Chapter 163: Where It Will End (Part 4)
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2300.
A large group of USDO operatives stood in the field outside flank of the massive mansion of the Lombardi crime family, an M60 Patton tank stationed behind them, having discharged a few shells to blow an entry point through the wall and a few entrenched gang positions on the second and third floors. All the operatives were clad in grey SWAT gear, all except one who was still donning a white lab coat.
"Captain Griffin, we'll start the breach here," General Blackwater ordered 'Brick' to start making the entrance. "Once we're in, we'll do a standard search pattern, large groups only, and spiral inwards."
With that, the general led the way, climbing the rubble leading to the new entry point that would take the squad into the mansion. He signaled for a flashbang to be deployed. One of the men flanking the entry point obliged and tossed in a flashbang. There was an audible pop, and immediately the men moved. Professor Utonium stuck closely with the general, keeping his head down as instructed. His instinct had been to just rush in and yell for the Girls, but he knew he couldn't do that without getting shot at random; reluctantly, he followed the general.
"Captain Griffin, start at nine," the general ordered - he meant that the captain should take the left. "I'll go three."
"Ten-four. Squad 1 and 2, you're with me. Squad 3 and 4, follow the general," Brick, one of the best captains of the USDO, gave out orders like a natural. "Sergeant Bilinski, behind me. Rest of you form up behind the general."
"Professor, stay behind me. Rest of you form up behind the professor. Guard him with your life," the general gave his own orders. With that, the two teams separated, and began to do a sweep of the area. At the same time, reports were being sent to him through the radio, which he was listening to in real-time through a headphone. He was constantly giving brief orders. In short, the professor was able to work out, through his one-sided observations and the thick military jargon that soldiers from the USDO were pouring into the building, with personnel from the FBI, CIA and TPD coming to reinforce them.
And so the professor followed, but while the general and his men began clearing rooms, he was often led to stay behind until all the threats were eliminated. Surprisingly, there weren't many gangsters waiting for them, just the cowardly stragglers who opted to hide while the rest of their peers went out to meet whatever force was coming for them. Some tried to fight back, perhaps thinking too highly of themselves or the company they kept, but others gave up, and were promptly handcuffed and restrained for the backline to pick up.
Once, a large group of Lombardis came through and a firefight ensued, forcing the squads to scatter to take cover - it was during this firefight that the professor had no choice but to participate in the mayhem. Bullets rained horizontally down the opulent corridor as the professor dived through an open doorway and into a room for cover. Others did similarly, taking advantage of the unnecessary number of rooms. A firefight resulted, and it ground their progress to a halt such that the professor became impatient enough to fire his pistol at the foes occupying the other end of the corridor, even managing to take down one or two of them - the professor wasn't experienced enough in the 'martial sciences' to count the exact number in the heat of battle.
"Keep your head down, prof!" one of the USDO soldiers escorting the professor shouted. The sound of a pin being removed from… something gave Upton a hint as to why that was necessary.
"Bouncer out!" the same soldier shouted cryptically, no doubt to avoid alerting the Lombardi gangsters of what was to come. He lobbed a grenade towards them, which bounced off a wall purposefully to prevent it from being thrown back. There were panicked screams from the opposing forces, then an explosion. Dusts were kicked up and debris fell. The professor's ears were ringing even after the explosion was over - even after wearing earplugs provided by one of the soldiers.
Nothing stirred after the explosion. The group pushed forward, clearing more rooms.
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2305.
Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were close that they could feel it. Well, more than feel it. Blossom had risked her well-being by using her x-ray vision to see through the walls of the mansion. The effort burned her eyes - she was exhausted enough - but in doing so, she saw the Amoeba Boys. They weren't too far ahead, and they were frequently stopping, likely to figure out what their next move was considering how they were surrounded by enough soldiers armed with enough ordnance to start the next world war. While she was watching, she saw them going up, taking the stairs to their grand library on the third floor. It was the same library where the Powerpuff Girls and the Amoeba Boys would meet, back in those days when the former were none the wiser.
Resistance to the Girls had dropped sharply, likely due to the forces pressing into the mansion from the outside; the USDO were finally on their side again, at least nominally. Taking advantage of this, the Girls press on, first flying across the mansion before climbing the stairs.
