Chapter 65: Games

The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.

27 FEB (Monday) 1989. 0655.

Selicia was finally able to sit in her own bed after a day of absence in her own home. But it didn't bring her any joy or relief. She wasn't supposed to be home, not for another two days, but here she was.

Bunny wasn't with her. The general had dismissed Selicia and sent her packing with no reasons given. Selicia, however, knew the reason. It didn't need to be said between them and she understood when the general would just stare her down in her debriefing. She'd seen the way the general was looking at Bunny, and it scared her. She had never seen General Blackwater that way before. But it couldn't be. Why would the general ever become attached to her? Enhanced beings had killed most of the friends and comrades he knew intimately in the USDO - he hated them with a passion. Hated them for decades. Even with Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, who were clearly on his side and obedient to his command (for the most part), he was barely able to stop himself from acting out in anger towards them.

Why the change now?

She thought that she was either getting in the general's way or that she had failed him this morning, by allowing Bunny's discipline to slacken. But it didn't matter. Either way, she was no longer with Bunny any longer; she had failed, and now she was afraid of what the general would put her through in her absence.

It was still early, and Selicia had returned home much earlier after Bunny had reported to the general. The first thing she did was to check up on her sweetie - Thomas Upton. She was sitting close to him, stroking his hair affectionately. He seemed to have responded, turning for a moment before putting a hand over hers, but she knew he wasn't awake.

After a few minutes of watching him, she went to the Girls' room and sat on Buttercup's side of the queen-sized bed, caressing her back. She, too, responded subconsciously, hugging her thigh where she sat.

When the family came down to the kitchen and living room, they would be surprised to see her…


Training Segment: Vehicular Operations

Date: 27 FEB (Monday) 1989

Time: 0738

Subject: B-50 'Bunny Utonium'

Role: Black Ops Organic Weapons Platform (Bioweapon)

Status: In Training

"And this, right here, is where you load the tank's cannon shell," General Blackwater pointed out the loading station of the tank he and Bunny were in. It was cramped inside, but Bunny's smaller size and having fewer soldiers in the turret made it less claustrophobic. The general was sitting in the commander's seat, and Bunny was in the gunner's. They were previously in the driver's cockpit, and Bunny actually got to drive the tank, which was an old M60 Patton tank that the USDO had purchased off the army.

After the revisions, the general and his motorcade had driven Bunny to the closest US army base to conduct a lesson in vehicular operations. The parking complex of the USDO headquarters was too small, too enclosed and too exposed to the public eye, and even Townsville's national guard depot would have compromised the secretive nature of Bunny's training. The nearby US army base, Fort Crassusvale, thus, became the ideal training ground.

Bunny liked it very much, being this close to General Blackwater. The limited space of the tank felt cozy to her, and it gave her an excuse to get even closer to him than before. In the driver's cockpit, she was even sitting on his lap, though he was clearly grunting and wincing from her weight - she was wearing her protective suit, which made her weight the equivalent of a heavy adult.

The training was more than just about piloting a tank, however, much to Bunny's delight. She got to do the same with the USDO's (admittedly antiquated) APCs, the more modern IFVs, Humvees, old Jeeps, all the way down to common civilian trucks, vans, and cars. An entire fleet of vehicles had been assembled for her training. If it hadn't been top-secret, it would have attracted a huge crowd of onlookers, but since it was, just a small gathering of high-ranking officers was observing.

"You see this joystick-looking thing here?" General Blackwater patted the top of a stick beside him while he was sitting in the shotgun seat of an old Toyota car. Bunny was in the driver's seat, turning the steering wheel gently while she was running laps around the army base. "That's the gear. You shift it while you are speeding up or slowing down."

It would have been a funny sight, seeing an 8-year-old driving a car, right next to the fact that Bunny wasn't even a week old yet. Her eyes were barely high enough to be able to look over the dashboard of the car, but thankfully, the general thought, she was created to be physically eight, and a tall one at that. Had it been Blossom, the car seat would have needed several encyclopedias for a boost and the pedals, bricks.

Mastering the use of a car, however, didn't spell the end of the lesson.

"Did your father teach you how to ride a bike?" the general asked Bunny while she was concentrating on making a three-point turn so that she could reverse the car and park it next to a Jeep she had done the same with not too long ago.

"Yes… it was the funnest day ever," Bunny said. She couldn't help but reminisce on it, and it distracted her, causing her to scrape the back of her training car against the Jeep, likely damaging the paint. The impact jolted her, and she quickly corrected her error. "Oops…"

"Good to know that Utonium took my suggestion," the general mumbled to himself, before turning to Bunny. "I'm about to do the same."

They got out of the car, and the general led Bunny to a warehouse. One would have expected it to be filled with spare hardware, but it was empty except for a solitary cargo truck, which the general and Bunny approached. A man in USDO uniform who was standing beside it saluted quickly before opening the shutter at the back of the truck. With the help of an assistant disembarking from the cab of the truck, they dropped a ramp built into the truck. Before they entered the cargo compartment, however, the general stopped them and did it himself, disappearing into the darkness while Bunny waited in anticipation of another surprise.

