Chapter 83: A Special Day (Part 2)

The City of Townsville. Eastern Suburbs. 8 Blueberry Street.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1055.

"Jesus! Isn't it a little too early for you to be selling cookies out there?" Damian said while still keeping the gap between door and frame constant and small.

"They really need the money," the girl scout claimed, still shivering. "May I c-come in for a minute? It's really c-cold. P-please…"

"Sure, sure," the off-duty cop said, and promptly unlatched the chain on his door. Opening the door wide, he let the girl scout through, and she was so eager to get into a warm place that she'd squeezed past him and into the living room.

"You know, you should have brought a jacket and some winter accessories if you're going on a crusade for charity," Damian said jokingly in an attempt to liven up the atmosphere, but he immediately regretted it as he found the fact that a kid risking all sorts of diseases and injury just to put a few dollars in a charity's piggy bank was impossible to look upon with a lighter spirit.

"Thanks…" the girl scout said while she was rubbing her hands together. Damian thought it odd that the eight-year-old-something wasn't even wearing any gloves. Wouldn't she risk hypothermia that way? She looked up at him expectantly when she had gotten the shelter she needed. "How many boxes do you want to buy?"

"Tell you what, kiddo," the off-duty cop said. "How about if I buy them all off you? My boy's birthday is coming up anyway and I can't bear the thought of you walking around out there trying to sell a few boxes of cookies."

"I've got more in my little wagon…" the girl scout added.

"Yeah, that's even worse. I don't think you should lose your nose or a few fingers over them," he added before patting himself down for his wallet. His cardigan was light and his pants were flat. Then he remembered where it was.

"Honey, who is it?" Damian's wife, Joanne, called out again from the kitchen.

"Just one brave girl scout selling cookies, dear!" Damian shouted back. He then turned back to the girl scout. "Tell you what, let me get my wallet, and I'll be right down, okay?"

"Okay," the girl scout said with a smile on her face, a smile that Damian couldn't quite understand. He'd decided that it was just an innocuous expression of satisfaction over her charitable work and success.


The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1056.

When Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were inside the study, they saw immediately that the Amoeba Boys were seated behind their tables as usual, like the bosses they were. However, there were others in the room. More men in their smart suits of various dark or nondescript colors, and some women in long, flowing dresses, all of whom were enjoying the same kind of beverage Bossman had given Blossom back when they dined together. The smell of the champagne was strong in the room.

The moment Bossman saw them, he stood up and went around his table. He was a huge man, imposing, but strangely, Blossom felt none of that any longer. He had been something of a friend to her, despite their hostile beginnings. Where they used to skirmish in proxy wars, they were now working together to make Townsville a better place. Bubbles, however, wasn't as readily accepting of the new arrangement. There was something off - something wrong with it. If there was one thing she learned from her mistake with the Fairy Godmother, it was that evil would never reveal itself as such - no, quite the opposite - evil would disguise itself as good first and foremost. But with Blossom being so adamant that she was right to work with the Amoeba Boys, Bubbles could only keep an eye out for any trickery. Buttercup, on the other hand, did not care. If there was anything to be enjoyed, it would be great. Otherwise, she was just biding her time, waiting for a chance to ascend from the sham that was her family.

All eyes were on the Powerpuff Girls when they walked in. Bossman pulled his cigar out of his mouth and snuffed it out on an ashtray. The Powerpuff Girls could smell the cigar smoke in the air regardless. He'd been at it for a while, and everyone was happily breathing in his fumes.

"Well, how does it feel like to be a group of real heroines, girls?" the mob boss growled. All other eyes had turned away, as though they knew to give their bosses and the Girls their moment.

"The kicking-butt part was fun," Buttercup muttered, which attracted a disapproving sideways stare from Blossom.

"I'm just glad that those bad guys won't be hurting anyone else, Mister Ricci," Blossom spoke over Buttercup, trying to sound extra polite to make up for Buttercup's blunder. A waiter had handed the Girls their glasses of champagne in the meantime.

"Please, call me Bosco. That's my real first name," Bossman re-introduced himself. Blossom could figure out why people had taken to calling him 'Bossman' based on his real name, but she didn't say it. "It's not exactly… noble, yeah, but it brings back memories."

"It's a nice name…" Bubbles tried to play nice feebly. She still couldn't believe that she was talking to the brother of the men who had injured Blossom and Buttercup on more than one occasion. She tried to drink the champagne she was handed, but the taste burned her taste buds. Why would anyone drink such foul grape juice? To her, it was like drinking spoiled juice - not that she had ever done that before.