"Don't worry about us, we'll catch up!" Detective Wednesday reassured the Girls when he began to fall behind. Stanley Talker could have kept up with the Girls, but had opted instead to trot alongside the detective as he was afraid of leaving the detective alone in a hive of evil.
Reluctantly, the Girls zoomed forward, once again alone in their trio. Spiraling upwards, they touched down at the crown of the stairs, such that only a long stretch of corridor was all that stood between them and the Amoeba Boys. It was utterly recognizable - it was the same corridor they would walk through to meet them, and they would do it in those ugly black dresses the dons would force them to wear.
Just to make sure, Blossom brought up her x-ray vision one more time; it didn't matter that she was tiring herself out - no matter what happens later, she was determined to give her all to end it all. Every single ounce of energy she had left, she would give to finally put an end to the Amoeba Boys' manipulations and treachery.
"They're all there…" Blossom said as she peered through the wall of the grand library. She could see all three of the dons flipping tables, creating cover.
"What do we do?" Bubbles squeaked in her usual panicky, nervous tone.
"What do you want us to do, Bloss?" Buttercup asked, deciding to play the dutiful and obedient sister once again. Blossom turned to face them. Bubbles and Buttercup stopped walking.
"Bubbles, you take on Junior. Buttercup, you take on Slim. I'll take on the big man himself. We'll go on my mark," Blossom explained the game plan.
"I- I'm s-scared…" Bubbles muttered, as if there were ghosts listening from behind the doors.
"Yeah, to be honest, we're all beat up," Buttercup said, down-to-earth as was her usual self. "How are we going to beat them?"
Blossom squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. She took in a deep breath and held it before letting it out again. Daddy kept popping up in her head. She opened her eyes again. There was no way she was letting the Amoeba Boys go considering what they had done.
"We're fighting them even if it means killing us," Blossom said. "Daddy… Daddy's gone because of them. You said so yourself, Buttercup."
"Remember how they laughed at Mom's death?" Blossom turned to Buttercup. "They were behind it, I just know it."
"Remember the friends we've lost?" Blossom turned to Bubbles. "It's all because they had to protect us from all the bad guys the Amoeba Boys threw at us."
"We've lost so many friends and our family…" Blossom said sullenly. "Fighting them is all we have now, because the life we knew… it's gone. Those who loved us are either gone or hate us now."
Wiping away tears, Blossom steeled herself; hanging on to her own words, she willed herself to stop crying. Hatred, instead, replaced her tears.
"I'd rather die than to live like this. I'd rather die than let them get away with it!" She said, and with that, she turned around and began marching towards the grand library. Bubbles and Buttercup followed, similarly emboldened by her speech. "Let's put those creeps in jail before bedtime!"
"Bubbles, go left. Buttercup, right," Blossom gave her usual orders. She had seen what lurked in the rooms surrounding the one corridor leading into the grand library. "Bad guys behind the doors."
Sure enough, as the Powerpuff Girls walked through the corridors, the doors ahead of them would open, but they were ready. As the amount of energy they had left felt woefully inadequate, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup tried to conserve as much as they could. Tiredness had another meaning with the Girls, and one thing it didn't mean was merely physical exhaustion. It felt deeper as Chemical X was involved, and it meant they had more energy than a hundred men combined at first. It was the same emptiness a lake would feel if most of its water were drained, if lakes could feel.
Bubbles bowled into the legs of an ambusher in waiting, snapping some bones before getting on top of him and punching him in the back of his neck, knocking him out.
Buttercup flew up to the other ambusher on the right, stealing the man's hunting rifle before he could fire it, tossing it in the face of another gangster in the room he was in before twisting his arm so much that it dislocated. The man screamed. Wrestling the man down with a mix of flying force and X-charged muscles, Buttercup grabbed the man's other arm and dislocated it too. By the end of it, there was no need to knock the person out as the pain of a double dislocation had done the job.
While Bubbles and Buttercup were occupied, two more doors were flung open just up ahead. Blossom had them covered, firing stun rays at the man and woman who emerged from the doors, pointing guns at her. They hit the floor immediately.
