Chapter 23: The Descent (Part 3)
The City of Townsville. Tenement Area. Silver Age Cineplex.
10 FEB (Friday) 1989. 2005.
Stanley Talker didn't so much as found Bubbles as she had flown right by him - and when he'd barked and shouted at her to stop, she wouldn't. In the split second he'd seen her, however, he knew that something was wrong. The color of her eyes was different, and so was her X-energy contrail. It was baby blue, and now it was bleeding red from the center. He should know - being a dog, he saw the world in a spectrum of blue to yellow - that her eyes and part of her contrail had turned yellow to him was disconcerting. Frightening, even. Since when could humans, even enhanced humans, do that without their mystical technology?
Bubbles had returned to the Silver Age Cineplex in just a couple of minutes, ignoring police warnings to stop, not even stopping to help Agent Blake and his men to finish off the remainder of their ambushers. Despite not knowing Blossom and Buttercup's location, she didn't have to - her Sister Sense had gotten stronger, and she was able to locate them by how its increasing strength had denoted proximity instead.
Knocking down the two sets of strong double doors leading into Cinema 3, she was met with the sight of her sisters on the floor of a cinema aisle, both of them severely injured and looking incredibly exhausted. Helpless. Bubbles' hellish red eyes went from her sisters to Naga then the insignificant cultist beside her. Before, she would have seen an insurmountable obstacle, a mountain with four crane-like arms. Now, all she saw was red - rage and blood.
The cultist Blossom had forced into hiding behind a corner speaker had made the mistake of coming out at the wrong time and shooting Bubbles. The bullets and pain were ignored. His presence as a pest and annoyance wasn't. Turning to him, Bubbles zipped to him and shredded his face with a single swipe of her fingernails - the fingertips of one of her gloves were cut open at the same time. He was knocked back, finding purchase on a cinema seat, and when he tried to get back up, Bubbles punched him so hard that his head flew down the movie theatre and bounced off the silver screen, making a splatter of blood. The suddenly headless body twitched as it collapsed. She then turned to Naga.
"You're next!" Bubbles growled at the four-armed woman with a kind of hatred that even Buttercup couldn't muster up.
"You'll pay for that bite you gave me!" Naga proclaimed stubbornly, referring to their first encounter when Bubbles had actually saved Buttercup in The Strip by climbing on the snake woman's back and chomping down on her neck.
Without another word, Bubbles flew across the theatre and cannonball-tackled Naga, at the same time ignoring the sword cuts she gave her, even though it had split skin and spilled blood. The tackle had sent Naga tumbling down towards the silver screen, losing her swords in the process.
"The chosen is here - it is done," the head cultist simply said as he walked away, refusing to help Naga.
Getting up, Naga stood in a defensive stance, her arms held in a posture with certain strikes prepared. Bubbles zipped towards her, swinging a destructive punch, which Naga ducked. The lady returned it with a right hook to Bubbles' face, then a left hook, both of which Bubbles simply laughed them off maniacally like a joke.
"Bub…Bles?" Blossom groaned as she saw what was happening. The Bubbles in the theater was unrecognizable from the Bubbles she knew. The way she fought - the way she talked. It was as if she was a whole other person.
"You have more arms to break than me!" Bubbles simply laughed madly as she gave Naga an unexpected uppercut which sent her stumbling back. Desperate, Naga drew her shotguns out of desperation and fired both of them at Bubbles - doing a grand total of nothing except pushing her back and ruining her Kevlar arm guards and vest. Bubbles launched towards her again, delivering a flying kick aimed at her chest, which Naga blocked by forming a cross with her shotguns. The force of Bubbles' kick was so great that it'd broke both shotguns in two. Naga was sent flying into the silver screen with a loud crash, the force paralyzing her. Falling out of a crater she'd made, she dropped to her knees.
Bubbles floated menacingly towards Naga. While still on her knees, Naga aimed two punches with her left arms - but it was like punching a Duranium wall. In response, Bubbles chuckled masochistically and gave her the same kind of right hook that beheaded her ally. It was only by virtue of her enhanced resistance that the same did not happen to her. Naga had been trying to get up, but the blow had put her back on her knees again.
