Chapter 157: Monsters in a Hotel (Part 1)

The City of Townsville Coastline. Monster Island.

25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2028.

The Girls weren't exactly gardeners, but they did their best with the tree Blossom broke in two. After lifting the top half of the tree up and fixing it back, Bubbles ripped apart a park bench to use the metal bars as splints for the tree. Blossom had found some rope tied into a hangman's noose not too far away, and she used it to tie the splints onto the tree. Buttercup helped by keeping the tree in place - much to her disgust. She had thought of the task as a waste of time.

When it was all done, the Girls stood at a distance, admiring the good work they had done.

"Will it be alright?" Bubbles asked, genuinely concerned with the tree.

"I hope. I didn't mean to hurt it," Blossom said remorsefully.

"I don't think you did. It didn't scream in pain, did it?" Buttercup said cynically, still thinking to herself that her sisters were overly-emotional and idiotic, even Blossom, who was supposed to be the smart one.

"What do we do now?" Bubbles asked. Blossom turned to her; Bubbles recoiled immediately, afraid that Blossom might blow up again. She apologized profusely, hoping to mitigate it.

"Bubbles! It's fine!" Blossom said, now upset that she had caused her sweetest sister to fear her. "You can ask, it's not a big deal. I was just thinking about what we can do."

"I'm sorry," Bubbles apologized again, this time to the way she was acting.

"It's really fine, stop apologizing," Blossom said. She had preferred it when Bubbles acted more naturally towards her without fear of repercussions for her actions or words. She tried her best not to think about how her relationship with her sweetest sister had devolved slightly into one involving a fear of authority… namely, hers. Flying higher and looking into the distance, she saw the resort in the distance and thought that it looked inviting despite the lack of maintenance. Coming back down, she announced it to her sisters: "There's a nice-looking place, maybe we can rest there."

Bubbles and Buttercup flew up to join her, only for Blossom to pull them back down by the hands.

"Hey, what gives?" Buttercup questioned Blossom.

"I think it's better if we walk there," Blossom decided. "Someone could be watching us. If we fly all the way there, we'll be seen and they'll come after us."

"Eeeks! I wonder who could be here?" Bubbles said, with her hands rising up to her mouth; her imagination had conjured up all sorts of monsters, some of her own imagination, but many that she didn't have to imagine as many weren't exactly monsters, but people with ill intentions.

"Whoever it is, we'll pound them into the ground, right, Blossom?" Buttercup said, making sure to participate a little just so it would appear they were on good terms again.

"Maybe we won't have to," Blossom suggested instead. Together, the Girls walked past the giant monster rides, past decrepit attractions that they dared not enter. A haunted house. A hall of mirrors. Something resembling teacup rides except that the teacups were replaced with hollow jellyfishes. Another park separated the rides from the resort.

Before long, they stood before one of the hotels of the resort. Grand and luxurious, it was decrepit all the same. Compared to everything else that they had walked past, it was inviting. It was good enough. 'I'm sure we'll be able to find a good place to rest in that huge building…' Blossom thought.

"Can you see anything?" Bubbles asked, referring to Blossom. Bubbles and Buttercup had relied on Blossom to see through objects and buildings to spot anyone who could be lying in ambush. So far, they were alone.

The problem was, the constant search for anyone who could be stalking them had strained her eyes.

"Urgh…" Blossom moaned as she rubbed her eyes. She tried concentrating, but her vision had gone blurry. "I don't think I can see through stuff anymore. I'm tired." A day's rest wasn't going to have much mileage, especially when helicopters were thrown at them by the squadrons.

"Then we'll just have to check the building the old-fashioned way," Buttercup said as she flipped off the safety of her Stoner Light Machinegun. Reluctantly, Bubbles pumped her Super-Shorty shotgun, while Blossom cocked her XM4A1.

Together, they approached the hotel they had been eyeing, their guns up, grateful that they still had them as they would save the energy needed to fire ocular beams of any type, or even to throw their megaton punches and kicks.

Staring at the windows as they got closer to the abandoned hotel, the Girls kept both their eyes and ears sharp on the lookout for anyone who would mean them harm. But there had been nothing so far but silence, well, that and the howling of the night wind.

"Well, I don't think there's anyone-" Bubbles said, but was cut short by a bullet slamming into her cheek: "Eeeee!" She had meant to say 'in'. The bullet had taken her off her feet. The gunshot had come from one of the windows. A brief flash revealed that the shooter was deep within the building and hidden in the shadows.


The City of Townsville Coastline. Monster Island.

25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2042.

