A/N: (8 FEB 2020) Amended mistake with the dates, which should be in February, not December.
Chapter 69: Interrogation
B-49 W15 Experimental Report
DOC: 27 FEB (Monday) 1989.
Created By: Professor Utonium
Title: Further Development in B-49
B-49 (Bubbles) has just developed an amazing new ability. However, it is uncertain if she has this ability all along, or if it is newly acquired. There is no way to pinpoint and verify the exact date of its occurrence or if it even 'occurred' at all - she might even be created with it.
However, what is verifiable is the use of this new ability. In short, Bubbles has somehow acquired the ability to mentally translate foreign languages into English, in real-time. What is even more amazing is her ability to speak languages other than English after translation. This, however, has a limit.
On discovery of Bubbles' new ability, I was able to devise a quick and cheap experiment to examine Bubbles' abilities and to test its limits. The basic test involves me speaking languages foreign to Bubbles' cultural upbringing. Due to my basic understanding of languages other than English, I have decided on English as a control, followed by simple French, German and Latin.
Full documentation of the experimental set-up and results is appended to the end of this report. To summarize it here, she is able to understand words spoken in French, German and Latin and translate them back to me. Armed with dictionaries of my chosen languages, I began testing her on some of the more uncommon words - and the result is still positive. The control results are particularly interesting. Despite her newly-formed ability, she is unable to understand English words she has not learned yet and needs to be taught in that case. Otherwise, she appears to understand whatever language I throw at her. However, what came next was unexpected: she was able to speak the language as well.
With the discovery of this part of her new ability, I expanded the scope of the experiment. I began conversing with Bubbles in French, German and Latin. The results are positive. However, it is at this point that I noticed a pattern in her translated speech. She appears to be using very simple words, sometimes to the point of butchering the language.
It is not until much later that I realized that Bubbles was using words that I would have known, and no words that I have no idea about. The few that I have trouble deciphering are words that are what I remember learning and using but have forgotten until recently when I had to look them up on the dictionary to understand Bubbles. In short - her ability to understand, translate and speak languages she does not know is limited to the person speaking to her.
This leads me to my theory on Bubbles' translation ability. She might have gained a low-key passive telepathic ability that draws on a target's thoughts and knowledge, activated in times of stress from an inability to understand the target's speech. There must be a minimum level to this stress as this does not work on English words she simply has not learned yet. However, this is, at this point, an educated guess.
I continued the experiment after that with a modification to the set-up. The experiment is repeated in an MRI and PET scanner to determine what is going on with her neurologically. As expected, the appropriate centers of control related to language show increased activities. This includes the Broca's Area, the Insular Cortex and the Angular Gyrus. Memory forming areas such as the Prefrontal Cortex shows a selective increase in activity, present especially when the words given has an English analog.
How Chemical X is involved in this, and the mechanisms of this is currently unknown, pending investigation.
Addendum 1: Videos were taken during the experiments. I have examined the videos for both scientific and personal reasons, only to discover that there appears to be slight distortion in the air above our heads while the experiment is being conducted. This brings back memories of previous Project Powerpuff subjects with telepathic abilities, though the distortions with those past subjects are more visible. It is possible that Chemical X is released into the air to be used to form a connection between Bubbles and whoever she is translating. It is likely due to the fact that her translation ability is very subtle and low-key, utilizing very little Chemical X in the process. For comparison, subject B-46 (Blisstina), would erupt in purple lightning and light up her pale hair whenever she utilizes her telepathic or telekinetic abilities (or other psionic abilities).
Addendum 2: I've interviewed Bubbles about her ability, and got her to talk about her new translation ability. I suspected that she might have developed them at an earlier date and I was right. Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup and I had sat together to talk about Stanley Talker, the talking dog before, and in our conversation, Blossom and Buttercup remarked that he was hard to understand but Bubbles, on the contrary, believed that he was easy to understand. This might have been due to her translation ability kicking in at such a low level that no one noticed - Stanley Talker was speaking in English, albeit a version of it that is more conducive to a dog's facial and oral configuration. In other words, different enough that it required a small degree of translation.
But there is something much more amazing than this. Bubbles' experience goes further back than Stanley Talker's entry into their life, all the way to the beginning, and it is something that I and a few others can second.
Bubbles is able to speak to animals. More experiments will be planned and executed.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Townsville Police Department Headquarters.
28 FEB (Tuesday) 1989. 1445.
I was marching through the corridors leading up to the chief. The floor was dirty brown and ancient, and it had been collecting cigarette ash and spilled beer and blood for decades. Washed weekly, the stain could never be fully removed - or our perception and memory of it. But it was somehow different for the past couple of months. Someone had rolled out the red carpet, not physically, but it was there. It was a consequence of my higher profile, but the red carpet wasn't just a welcome mat.
