Reply to Guest: I'm torn between giving this a T rating and an M rating too. Way I see it, since I have nearly no sexual content, and when there is, it's minor descriptions and fade-to-black, I'll keep it at T. Morality lessons touching on dark subjects, let's face it, has been around since Grimm. As for the level of violence, could have been worse. Or is it just me? I've been trying to keep a rein on it and I haven't portrayed the worst stuff I can think of...


Chapter 15: The Purple Man (Part 3)

The City of Townsville. Pokey Oaks County. Pokey Oaks Woodland Reserve

7 FEB (Tuesday) 1989. 1607.

"It sounds like our friends are in trouble…" Bubbles looked up from Boomer when she heard the sound of gunshots and screams in the distance. She had covered Boomer in a thermal sheet after she was done cleaning and bandaging his wrists. "What do we do?"

"We should help them, Mister Blake!" Blossom suggested aloud, itching to fly in the direction of the USDO soldiers in trouble, the fog, which had intimidated her with its miasmatic white abyss, was nothing now compared to the urgency she felt when it came to innocent lives. "We have to!"

"Yeah! Right? Right?" Buttercup was practically begging for a fight - agreeing to assist for all the wrong reasons.

Blossom was, of course right, Agent Blake thought. However, combat strategy and tactics weren't always about sympathy. He had to think about the cost in lives versus securing the objective. Should he safeguard those who had yet to encounter the Purple Man and brace them for the coming confrontation? Or race to save those who were already locked in deadly combat with him? Should he risk the Girls for the sake of expediency?

"Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, go!" Agent Blake ordered. As much as he loved the Girls, he had to think of the lives of others too, even if he wasn't as close to them. It was the right thing to do. It had to be – it was three Girls against one. Three enhanced individuals against a single one. He told himself that the Girls should be fine – they had done this before.

"But what about Mister Wilbur?" Bubbles said as her hands were all over Captain James 'Boomer' Wilbur's face - she had been stroking his hair, his cheeks, feeling really sorry for the poor man for what he had suffered - he had lost all his friends, and he was nailed to a tree as a human signpost for hours on end. And she had yet to take care of his ankles.

"We'll take care of him," Agent Fields, Blake's second, promised. "You did good work on his wrists. We'll work on his legs."

"Let's go, Girls!" Blossom ordered before kicking herself up into a high floating position then flying towards the sound of battle. Buttercup and Bubbles followed her eagerly and hesitantly respectively, their lines of pink, baby blue and lime green light disappearing into the winter fog.

The Girls had charged straight in, and yet, by the time they reached Charlie squad, all they had found were dead bodies not unlike the ones they had found in the Exxon gas station. Some were ripped apart limb by limb. Another had his face smashed in - his helmet doing nothing against the fists of the Purple Man. Another soldier had his guts pulled out. Yet another was bisected entirely at the waist. Only the minority of them were killed in a more conventional manner - by shotgun shells. Splotches of red colored the snowy floor like drips of paint on a canvas.

As Blossom and her sisters surveyed the scene in utter horror, the leader heard a twig snap, then leaves shuddering as if quaking in fear of the Purple Man.

"There!" Blossom pointed in the direction of some swaying trees leading into a thicker part of the woods. She flew in, her speed much slower to avoid accidents in the woods, followed by her sisters.

Despite giving chase as fast as they could, the Girls could never spot the purple fur Agent Blake had said to look out for. But they were closer than ever. Floating through the thick woods, they were able to hear footsteps just out of sight, and just when they thought they were getting warmer, it stopped abruptly. And so did they.

"Do you see purple, Buttercup?" Blossom asked, puzzled, as she looked all around her, and yet all she could see was white, white, and more white, as the winter snow had covered everything in its purity. Switching to her x-ray vision, she checked behind the trees, only to find no one hiding behind them.

"I don't see anything," Buttercup growled in frustration. She really wanted to best the Purple Man, and even take a few trophies from him.

"M-maybe we should go back and see if anyone needs help…" Bubbles was almost whispering as she held on tightly to her stockless XM4, shivering more from fear than the cold as her eyes darted around the woods, searching every corner of it. The fact that they had found nothing so far had only added to the fear.

"There wasn't anyone alive, Bobblehead," Buttercup said derisively. "And I thought my eyesight was bad."

Bubbles turned to stare Buttercup down - momentarily angry, but the heat in her gave way quickly to hurt, and pain, and misery.