When Manuel had spotted the Powerpuff Girls in the dark, the thought that a group of enhanced superhuman beings had crossed paths with him did not enter his mind. He wasn't exactly a man of science; quite the opposite. When three glowing eyes appeared in the dark, thoughts of the more superstitious sort were what he had in mind. Some kind of spirits, or creatures native to the island were after him.

He had opened fire regardless, as there was still a semblance of poached modernity in him, and when he saw his shot strike home and knock one of them off her feet, he realized that he was up against something corporeal, not ghosts or demons. But when the blue-eyed creature he shot got back up, he wasn't sure anymore, but one thing remained constant: he was terrified, still.

"We've got company!" Manuel shouted in Spanish. He had barely gotten out of his position in the hotel when it was lit up with machinegun fire. He'd caught a glimpse of who was firing. It was the one with glowing green eyes, a small thing that could somehow wield a machinegun easily and fire it on full-auto without using a tripod.

"Who is it!?" Mariana, who was coming down the stairs, shouted, shotgun in her hands. She, too, spoke in Spanish. Her entire crew did, and it was no wonder as they were all smugglers and traffickers from Mexico.

"Some weird bunch of pygmies with guns!" Manuel replied, backing away into the corner of the lobby he was holed up in. He knew the look on Mariana's face before he even looked at her. "I'm not joking!"

"Whoever they are, they're dead!" another man, Esteban, said as he came running down from above, his rifle up.

"What do we do, man!?" Manuel cried, still in panic from what he'd seen and the fate he had just narrowly averted.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" Esteban rebuked Manuel as he grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close. "If you're this cowardly all of a sudden, you go down to the basement and warn the guards there, they'll do the men's work for you while you hide like a little girl!" With that, Esteban shoved Manuel towards the stairs. Looking at his fellow criminal with disbelief and incredulity and shock, he started down the stairs, all the while thinking, briefly, that everything he had done for Esteban had been for nothing.

Esteban and Mariana, along with a few others, began taking up positions at the windows, but by the time they did, the oaken doors of the hotel lobby was blown open - not with explosives, but with some force they didn't understand. The ground did not quake, and there was no noise until the double doors were torn off their hinges and thrown across the decaying lobby. They - about six of them in all - turned their attention and guns to the door.

Whoever it was who were behind the attack wasted no time to put their foot in the hotel. None of the smugglers and traffickers could believe their eyes when they did. Having spent years disconnected from the society they leech off of and drifting out at sea with their illegal cargo, living and otherwise, they hadn't quite heard everything about the Powerpuff Girls, just that law enforcement had tightened in Townsville. They simply thought that the 'Powerpuff Girls' was some sort of a codename, or a nickname of just another new task force, one that would be ineffectual, and it would be business as usual.

Well, it wasn't business as usual now, for standing at the dimly-lit entrance of the lobby were three shockingly young-looking girls, amazonian for their age, but what drew their attention the most were the eyes. Those ghoulishly frightening eyes were glowing, piercing the dark!

Without waiting or attempting to 'reason' with these entities, Esteban, Mariana and gang opened fire. Unexpected light dazzled them as their bullets seemed to bounce off shields of pink, blue and green energy. Most bullets would bury themselves in walls, floors and ceiling, but some would wound the shooters.

Mariana had been firing her pistol at the blue one. Though the blonde-haired little imp possessed a kind of shotgun, it refused to use it and instead screamed at the top of her lungs, producing some kind of overwhelming force that pushed her and one other smuggler, slamming them into the wall.

Esteban was unloading his old auto rifle at the green one, only for his bullets to bounce off more of the same projected green energy shield. The green ravenette girl-thing responded by flying into him like some kind of banshee, screaming at the top of her lungs as she grabbed his rifle and punched him in the face, sending him twirling to the ground.

Everyone else was taken out by the one with glowing pink eyes. Esteban had seen for himself how quickly his crew had been defeated. All of them were sprawling on the ground within seconds. Looking up at the green-eyed one, he saw her pointing her Stoner Light Machinegun at him, aiming through the sights. Unbelievable, he thought. Of all the ways to die as a smuggler and trafficker, it would be at the hands of something resembling a five-year-old little girl. He covered his face, his arm shielding himself uselessly as he waited for the inevitable.

"Buttercup. Stop," came a voice fit for a cherub. It wasn't the green one. Esteban had heard the green one's raspy voice when she punched him. He looked around at where it came from. It was the pink one, and she seemed to be calling the shots. "I've already told you - we're not killing anyone this time."