In the City of Townsville, nothing is ever so simple. A cigarette or a bottle of beer passed between acquaintances could pass for a lot of things. Words coming through the mouth of a Townsvillian would gain a few extra definitions along the way. A red carpet wasn't necessarily a welcome mat. Stakes could be hidden underneath, a trap waiting to be sprung. Lives were at stake.
People stared as I came through with Detectives Olivia, Wednesday and Patrol-dog Stanley Talker at my back. The people who stared were all wearing uniforms or badges. They weren't all my co-workers, hadn't been for decades. I ignored the snide comments and expletives hurled my way. I hoped to God that my daughter could ignore the veiled rape threats and Stanley, the 'hotdog' threats. The two-faces were losing some side money from the work I'd been putting in out on the streets. But one type of comment stuck out the most. If words could still break my bones, these would be the words:
"Where're your Powerpuff bitches now, Mullens?" one of the blue-scaled snakes had said. I didn't see who it was, but I knew who it was. I recognized the voice. He was one of those who'd be stuffed into a tiny, dark hole once all this was over. Except for the goal post had been moved way out of the stadium.
I didn't bother knocking. I'd just barged straight through the chief's office while my entourage waited outside.
"What the hell's goin' on, chief?" I said to the man. To ask me to hold back on the teetering cauldron of boiling vitriol would be asking too much - and I knew the chief was asking without words - but I held it back (barely) anyway.
"What are you talking about, lieutenant?" the chief asked. I knew he was acting dumb. He was too smart to be in the dark.
"You've been keeping the Powerpuff Girls away from me," I unloaded the bullets. I didn't feel like playing the game, not when I was this close to slaying the dragon, not when I could taste it, smell it in the air - the validation of decades of rot and stagnant water for some kind of closure.
"That's one hell of an accusation, Mullens," the chief said, pinching a pencil with both his hands before him.
"You knew how important they were to me - to my operations," I was spitting more out. I didn't just have an old revolver in my hands, and I'd been collecting the bullets for a long time. The Powerpuff Girls had always been available to me and my task force. A few days ago, when they were nowhere to be seen and elsewhere, serving some other, likely lesser, purpose, I'd put it down to high demand of service. But then they were ghost for a second operation I needed them for, and then a third. All three planned operations were canceled, replaced by kid-sized alternatives that wouldn't have helped. Three times the charm. That was when I knew something was up.
"Mullens, come on," the chief said in that condescending tone, standing up and putting his mitt on my shoulder, gesturing for me to sit down. I shrugged it off and told him that I preferred standing. It was good for the heart. The chief sat back down, unafraid of the shadow I cast on him.
"I'm just a police chief, one out of many. And I'm sure you know that mine isn't exactly the highest position, right?" he continued to play dumb. If he was a salesman, he'd be broke by now. Except he wasn't - probably because of the side businesses he'd been running. "There are dozens of us in this city, and when the commissioner or the DA and their deputies ask us to jump, we ask, 'how high'. You get it, right?"
The cauldron's gotta spill sooner or later. I slammed my fists on the table. But he was a mountain, used to my method of anger management since a long time ago. How I wished for those moments a long time ago to return - I could move mountains then in my youth. But now, it was somebody else's turn. Perhaps Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup's.
"Just once! Just for fucking once!" I roared at him, let him know how much I resented the law I was enforcing - because it was preventing me from killing him. "What I'm doing could end this - all of this! You could have fought harder for me but I know you didn't!"
"Now that - I resent that," the chief said while he had pinched a cigarette out of its box. He jabbed his fingers, with that cigarette between them, at me. "I've been fighting for your use of the Powerpuff Girls for weeks! Months! How 'bout a little appreciation!?"
"And now they're just magically under some other chief's control? Just when things are picking up steam?" I shot at him again. I knew how the game was played. You don't show your hands until the very end. How I fell for it despite being an old bird, I had no clue. "Who is it, chief?"
"You need to learn to relax, Mullens," the chief condescended, avoiding my magic question. "It's good for your health. Take it easy - go with the flow. You've been watching the news, right? The Powerpuff Girls… they're still doing good, aren't they? Kicking more ass than ever, I'd even say."
"I would hardly call shutting down one small gang at a time 'kicking more ass than ever'," I said. I knew I was just beating away the chaff. There was more to it than that. 'Duty' wasn't exactly a common word in Townsville.
