Chapter 46: No Going Back (Part 1)

The City of Townsville. Downtown South. Happy Barker Pet Welfare Center.

19 FEB (Sunday) 1989. 0720.

Olivia Mullens had been sitting beside the bed holding Stanley Talker for many hours. She was even sleeping in it. The past sixteen hours had been eventful, to say the least. The newly-christened Powerpuff Girls, already down a Girl, had gone missing, prompting a city-wide search by the USDO and select members of the TPD. It turned out to be a case of sibling rivalry gone too far, expressed in such a way only enhanced individuals were capable of. Blossom and Bubbles were hurting each other over certain differences.

If only that was it.

Yesterday, her dad, a senior detective made lieutenant just over a month ago, had discovered compelling evidence of something worse, something even more sinister. He found a metal syringe with 'His Secret 2.0' written on it. Signs at the crime scene suggested that either Blossom or Bubbles had used the drug. Chances were, it was Bubbles.

Olivia couldn't believe it herself when her father started putting it all together, but once the puzzle picture was assembled, it was all too obvious that she was surprised no one else figured it out. Bubbles had been acting strangely for the past week, gaining a new power that seemed mundane - increased aggression, increased strength, no inhibition, and glowing red eyes. No one in her family thought her 'BerXerker' power suited her, and they were right all along.

Her father reasoned that it wasn't a new power. He'd compared it to the cultists who had shown similar symptoms. They had interrogated said cultists, and they were all using 'His Secret 2.0' too. They, too, were more aggressive and stronger.

The other tell-tale signs of the truth had rolled out of his father's mouth smoothly. Professor Utonium of the USDO, suspected something, and he was the go-to person when it came to the stuff that made the Powerpuff Girls, or so Doctor Vanum, another prominent member of the USDO, said. Utonium was likely too biased as the Girls' father to see it. Then there were the suspicious happenings surrounding the death of a USDO intelligence agent Jackard and the disappearance and escape of Leopold Sutton, and Bubbles happened to be there too. For some reason, her dad suspected Bubbles of working with the Cult of His Promise too, somehow, despite being a mere little girl, endowed with superpowers but watched closely by parents and a federal agency.

There were still a few missing pieces to the puzzle, and one of them was the supplier - how would Bubbles be able to get a hold of her supply of drugs? They had seen her going off on the dope multiple times, which meant multiple doses of the stuff at least.

Stanley Talker's shifting had distracted Olivia from her thoughts. The talking dog had been out for fourteen hours, at least, and he had been operated on in that period, too.

When Stanley Talker was in need of medical attention, she and Detective Mullens were in huge trouble as Stanley was a sapient dog. The hospitals in Townsville were dedicated to Human patients, so a veterinary clinic was their best option. But that wasn't the end of the story. When the veterinarian on shift tried to operate on Stanley, she discovered that her instruments could not cut or penetrate the dog's skin and flesh - her scissors and shavers couldn't even cut the dog's fur!

Olivia had to call the USDO for assistance. They were surprisingly receptive, perhaps because of the need for inter-agency cooperation and PR management. They'd sent in a doctor, Simmons, to assist. The rest was smooth-sailing, if graphic and bloody. The USDO doctor had brought along instruments made of Duranium to operate on the dog, and within a few hours, were able to fix the fractures and flesh wounds in Stanley's face - most of it, anyway. Only time would tell what the prognosis would be.

"Rur-rles… No… Stop..." Stanley Talker whimpered as he shifted. His legs started sliding on the mattress as if running. A nightmare, likely. The blanket covering the dog had nearly fallen off, but Olivia pulled it up. Her effort was quickly undone, however, when the talking dog sat up, barking in shock as he transitioned from dream to reality. Olivia stepped back, giving him space - she knew what Stanley was capable of. A single accidental chomp from him could put her in retirement forever.

"Rrr… Sorry…" the talking dog apologized, before lying back down in bed, careful with the half of his face that was mending.

"Don't worry about it, doggy," Olivia said. Returning to his side, she adjusted her chair and sat down again, holding one of the dog's fore-paws.

Silence. Dreadful silence.

"Rur-rles… She…" the talking dog uttered. "Ris she… ralright?"

"She stood down, Stan," Olivia said as she stroked the dog's paw. She felt sorry for the creature. He was only two years old. In dog years, he was little more than an adolescent, still, and yet, he had suffered much - experimentation under the USDO, being hunted like an animal for weeks - after making a transition to becoming something more than a mundane animal - and finally, getting beaten to pulp by a little girl he thought was his friend. "Blossom and Blake took her home. I think she's sorry she did this to you, 'cause she stopped and…"

Olivia couldn't think of what to say any further.