The one named Buttercup lowered her light machinegun, that demented smile still on her face, something that did not fit the face of a little child - these things must be the spawns of El Diablo himself, dressed in little girls' bodies!

"I wasn't going to," the green one claimed. "I was just carried away… He was really fightey and he was shooting at me - really shooting at me."

'What kind of children's language are these spawns of the devil speaking?' Esteban thought.

"He wouldn't have hurt you," the pink-eyed one said before coming closer to Esteban. The Mexican trafficker straightened up and backed into a wall. Sure, she ordered the green-eyed psychopath to let him live, but was it so that the pink one could torture him herself, or worse?

"What are you going to do to me!?" Esteban screamed as he continued shielding his face with his arm. The glowing pink eyes were now floating, going slightly higher. Esteban looked down to see that she was floating off the ground, slightly elevating herself to an eye level higher than his.

Those pink eyes looked at him quizzically, as if finding his question, asked out of fear, bewildering. Looking behind the pink girl, Esteban saw that there was no hope of fighting back or escaping – all his compadres were guarded by the green and blue ones. He knew his fellow smugglers. They had gone through several skirmishes a head. They were tough, but it'd all come to nothing

"Get up, mister," the pink one, who appears to be in charge, ordered him. He did as he was told, afraid that she might make an example out of him. "Go sit with your friends."

His heart pounding, Esteban got up. He could barely do so as he was still in shock. With half-numb legs, he shambled over to his friends and sat without a word, in front of the two other little devils, who stared at him with their inquisitive, glowing eyes.


The City of Townsville Coastline. Monster Island.

25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2046.

Manuel had run down the stairs to the second basement as fast as he could, only pausing briefly to listen in on how the battle above was going, whether his compadres were victorious or if his help was still needed.

The battle above had raged only briefly, and now there was only silence. There were no cheers or celebratory gunshots. It could only mean one thing. He hurried along, skipping one or two steps at a time. He raced across maintenance and laundry rooms, kitchens, pantries, staffrooms, a chamber refitted to house a large group of underaged girls they kidnapped before going into another.

Another group of his compadres were standing guard there, watching more kidnapped girls under their care as patrons would watch zoo animals. One of them, a huge beast of a man, had just left the cage while he was buttoning up his pants. He picked up a machete leaning against the cage.

"Diablo! El Diablo!" Manuel screamed as he ran in. "Devils! They've come to take us!"

"What are you talking about, man?" one of the smugglers said with a Filipino accent, grinning.

"Probably an American raiding party," the huge man who had just raped one of the underaged girls said, his Jamaican accent thick. He rested his massive machete on his naked, muscular shoulder. "We kill them like the others."

"No, these are different!" Manuel screamed. "Creatures! They came from the dark! They had glowing eyes!"

"Probably just some of the fancy devices they're wearing," one of Manuel's friends, a woman of similar Mexican origin, said. "Save some of them when we're done. I'm sick of fucking these kids and I'm not even lesbian."

"But- but- They're not-" Manuel cried, lost for words as panic and fear had robbed him of his Spanish vocabulary.

But he was too late. His pull and influence within the smuggling and trafficking group was too small. Someone had hit the alarm. Soon, the rest of the smugglers' den would be rushing upwards, rushing to their death.

"I sense this battle is special. Shall we?" the big Jamaican said.

"Let's," another smuggler, a man with a sombrero, said. Everyone in the room began pulling syringes out of their pockets. Well, everyone except Manuel.

The group had been smuggling His Secret 2.0 out of Townsville as well, and they would never shy away from using their own merchandises, living or non-living.

Some would tie tourniquets around their arms, while others would take it without aid. Battle cries could be heard throughout the basement.


The City of Townsville Coastline. Monster Island.

25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2049.

Blossom had led Bubbles and Buttercup down the stairs, in pursuit of the remaining criminals. She had gotten some of them talking, and if they were telling the truth, she would know what the expect: the hotel was used by smugglers as their den, and there were several times more criminals underground than there were above ground. Blossom's x-ray vision remained unused however - she needed a break before she would dare to strain her eyes again. This time, however, she could go by the noise downstairs to find them, even if her hearing wasn't as exceptional as Buttercup's. The smugglers below ground weren't very subtle about their operations. While she was descending down to the second basement, she could hear the crying of girls of all ages, almost drowned out by an alarm.

The smugglers knew they were coming.

And these underground smugglers were tougher. Much tougher.

The Girls fanned out to take down as many criminals as quickly as possible. Blossom had thought that the criminals here must surely be nothing like the ones they fought on the mainland. She was dead wrong.

