A/N: I've decided to change big guy's suit from gray to dark blue.

Chapter 56: Equals

The City of Townsville. Downtown. En Route to [Unknown]

24 FEB (Friday) 1989. 0836.

The black car's engine hummed elegantly as it took Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup across Townsville, towards someplace they weren't privy to. The driver was silent, quiet in his defiance of the Powerpuff Girls' initial impressions. His voice was deep and his stature huge, which made them think he was just some dumb muscle, but the look on his face, the aptitude in which he kept information from them, right down to the spartan surroundings in the car, his own person and his expression, told them the only thing they needed to know about him: he wasn't just some mindless muscle. Beside him was a skinnier man, this one in a brown jacket with a brown trilby to match. His hands were gloved. When Blossom had studied the driver's hands, he noticed that they were gloved too.

"Where are we going?" Blossom asked again. Just knowing which street she was on didn't help her to figure it out. They could be making any number of turns, throwing off the straight line she'd drawn in her mind's map.

"You'll soon find out," the skinny man in brown replied evasively, though he was calm.

"I want to know where we're going," Buttercup insisted, the irritation in her voice promising violence. The two men looked at each other as if exchanging wordless messages.

"You'll not be harmed," the big guy on the wheel said. "If you want to find out, don't try anything."

"Our instructions are to escort you. That is all," the other man said, turning to his right to squint at them. "If we fail, we'll be punished… fatally for our ineptitude. Killing us won't do anything for you but curse you with a question you'll never find an answer to for the rest of your lives."

"I'm scared," Bubbles let slip.

"You're right to be," the big guy said, and that just made it worse. Blossom held Bubbles closely as she shivered. "But you're far better off than… well, I'm not going to tell those stories to little kids. If it helps, there are snacks behind my seat. Help yourself if you want to. Just don't leave a mess."

The journey towards the mystery location took a long time, but the Girls didn't help themselves to the snacks. Well, except Buttercup, who took it upon herself to eat some potato chips for the three of them. The car wasn't built for speed, and neither did the traffic and stoplights help. Blossom had been tracking their location all the while, and where they were heading, it didn't help with the oppressive, ominous atmosphere.

They were heading to the outskirts of Townsville, where terrible things tended to happen. The cityscape, abuzz with people and machines and vehicles, gave way to wilderness both open and enclosed, and more ancient, rustic buildings, a change the Girls weren't used to, being created and raised in an urban environment.

The foreboding atmosphere wasn't helped when a mansion came into view. It was nothing like Princess Morbucks' place, which was sprawling, homely and welcoming, and vibrant with colors. Instead, this mansion was tall, looming in the horizon like a giant, surrounded by jagged fencing on the parameter. It had a dull color theme to it, of gray and brown and vegetation. As the Mercedes passed through its gates, Blossom saw armed guards, all dressed smartly in suits and fedora of various dark colors. She would have thought that it was a dress code had it not been the few men and women who dared to wear brighter colors. There was a multitude of them, and she could only hope that they were police officers in disguise, just like back in The Strip, when Bubbles went undercover and… suffered horrible things.

Swerving into a parking lot, the car finally stopped, and its gentle humming stopped. It'd made Blossom wish she could just stay in the car. Both the driver and his partner got out of the car. As if well rehearsed, they got opened the passenger doors almost in unison.

"Come on out," the big guy said, and the Girls obeyed reluctantly. He then glared widely at Buttercup. Scattered all around her were crumbs of potato chips.

"I said not to leave a mess," the big guy said sternly.

"Sorry," Buttercup shrugged her shoulders.

"We will escort the three of you into the mansion," the thin one said. "There are rules to follow."

Bubbles didn't like where this was going. 'There are rules to follow,' that's what one of the suited men said, and it just so happened to be something the fairy godmother had mentioned before. Those rules were what nearly got her to kill half her family - something that would be a mark of shame for the rest of her life.

"What kind of rules?" Blossom asked.