"Ris she alright?" Stanley repeated his question and Olivia nodded as she understood why.

"She wasn't hurt," Olivia said and decided to keep it at that: simple and optimistic.

"Ris it over?" he asked further. Olivia shook her head as her eyes wandered down.

"No," she said. "My father thinks there's a lot more to it. He thinks Bubbles have been acting under the influence of drugs."

"That… Ractually makes sense…" Stanley Talker was still struggling to speak. The bandaged half of his face was still on fire.

Before they could continue their conversation, the door leading to the room they were in – a kind of animal ward – opened. Two figures walked in. A kindly woman in her forties with a stethoscope around her neck, the veterinarian, and someone familiar to Stanley Talker. There was something in his hand. A paper bag.

He was an old man from the USDO. Both the talking dog and Olivia could see a mix of both USDO soldiers and police officers guarding the corridor outside. The man was wearing a lab coat of some kind, with a USDO ID tag clipped onto his breast pocket. The talking dog sat up again on his hinds, startled by the USDO presence.

Doctor… Simmons? Stanley struggled to remember the name of the old man. He wasn't as developed the last time he met him, but this he knew: Doctor Simmons was one of the kinder humans in that hellhole of steel, glass, and experimental instruments and chemicals. Right up there with Professor Utonium and half his staff.

"-full recovery within days by your projection," the local veterinarian had just concluded she and the doctor's discussion when they came in.

"How's our little puppy?" Doctor Simmons asked, his voice a soothing, paternal, kindly tone. It brought back memories. "Ah, I see he's awake. That's good."

Stanley's memory of his younger years was fuzzy, formed mainly by smell, and hearing. And something else was causing other memories to float. As Doctor Simmons got closer, he took something out of his paper bag. A styrofoam box. The smell of meat was strong.

"It's not healthy to feed a dog meat and food processed for human consumption, you know," the veterinarian - a woman in her forties - warned.

"No, this canine's different. He's enhanced, and that includes his diet. He's healthy as heck, too, as one of you younger generations would say," Doctor Simmons explained. He opened the styrofoam box and set it down beside Stanley Talker. There was a beef burger inside, stuffed with an egg, lettuce and tomato ketchup. Turning to the dog, he went on: "It's not the same as those medium-rare steaks from the cafeteria I gave you when you were a pup, but I'm sure it'll serve."

"Roctor Rimmons," Stanley Talker greeted the man. When he got close enough, he lunged for a hug, giving off a whimper, a good kind of whimper analogous to how humans would cry when meeting a friend dear to them after a long absence. "Ri rissed you!" He gave him a few licks in the face before letting go.

"Look at you – all grown up and serving the public as an officer too!" the doctor said and admired the dog as one would a human son. "I knew you had it in you – the USDO was wrong to write you off. I heard the stories from Detective Mullens and it more or less confirms that you wouldn't have been a liability if you were made a prisoner. I mean, just because you can talk – in great volumes too – does not mean your audience will ever be the enemy-"

Olivia cleared her throat to signal to the doctor that they had to move on. Detective Mullens happened to be at the doorway leading in too, leaning against the door frame. Olivia knew that he was going to talk about business the moment he stepped in.

"Look at Talker, pops," Olivia said to her father. "He's already moving about, right as rain."

The senior detective came up to them, looking over shoulders. Stanley Talker was taking intelligent bites out of the burger, using his fore-paw to hold it in place, quite unlike a normal dog which would have spilled food everywhere.

"That's… great," the detective said. Olivia knew better than to raise an eyebrow. She knew what was next. But it wasn't so for the rest of them. "Listen, we need to talk. Something big's going down and we need to be ready." He then turned to the veterinarian. "Scuse me, ma'am, but can you give us a minute? Police business."

The vet walked away really quickly. In Townsville, police business wasn't just serious business. It was lethal business - no matter what kind of police officers were in the room - angels or demons, someone was likely to end up dead or wishing he was dead.

The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.

19 FEB (Sunday) 1989. 0833.

There was no church this Sunday. Blossom did not know why, but from her perspective, she believed that it was her fault somehow, and it was because of what happened yesterday, both between herself and Bubbles and Buttercup. Thinking back, Blossom thought she had a good feeling about the warehouse church - the Church of the New Trinity. It would have been fun if they could be back there as they were treated like royalty, but it was not meant to be.

Instead of going outside, the Girls ended up playing in their room after breakfast instead. For the past twenty or so minutes, Blossom and Bubbles had been operating a daycare center with dolls and soft toys for babies. Bubbles had participated half-heartedly, while Blossom thought that this was what they needed.