The Girls kept marching forward, ever moving forward. There weren't many doors left, nor much of a corridor left to travel through. Four more doors opened, and the Girls sprung into action, all three of them. Bubbles tackled one back into a dark room. She let out a sonic scream after that, no doubt to knock out several others in the room. Buttercup flew to another emerging gangster, grabbing him by the shoulder and throwing him against a wall. Blossom ran up to another in a zigzag fashion, dodging bullets before delivering an uppercut that sent the man flying up and cracking the ceiling. There were others in those rooms, and Blossom dealt with hers by blinding them with her bioluminescent eyes and punching the closest of them, who crashed into another. When they were on the floor, she kicked them in the head one after the other, knocking them out. There were gunshots, but by the time she walked out of the room, Bubbles and Buttercup were waiting.
At the same time, Detective Wednesday and Stanley Talker were still trying to catch up to them. They were climbing a spiral staircase to get to the Girls, but they were met with a squad of gangsters with automatics one floor down. This wouldn't have been a problem had it not been for the fact that one of them had lobbed a C4 charge at them, forcing the detective and the talking dog to flee back down in panic before the bomb exploded, taking the top half of the stairs down. They were out of the Girls' fight, if only because they would have to chewed through dozens of other bad guys and find an alternate path up to get to them, which might as well amount to an ETA of never.
Blossom threw a look over her shoulder when she heard the explosion. She knew what it meant. Concerned, she brought up her x-ray vision once again to check on her friends. Through the floor, she saw that the way back had been cut off - this in itself wasn't a problem for the Girls, but it meant that no help was coming. They were on their own. Her friends - the detective and the talking dog - were running back down. All she cared about was that they were fine.
"Let's go," Blossom simply said, without a moment's hesitation, without much of any emotions. There was only one thing left to do. She continued marching forward, and her sisters continued following.
"But what about Mister Wednesday and doggy?" Bubbles squeaked anxiously.
"They're not coming," Blossom said.
"You mean they're dead?" Buttercup said.
"No, the stairs blew up. They're not coming," Blossom explained. Both Bubbles and Buttercup heaved sighs of relief.
The Girls continued marching forwards, unimpeded this time, and soon, they reached the double doors that would open to the library. It was the same doors where they used to arrive completely stripped of their passion and personality.
Without waiting any longer, the Girls flung the doors wide open.
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2309.
General Blackwater's squad shot their way through the mansion. He had lost a few men, but he continued pressing forward. No matter how much it hurt him, he knew that they were 'acceptable losses', and that their deaths wouldn't be in vain. What greater purpose could there be, beyond dismantling one of the most dangerous criminal gangs in the world? In scrubbing clean the criminal capital of the globe?
They fought through the waves of assorted criminals - bikers and triad members, Italians and Russians, black mafiaso and Chinese triad members - until they reached what appeared to be a dining hall. Off to the side, in one of the corridors, the general's squad would have stormed the massive hall had someone not come at them. A shadow running down the corridor, someone in a coat and hat. Some sort of animal beside him. Guns were immediately pointed in that direction.
"Whoa whoa wait! Friendly!" the man shouted as quickly as he could. A dog was running beside him, stopping exactly when he stopped, like the most loyal companion ever. General Blackwater recognized both him and the dog immediately. Detective Wednesday and Stanley Talker the talking dog. They were both closely associated with the Powerpuff Girls, and because of that, were under close scrutiny by the USDO. The general himself was kept updated on them by the occasional report about their developments.
"What are the two of you doing here?" the general questioned the man-dog duo. "How did you get in here?"
"I know the city better than you, old man," the detective said. "I know a way in. I slipped past your soldiers."
"Fine. Have you seen the Powerpuff Girls?" the general asked; he'd spat out the Girls' name with some contempt, not for Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, but for the name itself, which he thought didn't fit what was essentially a highly specialized elite military unit.
"They're on the top floor. We got separated from them by a blast which took out the stairs," Detective Wednesday explained. "Been trying to find another way up since. I made a break for it because the coast was clear, or so I thought."
General Blackwater growled, a confusing mix of feelings radiating from it; annoyance, anger, understanding, resolve, all of it. Pulling his radio from his belt, he gave several orders, all directing the units involved in the raid on the Lombardi mansion to make their way upwards.
"Let's go," the general then said, urging Wednesday and Talker to join his squad of misfits.
"Mister Wednesday, Mister Talker," Professor Utonium greeted them almost lethargically. Despite being a fish out of water in a battlefield, despite his exhaustion, he had been pressing on. Despite it all, he hadn't neglected the detective and the talking dog.