"I hate rules!" Buttercup muttered.

"Just common sense, really," the big guy said. "They are things you'll do for someone you respect, like your pa, for instance."

"Considerin' that the three of you are kids, I think the rules goes double for you," the thin man said.

"The three of you will speak to them when spoken to, and only when spoken to," the thin one began listing the rules. "Do not turn your back to them unnecessarily. Don't be rude in any way. Do not just call them by their given names. Use their well-earned titles. That is all. For now, anyway. I haven't gotten into the rules of the house yet, but that can wait."

"Seems simple enough…" Blossom said.

"Pfff," Buttercup spat before folding her arms.

"But who are they, anyway?" Blossom asked again.

"You'll find out soon enough, like I said," the big guy said.

They were then led to the porch. The courtyard was huge. Just the courtyard alone had ten similarly well-dressed men and women guarding it. The porch had a similar number, well taken cared of with seats and glass jars and cups filled with water, and sandwiches. Everyone turned to stare at them as they walked past them. Past the porch, they went into the grand hall, then up the grand stairs. There were always eyes scrutinizing them, and there was never a moment when there weren't multiple pairs of eyes glaring down on them.

Crossing into a junction corridor beyond the grand stairs, they were led up an ornately-decorated spiral staircase, passing a floor entirely and into the fourth floor. The house had thus far been… voluptuous. Expensive. Richly furnished and designed and way ancient beyond their comprehension. Blossom concluded that who they were meeting must be very important, considering the place and the higher floor they were headed. For some reason, important men loved the upper floors. She had learned that from meeting the mayor, as well as Mister Morbucks back in January when they met over tea in his office at his tower.

Finally, on the fourth floor, they went down a corridor full of finely-carved doors, to one at the end of it, which was oddly similar, blending into the rest of the mansion. The big guy in his dark blue suit knocked on the door and poked his head in. He muttered something in a low tone, to which someone answered back in muffled words. Blossom turned to look at her sisters. Bubbles seemed afraid as usual, but she had changed, and she now felt that she could count on her meek sister to fight. Buttercup looked like she had been put on edge. Blossom remembered that she seemed to be able to hear things she couldn't - perhaps there was something she heard?

The big guy slipped his head out the door before closing it again.

"They want the three of you disarmed and stripped down," the big guy said. Blossom and Buttercup made confused expressions in the last part of the man's request. Bubbles, however, was especially horrified, considering what happened at The Strip. The man appeared confused himself with the look on their faces.

"Stripped down to your uniform, I meant. They want your armor and gear removed," the big guy clarified his request. "I know what we are, girls. You won't find a single pedophile in this building or in our entire organization. That kind of unnatural inclination isn't condoned around here."

"Taking our stuff away isn't going to make it any easier to beat us!" Buttercup exclaimed impulsively as she stepped forward aggressively.

"If we want to ambush you, we would have done it already," the thin guy said. "The three of you are not here to be killed."

"It's in your best interest to cooperate," the big guy boomed. "The men we work for can be generous if opportunity allows it. I suggest you take this chance. Besides, if you act out now, you'll never find out what they have to offer."

"How about if I put my fist in your-" Buttercup was about to curse at him as she stomped towards him when Blossom put her arm out to stop her.

"We should listen to them," Blossom decided. "If there's a way to avoid hurting people, we should do it."

"But this feels… wrong…" Bubbles said, still shaken by the earlier misunderstanding and the strangeness of everything. Blossom turned around to face her, taking her by the shoulders.

"This could be the reason why we're here," Blossom countered. Bubbles couldn't think of anything. "The police chief on the phone told us to get into the car. We have to do this - to help the people of Townsville!"

