Chapter 161: Where It Will End (Part 2)
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2220.
The door to Professor Utonium's residence was slammed open abruptly. The professor himself had been lying on the couch and staring into the ceiling, paying the television no mind even when it was playing a science-fiction show about starships and aliens.
General Blackwater stood at the entrance, staring at him with half a dozen men behind him.
"Utonium," the general called out to him. He didn't need to shout as his voice carried effortlessly. The professor, on the contrary, didn't make a sound. "Get up, Utonium."
Still nothing. For a moment, the general thought that Professor Utonium had finally done it.
"On your feet, Utonium!" the general demanded. "We've found your… daughters."
The general knew what he was doing. The mere mention of the Powerpuff Girls got the professor bolting up from the couch instantly.
"Where!?" he asked, his voice hoarse and cracked. "Where did you find them!?"
"They were heading in the direction of the Lombardi mansion," the general said. "I don't think we even need to guess what their plans are."
"I'm going there," the professor said, without hesitation, without the same tiredness present in his voice just seconds ago. Getting off the couch, more spry than his circumstances suggest, he made for the door, then to walk past the general when the general blocked his way with a well-muscled arm.
"Just so we're clear - what do you think you're doing?" the general asked.
"I'm going to see them - I need to see them," Professor Utonium said urgently, almost impatiently. "They need me."
"That place is swarming with scum of the lowest order, scum you'll wish you haven't met," the general said. "You're just a God damn scientist, don't go Rambo on me now."
The professor tried to muscle his way through the entrance. With just a flex of his arm muscles, the general pushed him back, stumbling him.
What happened next took even the legendary General Blackwater by surprise: Professor Utonium rushed forward, drawing his pistol from his belt so quickly that the general and his men couldn't react. The professor buried the muzzle of his pistol in the general's side.
"I don't care what I have to go through to get to them, even if it's you," the professor said firmly, and coldly - oddly. "Even if I have to wade through a million miles of hell and fight through a hundred scumbags I'll wish I've never met."
"I never said no," the general said before lowering his arm, unfazed by the gun the professor was jabbing him with. "I just need you to be clear. You won't be driving, and you're sticking with me throughout this whole mess, do you read me?"
"As long as I get close to the Girls…" the professor said.
"I'll allow you to get close to them this time," the general said. "But only because you'll be useful in retrieving them."
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2240.
It didn't take long for Professor Utonium to be transported to where the Powerpuff Girls were reported to be. He had to tag along on General Blackwater's convoy, sitting right beside that hated man in his armored humvee, surrounded by other humvees rolling at maximum speed. They didn't stop for anything, and the drivers of Townsville were adept at staying out of their way after decades of staying out of the TPD and the criminal gangs' way.
It was during this drive for the Girls that the professor realized that this was the real deal, not just some military operation conceived on a hunch, not just another fruitless recon-in-force. The radio was abuzz, and the professor could decipher the lingo by virtue of having been in the USDO for many years. B-47, B-48, and B-49's locations were confirmed, and they had started a hot zone. Recon teams on site confirmed numerous casualties.
Tanks were deployed all around the Lombardi crime family's mansion. Professor Utonium had heard it on the radio, and it didn't take long before he could see it for himself. As General Blackwater's convoy went off-road and spread itself across an empty grass field, the professor could see a squadron of tanks spread far apart, surrounding the mansion, each tank hiding a squad of men behind it. They were M60 tanks bought from the US Army; outdated by military standards though they were, they were a godsend by law enforcement standards. The USDO had already proceeded to paint them gray and place the agency's crest on their sides.
The professor looked up, studying the sky just for a moment. It was overcast, darker than a normal night. Mother nature was defying expectations; it had summoned a final snowstorm near the end of March, coloring the scene in whiteness. Winter itself knew that it was dying; it had long gone into labor to birth spring. Snow fell in volumes that hadn't been seen in days, weeks. There was a fog that hung like a curtain over everything.
