Chapter 81: Shadow War (Part 3)

The City of Townsville. The Slums. Former Exposito Family Headquarters

02 MAR (Thursday) 1989. 2256.

When Bunny barged through the front door of the old apartment that was the former Exposito headquarters, another couple of police officers were already heading towards her, attracted by the noise outside that didn't sound like the usual gunshot. Bunny's submachinegun was already up, so she was able to put bullets through their skulls before they could draw and train their pistols on her.

Two more officers were headed down the stairs when Bunny executed their colleagues in the lobby. They drew their sidearms.

"Police! Freeze!" one of them yelled, but Bunny didn't care. She imagined that they weren't police officers. Police officers wouldn't bully her sisters when their backs were turned. They traded shots, but the officers didn't stand a chance as their small-caliber bullets simply bounced off her face or armor. The officers were instantly dead.

But they'd gotten off a couple of shots. It could mean alerting the others. Sprinting to the elevator, she pressed the call button to summon it. The shutters - it was an old building - opened and the elevator sat waiting. Dashing in, she dug into the control panel and tore the controls out wholesale so no one could use it.

Bunny sprinted upwards, clearing floor after floor. She'd read the reports back at the Vaugh Steel Co. Warehouse. The Exposito Crime Family had occupied the top floor, so it made sense for the rest of the corrupt cops to be there. Stragglers emerging before or after she'd swept the penthouse suite clean would be shot on sight by USDO agents.

When she reached the top floor, she had to skulk around every corner, from the stairs to around the stairwell, then into the corridor connecting the top floor penthouses to the rest of the building. She expected the corrupt cops to swarm her - it was their only hope of ever beating her - but there was no resistance to be quashed, at least not in the corridor.

She knew which apartment they were in. She could hear them through the walls. It helped that there was a hole in the wall, large enough for her to enter, and so she did. It was already dark out in the corridor, and it was pitch black inside, so she pulled her night-vision goggles down and switched it on. She squeaked the moment she saw what was inside; there were rats writhing inside the walls, and they swarmed past her when she entered it, agitated by her presence. Shifting deeper inside the walls, she listened to the conversations in the penthouse:

"-Took us forever to find the damn safe," someone said. A male voice with an Italian accent to it. "And now what? It's taking forever for us to crack the damn safe."

"Didn't help that we can't grab one of those safe-crackers to do the job for us," another person said. A female voice.

"USDO's been turning the screws really tightly on the street gangers," another man said. "Everyone's laying low for now. Wouldn't want to get Powerpuffed. Heard those little nutcrackers can be really brutal. Ah, at least this way, we'd each get a bigger share."

"Any moment now…" another voice, male, said. Bunny could guess that there were at least four bent cops in the penthouse.

"Can't it go any faster?" the first officer pressed whoever was working on the safe.

"Sorry man, this one's tough. The Expositos may be living in a poor neighborhood, but they sure invested in a good safe. It's hard to hear the gears inside and your yelling isn't helping," one of the officers said, frustrated.

Bunny was able to shift herself into the walls of the room the officers were in. With the need for stealth, her enhanced speed was a liability should she draw on it, but her small size had made up for it. Soon, she was poised to strike the treacherous officers for their crimes…


The City of Townsville. The Slums. Former Exposito Family Headquarters

02 MAR (Thursday) 1989. 2259.

"Almost got it…" Officer Thomas mumbled to himself as he listened intently for the gears in the safe through his stethoscope. The gears were incredibly tricky in this one, with lots of false positives. He had to fail dozens of times to get the feel of it. It'd given him that Thomas Edison feeling, though. He knew he had to try and try again to get results. He knew five of the numbers. The last one had been eluding him until now when he finally heard an audible click. Laughing maniacally, he pulled open the safe's door to find exactly what he'd dreamed of all this time - stacks upon stacks of thousand-dollar greenbacks, all sorts of jewelry and a several designer watches. There were even a few gold bars hidden in there when he lifted some of the bricks of dollar bills. "Gotcha!"

"Jesus! We're rich!" Officer Cromwell, the ringleader of the corrupt cops, shouted with joy. He should be happy. He estimated at least a couple millions' worth of dough and valuables in there, likely more, and even if the Amoeba Boys took their 50% cut of the heist, each member of his merry band would walk home with a hundred and seventy thousand, easy. To a police officer, it was a few years' worth of salary, and a step closer to retirement.

"Yeah!" Officer Jane screamed. "Fiji, here I come!"

"Luck's finally on our side!" the last officer, Officer Maclean said. His optimism, however, didn't last very long when something burst through the half-rotten wall of the penthouse guestroom, creating a plume of decades-old dust, sending fragments and shrapnel everywhere that had the corrupt officers covering their faces and scattering, trying to hide.

"Hell's going on!?" Jane screamed.

"T-this never happened before!" Cromwell yelled over noise that had already gone.

Through the dust, a pair of ghoulish purple lights shone through. The corrupt cops didn't make the connection immediately. They were wary of possible Powerpuff intervention, but those eyes had been bright pink, blue and green. The purple lights struck them as something belonging to a power panel at first, but the frightening look of it had them drawing their sidearms.