"Shhh! Let's keep moving," Blossom said as she floated forward, deeper into the woods. "Be careful…"

A massive form rose from the snow, silent despite its size, silent despite the volume of snow it was throwing off itself. Standing up in his snowshoes, the massive form took one careful step forward after the next, in silent pursuit of the invaders - this time three wisps in service of the highfalutin government men. He pulled his weapon out of the ground - an old lever-action shotgun which he adored since the bad days in… He couldn't even remember much of his life.

But he wouldn't be using the old Winchester on the wisps - gosh, no, because the wisps were special like he was. They were so special that they were floating with their specialness. Slinging his old shotgun, he had something else in mind, something more personal.

As they floated lazily forwards, he was gaining on them with one big stride after the next. He was gaining on them alarmingly fast, and before he knew it, he was within an arm's length of them.

"Mister Blake said he was easy to see…" the blue wisp had whispered, and the Purple Man thought how knee-slappingly funny that was. After all, they had no idea what he was capable of, and it sure as hell was more than stealing the snow ghillie pants of the dead G-men to hide his denim pants. His tricks would be the last thing those meddling kids would ever learn.

He raised his claws at them, preparing to strike…

"I'm still worried that there could be someone we could help just now…" Bubbles said, and she wasn't lying. She was truly worried that someone in that recent battlefield was still alive, and in as much pain as Boomer. She turned around- "Maybe if I check-" and saw, right before her eyes, a massive form just rearing to strike her with its massive claws, and it wasn't purple at all.

"B- B- Blos-" Bubbles stuttered, petrified by the monster before her.

Before Bubbles could understand what she just saw, she felt claws on her right upper arm and shoulder, shredding right through the arm of her ghillie suit, her skin and partway, her flesh. The force of the blow had knocked her flat down to the ground. Blood splashed in four long blades across the snow.

Blossom and Buttercup whirled around in mid-air after hearing the roar that accompanied the attack. Buttercup trained her light machinegun on the massive form only for the hulking thing to grab it by the barrel and push it aside just as she had squeezed the trigger, causing her to miss all her shots and hit Blossom in the chest. Next thing she knew, what felt like a freight train slammed into her face, sending her flying many yards away and hitting a tree before tumbling in the snow.

Blossom, who was still recovering from taking a full burst of rifle rounds to the chest, had only time to see what she was up against: He was the Purple Man, alright, except he wasn't purple. His fur was white somehow such that he resembled some kind of a yeti creature, and he had covered his denim pants in stolen USDO snow ghillie apparel. He was wearing a kind of white woolen sack on one shoulder, its content unknown.

The beast took Blossom by the arms, by surprise. Sprinting towards a nearby tree, he slammed her against the trunk hard enough that the force had fallen the tree. She fell in the snow after he'd let go, his attention shifting to a bleeding Bubbles on the ground.

Bubbles was bawling her eyes out as she clutched her wounded arm - there were four deep claw marks going through skin and flesh, all of which were bleeding severely. She had completely lost it, to the point of forgetting that she had powers to match the Purple Man and that she wasn't just a normal little girl.

And it was made worse by the Purple Man staring at her with his ghoulish and soulless gray eyes when it took strides towards her, reminding her of pictures of anglerfishes and other predatory deep sea creatures.

Buttercup sat up despite the pain she felt in her cheek. She had never taken such a punch before. Touching it, she could feel a bulge forming, but something worse under her bruise had made even opening her mouth an agony.

Bubbles was screaming and crying at the same time. Buttercup shot up, but her machinegun was nowhere to be found – she had lost her grip on it after taking an anvil-like fist to the face. She unslung her MP5, which was still surprisingly found on her person. Aiming it quickly, she unloaded everything she had on the white-furred Purple Man, and every shot was a hit - the recoil was no match for her strength.

It served to distract him, not that that was her intention. With a roar, the Purple Man charged at Buttercup, who switched out her magazine quickly but could only let off half of it before he took a swing at her.

He was blindingly fast, and his size had done well to disguise that. Buttercup couldn't even get out of the way despite her powers of flight, what with the battle being measured in milliseconds.

It felt as if she had been thrown in a shredder when the Purple Man had swung his claws at her. His claws had cut a bloody, diagonal swathe through her ghillie suit, vest, uniform, and skin. A shocking amount of blood had splashed on the snow in the direction of the Purple Man's attack. Buttercup was sent tumbling once more with multiple deep lacerations in her chest leaving smudges of blood on the snowy white floor as she rolled.

And before she lost consciousness, she saw the Purple Man transform before her eyes, turning from white to purple like a chameleon.