Buttercup hadn't joined in even though Blossom had tried very hard to recruit her to run her daycare center. Instead, she had opted to hide in the walk-in closet, hugging 'Blankie', her Mom's discarded gym towel, which she had saved from the trash over a month ago, and more recently, saved from destruction the previous day.

Speaking of the previous day, it was traumatic for her. The professor had dragged her down the underground lab, poked her with needles and stuffed her with medication. She remembered getting drowsy from some of the bitter stuff and being sent into the MRI machine. She remembered being barely conscious when she fought against being strapped into the Duranium bed, likely to be gassed with whatever it was that took away her powers, only Dad had just stood there, looking over her, thinking, himself emotionally affected. Upset.

He was trying to scare her, Buttercup believed so. And she was scared and scarred out of her mind until she was released and put back into bed.

"This baby needs a new diaper, Bubbles," Blossom said to her sister before handing a life-like baby doll to Bubbles, who didn't look any better than she was the previous day. Her whole daycare center pretend play had inadvertently reminded her of the baby she saved at the Cult of His Arm compound. She could only wonder how the baby was doing now, as Mister Mullens didn't tell her.

"She's yucky," Blossom pinched her nose and pretended that the baby (which was so obviously real) had defecated into its diaper and stunk as a result.

Bubbles took the baby wordlessly, averting eye contact with Blossom, before setting it down on a proportionately small plastic toy table before her. She had held the baby wrong by picking it up by the neck and plopping it down on the little table butt-first.

"Bubbles, what's wrong?" Blossom asked, but Bubbles was tuned out, going through the motions with changing the diaper on the baby, at one point standing the baby on its head while she undid the 'soiled' diaper. Blossom knew that something was supposed to be wrong – it's why she decided to play with her… to work things out so they could be close again, like before.

"I think we need to forgive each other, Bubbles," Blossom went off the seat of her pants. Forgiveness was the problem, wasn't it? At least, she thought it was.

"You'll forgive me, Blossom?" Bubbles asked. Her question had raised others in Blossom. There was something off with the way she phrased it, though she couldn't put her finger on it.

"Yes, of course," Blossom said, deciding that it was nothing. "You're Bubbles! What would I do without you?"

"I forgive you too," Bubbles said. "I just want you to know that before…"

Bubbles fell silent after that.

"Before what?" Blossom asked, further confused.

"Before our third month's birthday, I guess," Bubbles said, picking something off the top of her head, though it wasn't quite at the summit of it. Something ugly had already occupied that spot.

"That makes sense," Blossom said. When Bubbles was finally done with the baby, she handed it over to her sister, who returned it to a toy cradle. The toy baby was able to fit snugly in it even though it was comparatively small.

They continued playing for some time, though it wasn't as fun as it used to be. Blossom would feed the baby a bottle of formula, while Bubbles cradled another in her arms, going through the motions, more like clockwork than a mother. Her mind was elsewhere, even the naïve Blossom could tell.

"I wonder how it'll be like to be a mother and have my own baby…" Blossom rambled as she rocked the cradle of her toy baby. "Taking care of it like how Dad and Mom took care of us…"

Bubbles remained silent. Blossom thought she looked bored, though that was far from the truth, just like how the fact that her growing up, having a baby and caring for it would never be reality - not that Blossom knew.

Sensing that they needed a new activity, Blossom switched out their daycare center set and took out their stable set. Hoping to get Bubbles to be more involved and invested, perhaps mend their interactions, she invited her to set up the toys, which consisted of a stable for horses, a corral and numerous horse figures of various breeds. Bubbles, however, didn't look more involved and invested, as she continued looking away. She didn't look like she was having fun, as she was sluggish about it, lacking the energy and vigor of excitement while she was setting up the toys for play.

"Neigh… Neigh!" Blossom imitated a horse's call as she moved one of the horses closer to Bubbles. Bubbles, on the other hand, hadn't done anything. Her eyes were dead, staring into the distance. "Don't you wish we'll get to see a real pony? I want to see a real pony and ride one too, in a real stable, not like the one with cultists in it…"

Bubbles remained silent. Blossom stared at her, upset that she hadn't responded.

"I remember Dad saying he'll take us there someday, when it isn't so cold, like in spring," Blossom continued, still trying to connect with her sister somehow. Bubbles turned to look at her.

"Spring?" Bubbles repeated the word. Before the fairy godmother and the crazy drugs she got her hooked up on, it was one of those things she was obsessed with.

"Yeah," Blossom said, encouraged by Bubbles' attention. "Remember what Dad said yesterday too? We get to do picnics too in spring, and all sorts of things. Maybe all of them in one day!"