There was a clunk emanating from inside the truck. It didn't take long after that for Bunny to see Douglas Carver emerge from the darkness with his hands on the handles of a… bike.

It wasn't the kind that Daddy bought her. It looked bulkier, and heavier, with machinery attached to it.

It was a motorcycle, and it was clearly for her because of its purple color theme. The general was wheeling it out with a smile on his face, which soon spread to Bunny.

"Is it…" she was so surprised that she couldn't complete her sentence. "Is it for- for…"

"Yes, Bunny, it's for you. As in, you get to ride it and take it home," the general answered nonetheless, pleased that the enhanced girl liked the bike. He wheeled it over to her, and she picked it up effortlessly to inspect the mid-section of the bike and the engine. "Gentle, Bunny."

"It's different from the bike Dad gave Bunny…" she said before putting it down again. The numerous controls confused her, though she was beginning to put together what some of the parts were for. The bike had its own dashboard, though it was smaller, and there were pedals, too, like the other vehicles she drove.

"It's not just any kind of motorcycle, either," the general said. "It's custom-made. Bigger engines, bulletproof armor and some compartments for weapons."

"I can teach you how to ride it, but it's similar to riding a bicycle," the general went on and offered, an offer that Bunny took up immediately. Pretty soon, she was riding the bike around the army base at high speeds. The general had turned it into the game to see how fast she could circumnavigate the base while he smoked a cigar and sat on the hood of a humvee, timing her.

And that was when he discovered something. He thought he could see trails of light emanating from behind Bunny while she was zooming around the base, analogous to Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup's whenever they flew or ran at high speeds. Professor Utonium would call it an X-energy contrail, an effect produced by the consumption of Chemical X when light and used Chemical X were released as waste energy and matter. It meant that Bunny was already drawing on the Chemical X2 in her body, and for more than just lifting weights or running.

He would later find out the rough perimeter of the army base, and when he did the calculations, realize that she had somehow pushed the motorcycle beyond its top speed. He would later get Doctor Vanum to verify his findings as he couldn't find it within himself to trust his antiquated high school education, but his math would be found to be accurate, and Doctor Vanum would also put his stamp of approval on his findings. With what the doctor knew, he was able to explain it either: Bunny had harnessed her Chemical X2 to build up some X-thrust, propelling her and the bike beyond the top speed of the vehicle. A biological, built-in Nitro system, in other words.


Training Segment: Stealth and Subterfuge

Date: 27 FEB (Monday) 1989

Time: 1045

Subject: B-50 'Bunny Utonium'

Role: Black Ops Organic Weapons Platform (Bioweapon)

Status: In Training

After learning how to drive way before her time, Bunny was driven away from the rural country back into the city. She was brought to the outskirts of the city where an abandoned mall sat, the same one where Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were given their one-day crash course.

General Blackwater did not tell her immediately what the next activity was, however. The first thing they did was a 'treasure hunt', when the general would lead Bunny from room to room in search of weapons and items that would be advantageous to her in any given mission. The first room she went to was a summer wear shop, with the shelves nearly empty - surprisingly, there were still a few odd pairs of shirts and pants still lying around. Bunny would take from this room what her training had prepared her to recognize - a fire extinguisher served as a nasty bludgeon or mist machine, a pair of scissors in the drawer of an old cashier counter for blinding or killing and a measuring tape that could double as a garrote wire for strangling.

"The point of improvising and scavenging, Bunny, is not always about the offensive," General Blackwater lectured Bunny after she laid out everything she had found in front of him. He walked over to a shelf containing some old and dusty shirts and pants and an odd cap. He picked them up. "These, for instance."

"But what can Bunny do with those?" the enhanced girl laughed.

"Reminds me of that one time during the Vietnam War. I pulled the uniform off a dead soldier and set it up as a distraction. Two communists fell for it, and it was their last mistake," the general explained, before simplifying it when he realized he had been reminiscing too much selfishly, using words that Bunny would never understand. He walked over to the cashier counter and put the cap on its surface. "You can make it look like you are there."

"Oh…" Bunny said upon realizing the endless possibilities that came with picking up various odds and ends.

"It doesn't have to be a discarded cap. If you have a helmet or a headphone, those could work too, if you set them upright," the general said, then moved on to hold the shirt he salvaged from the store shelf in front of her. "Rags like these could be burned as a distraction, or even thrown right into your enemy's face to disorientate him. With your mighty strength, it might even hurt him."

They would go from room to room, picking up odds and ends for use in an imaginary mission. It wasn't just a treasure hunt anymore - Bunny would have fun imagining how she could use all the junk she had salvaged from her surroundings to defeat the hypothetical evil enemies who would hurt her sisters.

Going through the backdoor of the summer wear shop, Bunny would pick up a fire ax and a loose pipe with obvious applications, then a first-aid kit and a flashlight as utilities. She would also move on to pick up a rat to either serve as emergency rations or as a distraction especially when forced into a pail she found that would rattle and cause a commotion as the rat tried to get out of it. The pail was also good for hiding a grenade, claymore or any other kinds of explosive charges.