Blossom was still recovering when Buttercup was struck down. But she'd seen it – her sister, rent so barbarously by a color-changing maniac. She couldn't even be sure that she was still alive – she'd felt pain in her temple when Buttercup was hurt, and it wasn't a good sign. And Bubbles, who was gripping her bleeding shoulder and arm and bawling on the ground, wasn't far behind.

"Buttercup!" Blossom yelled as she raised her own MP5 and let go with everything she had – bullets and infrared beam both. The bullets did nothing but ruffle fur, but her heat beams had seared red on purple, which was encouraging.

"Wha' in tarnation!" the Purple Man roared when he felt his fur and skin both burn as he shielded himself with his arms. It was the first time he'd felt such a thing. Thinking quickly, he picked up a moaning Buttercup by the sides and held her up as a shield. The heat beams stopped.

"Let her go!" Blossom warned the Purple Man as she was quickly swapping in a fresh MP5 magazine from her pouch.

"Or what?" the Purple Man replied surprisingly in a southern hillbilly accent. "You gonna burn me some mo'?"

"Bubbles, go around!" Blossom had turned to Bubbles for solutions. She was still crying, however, but the worse of it was over – still, she shook her head in fear, panic still deciding her actions. "Bubbles!"

That was when Buttercup came to, and with her remaining strength, threw her fists down and broke the Purple Man's grasp on her. Ignoring the beast's frightening roar, she began delivering right and left hooks to his face, knocking him back one step at a time. The blood on the Purple Man's lips encouraged her further. This was followed up by a furious flurry of machinegun punches to his chest, then a spinning kick where she floated. However, even after all that, the Purple Man was still not down – he wasn't even fazed by the attacks. Surprise turned to shock and fear when he simply spat a glob of blood into the snow nonchalantly and retaliated with a hammering wallop down her skull. So paralyzing and painful was it that Buttercup dropped to the floor after a pregnant moment.

"Leave my sister alone!" Blossom screamed before letting off another pair of heat beams. She could feel more pain in her temple when Buttercup was pounded over the head.

On feeling his chest getting burned, the Purple Man hit the deck immediately and unslung his shotgun, firing off a shotgun shell, forcing Blossom to hide behind a tree.

Buttercup's ears were ringing, her vision blurred. She could feel a severe headache coming on, and it was hard to think. But it didn't take good vision to see the massive, muscle-bound Purple Man, nor a good brain to figure out what to do next.

While the Purple Man continued to fire wild shots at Blossom as he stood up, Buttercup propelled herself straight from the ground and delivered a kick to his side, stumbling him and launching herself far away from him, up into the sky. From there, she launched herself into a flying punch but missed when the Purple Man sidestepped the attack, crashing into the snow. From the ground, she delivered a quick kick to the back of his knee, causing him to fall to a kneel. Getting up, she aimed a spinning kick to the back of his head and struck home.

"You like that!?" Buttercup taunted the Purple Man triumphantly as she flew away once more when he started swinging his claws around wildly, showing no sign of stopping.

"Oh, you!" the Purple Man said as he rubbed his head. "Slippery lil' city 'un!"

As Buttercup was flying around once more for a frontal assault, he aimed his shotgun and pointed it one-handed at Buttercup. He squeezed the trigger after he was certain he'd hit.

What happened next caught Buttercup unawares: the pellets hurt far more than the regular kind, had even dug into her skin somewhat. Somehow, the Purple Man's shotgun was better. Unbeknownst to the Girls, he had mixed some of his blood into the home-made gunpowder he had been making. The curious addition had made his shots more powerful, but without damaging his shotgun as he had reinforced the barrel and mechanisms with some old-fashioned blacksmithing.

The Purple Man whooped in celebration of his good aim as Buttercup fell from the sky like a hunted goose, landing in the snow. Shocked by her sister falling from the sky, Blossom rushed the Purple Man, eyes blazing and heat beam flaring. The Purple Man pumped his lever-action shotgun one-handed with a single jerk of his powerful arm and fired. Fading sideways, she was able to dodge most of the shot, feeling some of the pellets in her shoulder, before driving a foot into the Purple Man's solar plexus, actually pushing him back somewhat and causing him to roar in pain.

"That actually hurts!" the Purple Man screamed as he pulled down the lever of his shotgun. Meanwhile, Blossom had flown in an arc and delivered a double-kick to his back, aiming for a curious white cotton sack he'd been carrying around. Something crunched - shattered really hard. Blossom did not know what it was at first, as she was too busy trying to stay alive. Then she saw the pieces of a Banjo falling out of the holes in the white sack, scattering on the ground; carefully varnished wood, strings and oiled metal parts all.

