Chapter 38: In the Shadows (Part 5)

The City of Townsville. Tenement Area. Logger Street.

16 FEB (Thursday) 1989. 1811.

Buttercup had gone after the cult workers with the intention of disobeying Blossom. There was simply no reason to listen to her anymore. Her previous murder of the cultist woman and attempted infanticide of the cult baby was exposed, and from what she'd heard, her family had thought of her as being 'messed up' and 'sick' inside. They hated her, she knew. She had lost everything, including all of which she had worked for.

Mere minutes ago, when she came within range of the closest worker, she'd fired a laser beam at him, and it wasn't just a warning shot or a deterring fire. She'd bisected him by the waist, leaving him to crawl with just his arms, though he wouldn't get far and Buttercup knew it. When she got up to point-blank range, she beheaded another with her laser before punching another runner in the skull so hard that it shattered, and the grey matter underneath turned to mush as the man collapsed in a heap.

A couple of them had turned around to fight using crowbars - she thought their effort was laughable. When one of them took a swing at her, she grabbed the weapon mid-swing - it stung a little, but she knew it wouldn't even scratch her. Wrenching the weapon out of the man's grasp, she impaled him in the eye with the prying side of the crowbar, the metal tool exiting through the other side of his skull.

In the meantime, she felt a sting in her side - the other worker had struck her there. She reciprocated by giving him a left hook hard enough to break his neck. He fell, losing all control of his body. But he was alive - Buttercup knew from his mewling and begging. It wasn't something she would stand for, so she lifted him by the collar and pushed his face into the murky water, finding pleasure in drowning him in the filth of the city.

But much to her chagrin, she knew that she couldn't watch him drown slowly in the piss and crap from the city. There were others, and they were getting away, so she left the paralyzed man face-down in the refuse water to drown by his lonesome. In her reverie, she had forgotten all about Blossom and Dad and the rest of her family. With a wide grin on her face, she launched into a flying kick at another runner, breaking his spine in two and killing him instantly by severe trauma. Grabbing another man by the head, she slammed him against the wall so hard that his head was partly flattened. He fell a gurgling mess, his corpse twitching even after death.

Three more. She took one of them down by laser drill, blowing a hole in his chest larger than her fist. She then flew into the second with a fist in the small of his back, snapping bones, causing him to fall and slide in the muck. Jumping on the back of the last man, she pulled him up and hung him by her arms, giving the filthy hobo worker his final embrace as he twitched and gasped in vain for lack of air. She gave him a final squeeze and heard his throat shatter and his neck break, but at least the twitching stopped.

Dropping the man she hung, Buttercup looked around her. She'd heard scuffling. One of them was still alive. The man who she'd broken the back of. He was trying to crawl away. She thought that he was like an animal - like the ones she'd killed in secret back in January. She remembered a bird she'd chased and struck down in the backyard while no one was looking. She'd broken its back but it'd tried to crawl away with just its head and beak dragging along the snowy floor. She thought it was fun, and she was reliving the moment now, except better.

And without her knowing it, Blossom was watching her. She hadn't seen the whole thing, but she had seen enough to know that Buttercup had killed on purpose, defying Dad and her, throwing the family away for… what? Blossom could never understand Buttercup's compulsion to kill, except through Dad's words, that she could not feel as much as her, and she was sick and messed up inside.

And Buttercup had continued to do so even when the runners she pursued were down to just one half-paralyzed man. Blossom wanted to help, to stop her insane sister from hurting the poor worker more, but before her stood a group of cultists she had to guard. She could just barely hear Agent Blake talking to Bubbles. She could hear their voice echoing through the tunnels. Bubbles, at this time, would still be trying to calm down from her BerXerker power, which Blossom realized was more curse than a blessing. Blake was this detained.

And that meant she had to watch Buttercup mutilate the hobo. She'd tried shouting and screaming at Buttercup even as she was breaking the man's fingers one at a time, starting from the pinkie, but she wasn't Bubbles – her voice would not carry nor defy the laws of physics. It couldn't have reached the parallel tunnel Buttercup was in.

"You seem disheartened, Blossom," one of the cultists said. It didn't sound like a taunt at all. It sounded far too sincere for her liking.

"You poor, misguided thing," another cultist said, just as frank, no tricks pulled.

"Join the Master and all will be clear," yet another cultist offered.

"I don't want to hear it!" Blossom yelled at them.

"Join Him and you need not be sad any longer," another cultist continued saying anyway.

"Shut up!" Blossom cried.