"Maybe…" Bubbles mumbled. She pushed a plastic horse closer to Blossom's, right up beside hers. She didn't look like she was having fun, though. She even looked upset after moving the horse. "I guess the flowers would be nice. Like the Dandelions."

BRZZZ! BRZZZ! BRZZZ! The USDO hotline interrupted. Blossom sighed. The harsh, urgent tone of the deceptively cartoonish phone was a reminder of how her days were like these days – all crime-fighting and no fun. With Bubbles losing her grip on her true self, it was the last thing she needed.

"Can't we just have one day to ourselves?" Blossom said dejectedly before reluctantly scooting over to the phone and picking it up.

"Powerpuff Girls! We're in trouble!" an unlikely voice, panicky, screamed through the phone. Blossom almost didn't recognize it. But there was something else that caught her attention. "Big trouble! Help!"

"What did you just call us?" Blossom asked. "Did you just call us Powerpuff Girls?"

"Yeah. Don't you know? That's what everyone's taken to calling you these days," it was Mayor Wilford, and he wasn't his normal self. Blossom thought that the venerable old man would be the last person in Townsville to freak out.

"I like it! It's even better than 'Angels of Justice' and waaaay better than-" Blossom exclaimed. The Mayor had to interrupt her. Being named something awesome had all but distracted her from her troubles, and evidently the Mayor's.

"There's no time! Please hurry! The City Hall's under attack!" the Mayor screamed again into the phone, his voice higher-pitched than usual. There was the sound of machinegun fire and grenade explosions in the distance.

"Hold on Mister Mayor, we're on our way!" Blossom said urgently before speeding into the walk-in closet to get changed. Bubbles followed suit. Buttercup had to duck out of the closet, though she discovered something along the way – she was faster than before! Sure, it wasn't like before, not by a longshot, but she'd still be able to win Mac in a footrace by a mile in her sorry state. Her powers were returning!

Blossom and Bubbles were decently surprised when Buttercup had taken out her stuff after them. The fact that she could carry all her gear in a single pile was a clear indication of her return to form all by itself.

But she was slower and more sluggish with her load. If she had recovered her powers, it wasn't total.

"Are you sure you should be following us?" Blossom asked.

"I sure am! I can't wait to kick some butt!" Buttercup exclaimed confidently, though her speed had a different façade. Even by the time the other Girls were done, she wasn't even halfway through her speed-changing. But they did saw her hover as she was putting on her military cargo pants though.

Rapid footsteps outside the door, however, put a damper on Buttercup's confidence. The door opened while Buttercup was still in the middle of wearing her vest.

"Buttercup?" Dad said, looking just as unsure of himself.

"I'm going, Dad," Buttercup said defiantly as she was quickly attaching her Kevlar leg guards. Although she had regained a part of her strength, she could feel the weight of her gear.

"And I won't stop you," Dad said, to Buttercup's surprise. He came up to her and gave her a hug. This time, she did not resist, though she was anything but warming up to it. "I've thought about it, and I guess being just a little girl isn't who you are."

Of course, that wasn't the only reason. The USDO had ordered him to cease and desist and let Buttercup be. However, his personal reasons weighed heavily – and that had stopped him from applying more Anti-X on Buttercup and claimed ignorance when it came to the reversal of her disempowerment.

"You just have to make me a promise, Buttercup," Dad said firmly. "And keep it, or I'll make sure you lose your powers again."

"What is it?" Buttercup asked, still vulnerable enough to be affected by Dad's threat. Looking around her, she felt herself surrounded by enemies who would help Dad go through with his threat. Bubbles had revealed her dark secrets, her skeletons in the closet, while Blossom was Daddy's Girl, and would never fail to tell on her and force her into the straight and narrow road… which she hated with a passion.

"No more trophy collections! I don't want to stumble upon another jar of teeth in my house again," Dad ordered - he couldn't believe the kind of words that were coming out of his own mouth. A jar of teeth as a trophy? It wasn't the kind of thing a normal family would talk about.

"Okay…" Buttercup grudgingly said. She had wanted to object to it but felt it more prudent to let it be.

"No more drugs – I know you think it's normal or cool to use it, but those criminals were criminals for a reason!" Dad gave his second demand.

"But-" Buttercup was about to claim innocence, but she was quickly interrupted.

"No buts! And no more lying to me again!" Dad demanded. Buttercup stared at him long and hard in the eyes, before withdrawing her eyes in submission. It was the only way out.

"Okay…" Buttercup said.

"And finally, no more unnecessary hurting and killing," Dad hit the nail in the coffin, wagging a finger at Buttercup.