In the end, The Powerpuff Girls submitted to the big guy's relayed demands. Blossom, in pursuing her mission, Bubbles fearfully, while Buttercup, reluctantly. They laid out their weapons in a cabinet outside. Their two escorts had to pat them down for weapons. Buttercup was the worst offender when it came to hidden pieces of armament. Ever since losing her powers for a couple of days, she had become paranoid about losing them again, and as such had hidden weapons all over her gear to prepare for the day it might happen. The big guy and the thin guy had to pull out backup pistols from her back pouch, out of her belt and even inside her uniform. There was a kitchen knife in her back pouch, too, that she had filched from The House's kitchen. By the end of it, the Girls' weapons had formed one big pile.

After stripping their armor off, the Girls were ushered through the door in their uniforms. If there was anything that could rival the oval office of the White House, it was the room they had just entered, though it was more of a rectangular office, with a rustic, rural-gentlemanly look to it. It had a predominantly brown-colored theme rather than white. Bookshelves, completely filled, lined either side of the room. Couches and tables took the middle. But the first thing the Girls noticed were the people seated behind the triplet desks at the end of the room.

It was the Amoeba Boys. The so-called Bossman, Slim, and Junior.

Bossman, a thickset brawny man with a cigar clenched between his teeth, stood up first. Same as the men who respected him as their boss, he was smartly-dressed, with a gray suit.

"If it isn't the 'Powerpuff Girls'," he said in an Italian accent whilst biting his cigar. "Welcome… to the Lombardi Family Estate."

The Girls had never seen the speaker before, but two of them didn't need long at all to recognize the two other faces on either side of him. Blossom and Buttercup remembered how they met Junior first, how he had beaten them to within an inch of their life. They remembered, too, how Slim had drowned Buttercup and nearly killed her. Bubbles, on the other hand, wasn't present either way, but somehow, just somehow, she knew to fear them - mostly because she feared the fairy godmother.

"It's those two!" Buttercup yelled as she stepped forward in a combat stance.

"Slim! Junior! What are the two of you doing here!?" Blossom questioned the inferior bosses of the Lombardi.

"What did I tell you about the rules, you rude little girls!?" the big guy roared behind them ferociously. When Blossom turned around to look at him - she didn't realize that her escorts had taken positions on either side of the exit - she saw him pulling out the biggest pistol she had ever seen and pulling the slide with the sound of mechanical steel moving making it abundantly clear that she had wronged him severely. He pointed it at him - Blossom saw him squeeze the trigger halfway when-

"Stop," Bossman growled, calmer than any of the Girls would have been, putting up a hand. The big guy blinked at him before hesitantly withdrawing himself. Removing his pistol magazine, he pulled on the slide again and caught an unspent round after it was ejected. After resetting his pistol, he went back to guarding the door. "Shooting her won't do nothing anyway."

"What's going on!?" Bubbles cried in confusion.

"I can see that this ain't gonna be easy," the Bossman growled.

"Hehe, yeah. It's not gonna be easy," Junior repeated in a more high-pitched tone, adding his own twisted meaning to it.

"The two of you may leave," Slim ordered the two escorts, gesturing for them to get out. Without a word, the big guy opened the door and left, followed by the thin guy.

"Bubbles is right - what's going on here?" Blossom asked again, this time lowering her voice to avoid risking a violent confrontation.

"Yeah! We're supposed to be fighting!" Buttercup said, perhaps not unwisely so - the Amoeba Boys and Powerpuff Girls were enemies right from the start.

"You try that!" Slim exploded at Blossom. He remembered how Blossom had burned his face with her infrared beam when she first discovered it. While the Amoeba Boys were largely immune to physical strikes, heat was one of those things that could hurt them. Slim hated Blossom for reminding him of one of his Achilles' Heels. He would prefer to think that he was invincible. "I'll make sure you drown like your tomboy girlfriend over there!"

"We're sisters!" Blossom corrected him, not that she knew what 'girlfriend' meant. She just thought he meant a friend who was a girl.

"I'm going to kill you!" Buttercup took another step towards Slim, then turned around. "Can I kill them, Blossom?"