"Now you look here!" the chief shouted again. It was still just as manufactured as his cigarettes. "As much as you'd like to think you are, you're not the center of the universe! No, you're a dime in the dozen, no matter what the newspapers and mouths on the street say! Your plan isn't the only one, Mullens! Those damn super-powered kids don't belong to you! You've had your chance to use them, and now it's someone else's turn to shine! Fuck, they just busted the fuckin' Yakuza right in the head, you know that? How's that for important?"
I didn't think much of the Yakuza bust. I had run out of trust a long time ago, along with many other things. It wasn't the first time a local weed was pulled, and it wouldn't be the last. The weeds would grow if not one species then another. Sometimes, the police were just hands, pulling them out to make way for another.
"I want them tomorrow, you hear me? Don't make me climb the ladder," I didn't stick around to argue. I wasn't in the debate team back in high school, hadn't had the patience for it since. I don't talk the talk. I wanted to walk, and fast. Get to the finish line before anyone else.
"That's a tall order," the chief said, resigned. Good.
"Then make it a full glass of cocktail with an umbrella and slice of lemon on top," I sassed him before putting on my hat and turning around, letting him appraise the back of my trousers.
He didn't say anything more as I took my leave. Good.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. USDO Headquarters.
28 FEB (Tuesday) 1989. 1521.
As Bunny sat in General Blackwater's office, her mind couldn't help but wander back to the wintry forest out there, back in time, back to that specific time. General Blackwater had chopped Rabbit's carcass into two right in front of her, the intestines and blood spilling onto the snow, red and stark, while she watched. The general made her watch, saying that she needed to toughen up. He then gave her the front portion and then demonstrated with the back portion how to skin a rabbit.
Bunny didn't want to. It felt wrong. But she did it anyway because OBEDIENCE BRINGS VICTORY. Because it'd satisfy the general, make him happy. They would then cook the rabbit in a pot of boiling water, with additives to make a stew.
When the rabbit stew was ready, General Blackwater made her eat it, no matter how many tears she had shed, no matter how many times she begged not to. It didn't help that she was hungry, and the rabbit stew smelled so great. She began chewing faster, swallowing quicker, until she had devoured the rabbit stew made from her friend.
It felt worse than cannibalism - something which General Blackwater actually talked about after that - that if she had no other choice, she would have to consume the corpse of a person to survive. With Bunny, General Blackwater reasoned that it would be slightly more acceptable since she wasn't exactly human in the normal sense.
"Bunny? Come here and I'll show you something," the general said to her some time after she was done thinking about the near past. Stiffly, she got off the chair opposite the general's and skirted around his desk. With no other chairs available, the general welcomed Bunny to sit on his lap, groaning under the weight of Bunny and her heavy armor.
When Bunny was settled in, the general opened a video file and played it. While Bunny was unfamiliar with the contents of the video, General Blackwater had already scanned through the file numerous times over the past two months. Had Bunny's elder sisters, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, been here, they would have recognized it too.
It was some security footage taken from inside the Townsville Central Bank, from over two months ago. It was the Powerpuff Girls' first mission (who were then named The Three), and it'd gone horribly wrong.
Bubbles was shot in the eye, shattering her combat ballistic goggles and knocking her out, forcing Blossom to pull her back on the retreat with Buttercup hesitating and attacking, only to be outnumbered and forced to run anyway. They were shot dozens of times on the way out, and Buttercup was even set on fire using a molotov cocktail.
Bunny could barely even look, and the general had to prod at her and order her to keep looking. She'd burst into tears in the middle of it.
"Do you understand now?" the general said, and Bunny nodded her head even though he didn't elaborate.
"Stop crying and listen. Your sisters are weak, and you need to protect them; fight crime and neutralize the enemy so this does not happen again. Do you understand?" the general explained, knowing that Bunny wasn't quite in the right state of mind to be asking questions. Bunny could barely hold it in even as she listened. She broke down again after that. Just the violence of it all being ruthlessly exacted upon her elder sisters was unnerving.
The general, however, wanted something more. This simply would not do. Taking her by the shoulders, he shook her up. "I said stop crying!" He threw her off his lap, and she landed hard on her back. "Stand up!"
Bunny did as she was told, brought out of her weeping by the pain and shock from the general's actions. She stood up immediately, like a soldier berated by a drill sergeant. The general got off his chair, pushing it back violently as he sprung to his feet.
"You want to be emotional, Bunny? Then be angry!" the general said to her. "Be furious! Mad! Those men hurt your sisters! Come on, give me your angry face! Think about it! The pain those men caused your dear sisters!"
Bunny needed several tries before she could get it right. She'd imagined getting shot a million times, and how it might have been for her sisters. She had been shot before, ironically by the general who used a Duranium XM90 Anti-Material Rifle. It wasn't something unknown to her.
