Chapter 43: The Wages of Sin (Part 2)

The City of Townsville. Downtown. USDO Headquarters.

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1623.

'This is Sierra-Hotel-Seven Lima, we have a Run-Away situation with The Powerpuff Girls. I repeat, we have a Run-Away situation with The Powerpuff Girls,' Blake's message had gone out hours ago. 'Bravo-Four-Nine is now MIA since the Business District.'

Although Lieutenant Blake wasn't far removed from the foot soldiers of the USDO, his message had serious implications, which meant that all available units had to conduct search patterns throughout the city to find Bubbles. The news had floated up to the chain of command as well, all the way up to General Blackwater, who would then have to decide on the strategies involved in the search and the priorities of the USDO. Since Detective Mullens and his task force were most familiar with the newly-named Powerpuff Girls, he was roped in to search for one of the missing Powerpuffs.

Agent Blake and Blossom had been circling the city multiple times in search of Bubbles, waiting for news from the numerous units involved, but to no avail. Blake had pushed his Chinook to the breaking point in pursuit of that goal, and even though it was modified to stay airborne at high speeds for far longer than the stock model, it had to stop to refuel and undergo maintenance eventually.

While fuel was being pumped into the tanks of the Chinook and maintenance technicians were giving it a once-over, Blossom was sitting on the edge of the roof, her legs hanging off the edge.

"And- and- she just flew away after she hit me-" she was crying into her high-tech cellphone with Dad on the line. Blake had heard it; he was walking up to her from behind when he did. He stopped to give her the time and space she needed to speak to her father and find comfort in familial connections. "I tried finding her but she wouldn't come out."

"Thanks, Dad. I'm sorry I lost Bubbles again," Blossom sobbed, her voice tired and raspy. "No, Dad. It's all my fault. She… she said so herself. It's all my fault."

"I don't know. I can't help but b-blame myself-" she'd gone on in her conversation with Dad. Blake couldn't hear Professor Utonium's voice beyond an indecipherable, muted garble. "Okay… Thanks, Dad. I'm still sorry, though."

"I'll try," the conversation was concluding. "I love you too, Dad. I can't wait to see you again. Bye. Hugs and kisses. Bye."

"How did your dad handle the news?" Blake asked after giving Blossom a moment of silence.

"He wasn't angry, but he's upset," Blossom said, her eyes wandering into the horizon, still teary and shell-shocked. "He didn't sound like it, but I know he's upset."

"How can you tell?" Blake asked as he came up to her, chose a spot on her right and sat down beside her.

"I just know. It's the way he talks, I guess," Blossom said, but was unable to describe what she meant. She knew from the slight tremble and pauses in her Dad's voice that her Dad was holding his emotions back, trying to mask them, trying to be strong for her. She had no idea how to express all this, however. Blossom broke into tears again after that. "Bubbles- she's still upset because of what I did!"

She leaned against Blake, desiring the comfort he provided, and Blake allowed it. He put an arm around the enhanced little girl and she scooted up to him. Blake couldn't help but notice just how tiny she was - how unnatural and surreal it was that she was cast into this situation, sitting on top of the HQ of a federal law enforcement-military agency, wearing her heavy armor. Sure, he had months to get used to the fact, but being away for so long from her had made him raw to it. Come to think of it, he was never really used to it - all the while, he had only time to roll with it and not think about it.

"Is it what you did at the cineplex?" Blake asked, keeping his voice a soothing whisper and respectfully low.

"And that wasn't even the half of it," Blossom said. "I'm so stupid…"

"Don't say that. Everyone makes mistakes. You can't change the past, kiddo," Blake said. "But you know what you can change?"

"What?" Blossom asked.

"That rumbling stomach of yours," Blake revealed. One of his men was just coming up with a juice box and wrapped burger. "You're going to need to keep your strength up if you want to find Bubbles."

The City of Townsville. The Strip. Backside B2B LLC Office (Abandoned)

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1920.

Bubbles had been hiding ever since blowing up in front of everyone in the Business District when they were supposed to be fighting the Gangreen Gang. She'd been feeling ashamed of herself ever since, but as it was right now, that was the least of her worries.

Since the morning, she'd been silent the entire day and giving Blossom the cold shoulder because she knew she was going to have to kill her. Her silence, however, wasn't just to make it easier. She had been ever-watchful for opportunities to do so, and she had been spending every single minute thinking about the deed she had to commit, all for the sake of her next hit of His Secret.

She just couldn't stop going round and round in her mind, trying to convince herself that her actions were justified, only to realize that she was about to make a big mistake, then convinced, once more, that what she was doing was for the best - on and on. She couldn't help but imagine a hundred ways to get it done, to make sure.