General Blackwater reached into his humvee and pulled a loudhailer out. As always, he was completely prepared for battle. Despite being a general, he was decked out in next-generation SWAT gear. Professor Utonium understood immediately what he was doing. The general had been fighting battles ever since World War II, and he was part of a dying breed of high-ranking officers who led from the front. He had seen the conclusion of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, albeit from a unique perspective, and the general meant to see the conclusion of this war. For decades, Townsville had suffered, and the past few weeks had been hell for everyone, as the body of the city became overcome with fever as if to kill off the viruses and bacteria and parasites that had been infecting it for far too long.
"This is the USDO!" General Blackwater bellowed into his loudhailer. "We have you surrounded! Disarm yourselves and surrender peacefully or we will be forced to use overwhelming force!" This, he repeated several times, and each announcement and offer was met with a huge nothing.
Professor Utonium knew that the general wasn't just addressing the mobsters in the mansion. It wasn't a simple crime bust.
Silence. There were no mobsters standing at any of the many windows. For now, there were no movements at all. No gunshots. It was all too anti-climactic, and General Blackwater knew why. Climbing down from the side of his command humvee, the huge bear of a man landed on the snow heavily - he was sixty-something but his age wasn't showing, thanks to a combination of next-generation medicine and good genetics.
The Powerpuff Girls were already inside. A secondary objective of this operation was the arrest of the dons of the Lombardi, who were known by their nicknames: Bossman, Slim, and Junior. It seemed that B-47, B-48, and B-49 had the same ideas in mind. The main entrance of the mansion - double doors large enough to let a cavalry formation through - were knocked off their hinges. If those were the gates into a fortress, then the fortress was likely breached.
"I'm scared for them," the professor said, arriving at a similar conclusion, his voice shivering and not just because of the cold. General Blackwater turned around and regarded the professor. He was poorly equipped for the operation. He was still in his lab coat, which wasn't exactly something you wear out into the winter, even if it was a winter that was almost certain just a day, or days, away from ending.
"After all they've been through… After all they've been put through…" Professor Utonium continued, almost mumbling. He didn't look much better himself - and it was obvious why. It wasn't exactly a cakewalk for the polymath either. "They shouldn't have to suffer another second more. It's all my fault."
"You need to stop treating them like little girls. They're far more than that," General Blackwater declared gruffly. "They can take care of themselves."
"I can still remember a time when they couldn't, and it's not that far from now," Professor Utonium said, his voice shaking just as much from worry and fear, as it was from the cold. "I still remember it like it was yesterday when they couldn't even talk, when they were still in diapers. Sometimes I wish they had to grow up like normal little kids."
"Do you want that for yourself, or them?" General Blackwater questioned the scientist as he pulled an assault rifle out of his vehicle. An XM4 Carbine - latest tech that even the US military did not have. In fact, there were many things that the USDO had that the US military could only dream of, and with the breakthroughs they'd been making - thanks largely to Professor Utonium and his research into Chemical X and its predecessors - they were fast approaching territories of technology that used to be science fiction, even if their latest Project Powerpuff subjects weren't counted.
The general inspected his weapon before cocking it and made sure it was on safety. Manpower was slim partly due to the casualties suffered by the USDO and the high crime rates tying up personnel. He had to go in there himself with his own staff; there was no other way.
"I care nothing for myself," Professor Utonium contended. "Not after what I've done. I want the Girls to be happy - it's all I want. Sometimes, I'd even think that… They might even do better without me."
"Don't be stupid, Upton," the general growled at the professor. The irony that he was telling a leading intellectual that wasn't lost on him, though some would argue that he himself was an intellect in his own right, just that he specialized in the art of war. "If I can see that those three little kids and you need each other, then it shouldn't be a question for you. The four of you are like a tightly-knit squad. One of you can't function without the others. You're going to have to learn how to let them go, however - eventually. Just not right now."
"That's funny, coming from a control freak like you," the professor retorted. He didn't like how the general was lecturing him. The General Blackwater, who wouldn't hesitate to deploy the Girls over and over again to achieve whatever objectives he had in mind, with little regard for the Girls' well-being. He hated the man for that. "I'm going in there with you. Ready when you are."