Stubbornly, Naga went for a double right punch, which Bubbles blocked with ease before she screamed like an animal and clawed at her with her fingernails, putting numerous cuts and slashes in the snake woman's face, even putting tears in her armor. At the same time, Bubbles' gloves had basically become fingerless. Grabbing her by the neck with her left hand, Bubbles continued to pound on her with her right hand, sometimes aiming at her head, sometimes her chest.
Buttercup could only watch in disbelief and wonder if a second Bubbles had taken the place of the crybaby coward she knew.
"One is my favorite number!" Bubbles screamed deliriously as she slammed Naga against the ground on a prone position. She stepped on one of Naga's forearms and broke it by bending it backward with both her hands. A loud, spine-tingling crunch resulted and Naga screamed – her illusion of invincibility destroyed. Finding the woman's pained cry annoying, Bubbles delivered a kick to her skull. "I'll break you bit by bit for what you did!"
"One is followed by two!" Bubbles screeched as she stepped on a second arm and bent that too, breaking it with a sickening crack using her bare hands. Miraculously, despite the excruciating pain she felt, Naga was able to elbow Bubbles in the face, throw her off and get up on her knees. It wasn't even an inconvenience to Bubbles, however, and when Naga followed this up with another feeble punch with one of her remaining arms, Bubbles intercepted it with her own punch, breaking Naga's hand, rendering a third arm useless. "Two plus one is three! Hehe- hehehehehe-"
"You… sick little… freak…" Naga muttered while she was on her knees as she bore with the pain in most of her arms, as she listened, in fear, to Bubbles giggling like a sick puppy. The enhanced little girl then headbutt the four-armed woman, knocking her out.
Sensing that Naga was no longer a threat, Bubbles touched down, clutching her head as she panted from exertion. She could feel it coming down - the fairy godmother's blessing was running its course. The return to a lack of constant pleasure and a state of constant fear was painful to Bubbles such that she was gasping and wincing.
"Bubbles?" Blossom's pained call was the only thing that could distract her from the withdrawal. Bubbles turned around, her pupils changing color from hellish red to baby blue when she did. Blossom had been limping towards her when the change in color alarmed her and caused her to freeze. But the red was just a glimpse, however, a blink-and-you'll-miss moment, such that Blossom was questioning her own eyesight when she saw it.
Buttercup was coming up behind her, one of Naga's swords still in her thigh. She was putting most of her weight on her good leg, and she had to lean on Blossom for support.
"Blossom? Buttercup?" Bubbles said as she walked up to them. Buttercup tried to come closer, but she'd nearly fell had Bubbles not warped forward to hold her up. Blossom limped up next to her.
"I'm sorry for everything, Blossom," Bubbles apologized to them, her eyes swimming in tears. "For being weak - for letting all those criminals go… and those children…"
Blossom hugged her. She knew what was wrong, and it certainly wasn't Bubbles. It had been her all along - the anger in her, and how she had failed to be a good leader and sister even when she loved Bubbles as a sister.
"No, Bubbles," Blossom said. "I should be the one saying sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you, or hit you."
"Yeah, and that was hardcore, Bubbles!" Buttercup exclaimed with a smile.
"You mean it?" Bubbles said, unable to believe that she had found acceptance with Buttercup too, something that seemed impossible and unattainable before.
"But how did you do it, Bubbles?" Blossom asked.
"Oh, I… um…" Bubbles struggled with the explanation. She knew she couldn't reveal it. Her Dad had taught all of them about the horrors of Townsville, and drug use was one of them. Though he'd tactfully explained it in a more child-friendly way, it was enough for Bubbles to know that what she did - using the fairy godmother's magic - was wrong. Her Dad would have called it 'abominable', 'reprehensible' and 'evil', along with other impressive vocabularies that only adults know.
"It's a new power I discovered!" Bubbles lied, forcing a smile and faking her excitement over it. Why should it matter that she had to drug herself and lie to her sisters? As long as she had saved the day and the lives of her sisters? Why should it bother her when she had finally found redemption with Blossom and acceptance with Buttercup? Blossom was entirely convinced by the lie - she had never known Bubbles to be a liar, and it was a perfectly logical explanation for the red eyes if she could even trust her eyesight after the beating she took.