And hours of it, combined with the pain and trembling and other withdrawal effects she had to endure at the same time, she couldn't help but go a little… crazy when Ace had sliced her with his sword. She knew she had failed then when pain overtook her and the Gangreen Gang bolted. She was convinced then that Blossom would be upset enough to hit her again.

And now here she was, trembling and sweating, all alone with only a dim red table lamp for company. How long she had been stewing on her own, however, she did not know, nor did she care to find out. It took her some time, but a plan began to form - a plan to isolate Blossom from everyone else and kill her without anyone looking or trying to intervene.

The City of Townsville. Business District. The Captain's Chair (Restaurant)

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1921.

The entire day was too slow for comfort, just to drive the knife in. Blossom was miserable, and all she could think about was Bubbles. It didn't even occur to her that she was seated in a high-class restaurant, a fish out of the water with all the men in suits and ladies in dresses staring at her. Blake had thought that the least he could do was to give her a treat because of what she'd been going through, and so he landed his Chinook on the roof of a tower and brought her down to a restaurant in the same building.

Blossom, however, could be in a dingy and unsanitary eatery and she wouldn't have noticed. For the time being, she was alone as Blake was away, speaking to a waitress about the restaurant's arrangements and billing. It was another thing she didn't notice as she had long retreated inwards that she might as well be in a coma, a walking vegetable.

That was, until her cellphone began ringing with the familiar tone of the USDO hotline.

Bzzz! Bzzz! Bzzz! It cried, begging for attention as if it knew what's coming. Reluctantly, Blossom reached for her pocket and pulled it out, flipping the high-tech cellphone open… only for her eyes to go wide.

On the digital screen, 'Bubbles is calling' was written in the center with a pixelized font. She pressed the 'Answer' button without hesitation and pushed the phone to her face quickly, afraid the call would disappear the very next moment.

"Bubbles! Where have you been? I've been so worried about you!" Blossom cried into the phone.

"I'm where you tried to leave me behind," Bubbles' voice said, unconcerned about the obvious worry and anxiety in Blossom's voice, cold and careless. "I want you to come alone. Don't tell anyone… or I'll kill myself."

Blossom froze when she heard it. She couldn't just feel a lump in her throat forming. It was as if she had just swallowed a huge rock, and it'd gone down to her stomach, and it felt heavy there. The restaurant was supposed to be heated to a comfortable, warm temperature, but it felt cold all of a sudden. She couldn't help but tremble - it didn't sound anything like Bubbles on the phone, even though she knew the voice belonged to her. It was completely nothing like the Bubbles she knew. Even while she was panicking while fighting Ace, Bubbles was recognizable.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

But she had to get her sister. Feeling that there was no other choice, she donned her flight pack, extended the glider wings and flew out of the restaurant, past frightened and shocked patrons, ignoring Blake and his men as they were shouting for her to come back. She busted through doors, and out into the night sky. She knew where she was going - but even as she was cutting through the snow in the sky, she had no idea what was waiting for her…

The City of Townsville. The Strip. Backside B2B LLC Office (Abandoned)

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1943.

"Bubbles? Where are you?" Blossom called out to her sister the moment she reached the place and stepped through the door. The adult products business office had been left derelict ever since it was found out to be a front for Townsville's biggest child trafficking ring, and in just over a week, it was already starting to look the part. Graffiti was everywhere on the previously pristine walls and the floor was littered with syringes and take-out packaging and used condoms. As Blossom passed by a room, she saw discarded ropes on the floor and blood everywhere. Another had a dead body in it. Townsville being Townsville, the place was overrun with crime and vice the moment it was disowned.

"Bubbles! Come out, please!" Blossom called out again but stopped. She thought she could hear whispering, and it'd made her hair stand, given her goosebumps. Something was wrong. Red flags were being raised in the endless rows of flagpoles in her head, everywhere. Shouldering her MP5, she followed the hollow sound of whispers coming from deep in the abandoned office.

The path she took felt familiar to her, even when she was hovering towards the whispers. Halfway along the way, she'd realized that she was taking the exact same route she took towards Bubbles as that terrible day, when they had trouble finding Bubbles, and- Blossom still could not understand what exactly did Bubbles suffer that day. It wasn't as if she was shot with Duranium bullets or sliced up with Duranium blades…

"I can't do it - I can't do it - I can't!" Bubbles was throwing a fit in the distance, unseen but heard very clearly, and it'd made Blossom very tense. Her ample imagination was playing all sorts of games with her. Bubbles sounded completely off-kilter - and with her BerXerker power seemingly more out-of-control than it usually was, Blossom could not imagine what she might have done to herself, considering that she threatened to kill herself on the cellphone.