"The hell you are! You know how important you are to the Girls and the USDO!" General Blackwater refused. "I need you on the radio. You'll be on standby in my humvee when I need you to communicate with the bioweapons. You're not going in unless they specifically request it." The professor gritted his teeth when Blackwater called the Girls 'bioweapons'. It was an ugly title, dehumanizing and alienating.
"You're going to need a doctor, Blackwater. The Girls might need a doctor," Professor Utonium countered. "I've heard about what the Amoeba Boys have accomplished, felt it personally, and we've all fallen for it. They have something up their sleeves, I just know it. I'm afraid for the Girls."
General Blackwater thought about it for a second. Throwing Professor Utonium into a warzone the likes of which Townsville had never seen before was akin to the allied forces parachuting Einstein into the European theatre - which never happened.
Yet bringing the good professor along was tactically sound. Pacifying B-47, B-48 and B-49 with his voice on the radio might not be enough, and there might not be time enough to call in the professor by then. They might then think it was a trick. It could be risky, but it would be riskier if the Girls escaped once again, thinking that the USDO was trying to kill or capture them - not that they would be entirely wrong.
"Fine. You've always had your way, Upton, and so you will this time," General Blackwater said. "You prepared?"
"Always. For my Girls," the professor said. He reached below his lab coat and unholstered a pistol. Once upon a time, it'd been a danger to himself and the Girls. Now, it might just be the thing that could save them. General Blackwater scanned him from head to toe. The professor was wearing a bullet-resistant vest as well. He had failed to see it at first, but when the professor had undone a button or two, it was right there, under his shirt.
"Just keep your head down. The Girls may not go down easy, but one bullet to your brain and they'd definitely go down crying," General Blackwater said. He then turned to his captains, who had assembled while they were talking - and he had brought in the finest and most veteran of them all, those who had been with the USDO when it was still the Organization and had been on numerous missions going back up a decade or more. "Let's move into the hot zone! Brick, you and Sierra-Tango-One on me! PTF, give me an Alpha-Two before the rest of us head in. Butch, lead Sierra-Tango-2 and Sierra-Tango-3 and back us up. Boomer, you and Sierra-Tango-Four are on reserve in case the surrounding forces need reinforcement."
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2250.
You're useless!
Useless, useless, USELESS!
Bubbles gasped; it was as if someone had been shouting in her face, but when she opened her eyes once more, she saw no one; nothing. Well, except for the gangsters who had been knocked out cold by her and her sisters.
She had been in and out of it for some time. Looking around her, she noticed that she was alone. Blossom and Buttercup had gone on without her.
Distant explosions rocked the place almost as soon as she came to. Tank shells were blowing holes in the mansion; she could feel it in the stairs she sat on, the banister she was leaning on, and the floor her feet were planted on. Her sisters need help, she knew it in her heart. She was useless in the past, but she dared to think herself as something more in recent times.
She tried standing up, but pain shot up in her chest the moment she did, and she promptly fell back down on the stairs she was sitting on. Recent memories of what had happened, which were almost just as painful as the bullet in her chest, flooded back in. She had done well to help Blossom and Buttercup, at least up until the point where an opportunistic gangster fired a Duranium bullet at her. The bullet had pierced right through the strongest, bluest X-energy shield she could muster, burying itself in her chest.
It didn't feel that deep. 'I can do it…' Bubbles told herself; even her inner voice was meek and soft. She thought she could hear her sisters screaming, somewhere from deep within the bowels of the crumbling mansion.
'I can do it…' Bubbles told herself once more. The bullet wasn't too deep in her chest - it would be painful to pull it out, but if she could do it, she might be able to put herself back into the fight, a fight that might only be won if she returned to it.
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2251.
Blossom and Buttercup flew deeper into the mansion, their speed but a fraction of what they were used to, partly due to their tiredness and partly due to having to navigate the built-in labyrinth of the Lombardi mansion.