"Of course it is. It's the only thing I have left from my ma and pa," Bossman said with a barely noticeable smile. Blossom thought it seemed a little bitter.

"That's really sad…" Blossom empathized.

"Yes… But that's a lifetime ago. Now? Now we celebrate," Bossman growled. "There was a time when the Lombardi was just a small family like any other. It's a family with a rich history, going all the way back to the founding of the city. It's had its golden age, but by the time I was around to take over, it's like a shrunken head, a bony man from the ghettos." Blossom took a sip from her champagne and found it to be somewhat to her liking, but it was an acquired taste. "You know how I brought it back to its former glory?"

"How?" Blossom asked. Bubbles, who was just hanging around behind her, didn't like Bossman's story. It was basically about the rise of evil. Had Bubbles known about Hitler, Bossman's story would have equaled the historical dictator's in her eyes.

"Back in the day, the Lombardi was a very… exclusive club. Like those classy joints where you enter only if you have a suit and a necktie, a well-dressed dame hanging on your arm, whom you might have f-" Bossman growled, then laughed. "I apologize. I won't go into details not meant for young ears. Anyway, back then, the Lombardi accepted Italian men only - no women, no men of other upbringing, white or otherwise, long as they're not Italian. Between the gang wars and the arrests, they were running out. So I opened up the family, brought in some good men - and women - even if they weren't from The Boot." Bossman was waving a hand at some of the others in the room. Blossom turned to look at who he was referring to. A black man, talking to a woman in a blazer. Both of them were dressed formally, but the look in their eyes wasn't just seasoned. Those were killer eyes, barely restrained.

"And now we come to you," Bossman suddenly said. "You've been a great help to me and my brothers, to the Lombardi. Without you, I don't know if we'd ever turn over a new leaf and help clean up the town. The Lombardi remembers its friends, and we count the three of you like some of them. I find it an inspiring story really - we were enemies, but we've put aside our differences for the greater good." Blossom was clasping her hands together, looking like a girl just about to blow out the candles on her birthday cake.

"Which is why I'm about to offer you something only my closest friends get to do," Bossman continued as Blossom was completely hooked on him and his every word. Where she couldn't seem to gain any validation and affection from Dad any longer because of Bunny, Bosco's attention had filled the void, and it seemed like gold to her. The mob boss stuck his right hand out, making sure that his ring finger was sticking out a little. The metal on his knuckle there didn't need that emphasis to stand out. It was a huge, golden ring, likely made larger for Bossman's thick finger. There was a solid, silver 'L' embossed on the ovular top of the ring.

"That's a really pretty ring, Mister Bosco," Blossom praised the mob boss. It was at this point that everyone had returned their gaze and attention to the famed Powerpuff Girls and their bosses. There was a pause, with Bossman looking at Blossom as though expecting something from her, something that Blossom had no idea about. "Urm, what do I do?"

"It's a family tradition, something only friends and family and associates of the Lombardi ever got to do. Call it a symbol, a sign of friendship. Something to seal it, forever and ever," Don Bosco Ricci explained. "What do you kids love to call it? Best friends forever? BFF? Yeah, call it a little clique thing to make it official. All you have to do is kneel and kiss the ring."

Blossom's smile grew wider. In her life, friends were far and few in between. She had heard from her classmates in Pokey Oaks Kindergarten how many friends they had, numbering in the dozens. It'd made her envious, seeing that the only friends she had made up not even a dozen, and she would hardly ever see them. Most of the kids in Pokey Oaks were still keeping their distance, emotionally and sometimes physically.

She couldn't pass up another chance to make some new friends, three and possibly even more from the Lombardi Family. After a pause as she took in the gravity of what was said between them, and of the good that could come from this, Blossom spread her skirt and finally knelt in front of Don Bosco Ricci. She couldn't reach his ring that way though, so the Bossman had to get on a knee as well to make up for her height.

Taking Bossman's massive hand, she gave his family ring a long and hearty kiss. She felt a huge hand stroking the back of her head, interweaving with the hair there. Flashes of white light went off when that happened, and when Blossom turned to see where it'd come from, she realized that a few men were taking photos and videos.

"This one's going into the history books," Slim, who had stood up in the middle of this ceremony to get a better look, said.

"Hehehe… Yeah, history books," Junior repeated Slim's words, adding his own meaning to it with his laugh and tone.


The City of Townsville. Eastern Suburbs. 8 Blueberry Street.

03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1058.