Bullets were fired their way as they flew towards them; those were easy enough to block, if tiring.

The first inkling that something was wrong was felt when Blossom punched her first smuggler. He didn't exactly have glass jaws like the rest. It actually HURT when she punched him in the face.

A second smuggler, a huge, topless, and dark-skinned Jamaican brought his machete down on her, breaking it over her head – and flooring her! The rippling, black muscles of the smuggler wasn't just for show; there was immense power behind it.

Soon, Bubbles and Buttercup were screaming. Blossom turned briefly towards them, only to find them getting swarmed. Many hands were grasping at them, threatening to pin them down. Bubbles had to unleash a sonic scream to push them away, and even then, the smugglers did not react the same way normal people did. They weren't covering their ears and getting blown away. They were holding on to whatever they could and waiting for Bubbles to run out of breath.

Blossom rose up, giving the Jamaican an upper cut, sending him flying close to the ceiling before landing. Two more smugglers took his place. More behind them, previously clean, were injecting themselves with syringes after seeing what they were up against.

Fists criss-crossed. Some of the smugglers were using both improvised and manufactured melee weapons. Blossom was able to dodge a club and spin-kick one, only for the other to smash her with a lead pipe.

Gunshots sounded once again. Buttercup had lost patience, but Blossom had begun to question her own resolve to avoid killing while she wiped blood from her forehead. Buttercup, too, had been hit hard enough to bleed.

"You will die for messing with us!" the Jamaican said as he got back to his feet again, his eyes, this time, shining red. There was no more room for doubt left in Blossom that His Secret 2.0 was involved.

Stressed by the sound of gunshots tearing through flesh, Blossom started with stun beams at first, firing several into a crowd forming around the Jamaican, doing nothing except causing them to surge forward.

Blossom raised her rifle and emptied it into the crowd. Bubbles had done the same out of panic.

By the end of it, numerous bodies lay on the ground, some writhing, others still. Blossom's rifle clicked as it smoked. It was emptied completely.

There were still others who hadn't taken His Secret 2.0. Those had already turned tail and run, though some had dropped their weapons before dropping to their knees. Manuel was among them, for he was afraid that running would be useful considering how the 'El Diablos' could fly, and surrender might make them go easy on him.

"Should we kill the rest of them?" Buttercup hovered next to Blossom and asked while she was trying to clear a jam in her smoking Stoner LMG, though on discovering that there were no bullets left, dropped the massive gun as if it was a toy she no longer find fun.

"Why did you have shoot at them, Buttercup!?" Blossom chided at her wayward sister. "We weren't supposed to kill anyone!"

"But they were going to kill us!" Buttercup shouted back. "And you did the same thing too!"

What Buttercup said had cornered Blossom; she had succumbed to panic and herd mentality in the moment.

Buttercup smiled. It wasn't very often that she got to win against Blossom in an argument.

"Looks like the leader was led," she mocked Blossom as she smirked and laughed at how funny and smart she sounded.

Blossom's heart was still thumping as if she was still in the middle of battle. She could see red, as if she had taken the drug too. She clenched her fists…

And would have torn Buttercup apart there and then had Bubbles not stood between them.

"They were really tough and mean, Blossom," Bubbles said as she put an arm around Blossom, leading her away from Buttercup. "We tried not to kill them… We can't always be nice."

"Yeah, Blossom," Buttercup added; she was following them all along, refusing to back down. "You would have done the same thing and you did!"

Blossom broke free from Bubbles' hug and glared at Buttercup, her fists clenched once more.

"Whoa! I was just telling the truth, Bloss!" Buttercup said, her hands put up defensively, though her smirk was telling a different story. Blossom couldn't decide if Buttercup was mocking her or laughing nervously. "We're sisters, right? We shouldn't fight over this. Right, Bubbles?"

Blossom threw the criminals on the floor a look. Some were still alive, but they were bleeding, screaming.

"Go take care of them now. Be gentle with them and make it quick," Blossom ordered Bubbles, and Buttercup, though her steely gaze was still fixed on the latter.

"Do you mean putting them out of their misery or fixing them up?" Buttercup joked stubbornly. Blossom's face changed immediately upon hearing the 'joke', just when Buttercup thought it was already angry to the max. Blossom was positively shaking with pent-up fury, barely keeping it all in and struggling so hard that she was tearing up.

"I was just kidding," Buttercup added to stave off Blossom's wrath, cracking a smile to make it seem convincing, though she could only hope her slip-up was neutralized.

"And tie them up when you're done!" Blossom shouted after her sisters before joining them.