"Hey, I discovered a new power too!" Buttercup added. "I can cut things with my eyes now!"
Outside Cinema 3, the sound of gunshots had long ceased. From every door leading into the movie theater, USDO and police officers alike were bursting through, only to discover that the day was saved… thanks to Townsville's Angels of Justice.
Agent Blake's men were quick to secure Naga, putting Duranium cuffs on her many arms and dragging her away. The head cultist was nowhere to be found, however, though his followers and criminal allies - the majority of who were alive, just wounded - were arrested on the spot.
Detective Mullens and Olivia followed up behind the cops and soldiers, searching the cinema for the Girls. Stanley Talker had to boost himself up behind a seat, and when he saw Bubbles, he barked happily a few times, showing a typically doggy grin. They ran up to the Girls, with Stanley in the lead. The talking dog darted up to Bubbles, before putting his forepaws on her shoulders and licking her face.
"You're ralright!" the talking dog said in between licks. "Ri ras rorried rabout you!"
"I'm fine, really," Bubbles said with a giggle. "What makes you think I won't be?"
"Ras ruch ras Ri like you, Rur-rles," Stanley said as he finally backed down. "You're rot a good fighter."
"I've discovered a new power now, Mister Talker," Bubbles said with forced pride as she'd put her arms around her sisters, each of them supporting the other as their injuries had mounted over the course of today's battle. "I think I'll be okay from now on." Of course, Bubbles had said this from a short-termed point of view, the only one she was capable of at the moment - the fairy godmother had got to have more magic to give her - she's got to have more!
That was when Bubbles could feel pain humming in her chest and jaw, getting hotter and hotter. She winced. Blossom and Buttercup had to carry her all of a sudden when she sagged.
"Rur-rles? Are you rokay?" Stanley Talker asked, and there was no answer immediately. He whimpered as a result. "You know, your reyes rere re-" the talking dog could not finish his sentence before Bubbles lunged forward and wrapped her hands around the dog's muzzle. Quickly, she led the dog aside.
Meanwhile, Detective Mullens and Olivia had just reached them - they were detained by a quick meeting with Agent Blake, USDO soldiers and TPD officers.
"What was that about?" Mullens asked off-handedly as he watched Bubbles lead Stanley Talker away by his snout – an odd sight indeed. But thinking that it was nothing more than just some childish exchange of petty secrets between a 3-month-old enhanced little girl and a 2-year-old talking dog, he went on his way to talking to Blossom and Buttercup. "Jeez, you girls are in a bad way." He'd said this while looking at the sword that had gone through Buttercup's thigh. "We'll have to get you to your pops, sooner the better."
"But good job, Girls," Olivia praised them. "Naga has terrorized Townsville long enough - believe me, she was way worse when we didn't know she existed."
"What are we going to do with her?" Blossom asked.
"Your USDO buddies will take care of it," Mullens said. "They probably have a million questions to ask her, and a thousand old scores to settle. The fun's just beginning."
The detectives' meeting with Blake and the USDO a minute ago had been about this. Apparently, they had to figure out what to do with Naga. A quick debate solved the issue, however - while Naga had committed numerous crimes within Townsville, such that the TPD had jurisdiction, the police's lack of equipment and infrastructure to deal with enhanced individuals precluded the local authorities from jailing Naga and conventionally processing her through the local justice system. Since she was originally the USDO's responsibility, she was to be returned to them for containment instead.
"Rur-rles! Not the whiskers!" Stanley Talker exclaimed after Bubbles finally let go when they'd found themselves a corner. "What ras that rabout?"
Bubbles sat down on a carpeted step beside Stanley as she contemplated deeply, more than she had before, about what to say to the talking dog. She traced the zigzagged lines forming a pattern in the carpet with her eyes as she did so until she finally made eye contact with the talking dog.
"Can you keep a secret, Mister Doggy?" Bubbles asked.
"Rof course, Rur-rles," Stanley Talker promised. "What ris it rabout?"
"It's my red eyes," Bubbles said, and even then, she was still trying to think of a convincing lie. She was never any good at it, as unlike Buttercup, she lacked practice. Eventually, she fell back to the closest thing she could get her hands on: "Please don't mention it. It's part of my new power, and I don't like the color."