But then bullets came flying out of the dust, whipping through it and tearing into Cromwell. Bullets were flying at random after that, and the three other cops hit the deck. Whoever it was on the other side of the dust cloud had been aiming based on sound.

The cops fired back, unloading everything they got, but as the dust was clearing, something flew out of it undeterred – running at the speed of a truck and putting a knife through Jane's forehead before she could even process what she saw, and she never will.

The remaining cops screamed at the sight of this, and as one of them was emptying what remained of his magazine and the other was reloading, what appeared to be a heavily-equipped eight-year-old snapped off a chain used to pull the safe out and up from under the floorboards and charged Maclean with it. With gritted teeth and too much anger in her eyes than was natural for a little kid, the brunette killer-girl swung the chain at Maclean, and the end of the broken chain cut a swathe through the uniform and flesh of his chest. He fell, sidearm clattering on the floor. He'd wanted to beg for mercy but couldn't when the heavily-armored creature of a girl swung the chain at him a second time, this time cutting a deep swathe through his face, just under the eyes and through his nose, taking the latter out entirely and leaving it hanging by a thin strip of bloody skin.

The last man alive, Thomas the safecracking cop, had stumbled back, terrified by what he saw. His partner-in-crime was a mess on the floor, blood pooling under his head, face torn in two, foaming at the mouth with eyes rolled up to his brains in pure agony. Thomas fell, his sidearm forgotten when the unknown Powerpuff-like girl turned to glare at him. He tried to crawl away, but his legs were like the wooden floorboards he'd destroyed to get to the safe.

"W-wait! Please!" Officer Thomas pleaded. The kid-of-death walked closer to him, the bloody chain still clutched in her gloved hands. She loomed over him, like the Grim Reaper himself, or at least his daughter. The girl stared at him dispassionately, looking like she'd just calmed down from a sugar rush, and now had to clean her room.

"What?" she asked, surprisingly, when the corrupt police officer was sure that she was incapable of it.

"Please d-don't kill me," Thomas begged, his arm still shield his face from the inevitable snap of the bloody chain. "I- just want to live! Please! You can take all the money, just please don't hurt me!"

"But I don't want money," the purple-armored killer-girl said bluntly. "I want bad guys like you to die so my sisters won't be hurt."

"Your sisters?" Thomas questioned. There were only three girls who could be the sister of such a monstrosity. "Look, I got no beef with your sisters - ur, Blossom and the rest, right?"

The specter of death seemed to pause, before pressing her fingers into a device in her ear. Thomas could see that she was wired, and someone was speaking to her. She then glared at him. "You're lying. It's nice talking to you, mister, but I'll still have to kill you."

The inevitability of it had somehow made Thomas braver.

"You little bitch! You fucking whore!" the cop yelled at the top of his lungs, and the girl seemed taken aback by his foul language, of all things. As she pulled her sidearm out, he continued to hurl all sorts of verbal attacks at her, perhaps because nothing else had worked: "Your fucking sisters will burn in hell, you sick fuck! I was just trying to earn a living! Who are you to judge!?"

The little girl with the mean teeth didn't seem pleased with his words. Not at all. She returned her pistol to its holster. Somehow, that seemed more terrifying than when she was armed. Thomas stared at her pistol, a little horrified, but he'd hardly missed a beat, as he had nothing more to lose.

"Ain't my fault the water's polluted here and I had to fall in line with the order of things!" Thomas yelled as if it was his last day on Earth because it was. "I hope Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup gets torn apart by the city! Yeah, they'll die slow 'cause fuck you and your stupid midget sisters!"

The eight-year-old in heavy armor started forward, ugly teeth and small fists clenched.

"Bet your sisters are selfish little brats just like everyone else! Bet they're working for themselves!" Thomas continued to cry, at first loudly, then literally when the girl seized him by his hair and lifted him off his butt. "Bet they're criminals just like you and me! No, no, NO!"

The little girl had punched Officer Thomas in the chest so hard that her fist had gone past his ribcage. He could feel her fingers wriggling in there and he could barely muster a scream at this point. Finally, he felt her hand close in on his core before retracting, pulling a big chunk of him out, dripping in blood and gore and skin.

The girl had pulled his heart out, and it was still beating right in front of him as he was losing consciousness. But there was mercy after all; he didn't last very long after that.


The City of Townsville. The Slums. Former Exposito Family Headquarters

02 MAR (Thursday) 1989. 2305.

"Status, Bravo-fifty," Rook's voice blasted Bunny's ear as she dropped the heart she ripped out of the enemy police officer right in front of her. She rubbed her hand on her armor. The blood had stained her deeply, and she wanted to get it off. It felt as if she couldn't. Something felt wrong with what she had done, even though the evidence that the people she killed were bad people were right before her. It wasn't just because these people were wearing police uniforms, or that they were real police officers. It was something else, something her young mind just couldn't quite grasp. "Sitrep, now!"

Bunny jumped when Rook yelled through the radio into her ear.