"Joe! YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!" the Purple Man bellowed furiously before smacking Blossom in the face as she was coming in for a flying punch. The blow sent her skidding in the snow and his fur had turned red in the meantime, a color scheme that even a kindergartner could figure out the meaning of. Getting up with blood snaking from her nostrils, Blossom wiped some of it off before launching herself into a flight straight towards the Purple Man, determined to take him down before he did the same to her sisters.

As if shooting a clay target, the Purple Man took aim and fired. Blossom was struck right in the face, the pellets propelled at speeds high enough to cause bruising even in her skin, and that was on top of the heavy blow he'd dealt to her with the back of his hand. The pain had been so blindingly extreme that she'd lost focus and even consciousness in that moment that she'd careened on the snowy floor face-first and delivered herself to the Purple Man.

The Purple Man had acted quickly to take advantage of this, seizing both Blossom and Buttercup by the neck and holding them up before him.

"Bubbles, help us!" Blossom screamed hoarsely for her other sister to act. Buttercup, on the other hand, was silent, her head lolling as she was being held like a ragdoll by the Purple Man - she was barely conscious.

Bubbles was still on the floor. The sound of the shotgun blasts had rooted her to the ground and spoiled her resolve. Weeks of therapy became non-existent. It had been enough that her sisters were beaten so completely right before her – what chance would she have against the Purple Man if her more able sisters couldn't stand against him?

Torn between her loyalty to her sisters and her insurmountable fear, Bubbles had frozen up. She sobbed and shivered where she was, the rifle near her abandoned, despite being quite reachable - her sonic scream all but forgotten, her strength locked behind her weakness.

Seeing this, the Purple Man chortled at how pathetic she was.

"Bubbles, please!" Blossom screamed, herself crying because she thought she was going to die there and then.

Seeing that the blue one was of no threat, the Purple Man got back to work, throwing them down on the ground so hard, one after the other, that the snow did nothing to cushion the Girls. Blossom could feel the wind knocked out of her and every bone in her rattling and screaming in pain with her. Buttercup was knocked unconscious a second time, and she was the lucky one.

The Purple Man raised his claws once more, and there was no mystery as to what he was going to do.

"Blossom!" Bubbles screamed, still unable to act. Blossom threw up her arms to protect herself - then felt claws on her forearms, slicing through her Kevlar arm guards, rending her flesh. The Purple Man followed up with another swipe with his other hand, and this time had caught Blossom in the chest, his claws slicing through ghillie suit and Kevlar like paper, tearing through Blossom's flesh like cloth. The enhanced little girl gasped and coughed in pain.

Bubbles felt pain in her temple as the Sister Sense between them transmitted the sensation. It'd added to the guilt.

"Why… are… you doing this?" Blossom asked the Purple Man, her voice weak, fading.

"You came to my neck of the woods with guns and terrible manners! You broke my Joe! And you're asking me that!?" the Purple Man roared his answer, and raised his claws once more. Blossom covered her face with her hand as she closed her eyes. The Purple Man's fur had turned a brighter shade of red in anticipation of the kill.

But help came. Up in the sky, a flare was shot upwards, ominously red but not for the Girls. There was a loud gunshot, and all of a sudden, blood spurted from the Purple Man's right arm. It screamed, surprisingly human.

It took off as quickly as it had appeared behind Bubbles, its fur turning from red to white once more. Within seconds, it had disappeared into the wilderness, chased after by Duranium bullets and more conventional sniper fire.

"Blossom… Oh no…" Bubbles said weakly as she finally found the will to act. Getting up weakly, still clutching her arm - by now her wound minor next to her sisters', she came up to Blossom, and the moment she saw clearly how hurt she was, voices in her mind had started blaming her, calling her names.

Blossom remained lying on the ground. Although she was hurt badly, she still had the strength to move. Betrayal, not pain, was keeping her down. A very strong sense of utter betrayal. And Bubbles' concerned voice had only served to stoke the fire of anger in her.

Bubbles knelt down beside her with a wince. "Blossom, are you okay?" she said to her sister.

Blossom did not reply. Instead, she stared up into the sky, watching the flare begin its descent. Her tears mingling with blood, freezing quickly into beads of condensed sadness.

"Blossom?" Bubbles pleaded for her to answer, and when she wouldn't, took her by the upper arms and tried to pull her up.