In an employee washroom, she wasn't able to procure much… Until the general taught her that, sometimes, she would have to break things to use them. Bunny proceeded to beak a mirror to obtain multiple shards of glass, useful for looking around corners, or stabbing men in the neck while they were rounding said corners.

After the treasure hunt and guessing game, Bunny was taught how to sneak around quietly. General Blackwater had done it with both practical instructions and a game of hide-and-seek. She was set loose on a squad of USDO soldiers after that.

The scenario used had been the same one as what her predecessors had been put through. A group of renegade USDO soldiers had deserted and holed themselves up in a clothes shop within the mall. The only thing that was different was the objective - Bunny was tasked with assassinating the leader without alerting the rest of the defectors.

Bunny was deployed outside the abandoned mall, the same as her sisters. Unlike her sisters, however, she was alone and armed only with a suppressed pistol and several flashbangs and smoke grenades.

Jogging towards the mall, Bunny hid behind a derelict car and spied on the roof of the mall. When she spotted no one, she ran as fast as she could towards a side door, rivaling the running speed of her sisters. Passing through an employees-only corridor, she got into the mall and hid among some boxes. There were numerous boxes and other obstacles between her and the shop containing her target. Peeking over her hiding spot, she saw four USDO soldiers guarding the side facing her. She strained her eyes to try to look through the unclean display windows of the shop. Something odd happened to her vision - it was as though things got bigger and clearer when she strained her eyes hard enough. Sure enough, she could see moving shapes in the shop. She had found the place where her target was hiding.

Her thought process had been similar to Blossom's, though her approach was different - superior, even, because of her training. The way to the shop was treacherous, and it was tougher for Bunny since her detection would end the scenario. Looking up, she saw that there were corridors stretching out across the mall on the next floor, and one such sky corridor was close enough to the shop that she could use it to get above the USDO soldiers without them noticing.

She waited, took occasional peeks from the shadows to see if the guards were looking, and when they had gone back into the shop, she ran up a flight of stairs, her steps lighter than her armor would indicate. Running across bridges and corridors, she got to the one directly overlooking the clothes shop, and after taking a deep, quivering breath, climbed over the railing and hung by her hands before letting herself drop down to the roof of the shop. The impact of her fall was much lighter than she anticipated. She was actually worried that she might even crash through the roof, but it was as if she was slowing down the closer she fell to the ground - it was exactly the same thing her elder sisters experienced when they had to let themselves fall a great height.

Her ideas weren't original. General Blackwater had given her breadcrumbs to follow in the form of his lesson in stealth - how to hide when to observe the enemy, how to run quietly, how to drop down from a great height without making lots of noise and…

Scurrying into a ventilation duct, she crawled through it by sliding across its metal surface to reduce the warping in the flimsy metal. Being small helped - despite being larger than her elder siblings and weighted down by her heavy armor, she was still in a better position to sneak around in the vents than a regular soldier.

She could hear the 'defectors' in the shop talking. General Blackwater instructed her to keep her ears peeled for information she might use, and she did. The men simulating the enemy had made sure to spill all kinds of useful information in between pointless banter.

'We'll be patrolling the mall, the eight of us,' one of the soldiers said, before leaving, and Bunny heard her on the way through the vents, unsure of where it would take her. Bunny mentally patted herself on the back when she heard it. It was good information. It meant fewer enemies who could spot her while she was trying to get to their leader.

'I bet she's out there among the boxes, like last time,' one of them mentioned. It confused Bunny at first, as there was no last time, but it was a relief as it meant that she had made the right choice, staying out of the field of boxes. Had she tried to take her time inching closer to the shop through the sea of boxes on the boulevard, she would have been caught and the game would be over.

There was one thing that made the rest of the information she gathered just by being in the vents pale in comparison, in terms of importance.

'Where's Lieutenant Burke?' one of the men had asked, unaware that Bunny had sneaked into the vents, listening.

'He's looking over some maps in the back, the employee room, I think - the place is old, I don't even know what that room is for, really,' the other soldier replied. Bunny wasn't able to understand everything, but she understood enough.

'In the back', that was where the leader of the deserters was. Crawling through the vents towards the back, it didn't take long for Bunny to find the man; she recognized him as General Blackwater had shown her a picture of him. With his helmet off, replaced with a cap, it was easy for her to see his face. The stripe on his shoulder gave his officer rank away.

Clutching the ventilation grill, she gave it a gentle, quiet push and drew her suppressed pistol. There was a loud, metallic thunk when the grill fell, but before the defecting officer could even turn to look at the vents, Bunny had already shot him in the skull.

Had it all been real, the bullet would have scrambled the officer's brain. Instead, it had merely activated a laser sensor on his cap and signaled that he had been shot.

"You got me, Bunny," the officer merely said instead with a smile and acted as if the 'bullet' had a real impact in an exaggerated fashion after that. Bunny laughed, and it was good fun. The soldiers had been instructed by the general, on pain of jail time if they failed to adhere to his orders, to treat her well - as a real kid, preferably - not that Bunny was told about this general order.