"Blossom?" Agent Blake shouted from a long way off, but his voice was loud and the underground sewers confined. Blossom could hear the steady beating of bootsteps coming closer to her, barely audible at first before becoming louder.

"I'm here!" Blossom called out to her friend. "There are lots of them but they gave up!"

"Blossom," one of them actually tried to catch her attention, singing her name like it was music. A woman. Black hair and brown eyes. She didn't look local. "Blossom."

"What?" and she fell for it.

"Don't you remember who you really are? Can you not see what you really are?" the cultist said cryptically.

"What do you mean?" Blossom asked, genuinely curious. She always had a soft spot for mysteries. She always had the need to know.

"You are a shadowkin, Blossom," the cultist said with some kind of an Eastern European accent. "The human tongue does not do the name of your divine kind justice, but you are a goddess among men – you deserve more than to be their slave and… what's your supposed father's name? His pet and lapdog."

"Don't talk like that about my Dad and me again," Blossom warned the cultist, feeling her rage returning – she was practically shivering with it. Her MP5 was rattling.

"He doesn't deserve your love for what he's done to you," the lady cultist continued regardless, unafraid of the tough front Blossom was putting up. "Corrupting you, making you weak and unambitious. You are not your shell…"

"Yes, you are more. He should be serving you instead," another cultist, a man, added.

"Shut up!" Blossom screeched at the lady cultist, pointing her gun at the man before shifting it to the cult lady. Instead of cowering in fear, the cultist put out her arms instead.

"Yes… yes… please," the woman begged with a crazy smile on her face. "If this is how you will realize your true destiny! Please!"

"Blossom?" Agent Blake called after the enhanced little girl, much closer this time. His team had finally reached her, and when they did, they immediately slammed the cultists against the sewer walls to cuff them. Blossom, however, looked like she was stuck in place, shaking with fury. She hated it whenever anyone spoke poorly about her Dad. But what the cultists were saying - that she was something else entirely - did things to her imagination, and now she couldn't stop thinking about it. "Are you alright there, buddy?"

When she felt a hand on her shoulder, it was as if she'd woken up. Turning to Blake, she studied him, then her surroundings. Everything seemed well again - her friends, all familiar faces from a simpler time - were there to make it all better by taking away the demons… demons she never knew she had.

"What happened to Bubbles?" Blossom asked. She had to pull herself away from her own problems. She had to - Bubbles was more important. Buttercup too.

"She's back there, resting. She was going wild, but I think she's calmed down enough," Agent Blake said. "What happened to her? Why were her eyes all red and bloody?"

"It's her new power. Dad called it BerXerker. It makes her really angry and out of control," Blossom explained.

"When did it appear?" Blake asked.

"When we fought Naga in the movies," Blossom answered. Blake found it surprising - he was there in the Silver Age Cineplex, but he might have missed it, he thought. Come to think of it, it'd explained Naga's defeat and the gore in the movies. It sure explained the gore in the sewer junction. Bubbles had done a number, killed quite a few before he was able to stop her.

Blossom stared through the wall of the sewers at Buttercup. By now, it was too late to save her last victim. She was busy dismembering the body, hiding pieces of it here and there where she thought no one would find them.

Agent Blake noticed what she had been doing. He knew full well, too, that she could see past walls. He could just about see the faint vortexes appearing before her glowing pink eyes.

"What is it, sport?" Agent Blake asked.

"It's Buttercup," Blossom said, her voice cracking from being upset. "She's killing people again. Why can't she be normal and nice and sweet like you? And Bubbles? Before she…"

Agent Blake smiled, but it was faint and it didn't last. He wasn't much of a smiling man to begin with anyway, but the situation seemed bad that he just couldn't. From his perspective, it was as if things had taken a nosedive since his left.

"Come on, why don't you go ahead and get your tough cookie sister and I'll catch up with you?" Blake offered as he stroked her head affectionately. He missed the old days, too, when he got to substitute Professor Utonium as her caretaker for a few days. He had since fallen in love with the idea of having a family and kids. He'd since been busy trying to make a life for himself whenever he wasn't on duty, stuck with a girlfriend he'd found in the city where before, he had a series of girlfriends and was proud of it. He intended to pursue marriage and having kids before he became too old for it.


The City of Townsville. Tenement Area. Logger Street.

16 FEB (Thursday) 1989. 1816.

When Blossom was flying to Buttercup's tunnel, she'd encountered Bubbles back in the sewer junction along the way. She was sitting on the floor, a raised part of the sewers that wasn't slick with urine and dirtied by feces. For some reason, she'd avoided sitting on the crates the cultists had hauled into the sewers - they seemed like better seats than the floor.