A cross-corridor came up ahead. Four Yakuza enforcers had manned that station, firing from behind the cover of the walls. They were but a mere nuisance, a speed bump. Blossom and Buttercup each took out two with ease, punching them away with negligible effort, knocking them out. More Yakuzas poured in from the corridors left and right, eight or nine in all, screaming for their blood - it was an ambush, and some of them were wielding blades of Duranium, likely gifted to them by one cult of Him or another.
"Take the right!" Blossom ordered Buttercup while she fired heat beams at the four she was responsible for. To the Yakuzas' credit, they were able to get real close, the vanguard blocking two others, who in turned shielded the last man, who was even able to swing his sword only to get knocked out by Blossom's heat beam before he could do any damage.
Buttercup was less discriminant about causing hurt. Firing twin laser beams from her eyes, she was cutting and spilling blood as five Yakuzas rushed her - but they weren't going down as easily. Two were able to get up close and swing their swords. One had an ordinary sword, which Buttercup seized by the blade and tore out of the owner's hands before punching him out.
"Buttercup!" Blossom cried when she saw it happen. The last Yakuza had a Duranium sword with him, and he'd just swung it diagonally down on Buttercup. She saw him spill blood, and Buttercup arching backward, face scrounged up in pain, as the force of the blow fell her. Before she had fallen, however, Blossom was quick to fire another pair of heat beams at the last Yakuza, knocking the man out.
Flying to Buttercup's side, Blossom caught her before she fell to the ground and gently lowered her down to the floor, keeping her bloodthirsty sister in her arms.
A quick look at her wounds made her wish she hadn't seen it. The blade had cut through cloth and flesh, through muscle. Blood was pooling in the long, gaping wound, spilling out. Tears spilled from Blossom's eyes.
"Blossom…" Buttercup struggled to speak, her voice raspier than usual. "It- it hurts- Can't believe I let that-" She coughed and couldn't complete her sentence.
"Buttercup- Don't talk. Here, let me fix that-" Blossom looked around frantically for something - anything to use. Looking along the walls, she saw no first-aid kits. She considered tearing up the immaculate clothes of the Yakuza, but decided against it when she saw something better. There were curtains around the windows of one corridor.
Laying Buttercup down gently, she flew to one such curtain and tore it right off the rod. Landing next to Buttercup, she began tearing a strip of the fabric off, making a crude bandage quickly. Laying Buttercup down on her lap, Blossom began wrapping her makeshift bandage around Buttercup's chest tightly, wounding it around her several times before tying a knot around her back.
Yet Buttercup was still struggling, specifically with breathing… so much that Blossom was afraid she might lose another sister besides Bunny.
"I was… I was kind of a wimp, wasn't I?" Buttercup croaked.
"Don't talk like that," Blossom said, trying her best to fight back tears like how she often had to these days. "You gave an army of them knuckle sandwiches…"
The both of them laughed despite everything, despite the blood, despite the deaths and possible death of Buttercup, despite the explosions outside, despite the hell they had been through for the past few days. It all stopped, however, when Buttercup started coughing and blood spurted from her mouth. Her wounds were deeper than Blossom thought. Straining to see into Buttercup with her x-ray vision, she sifted through skin, flesh, blood and vessels into her chest - and saw that her lungs had been cut too.
Very quickly, Buttercup was drifting in and out of consciousness.
"Go, Blossom," the wounded Powerpuff mumbled. "Go kick their butt."
"But I can't just-"
"Blossom- You can't help me- and I don't think I can help," Buttercup asserted herself despite her wounds. "I'll be fine… Just need my nap… time…"
Buttercup went limp after that. For a second there, Blossom was afraid that she might have died. However, a quick check with two fingers under Buttercup's nose had assured the Powerpuff leader that Buttercup was true to her words - though she wasn't sure if she was asleep or unconscious. Having no time to figure out if it was the former or the latter, Blossom gently lowered Buttercup to the floor. Using what remained of the curtain she tore up, she covered Buttercup with it as if she was tucking her into bed.