"Please don't make me - please don't make me - please don't make me!" Bubbles ranted as Blossom got closer. She could only wonder who her sister was talking to - or what - if she was even talking to someone. "I… I don't… I don't want to…"

"She's a bad sister!" Bubbles suddenly growled. Blossom was close now, just a few feet from the door that would open to the red room and her sister. "She hit me and… she hurt me, bad - she's a bad sister! A bad sister!"

The door to the red room was ajar. Blossom pushed it open with the muzzle of her MP5. It'd opened smoothly at first until it creaked while it had nearly swung fully open. Blossom gritted her teeth at her failure to keep silent. There wasn't time to wait and think anymore. She would have to speak to Bubbles then and there.

The City of Townsville. Downtown. TPD Headquarters.

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1929.

Detective Mullens had been in his muscle car for the last twenty minutes. His daughter was sitting in the shotgun seat beside him. Stanley Talker, the talking dog, was in the backseat, scratching himself. The last few days had been hectic, and he knew a bunch of smokescreens and mirrors when he saw them. Crime was rife lately, and he'd chalked it down to the Amoeba Boys riling up the underworld to keep law enforcement busy - to what end, he had no idea. As a result, he'd been chasing ghosts and shadows, and his case-building had stalled to a point where he was beginning to wonder if he should just turn in his chips and hope that it was enough to bring down the Amoeba Boys. Maybe land them in prison for a few years, tops. A few years of their reduced involvement in crime could be a stepping stone to a cleaner Townsville, even if it meant that it wouldn't be anywhere near as clean a slate as he had envisioned in his 'pipe dream', as Detective Wednesday put it.

"This is Lieutenant Blake of the USDO, PTF-Three. Please respond, over," Mullens' radio had said while he was still sitting there, stuck outside the headquarters. "I repeat, this is Lieutenant Blake of the USDO. Please respond."

Detective Mullens did not respond immediately. He'd known that he had poked the bear for far too long, perhaps even gone too far and now the bear was going to bite back. He could sense it now - Townsville had been feeling the effects of an awakening giant that was the criminal underground. He wondered what his next radio call was going to be about. He reached for the radio.

"This is Detective Mullens. What are you doing on this channel, Blake? Over," Mullens replied on the radio. The USDO and TPD did not share the same radio frequencies for their activities and operations. Neither law enforcement organizations trusted each other. The USDO saw the TPD as being rife with corruption and generally incompetent while the TPD saw the USDO as being untrustworthy for being more shadowy and autonomous than they should be, of having their own agenda. They would only sync up their radios whenever there were working together in joint operations, and they tend to do it on the spot to avoid criminal espionage. That Agent Blake knew the TPD's Investigative Branch's frequency was fishy in and of itself.

"It's Blossom and Bubbles – they've gone missing, over," Blake replied. Mullens straightened up. The Girls were in trouble, and that was enough to get him riled up. His daughter, Olivia, did the same, but all she could do was look at her Dad tensely, not knowing what the hell was going on and possessing far less handle over the situation as the junior detective and the inexperienced one. It went double with her status as Garrett Mullens' daughter.

"Any idea where they could be?" Mullens asked, so concerned he didn't think of the right questions first, as a good detective should.

"I was hoping to find out from you," Blake said on the other end. "You've been working with them for a while now. Any information that could lead to their whereabouts?"

Blossom and Bubbles. Oddly, Buttercup wasn't even involved at all.

"I need the circumstances and context," the detective asked, driven to solve this case even if it wasn't his. The Girls had reached him, let him find himself again. They were responsible for his reunion with his daughter. He owed them one. Or two, or three. "What about motivation?"

"They were fighting. Some kind of sibling rivalry thing was going on between them – I wish I wasn't away – I should have seen it coming-" Blake had started freaking out on the radio. Mullens thought it was uncharacteristic of a USDO soldier – a veteran officer no less. But through this, he was able to tell that it was a genuine response. No ulterior motives and backstabbing involved. Even USDO personnel were suspects in his book.

"Calm down, Blake," Mullens said. "Did they say anything? They were having a shouting match, right? Like kids usually do?"

"Bubbles said that something was Blossom's fault," Blake tried to remember the tiny details. Being an agent to a shadowy organization, he was able to recall most of it with clarity. "She said that Blossom had done something. And there was something about being hard-core."

It was all starting to come together in Detective Mullens' mind.

"I think I know where they are," the detective said.

