip on the portal, but mostly due to the proximity of Johnny’s face.  The desperate struggle to stay out of the vortex changed into a desperate struggle to keep him from kissing her.  She succeeded, but the vortex closed and disappeared.  Callisto and Johnny Bravo disappeared with it.
          Blue skies and fluffy white clouds returned to Townsville, and the happy citizens cheered their heroines, the Powerpuff Girls.  The cheering hushed, however, when another purple spot appeared in the sky.  The purple patch grew slightly, spat out Johnny Bravo, and then vanished.  He landed on his head, which meant that he was not seriously hurt.  The citizens of Townsville cheered again.
          And so, once again, the day is saved, thanks to Xena, Gabrielle and Gab– I mean, the Powerpuff Girls!

Disclaimer:
          The city of Townsville was not permanently harmed in the writing of this story.  It was just another typical day there.

Episode references:
          “The Way.”

Britney Spears song references:
          “Oops, I Did It Again,” “Sometimes” and “You Drive Me Crazy.”

Other references:
          Steven L. Sears was one of the principal writers for Xena: Warrior Princess.  A little girl bothered W.C. Fields on at least one famous occasion.  Lauren Bacall delivered the line about how to whistle in Dark Passage (to Humphrey Bogart, of course).

Author’s notes:
          Viewers of The Powerpuff Girls will note that various conventions have been followed, including the opening and closing, and the fact that the narrator is sometimes part of the action.  Sadly, there is no convenient way to depict most of the sound effects, though an effort was made in Johnny Bravo’s case.  For those unfamiliar with either cartoon, please visit CartoonNetwork.com .
          Johnny Bravo’s hair was indeed nominated for a ‘Fancy Anvil’ award, but it lost to Plank from Ed, Edd and Eddy.  He once was supposed to have a date with a woman named Gabrielle (not the bard) but she broke it off to go out with some other clown.  This particular Gabrielle was a redhead.
          “Sodo” is the neighborhood south of the (now demolished) Kingdome in Seattle.  “Sodo Mojo” was coined in 2001, when the Seattle Mariners won 116 games to tie the major-league record.  “Area 51” refers to right field in the Mariners’ new stadium, Safeco Field, which is in Sodo.  This position is usually played (at the time this story was written) by Ichiro Suzuki, who prefers to use only his given name; he wears jersey number 51.  “Fly, fly away” and “My, oh, my” are expressions used by longtime Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus; the former is applied to home runs.
          It is commonly known that Creation Entertainment “conventions” are thinly disguised merchandising events.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
          Xena: Warrior Princess, Xena, Gabrielle, Callisto and all other characters who have appeared in the series, together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of USA Network and Renaissance Pictures.  The Powerpuff Girls, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Professor Utonium, the Mayor, Sara Bellum, Mojo Jojo, the city of Townsville, all other characters who have appeared in the series, Johnny Bravo, their names and likenesses are the sole property of Hanna-Barbera Productions, Cartoon Network and AOL Time Warner.  It seems to be a rule to state that Craig McCracken created The Powerpuff Girls.  “Sodo Mojo” belongs to the Seattle Mariners.  No infringement of copyrights or trademarks is intended in the writing of this fan fiction.  Britney Spears, Steven L. Sears and Ichiro Suzuki are real persons and Creation Entertainment is a real business.  There is no intent to defame them.  This story is © 2003 by Philip D. Hernández and is his sole property along with the story idea.  The Undesirable Xenaverse Element Remover and the term ‘Psycho Doll™’ are his own creations.  This story cannot be sold or used for profit in any way.  Copies of this story may be made for private use only and must include all disclaimers and copyright notices.

Comments:
          Unless your sole purpose is to bash Joxer, Ted Raimi or Gabrielle-Joxer romance, your comments would be greatly appreciated.  You can e-mail the author at BroadwayPhil@yahoo.com .

More stories:
          Additional stories can be found on the author’s website, The Subtlety of Pickett’s Charge, at http://www.pickettscharge.us .