There was nothing much else she could do. Bubbles was the team medic, and she herself had been wounded and out of action. After making it a point to hunt for all Duranium swords in the vicinity and tossing them out a window (keeping the smallest one for herself), Blossom continued her pursuit of the Amoeba Boys.
But she could only fly so far. Her entrance into the mansion had taken too much energy. While trying not to think about how she was going to defeat Bossman, Slim and Junior on her own, Blossom touched down and proceeded on foot, not even running at super speed to conserve energy.
'The Chemical X in your blood, Blossom, will regrow itself,' Blossom could hear her Dad's voice in her head. She could hear him chuckle, almost feel his hand on her head. 'But you should let it rest, of course.'
Tears streaked down her cheeks as she jogged in the general direction of the Amoeba Boys. Corridor after corridor, Blossom ran through until she came upon a large waiting room. Half the lights in the room had gone out, and the constant explosions and rocking had reminded her of the reason.
Something stepped out of the shadow. Something dual-wielding two Duranium katanas. He didn't look familiar at first until the light was cast fully upon his face.
It was the Yakuza boss she had killed while serving the Amoeba Boys' design unknowingly. Mister Yamamoto, Blossom recalled his name. Even the Yakuza boss before he was killed would have been a more welcome sight than the monstrosity before her; the thing standing before her right now had glazed, white eyes. It wore some kind of a ceremonial armor likely found in the far-away country the Yakuza boss was from, what others would call samurai armor.
But there was something else that was wrong with Mister Yamamoto. There was a hump on his back…
A figure wearing red cloak, previously leaning against the wall and blending into it, stood out, walking up beside the sword-wielding monster. She was a woman of Japanese descent. The same one who had visited Mister Lumpkins in the woods, the same one who had gifted Ace of the Gangreen Gang his special sword. She was the same one who had been pulling some strings behind the scene - not that Blossom would know.
"Tragic, isn't it? Once a mob boss, now a flesh golem…" the cultist said. "You murdered him on the mistake that you were doing the town some good, and now he is but a tool for Him - and you've picked the wrong time to pursue His hands! Vengeance shall be the Yamamoto's!"
Blossom looked back, thinking twice about moving forward now that her path was blocked by something so formidable. However, two more figures had stepped out of the shadows to block her escape route.
When they stepped forward, the light fell upon their faces, revealing who they were. One of them was holding a massive staff. He was dressed in mock monk robes, slightly tattered but otherwise functional. His face was barely recognizable, but Blossom remembered it. Master Pang. Buttercup had tore his face apart in the fight in Chinatown, once again unknowingly helping the Amoeba Boys gain dominance over the criminal world in Townsville.
Master Pang, by now, was missing his lower jaw, which was replaced by some black metallic contraption made as if in parody of the actual thing. The fallen martial artist flapped it as if talking, but all Blossom could hear was metallic creaking. Like Yamamoto, there was no more humanity in his eyes, which were glazed over and white.
Next to Master Pang was the most recognizable of the three. Naga. That very same Naga in her fedora hat and trench coat. From what Blossom had heard from Mojo Jojo, she was killed by the late Bunny - all of which was a consequence of the Amoeba Boys' Lombardi crime family feeding on the Powerpuff Girls' misguided actions and getting stronger. She was mostly intact, having grown back her arms, but she was no longer as talkative. Instead, her arms were doing the talking, with all four of them twirling swords in anticipation of a fight.
Blossom readied herself for what could be the last fight of her life and faced Mister Yamamoto. In a ghastly fashion, the undead Yakuza boss raised his head far above his shoulders, revealing what the hump on his back was. Somehow, his neck had become elongated, with his windpipe still exposed in some parts along the length of his long neck. How he could balance his head or his entire body was a mystery, but his head appeared to be floating.
Kicking herself off the floor while unsheathing the Duranium wakizashi she had salvaged, Blossom hovered at the chest height of her opponent before charging at him…