"Roh hoh hoh!" Stanley Talker imitated the human laughter as he made a doggy grin. "That's rit?"
Y-yes…" Bubbles stammered. "Why? Was there something else you saw?"
The talking dog couldn't help but peak his ears when Bubbles asked that question. He studied her while tilting his head slightly. The question was odd, but he couldn't quite put a paw on what made it suspicious.
"No, not rat rall," Stanley Talker finally said, deciding finally that he was wrong to suspect the sweet and innocent Bubbles. She'd been the victim since… forever. There was no way she could do any wrong.
Blossom had gotten sad all of a sudden. Floating up to the armrest of a mostly intact cinema seat, she sat on it as she shed a tear. Looking over at the dead bodies down the theater, near the silver screen, she hinted at why. Detective Mullens and Olivia could tell. Buttercup was kept guessing.
"It's not your fault," the detective said. "Your friends were pounced on, and the seconds were ticking."
"I wish I could save them," Blossom said, nearly in tears. She was looking down at the children. One of them was shot in the chest and killed. The other, a boy, was crying over her dead body. Both security guards had been killed, one of them with his throat slit while the other was shot in the forehead. One of the woman hostages did not survive the dozens of shots aimed at her.
"It's okay- You did what you could," Olivia comforted her as she came forward and gave her a hug.
"What my daughter said," Detective Mullens added as he came up beside Blossom and Olivia. "Besides, you've saved more than you didn't. I don't know if my boys could have done the same. I've lived through too many moments when they couldn't."
"You Girls rock!" one of the hostages shouted as he was being led by a police officer out of the theater - he happened to be passing by.
"Yeah!" a young woman beside the male hostage added. She was clutching his arm. They were a couple, presumably.
Bubbles, in the meantime, had returned to Blossom after her secret talk with Stanley Talker. On seeing her looking sad, she flew to her and hugged her from behind.
"Don't be sad, Blossom. You're better than either of us in crime-fighting," Bubbles tried to console her sister. "It's why you're our leader."
It had only compounded the guilt Blossom felt. She didn't comfort Bubbles as a sister should when she was upset. Instead, she'd shouted at her and even struck her - on multiple occasions. At that exact moment, she remembered what Dad had said about this - that they should stay together as sisters no matter what happens so that they would always have a family whenever they were far from home.
"I think it's time I take you Girls home," Agent Blake said as he approached the Girls.
"Just like before?" Blossom sniffled, feeling a little better as she was surrounded by friends and family. Her guilt, however, required another solution.
"Just like before," Agent Blake agreed.
"Oh yeah!" Buttercup really agreed even as she winced hobbled along to join the crowd. Blake scooped her up carefully so she didn't have to inch her way around painstakingly.
The City of Townsville. Tenement-Downtown District Limits. En-Route to USDO Headquarters.
10 FEB (Friday) 1989. 2031.
It took Naga a while for her to come to. She had never been beaten so thoroughly in a one-sided battle before, not since she was something else - pond scum that would barely qualify as a human being. The moment she had awoken, she found herself sitting down, and when she tried to stand up, she found that she couldn't, and it wasn't just the sharp pain erupting in three of her arms, which rattled. Her hands were all cuffed to a bar on the seat ahead of her. She was in a prison bus, and she could easily guess that she was on a one-way street back into USDO custody.
All around her were seated heavily-armed USDO security officers and soldiers - about twenty of them were guarding her. Even without Duranium weaponry, they could easily overwhelm her as she had been chained by her broken arms and too much pain even without injury could knock her back into unconsciousness.
"Well, looks like our favorite four-armed freak's awake! Good evening, honey," one of the USDO soldiers walked up to her, greeting with what could only be sarcasm in his voice. A bald man in his thirties. She recognized him. He was one of the guards assigned to her since the very day she was transferred to the USDO back when it was still the shadowy Organization, back when she was still human. "I hope you're comfortable where you are."
"Very much, yeah. Thanks for the world-class limousine," Naga said defiantly. "It's real fucking comfortable. How's Carl and gang by the way?"