"You know, we do have the same criminals who hurt your sisters in custody," the general tempted Bunny and the fact that she had taken the bait had shown through her transparent look, that look that told everyone that she wanted sweet vengeance. It was the first time she felt that way, and the feeling was ambrosial and natural to her. "Good, good. You're born to suffer, to feel your sisters' pain. For now, it's because of those men. But you're born to do something else, Bunny. I think it's time you make them feel your pain."
Training Segment: Enhanced Interrogation
Time: 1530-1730
Description: B-50 is to be taught the art of inflicting pain and fear for the purpose of compelling cooperation from an unwilling and previously uncooperative subject. Up to three real prisoners will be provided for the purpose of this segment, and B-50's goal will be to force them to confess to a number of crimes they did not commit and to reveal information about the crime scene they were found in that is already known and corroborated by evidence on the scene. The prisoners' survival is optional.
Results: In the course of the lesson, B-50 is able to apply her knowledge of where to target to inflict the most pain from her human anatomy lessons, and how to cause fear from her lessons in psychological warfare. Her experience of being tortured herself has helped, I believe, as there was some resemblance in her technique to mine when it comes to terrorizing the target while cutting him with a knife. She is incredibly successful in this regard. She was able to interrogate all provided subjects without killing them for the duration of the training segment. However, only 1 in 3 prisoners was completely broken – better results are expected as she gains experience in this field.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. USDO Headquarters.
28 FEB (Tuesday) 1989. 1733.
"I'm proud of you, Bunny," the general whispered into her ear as the enhanced girl was cleaning her face with a wetted rag from a basin nearby. Bunny, however, was shaking. In just a few days, she had gone from being a normal girl living in a suburbs to a little superhuman terror who was unafraid of being a monster. The change had caught up with her after she was done working on the prisoners provided to her. She had released her anger in a basic sense of justice, but fear and regret had replaced it, despite everything the general had talked about.
Four USDO officers in grey uniforms came in shortly after that, and they began unstrapping one of the prisoners from a chair. The man shouted in pain as the guards grabbed him by the arms and dragged him in front of Bunny. He had been thoroughly worked on. The general had lost count on the number of cuts on his body, though the number of fingers the man still had left was much easier to count. The prisoner had to be dragged to Bunny because he couldn't walk anymore, not because of exhaustion and pain, but because balancing would be an issue without the correct number of toes, though the fact that one of his knees had been drilled with an electric drill was much more pressing. He wouldn't have been able to navigate well anyway, with one of his eyes mutilated before being gouged out.
The prisoner, a disgraced Lombardi capo with a scorpion tattoo on his forehead, gave an off-keyed shout when he was dumped on his knees in front of Bunny; with half his teeth torn out, he couldn't even do that right.
General Blackwater unholstered his pistol and stuck it out in front of Bunny, handle-first.
"He's yours, Bunny. Protect your sisters. Shoot this man and show me that you can," he said, and when Bunny hesitated and stared at the gun, he continued: "If we let him live, he might escape and threaten them again."
Bunny had hesitated not because she was afraid or unwilling to kill. She had hesitated because she still found it hard to believe that she had changed so much, into something even she knew her Dad wouldn't like.
"Your parents will be proud of you. Your Dad hates killing, I know, but he'll understand. Obedience brings victory, Bunny," as if reading her mind, the general said. Bunny took the gun and cocked it. She pointed it at the captured criminal's forehead. His one good eye was staring into the barrel of the gun as if welcoming what would come out of it. It would be hard to understand why not, for he was shivering not just from the cold, but also from how stretches of his skin were hanging loosely from his side and chest.
"Obedience brings victory," Bunny repeated the general's words before squeezing the trigger. There was a brief, but loud explosion and the tattooed prisoner collapsed, finally released from his agony.
"You are ready, Bunny. I can feel it," the general said, a rare grin spreading across his face. He turned to the four USDO security officers. "Take the other two back to their cells. I have a feeling they'd be good for another training session."
"No! No, please! I confessed! I'm guilty! Please, no more!" one of the torture survivors begged as he was being unstrapped, cuffed and taken away. He was brought through the door, still dripping blood from his countless wounds. His screams could still be heard until eventually, he was too far away.
"Did you have fun?" the general asked Bunny, who'd been watching her torture victims being dragged out all along. She turned to him, looking up, more serious than ever before, the last vestiges of her innocence either stripped away or superseded, terrorized into hiding in some dark corner of her psyche. The general looked down to trade eye contact with her.
Bunny had never been surer in her life before. She was born (created) for this. A grin spread on her face to match the general.
"Yes."