When the target had left for his wallet, Bunny got to work. Looking around the room, she began identifying potential weapons. Rook had said to improvise, as this mission was neck-deep in black ops territory and whatever she did here must not be linked back to the USDO. Would she use the fire poker? No, it was too far into the living room that someone might see her pick it up. What about breaking a window for a glass shard? No, someone might hear. Bunny's eyes turned to the dining table.

Yes. There it was. There was a weapon there that was exactly what she needed. Briskly walking to the dining table, she saw cutlery there, arranged for three to dine. There were forks, spoons, and butter knives, arranged neatly around dinner plates, but those weren't what she had her eye on. Reaching for the middle, she grabbed a rather long and big serrated knife off a platter, normally used to part slabs of steak or other meat. It was perfect. Easy to conceal, and no one noticed that she had taken it.

The moment she had it, she hid it behind her back and got back to the middle of the living room as quickly as she could. She stared hard at the stairs, waiting, waiting for her target to come back down. She waited and stared, and it was just at this moment that she realized she could sort of see shadows, or silhouettes, through the walls, and one of them just so happened to be at the stairs close to the second floor. Was she imagining it? That she could see through things?

"Okay, so I got my wallet," Damian, her mark, was walking across the kitchen and the living room and Bunny didn't have the time to process what she saw. It was time. "How much were those cookies again?"

"I'm sorry, Mister Damian Connelly," Bunny apologized, on the verge of tears. It was all going to happen again. Her hands were still behind her back, and they were shaking as she held the stolen steak knife with a vice-like grip. If she had applied her Chemical X2-induced strength, it would have been crushed. "I'm so sorry."

"What are you talking about? And how did you know my name?" the confused man asked. There was one other thing he noticed. The girl scout had abandoned her cookies, and he didn't have time to see where they had gone.

Neither did he have the time to react when the girl scout pulled a knife from behind her and thrust it into his chest, bypassing the sternum from underneath, easily pushing the serrated blade of the steak knife into his heart.

The doomed man wore an expression of shock, his mouth wide open as he dropped his wallet and gripped the hostile girl scout by the shoulder. He wanted to scream, but nothing came out even as unimaginable pain erupted from the core of his being, spreading throughout his body.

Bunny pulled the steak knife out, and as the man fell, she grabbed him by the collar. The man finally screamed after a delay, which alarmed Bunny. She quickly thrust her stolen steak knife through his throat and up into his brain, hastening his end, but she couldn't undo his scream.

"Damian!? What happened!?" the police officer's wife came running out of the kitchen. She froze when she came just an inch or two out and saw what had happened, catching the visiting girl scout red-handed. "Why did you-"

"DAMIAN! NO!" the woman shrieked in terror when the killer girl scout looked in her direction, a strange mixture of sadness and rage in her face. Backing away, she closed the door to the kitchen and the rest of the house and ran for a cabinet outside the kitchen.

The crazy girl scout, meanwhile, had dropped her dead assassination target and ran for the door. Joanne Connelly, the cop's wife, scrambled to open the cabinet. She had to work through the number lock, and panic had gripped her such that she was fumbling with the padlock. Somehow, by some miracle, she was able to get it unlocked just before the girl scout had crashed through the door, sending glass flying everywhere.

Joanne pulled a shotgun out of the cabinet and pumped it. The girl scout had slipped after smashing through the door, and as the woman was aiming her shotgun at her in a state of panic, she was just getting up. The panicky homemaker was able to get a shot off. Buckshots slammed into the girl scout's face, throwing her off her feet.

It should have ended there, except it didn't. Somehow, the girl scout was getting up again! After taking a shotgun shell to the face!

But there was something else that Joanne noticed. The slasher girl's eyes had turned purple. Bright, glowing purple.

Screaming in panic, Joanne pumped her shotgun frantically. She trained her weapon on the inhuman thing that had killed her husband but it was fast, too fast to be natural, having run up to her before she could line up a second shot.

Joanne pulled the trigger out of fear instead, when the girl scout pushed her shotgun out of the way and jumped on top of her, pulling her down as the both of them screamed. Joanne could feel small hands pulling her hair as she tried to crawl away, and in response, she slammed the body of her shotgun in the face of the killer girl scout, miraculously causing her to lose her grip.

And that was when an even worse horror dawned on Joanne. She'd heard the footsteps at first, but in her panic, she'd overlooked the noise. At the foot of the stairs stood a boy of about eight - her boy. It'd distracted her, and the girl scout was able to wrestle the shotgun out of her hands with ease.