"Bravo-fifty. Eight tangos dead. I think that's all of them, over," Bunny replied.

"Good. Do not go silent like that again, Bravo-fifty, over," Rook replied.

"How do you feel, Bunny?" General Blackwater's voice came on as a hissing whisper as if a voice in her head.

"I- I don't know," Bunny said as she continued to look around her. She'd never, ever forget the minutest details of the battle, just like how she would never forget the number of diapers her Dad had put on her or the color and feel of the pacifier he'd given her briefly. The officer with his face torn in two by a chain. The woman-cop with that big, ugly hole in her forehead. The grey-haired cop she shredded with bullets first thing when she entered the penthouse properly. Upfront on ground floor, something in the two cops she killed resonated with her, but she'd killed them even though she suspected they were innocent.

"I know how you feel. Your Dad taught you not to kill, and you've been doing it over and over," the general said. "I'm sorry you're born into this, but the world is more complex than your father thinks. You're doing the world a great service, Bunny. I can promise you that."

"They're police officers…" Bunny mumbled into her face-mounted mic.

"Bad ones. Remember that.."

"Not all of them…" Bunny muttered on her own, forcing her eyes shut as she willed herself not to cry. She knew she had to be strong, and General Blackwater said that to not cry is strong. She then said into the radio: "Are there… others?"

"No, Bunny. Go home and take a break. Have a good night's sleep. You've earned it," the general said. Bunny could just about feel his smile through the radio.

"Good night, General Blackwater. Nighty-night, Mister Rook," Bunny bade them farewell, and they did the same in turn, almost in unison over the radio.

Bunny raced down the stairwell after that. She couldn't wait to see Dad and her elder sisters again. Maybe they might distract her from what she had done.


The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.

02 MAR (Thursday) 1989. 2324.

A bike roared through the suburbs before stopping by The House. The lights were still on, and so Bunny hurried up and wheeled her bike into the garage quickly because she knew what it meant. As soon as she was through the door, Dad was waiting for her. She walked up to him, almost breaking into a jog, and hugged him.

"How's work, honey?" he asked.

"Bad. I missed you every second," she said. Behind him, Bunny saw someone rise up from behind a sofa, standing on the seat. Red, flaming hair, tired eyes. Blossom. Dad heaved and managed to get Bunny up on his arm despite the heavyweight. He noticed that she'd been looking behind him and turned, wondering what she was looking at. It was Blossom, of course.

"See? Your sister loves you. She's been up all night waiting for you," Dad said, then laughed. "She's never been more disobedient in her entire life!"

Professor Utonium's comment made Blossom's smile go from pure to bitter. She knew better that she'd been more disobedient before, and it was still a fact for every second she'd kept her killings outside The House a secret. It was a wonder, she thought, that he hadn't found out about them yet, but luck does pop out at the strangest of times.

"Thanks, sis," Bunny said, then flashed her crooked-teeth smile. The professor saw it and started wondering.

"You know, we ought to straighten that out," he said. Bunny shut her mouth when he said this, at which point he laughed again. "You're beautiful no matter what, Bunny. You're my daughter. You can't be any less."

"Thanks, Dad," Bunny said as Dad was carrying her towards the stairs. She looked down at Blossom, who was following. The elder sister was yawning and her eyebags were showing. Bunny was just glad that she wasn't frowning.

"So what did you do today?" Blossom asked, curious as to what she had missed, or was even saved from. She imagined that Bunny could have been fighting against Naga, or Mojo Jojo, or even the dreaded purple chameleon demon that was Lumpkin. That she had returned with almost no wounds was testimony that she'd won, no matter who it was.

"Just… things…" Bunny stumbled, unsure of what to say as there was nothing she was allowed to say, though there were things she would rather keep secret, such as the fact that she had just killed eight police officers, even if they were corrupt. Well, at least most of them. "I can't talk about it…"

And just like that, Blossom gave Bunny that dreaded frown, sure that her younger sister was being a snob now that she was slowly taking over their crime-fighting role.

On the second floor, Professor Utonium was bathing Bunny. Blossom was back in bed at the behest of the professor. It was late, and yet Bunny wasn't tired. She never was when she was with her Dad. Add to that her halved need for sleep and she was still an Energizer Bunny even as midnight drew closer. If anything, the professor was more exhausted than she was despite his non-physical work demands.

"Are you sure you can't tell me about what you did outside?" he managed to slip his question into their conversation.

"No…" Bunny said timidly as she was playing with the water while the professor shampooed her hair. "General Blackwater said its classified."

The professor hated it when she said that, though in his mind, Bunny shared none of the blame and the general all of it. To not be able to talk freely with his own daughter was bad, worse even, than the fact that they were fighting crime in the place of adults. It was something he would have to take up with the general.

"How's the arm, by the way?" he asked. He lifted Bunny's injured arm out of the water to inspect the wound. It was healing rapidly. The scabs would likely peel off within an hour or two, and then it'd be completely gone another hour or two later.

"It doesn't hurt anymore…" Bunny said. "I'm fine Dad."

But what she didn't tell him was how much she hurt on the inside.