"I promise…" Buttercup said, without really believing in what she said. However, she knew she wouldn't be able to pull off any assassinations any longer – everyone knew what she'd been doing in the dark and would always be watchful of her. And one of them just so happened to be able to see through walls.

"Good. Now don't let me keep you," the Dad said, before sitting down on the Girls' bed. Mom stood at the hallway, looking almost horrified, too much so to enter the room. Buttercup caught sight of her, and when she called out to her, she didn't come any closer. A look of disgust, not quite plain as day, but visible, was on her face. Buttercup knew what it meant.

"Remember to stay together out there, Girls," Dad said before they flew out of the circular windows.

"You'll have a family as long as you do," he'd said this, and it was obvious even to the Girls that he did it with less conviction than before. He wasn't blind to what was going on between the Girls, at least not totally. There would be a fallout between Bubbles and Buttercup, and Blossom and Bubbles would need time to rebuild their love and trust for each other after the intensity of the fight between them, as far as he knew. Just by treating their wounds, he knew that they were furious with each other. Their wounds were severe, which meant that they weren't holding back from hurting each other - Bubbles far more so than Blossom, which was expected considering her BerXerker spiraling out of control like a failing airplane.

It went without saying that the state of Blossom and Buttercup's relationship had a lot of uncertainty, too.

When the Girls finally flew out of the windows, Buttercup was floating lazily out compared to the others, with little green sparks sputtering still, no doubt from the Anti-X still contaminating her bloodstream. The wayward one had time to look back, still fixated on Mom. Professor Utonium sighed, and Selicia walked into the room and sat down next to him, putting an arm around his shoulders. The professor sighed.

"What am I going to do with them?" he said, putting his face in his hand. "It's as if they aren't sisters anymore - so much for nurture. Nature has won; like their very cells know they aren't related. And Buttercup… I still can't believe what I saw yesterday."

"Thomas, stop," Selicia hugged him tighter. "You're not alone - stop taking this burden on your own."

"It's not like the USDO is helping," the professor lamented.

"I'm talking about us. I was there yesterday when I saw it too. I know I'm fucked up but that jar of teeth and nails… Those drugs…" Selicia couldn't help but ramble as she spoke. She caught herself doing it and went on: "I don't think it's as bad as it really is, Tommy. They're kids, and they've been through some serious shit. I've never heard of this happening before, not even in the third-world countries I've been to; it's beyond even the child conscription going on in those places."

"That's dark," the professor said, sounding like he'd gone beyond rock bottom after what Selicia had said.

"My point is, they're better than they appear. I've seen some of my security colleagues handling it worse. Some guys snapping in the middle of combat and didn't quite recover after that. But our Girls - they are enhanced. They will recover after this - when it's over," Selicia tried her damnest to sound optimistic. The Girls were gone by now - Blossom and Bubbles couldn't be seen, while Buttercup was tiny against the wintry dark sky. A pink streak of light soon returned, going around and behind the green light that was Buttercup, before pushing her and accelerating her out of view. Selicia smiled at the little light show. The professor had seen it too. It'd offered him a glimmer of hope. But it was but a glimmer, and now it was gone.

"The USDO council wouldn't let them go after I create their reinforcement," the professor revealed, and it'd taken the words right out of Selicia's mouth when it did. "I tried making a deal with them. We leave the USDO forever and they'll leave us alone forever unless something's going to blow up the planet. They rejected my proposal. Said that we're still in the program. The Girls too, and they'll have to fight if the reinforcement couldn't handle things."

"What did they offer? What did Cliff give us?" Selicia asked.

"Just reduced responsibilities for the Girls," the professor said. "Which is nothing. We all know how the director is like. He's going to make them fight every time some second-rate mutant freak from the Foundation shows up."

"The Girls are barely hanging on now," the professor cried. "And if this keeps up…"

"It's a start, Thomas," Selicia comforted the professor. She gave him a kiss on the cheek that calmed him down, slightly. "If you create this 'reinforcement', the Girls will have help. Cliff's still giving way, even if it's only a little." She stood up and beckoned for Thomas Upton to do the same, guiding him with her hands on his chin. "You stood up to him for the kids, and you made him budge. You're the only man to have managed that besides… I don't know, Blackwater?" She pressed her forehead against his, lowering his head to allow it. "You're strong. You always have been."

"I don't know about me, but are we strong enough? Are the Girls?" the professor wondered.

"Come on, Thomas," Selicia took the professor by the hand and led him out of the Girls' room. "You worry too much. There's nothing more you can do. I'll show you a little something to take your mind off everything…"