"HOWARD, RUN!" Joanne screamed just before she felt a shotgun butt to the back of her head. "RUN!"

It was just at that moment when Howard saw a girl scout splatter his mother's brains across the carpet with a shotgun.

"Mom?" Howard managed to utter, shocked at what had just happened. His mom - his beautiful mom's face had just been blown half to bits, and those tiny bits were scattered all across the carpet too. There was a huge spray of blood. He thought he saw an eyeball fly out too, and another was rolling towards him.

He knew he was supposed to be afraid. Terrified. But he didn't have time to process the gore in front of him when he made eye contact with the girl who killed his mother. She appeared to be about his age, but she had freaky purple eyes. And they looked angry. And manic. And sad. And murderous when they fixed their gaze on him quite suddenly.

That was when he turned tail and ran back up the stairs, faster than he'd ever been.

"Lima-five, the boy in the house, what do I do with him?" Howard could hear the girl scout speaking into what was presumably a radio as he ran. "But- Yes, he can talk. Okay." He heard a shotgun blast after that, and the steps of the stairs exploding just as he flit out of view after that. He fell on the steps leading up to the second floor when that happened, pain eating away at his leg.

Looking down, he saw blood. Wooden shrapnel had pierced his leg at places. It wasn't life-threatening, but he had never felt such pain before, at least not for a long, long time. He forced himself into a stumbling run. He could hear the killer girl scout coming, much faster than he was.

After hitting the corridors, he limped back to his room, and he was more thankful than before that it was close to the stairs. He could hear the thumping of the girl scout's hiking boots right outside his door just as he locked it. Looking around the room, he wondered in panic what he should do, severely missing his parents' protection and guidance. Should he hide? No, he would never feel safe as long as he was in the house.

He got away from the door and watched it, still sitting on the fence as to what to do. For a moment, there was silence. Had the girl scout gone away? He hoped she did, even believed naively that perhaps she did - there was supposed to be a happy ending to this, right? He had a few uncles and aunts. He'd be living with one of them after this, he was sure of it, and they would take care of him.

The silence continued to pervade. Perhaps he was right after all?

But all his hope and belief had evaporated when the door exploded - particularly where the doorknob was. The girl scout had shot the door, sending yet more wooden shrapnel at him. He felt a stinging pain in his chest and arms as he ran for it - deciding on the fly that he'd leave through the window just like how he would whenever he wanted to meet his friends clandestinely.

As Howard pulled the window open, he could hear another shotgun blast savaging the door. While fitting through the window, he heard the door being kicked open and crashing into the wall. He scrambled out - hell, he'd jump off the roof if he had to!

But that would never be.

He felt a hand closing around his ankle and pulling him back in. How the girl scout was so strong he had no idea - it was like getting pulled away by several adults, or a robot like from The Terminator. He ended up crashing on the floor - and it would have been more painful had it not been for the carpet.

"No! Please, no!" the boy yelled as he rolled on his back to see how he was going to die. The girl scout was there, pointing his dead mom's shotgun at him. He tried to scramble away, but he was in so much pain that when he ended up hitting the wall, he gave up. He cried helplessly as he shielded his face in vain - as if his arms could deflect shotgun projectiles. At that moment, he'd wished that someone - anyone would save him. He'd wish that, somehow, the Powerpuff Girls would be there to stop the killer girl scout. He'd idolized them; he'd always wanted to see them and now it felt as if he'd never see them.

But the girl scout did not fire. Howard peeked between his arms and saw that she was lowering the shotgun. She looked… sad. To Howard, the glowing, purple eyes no longer looked frightening. It was as if the girl scout appeared frightened as well.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered, before raising her shotgun again and pulling the trigger.

The shotgun clicked, rang hollow. The girl scout appeared confused. She pumped the shotgun again and fired, but again it clicked. Howard winced, but he did not die.

"Please don't," he cried. The girl scout did not stop. Instead, she struck the boy in the head with the butt of the shotgun. He fell to the floor yelping, though whether unconscious or dead, the girl scout wasn't sure. So she struck him again, and again, and again, until his head was nothing more than a puddle of shattered bones, spilled brains, gore and blood.

Bunny got up, herself shellshocked. She dropped the shotgun beside the dead boy. It had to be done, that was what Rook said. She knew that General Blackwater would have agreed with Rook. The boy was an enemy - he would have tattled on her, gone to the cops, then the bad guys would hear and her family would be in trouble. It was a real shame - she had never met a boy close to her physical age, a boy close to her height. She felt sad about killing him, but her family came first.