"Here to find your kids?" the detective assumed.
"I'm here to help my kids," the professor clarified. "They've been out there for days on end. I can't imagine being alone as a little kid for that long. They must be scared, and hurt, and upset…"
"It ends tonight. I'll help you get them home," the detective promised. At the same time, he was checking the magazine of his pistol. After finding it wanting, he replaced it with a fresh one that was completely filled.
"Ri'll rhelp ryou too, professor," the talking dog promised. The professor thanked the dog with a pat on the head.
"If it's the Girls you're after, I suggest we focus on the task at hand," General Blackwater chided the three of them. Together, the group, along with another eight USDO soldiers, stormed the dining hall, spreading out to take up positions; the room seemed like the perfect spot for a confrontation.
And he was right. There were smaller tables covered entirely from top to bottom in cloth, surrounding a central long table - the Lombardi dons might have been planning a celebration - and those tables were overturned, revealing numerous enemies who had been hiding underneath.
"Get them! Kill them all!" a voice familiar to General Blackwater shouted. Fedele Palladino. It was a name the general had familiarized himself with, one that he had been memorizing just for this day.
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Lombardi Family Estate.
25 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 2310.
"If it isn't the Powerpuff Girls," Bossman said mockingly from behind his makeshift table cover, one hand in his pocket while the other holding his tommygun. "Looking no worse for wear?"
Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup kept quiet, and it wasn't just because they had difficulty understanding what Bossman meant.
"One last chance, Amoeba Boys," Blossom finally spoke up for the group. "Give up now or we'll fight." At this, Bossman gave out a hearty laughter as though he had already won.
"Why are you laughing!? Your house is falling apart and we've beaten all your friends!" Buttercup couldn't help but scream at Bossman.
"Sure you've beaten my 'friends', but look at the three of you," Bossman said. "I don't think the three of you are in any condition to beat the three of us."
"Oh yeah?" Bubbles challenged the Amoeba Boys.
"Yeah!" Junior, the smallest of the dons, matched Bubbles' challenge from behind another table cover.
"You sure!?" Buttercup added to the challenge.
"Sure we are," Slim added from the Amoeba Boys' side, also standing behind a flipped table.
"Do you honestly think you can beat us? Us, who He rewarded with such… powers?" Bossman boasted. "You haven't seen what we're truly capable of."
"Well, we're going to see it today then," Blossom said, no less boastful.
"Right, then be my guest!" Bossman shouted, pulling his left hand out of his pocket and winding it up quickly. Blossom could just about make out something green in his hand, but Bossman was fast, way faster than she would expect from someone so big. Before she knew it, Bossman had hurled something at her, and it would have smacked her right in the face had Bubbles not leapt in front of her and swatted it back at the Amoeba Boys.
It turned out to be a fragmentary grenade, which exploded between the two trios. The Powerpuff Girls formed X-energy shields to protect themselves from the fragments while the Amoeba Boys hid behind their tables.
Normally, fragmentary grenades did not create a lot of dust, but this time, the dust in the library, the dust from the debris that had already fallen, was kicked up, creating a haze that blocked out the Girls' view of the Lombardi dons. Bullets started flying before they knew it, and they were struck several times before the kids scrambled for cover behind splintering bookshelves and fluttering pages.
Thankfully, none of the bullets were special Duranium-cast munitions.
"Now what do we do!?" Buttercup asked Blossom.
"How are we going to beat them?" Bubbles said anxiously as she sat on the ground, leaning against the bookshelf they were hiding behind.
"Bubbles, you go left. Buttercup, you'll go right," Blossom ordered her sisters.
"Of course I'm going right…" Buttercup grumbled. "I'm always going right."
"What about you, Blossom?" Bubbles asked the leader sister.
"I'm going down the middle," Blossom revealed her 'plan'. "I'm going to take down the boss. You two keep the tall and short one distracted."
"Sounds like a plan," Buttercup said, smiling a little, meaning every word she said this time. For many times now, Blossom had been giving the same old orders over and over; it was a change of pace that she was trying something new and a little more surgical.
"Alright… On my count to three!" Blossom ordered.
"Three…"
"Two…"
"One… GO!"
The Girls flew out of their hiding spot immediately, Bubbles flying to the left, Buttercup right, and Blossom down the middle.