What Naga said last had pissed off the USDO soldier - she was referring to his security friends, those who were killed in her breakout. He punched her in the temple - the hardest punch he could muster. Yet still, the Naga laughed, brokenly and malevolently. No one in the soldier's security detail cared. They all knew the story, and a punch from a regular human being was far from what Naga deserved.
"You punch like a little girl," Naga insulted the man derisively. The USDO soldier grabbed her by the throat, squeezing it. As much as he was trying to choke the enhanced individual, he couldn't do it, however. Naga need only flex her neck muscles to prevent the squeeze - not to mention the fact that her windpipe could not be crushed with just the strength in a normal man's hand.
"Oh, you have no idea. You have no fucking idea," the bald soldier snarled with seething anger. "You're going to pay for what you did. We're going to make you cry and beg and squeal. You think your arms are broken? You have no idea. Just like how you have no idea how much fun we're going to have extracting every single scrap of information in your brain as we drill and cut and break you with Duranium. I'm going to personally feed you your spare arms if there's anything left of you after that."
With that, the USDO soldier gave her another punch, this time aimed at the jaw, which Naga laughed off all the same.
"I'm going to enjoy using you as a punchbag - and we still have plenty of time before we reach headquarters," the man growled as removed his XM4 carbine from his shoulder and placed it on his seat. "I'm sure you don't mind, milady - since I punch like a little girl. Like Bubbles, who defeated you on her own, I heard."
"Are you sure she defeated me on her own?" Naga said with a stubborn chortle.
As the prison bus ferrying Naga was en route towards the USDO HQ, a short, muscular and oddly-shaped creature was leaping from rooftop to rooftop in stealthy pursuit of the vehicle. Despite being organic, it was able to match speeds with the vehicle easily, and with stoplights slowing it down, caught up with it very quickly.
A red light came up just as the prison bus was about to turn a corner in a T-junction. Leaping from a shorter building a taller one, the oddly-shaped creature clambered up to the edge of the roof's ledge, looking down on the prison bus. There was no rush - and plenty of time for what came next.
The creature didn't even need to exert any strength to leap, nor brace itself for the task of falling off eight floors and down on a vehicle made of steel. Nor was it afraid as it fell, descending down upon the bus as gravity allowed, putting a huge man-sized crater on the roof of the bus.
USDO security officers and soldiers were scrambling within the bus, shouting. Shotguns, submachineguns, and rifles were pointed upwards. A staccato of rapid gunfire aimed at the crater came next, but the bus rocked as whatever was on the roof skittered on top. The bullets followed its vague path on the roof, putting holes in it but hitting nothing and revealing not a single part of the attacker, but every part of the USDO operatives' fears. Whatever that was attacking them was no ordinary human being. Or even a human being, for that matter.
The driver took the initiative, ignoring the red light to respond to the emergency. The skittering on the roof, however, was coming closer to him. Drawing his pistol even as he steered the bus with his other hand, he fired it upwards at the sound of the skittering. A furry, gloved hand, clearly not human, burst through the roof and seized him by his pistol hand, crushing it against his own weapon. The driver screamed. The inhuman arm was relentless, next seizing the driver by the throat and with a squeeze, crushed his windpipe and slammed him against the steel back of the bus cab section.
Without a driver, the bus swerved at the whims of the attacker as he gave the steering wheel a spin. It went over the curb and on the sidewalk, crashing into an apartment building. Before that happened, however, the attacker had punched another hole in the roof of the bus, pulled it wide open and jumped into the bus. Bracing himself for the crash, he watched as the officers and soldiers within the bus were thrown all over the passenger compartment while he remained rooted to the floor.
The commander of the prison bus had been sitting to the left of the driver in the large cab section of the prison bus. Like all the others, he had been thrown forward when the bus had crashed - his attempts at intervening when the driver was attacked had damned him to severe injury as he was out of his seat, and he was sent flying into the windshield. However, as he was strong and well-protected by helmet and kevlar, he wasn't out for the count.