Unsure of what to say to Bubbles, she flew past her without notifying her of her presence and right into Buttercup's tunnel. It was as if she could hear her heart thumping and echoing in the tunnels. The last time she had tattled on Buttercup, her very own sister, ever the wayward one, had tried to break her neck. She remembered how unpredictable Buttercup was - before this, she had threatened to break her arm if she didn't hand over leadership to her. Shortly after their first operation in Townsville Central Bank, she had tried to strangle her and even before that, she'd threatened Bubbles with bodily harm in the cinema when she wouldn't give up the seat next to Daddy.

What would Buttercup do next? Blossom didn't want to find out, so she took her time, knowing that Buttercup was trying to hide the bodies, in order to give her the time to do it. When enough time had passed, she flew up to her, ignoring the bodies that Buttercup hadn't been able to hide regardless of her speed.

When Blossom had found her, she was washing her hands of blood with the cleanest stream of water she could find, which wasn't saying much.

"Are you okay, Buttercup?" Blossom asked while Buttercup still had her back turned. Startled, the latter girl turned around.

"Why do you even care?" Buttercup said with her eyes turned away from her. She acted as if she was more interested in herself as she was brushing muck off of her uniform and gear, but Blossom knew that Buttercup was paying attention to her - she had to. Blossom did not reply to this. It was upsetting that Buttercup was speaking that way to her where they used to have conversations about… Buttercup's obsessions mainly. Although they weren't all that interesting to her nor did they last long, at least there seemed to be a connection between them.

"Where are the runners, Buttercup?" Blossom questioned Buttercup, knowing full well where the runners were. Some of them had been torn to shreds and stuffed up pipes and down chutes leading to the lower parts of the sewers. Others were more poorly hidden, just laid down along the sides of the waste stream.

"They were too fast, okay?" Buttercup lied. Blossom tried not to look at her wrongly, but the absurdity of her lie was too great. Picking up on this, Buttercup continued to weave her story: "They must have gone into those holes in the walls before I could get them - those cowards…"

Blossom, of course, knew that she was lying. She had seen what her sister had done to those poor people (who were literally poor). Because of what she did the last time, she felt the need to avoid a confrontation with her from now on.

"I believe you," Blossom lied.

"You do?" Buttercup couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at her sister. She was rarely this trusting to her, and for good reason.

"Yes. Of course," Blossom said. She hated lying, even if it was for a good cause. Hated it so much that her eyes began swimming in tears.

"What's with you?" Buttercup said as she noticed her glorious leader sister becoming emotional. It seemed to her as if it was coming out of the blue.

"Nothing," the red-haired one evaded. But she couldn't help but feel sorry for Buttercup, now that she had done her wrong by lying to her - but there was always more. The fact that her sister was 'sick inside' came to mind. It was sad whenever she thought about it. Moving towards Buttercup, Blossom hugged her while Buttercup had put up her hands defensively. As a result, her arms were trapped between them.

"Hey, what gives!?" Buttercup yelped, surprised. "What are you doing?"

Blossom held on tightly. It was all too upsetting. As Buttercup struggled, she felt a shiver traveling down her spine, from that silver lining in her brain, that connection between her and her sisters.

Sadness and pain. It was unbearable, even though she had rarely felt such a thing.

Buttercup stopped struggling. Pulling her arms out from between them, she returned the hug, confused as to what she was feeling, a single tear trickling down her cheek.

"I'm sorry," Blossom said.

"For what?" Buttercup replied, still unsure of what had set off Blossom.

"I'm just sorry," Blossom said, keeping the actual reason for her sadness from her wayward sister.

She was sorry, because she was going to have to tell her Dad about her again, and this time, she could sense that Daddy just wasn't going to go easy on Buttercup anymore. Those literally poor people didn't look like criminals. They didn't even have any real weapons. Blossom had seen it all through the wall. She had seen how scared they were before they ran. They looked more like children who had been caught doing something they shouldn't - and they had no choice in the matter. Like children made to do something by bullies. Blossom had seen it before in the schoolyard before Miss Keane put a stop to it.

By the time Blake reached them, Blossom and Buttercup were already flying back towards the sewer junction, hand-in-hand, which was a rare sight. The soldiers stopped. Blake smiled. The Girls looked lovely this way. If only Bubbles was in the picture too and not all pale and shivering and covered in blood while sitting alone on the filthy floor of the sewers. It would have been perfect that way.