"Go away!" Blossom shouted as she struggled out of her grasp, and when Bubbles wouldn't let go, she pushed her away. They both fell in the snow. Blossom remained on her back, still not feeling like getting up while Bubbles floated back on her feet. She tried to help her up again, taking her by the arm with both her hands.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Blossom barked madly when Bubbles had tried again to pull her to her feet. She struggled from Bubbles' hands, going so far as to slap her multiple times in the arm when she wouldn't stop and let gk, until she landed a blow squarely in Bubbles' cheek, at which point the latter girl finally let go, her hands going up to her cheek.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!" Blossom cried loudly, clear fury in her voice.

In the meantime, men were racing down from a nearby ridge, along with others from two other directions. Blake and his men.

"I'm sorry…" Bubbles mewled her apology as she clutched her - Blossom's slap had hurt more than the Purple Man's claws. "I… I was scared…"

"I DON'T CARE!" Blossom screamed with fury and explosive anger unchecked, before getting up on her own accord, motivated more by anger than anything else as she marched up to Bubbles. "Buttercup's right about you. You're useless! You're a USELESS no-good cry-baby coward!"

"Blossom! Don't! I'm sorry!" Bubbles cried as she cowered on the floor, shocked by how her sister had changed so dramatically with her rage.

"I HATE YOU! YOU LEFT ME TO DIE!" Blossom screamed and gave Bubbles a kick in the arm – the uninjured one only by coincidence – as the blue-eyed girl shrank away from her mad sister. Blossom would have done more to Bubbles too, had Agent Blake not ran up to her. Instead, she'd left Bubbles sniffling and tearing up instead.

"Blossom!" he called out to her. The mere presence of an adult had quelled her anger somewhat - she knew that the adults she loved wouldn't have approved of her shouting and violence towards her own sister, no matter how justified it seemed at the time.

Blossom turned around to face Mister Blake, turning her back on Bubbles. The pain in her chest - in her arms - everywhere, in fact, had flared up. She shivered as she could feel the cold, wintry gale penetrating her to the very bone, through the slits made by the Purple Man in her tactical gear, uniform, skin, and flesh. She winced as she limped up to Blake, her legs suddenly feeling weak.

She'd nearly collapsed on the floor had the USDO agent not catch her as she fell.

Bubbles, in the meantime, had sunk to the floor, left by Blossom a shocked, gibbering mess, caught in an unfortunate and unpleasant middle world between wanting to withdraw entirely from the world and wanting to cry her eyes out. Her reckoning had come - for the past month and more, she knew that her peaceful world would come crashing down, and she would be hated once more. Except she didn't expect even her closest sister to hate her too… to the point of taking swipes at her, screaming at her and even agreeing with Buttercup about all the terrible things the toughest of The Three had said about her.

When Sergeant Rutherland tried to get her attention by snapping his fingers in front of her, she wouldn't even respond as she was too preoccupied with feeling down and sorry for herself. The black man had put it down to shock and blood loss.

"Come on, let's get you home," the sergeant said as he pulled a thermal sheet from one of his pouched and draped it over her shoulder. Carefully avoiding the severe lacerations on her arm, he carried her with an arm under the crook of her knees and another under her back. Bubbles clung to his neck, welcoming the fact that there were still people who didn't hate her.

Meanwhile, a couple of Blake's men had come upon Buttercup, who was still out cold in the snow. One of them checked her pulse to discover that she was still alive, despite lying in a pool of her own blood, frozen as part of the snow.

The Girls had to be carried on stretchers as they were too injured to fly any appreciable distance. With their most powerful assets - and friends - severely wounded, Agent Blake had called off the manhunt and declared it a failure, before ordering the three surviving squads under his command to coalesce into a single fighting force as a defensive measure as they made their retreat back to Townsville.

Extraction by helicopters was impossible, thanks in part due to the USDO becoming engaged in fighting crime in Townsville - crime was on the upsurge once again. Another reason had been the Purple Man. There was no doubt that he could do something to a helicopter once he saw it. The risk of a crash with all personnel lost was too great.

With the Girls and Captain James 'Boomer' Wilbur on stretchers and some of the dead bodies of their comrades in tow, the retreat took far longer than the advance. Surprisingly, the Purple Man had left them alone despite their more vulnerable state. Lieutenant Blake had put it down to it nursing its own injuries.

It was well into the night before they finally got back to civilization. One thing was for sure: They wouldn't be coming back to the Purple Man's neck of the woods anytime soon.