Groaning, he was able to take a good look at the attacker during the lull after the crash: exposed brain covered in a reinforced glass dome, black fur, green discolored skin. It was wearing a cape over a bullet-resistant, loose-fitting uniform. White gloves, white boots. He lifted his XM4 carbine with difficulty as blood and cranial trauma clouded his vision. The thing turned to him and bashed the assault rifle away before he could fire. The commander's last memory was of the glowing, dark brown eyes of the beast now known as Mojo Jojo as there was a sudden laser flash from a weapon it pointed at him. He was instantly liberated from his own body as he felt a burning pain in his neck, tumbling back into his seat skull-first as he watched his body - which he could no longer control, tumbling to the floor of the bus. He could not breathe, nor shout orders and warn his comrades, and when enough blood had spurted from the arteries of his severed neck, he was finally granted his final rest.
Mojo Jojo continued to fire laser into the USDO guards surrounding Naga, beheading those who dared to stick their neck out and fire at him like their commander and slicing into them through the bus seats even when they didn't.
Before long, what was once a proud and dutiful twenty-strong squad was a mere fraction of it, both in manpower and spirit. Mojo Jojo strolled up the center aisle of the bus, clutching his chest. Out of the hundred or so bullets that struck him, a few had managed to dig into his skin, or even cause a hairline fracture or two, he imagined. It was a constant source of his jealousy for The Three – their creation using Chemical X as opposed to Chemical W, followed by exposure to Chemical X had given them better physical enhancements than him. But no matter – he knew he could bridge the gap with his intellect where the Girls would wallow in their own willful ignorance and flounder to learn even basic facts.
As the enhanced Chimpanzee neared Naga, who was crying in pain from her broken arms, another USDO soldier stood out and fired shots at the sapient animal, shots that ultimately did nothing as Mojo Jojo returned fire, cutting through the brave soldier's XM4 carbine and severing the brave soldier's arm, the wound spurting blood as the soldier grabbed at it as if his arm was still there, screaming as he fell.
Mojo Jojo walked up to him, pointing the laser pistol at the man's bald head, about to fire when Naga intervened:
"Wait," she said, before turning to look at the fallen man. "He's mine."
"The concept of revenge. A little payback. Tit-for-tat. I can understand vengeance, the close cousin of justice," Mojo Jojo lifted his weapon as he stepped back. "I saw what he was doing through the windows of the bus. Hitting you, striking you. He's yours."
With that, Mojo Jojo pointed his laser device at the chains of the shackles restraining Naga and fired, freeing her. With her one good arm remaining, the four-armed woman grabbed hold of the bar her chains were connected to and, with immense difficulty because of her injuries, broke it free with a loud 'thunk!' She held it menacingly over her USDO tormentor with a victorious grin on her face.
"Fuck you!" the soldier spat as he grimaced in pain while writhing on the floor. Naga swung her metal bar down at him wordlessly, striking him in the bald head, the sound of bone crunching loud and impossible to miss. She repeated the stroke multiple times, caving the man's skull in until he stopped writhing. Until the only thing moving on him was his twitching eyelids and cheeks. Naga thought she liked him better that way. True, he was one of the nicer security officers back then before she killed all his friends, but he was just as guilty as them by association. He was USDO, and that was enough of a reason to kill him.
She brought the steel bar down on him one last time, smashing his face to a pulp until there wasn't even any twitching left.
"I am glad you had your fill," Mojo Jojo said as he put a hand on Naga's shoulder, tugging gently. "But we must go now – bolt, flee, retreat!" There were sirens in the distance as if the city was coming alive and coming for them.
"No! I want to take this all in," Naga said, shrugging the Chimpanzee's gloved hand off. "I don't ever want to forget this beautiful scene."
Seconds later, she turned around.
"Thank you – for everything," Naga said.
"You saved me in my darkest, lowest, most terrible hour," Mojo Jojo said as he stood back to look Naga from head to toe. "It is only fitting that I do the same. It looks to me that our new ally does not value our lives and limbs." Mojo Jojo gestured at Naga's broken arms when referring to 'limbs'.
"It doesn't matter, as long as we have an ally as powerful as him," Naga said as she stumbled over the dead bodies on the floor of the bus, brushing past Mojo Jojo. "Pretty soon, Townsville, and even the entire nation, will bend to the Foundation's will."
"But in the meantime, Mojo will fix your arms," Mojo Jojo said. Naga smiled at him. They both clambered out of the corpse-filled bus together and ran. With their enhanced speed, they were long gone before the police could arrive on the scene.