"Everyone, cool your jets!" Bossman yelled at the room, and when silence was achieved, he stubbed his cigar in his ashtray and returned to his growl. "Shooting off your guns won't do anything. Powerpuff Girls, we're here to talk business."

"Talk? You're criminals! My sister is right. Why should we talk when your friends have been hurting us? And the people in Townsville?" Blossom challenged the Amoeba Boys, pointing fingers at Slim and Junior. "Our policemen friends brought us here to fight you. I think."

Bossman seemed to smile at this. Blossom didn't think he could do that, considering that his peers on either side seemed on edge, which told her that they were probably afraid of them.

"You think? But you know nothing about that, do you?" Bossman said triumphantly. "You see, kids, your 'policemen friends' brought you here to speak to me."

"You're lying," Blossom said. "Why would they?"

"Because they know that I'm a changed man, as you'll soon find out," Bossman said with a smile. "Slim and Junior here are not my friends. They're my brothers. You and me, we ain't so different."

"Your brothers have been hurting Buttercup and me. We're not the same," Blossom denied Bossman's charge.

"They were only looking out for our… friends. You attacked them," Bossman claimed. "You would have done the same thing. I've seen you out there, through the TV. I've heard about you three through my boys' lips. Would've heard more about you if some of them don't end up dead. I've been visiting lotsa graves lately. Never had so many widows and widowers cry on my shoulders before in such a short time."

Blossom was lost for words at the loss of lives. She hated it if anyone had to die, even the criminals. Some of them weren't just criminals, she knew. It seemed that way with the Amoeba Boys' friends.

"But your friends have been doing bad things!" Blossom argued.

"Only because they were desperate," Bossman said. "They needed food on the table, and they'll get it the only way they know how. Some of them have mouths to feed, and I know how they feel. Do you? I was once there - us three brothers."

"I'm not hearing another word-" Buttercup shouted impatiently, but was cut off.

"Shh! I want to hear their story," Blossom hushed her up, then turned back to the head of the Lombardi.

"We weren't always livin' it large, so to speak. We weren't even from Townsville. We were from Italy - it's a beautiful country, rich with history, but so much of what was good became history, too, capeesh? My mother died in the troubles back then, shot by a terrorist while buying fruits in a market, back in Milan. My father brought us to Townsville, but he died of Pneumonia on the way here," Bossman recalled, his eyes a little distant, as he slumped back into his chair. Blossom couldn't help but empathize with him. She had to fight back tears while she listened, and remind herself every second that she was listening to the words of the biggest criminal in Townsville. Yet, how could she ignore this story? Which person would not want to be with his parents? "We were put in orphanages at first, but the people there… weren't exactly kind and neither were they running the show out of the kindness of their hearts. We ran away, lived on the streets, suffered starvation and sickness every other day and became one of them - those criminals you've been killing out in the streets like dogs. We had to survive somehow, and no one would take us in. But then someone… saw something in us and made us who we are. We became the Amoeba Boys, and took over the Lombardi with our gifts."

"You were forced to do bad things?" Bubbles said, her voice trembling with emotions, her eyes teary.

"We were, and it became the only thing we know after that. Come to think of it, violence and crime was something I've always witnessed ever since I was just a little boy in Italy," Bossman replied, still sounding a little sad despite the permanent growl in his voice. "It's a habit I'd like to break. Perhaps, with your help…" He directed this specifically to Blossom, whom he knew was the leader of The Powerpuff Girls, not just from the TV and various media articles, but from the presence she exuded.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Blossom questioned the man.

"You're smart, kid, I'll give you that," Bossman praised the enhanced little girl. "How about if I help you clean up Townsville? There's a small gang on the eastern side of Townsville, in and out of the slums. If you think we're mean, you should take a look at those bozos. They're like us - Italians - but they've abandoned the way. They've forgotten honor and thrown away their code. They will rape, torture and murder and do all sorts of other terrible things at the drop of a hat."