The City of Townsville. The Strip. Backside B2B LLC Office (Abandoned)

18 FEB (Saturday) 1989. 1947.

"Bubbles," Blossom called out and struggled to think of what to say next. It wasn't supposed to be like this - it was never this way mere days ago, and it was all joy and laughter before things started going crazy in February. "Are you okay?"

Bubbles was on her knees, in the middle of the dilapidated red room lit by a single dim table lamp. She was trembling, and slapping herself over the side of her own head as she was speaking - Blossom knew now that her sweetest sister was alone. She had been talking to herself all along.

"Am I okay? Am I?" Bubbles answered oddly with another question.

"Okay, Bubbles, you're really scaring me," Blossom said. Her submachinegun was still up. "You were gone for so long and I was really upset and worried that you… killed yourself."

"You were upset and worried?" Bubbles asked cryptically. Her back was still facing Blossom, but she'd gotten up slowly, rising to her feet.

"Yes… Please, Bubbles. Let's just go home. Dad's really worried and sad too," Blossom pleaded with her sister.

"You're a liar, Blossom," Bubbles suddenly said. "This is where you did it. You tried to leave me here."

Bubbles' words had hit Blossom like a semi-truck. When Blossom realized just how deeply she had hurt Bubbles, partly with her Dad's lessons, it'd hurt her badly as well. Words could not express how she loved her sister - her sweetest sister, who would previously never hurt a fly, who'd treated even people who didn't deserve it nicely. She'd changed, and Blossom had always blamed herself for it.

"I… I'm so sorry, Bubbles. I really am," Blossom said, coming closer. Looking to her right, she saw the heart-shaped bed, now filthy with all kinds of stains, where Bubbles was held - for what, Blossom did not know. She assumed that Bubbles was there when she was attacked - or something. "I wish I didn't do it too…"

"I needed you, and you tried to leave me here," Bubbles continued. "I needed you, and you left me here!"

And she finally turned around, revealing what had become of her visage. Her eyes were a hellish red, more bloodshot than before. Her lips were dry and flaky. She had clawed herself in the cheek, and it was bleeding. Blossom lowered her MP5, disarmed by how contorted by hatred Bubbles' face was.

"You left me here!" Bubbles continued blaming Blossom for her past mistake, and the latter little girl didn't even try to defend herself because she knew how wrong she was. "You left me here and I could have died! I could have died, and you left me! YOU LEFT ME HERE!"

"Bubbles, please - believe me - I'm so sorry - I am so, so sorry!" Blossom cried as she backed away from the manic and crazed Bubbles, who was coming closer and closer to her. She'd backed away until she'd fallen into the heart-shaped bed. There, she sat, paralyzed by guilt. "I wish… I wish I could take it all back- I wish I was a better sister-"

"But you can be a better sister," Bubbles said as she grabbed Blossom by the neck, and she didn't even resist. Before she said another word, she slammed her hard down on the heart-shaped bed and straddled her there. Putting both her hands around her neck, she started squeezing, reluctantly at first, before doing it for real. "You can be a better sister by dying for your crime."

Blossom couldn't breathe - Bubbles had meant it, and she was giving her throat a squeeze so hard that she completely blocked her windpipe. Blossom's hand went up to Bubbles' wrists, but she didn't tug at it. Within ten, twenty seconds, that changed, however, as her reflexes took over and she began pulling at her wrists.

However, Bubbles was stronger as she was under the corrupting influence of His Secret 2.0. Blossom, on the other hand, was under the influence of Bubbles. The words she said had hit home. There and then, she truly believed that she deserved to die for what she did, and if it would make Bubbles feel better. As such, Blossom was even trying hard not to resist, to just let it happen and be over with.

Soon, she could feel herself drift as she became light-headed, as she slipped ever-closer to unconsciousness, with death not too far away.

'Do you see the holes these nails made, Blossom?' Blossom remembered Dad saying a week ago. 'They represent what happens every time you act poorly on your anger. For every wrong thing you say or do, you're hurting someone or something, and sometimes, they can be permanent like these holes.'

'Bubbles…' Blossom remembered that day as if it was a movie she watched five minutes ago. She remembered seeing the holes in the fence post made by the nails she had driven into it and imagining that it was Bubbles. She'd imagined it so well that she could see a vision of her driving Duranium nails into her own sister. 'I did this to her…'

She remembered her dear old Dad's words of wisdom - he didn't force her to make promises that time. He'd gently guided her to it then, the way only the kindest Dad she knew would.

'I'll be the nicest, sweetest sister to her ever,' Blossom remembered the promise she made all those days ago, and now she could make it right with Bubbles.