"What's rape?" Bubbles asked, but she was swiftly overshadowed by Buttercup's straightforward question.

"You want us to kill them?" Buttercup guessed with anticipation.

"Not really. Like I said, we're more alike than you think, Buttercup, Blossom, and Bubbles. We're like distant cousins caught on opposite sides of a civil war, see, because of our gifts. And like you, we don't kill unless we have to," Bossman said. Buttercup scoffed at what he said, as she didn't believe in sparing enemies. Especially when they were so much fun to mangle. Not that she could do any of that nowadays. "I can tell you where their headquarter is and when they will hold their next meeting. All I want the three of you to do is kill their leaders - help me help you."

"You said you didn't want us to kill them," Blossom said, narrowing her eyes as she studied Bossman's face instinctively, though she wasn't quite sure what she was looking for.

"I don't want you to kill off the entire gang - just the heads," Bossman corrected Blossom as he watched her every move in turn. It made Blossom nervous, being stared at that way, that she couldn't help but be a little self-conscious. All of a sudden, she didn't know what to do with her hands, and her entire body, for that matter. "If there's anyone who's to blame, it's their devil don and his evil inner circle. Don Exposito - that's his name. And wouldn't you know it, he runs the Exposito family. Kill him and his evil circle, and the rest of his men will scatter, even take up honest living, you know, and stop… er, terrorizing the common folks, as you'd say. Do we have a deal?"

Blossom could tell that Bossman seemed sincere, from how he told his story, which would have been a hard story to tell, to how he wasn't mincing words like criminals tended to. It was something she noticed about them as if criminals had everything to hide. But Bossman was different. He was laying out his cards in broad daylight, something the usual criminal wouldn't do. It'd led her to the conclusion that he wasn't a usual criminal, enhanced abilities aside. Like what the Lombardi don said, he was forced into becoming a criminal.

And Blossom decided that she would believe him.

"The clock is ticking, Blossom Utonium," Bossman said. Blossom found it odd that he knew her full name, but then again, he was an important person, and important people like Dad and General Blackwater seemed to know about everything. "Their next meeting happens to be today."

Despite her gut feeling, it would be irregular for her to help what her friends considered a criminal. Unnatural even. Yet, Dad had said that the right thing to do was often the hard thing to do. This felt like one of those times.

"The police…" Blossom muttered, unsure of what to say.

"They know about this - at least the ones who really know me as you do now. Think about it - if the police are in on this, then why should you not be?" Bossman said. How he knew what she was thinking, she wasn't sure. "I'll give you the time and address, even photos if you want. How 'bout it?" He circumvented his desk and extended his hand out - they were massive compared to hers, like a gorilla's.

Blossom walked up to him, eyes stuck to his as if with superglue. What had just happened was profound. It felt like a breakthrough, something that would define the future, even change it as she always wanted to do. She had been wishing for this very moment right from the start, when she would be given the opportunity to change things for the better, for good. She came up right next to him - something she never thought she would have done just minutes ago… and smiled.

"What are you doing?" Bossman said, confused.

"Aren't you going to pat me on the head?" Blossom said, and the three dons laughed heartily. Even Buttercup couldn't stifle a giggle, even though she didn't know what was so funny.

Bossman knelt down instead, getting down to her level - even then, he had to hunch his back to do so. He smiled at her, and he was surprisingly warm for a crime family boss. His eyes had stopped being so glaringly scrutinizing and had instead attained a friendly, 'come-on-and-let's-play' kind of look.

"No. I don't know what your 'friends' been putting in your head, but we're doing this as equals," Bossman said, before extending his hand towards her once again. Blossom finally understood then and took his hand. They shook hands after that. "You may be a kid, kiddo, but you've got what it takes to make some permanent changes around here in this town, more so than most of the adults have. No, you're going to outshine them all, kid - even this self-proclaimed 'general' Blackwater."

He'd said this with a smile.

And Blossom smiled back.