Chapter 58: Lies

The City of Townsville. The Slums. Exposito Family Headquarters

24 FEB (Friday) 1989. 0923.

Blossom did not stop when Don Exposito had fallen over, dead at an instant from a gunshot to the head. Blossom turned her gun on his lieutenants, falling them the same way she did with their leader. When a few more bodies hit the floor, the others tried to flee, but Buttercup blocked the exit and mowed them down with a combination of her XM4 Carbine and laser eye beams. Some of the men were either beheaded or bisected haphazardly. The wooden floor was awash with blood. The women and children screamed in shock and horror as she did, and didn't stop after all the men were killed. Bubbles, however, did nothing. Taken by surprise, she couldn't stop her sisters.

When it was all over, Blossom holstered her pistol and turned around to look at the women in the room. She had decided that they were part of the crime family. Flying closer to them, she thought about killing them too. But the way they look – with their dresses and faces, pale from shock, suggested that they had little to do with the Exposito atrocities. Still, Blossom contemplated killing them just to be safe, her fingers caressing her pistol as she did.

"Blossom, no!" Bubbles flew between her and the women, putting her arms out while she shielded them. The wives of the Expositos cowered in their corner, the ones with children were still covering their eyes. "You can't kill them too!"

Blossom turned her gaze on Bubbles. There was murder in her eyes. Bubbles had never seen her that way before - she was likely roused from Don Exposito's admission of guilt. But as Blossom processed what she said, and saw who was left to kill, the rage in her face dissipated. Her hand had gone up to the handle of her SMG, but she let go of it.

"I… wasn't going to," Blossom said, even though she knew that she had considered killing the women too.

"Aw, man," Buttercup exclaimed, disappointed. She thought she'd get to kill a few more people. "Then what do we do now?"

"Let's go," Blossom said coldly as she regarded the survivors in the room. "We've killed the meanest bad guys in Townsville and saved the day. There's nothing left to do."

With that, Blossom flew out the doors they barged through. Buttercup sighed before following. Bubbles looked at the remaining population in the penthouse before doing so; the women and children still looked shocked and wretched. Almost all of them were weeping or crying, and she empathized with them.

"I'm sorry about your friends," Bubbles said to them before taking steps forward to give herself a running start in flight.

"They weren't friends! They were family! FAMILY!" one of the women wailed as she was crying. Knowing that there was nothing she could say to comfort the mafia wives and relatives, Bubbles flew off, disturbed severely by what had just transpired. She still found herself wondering who was telling the truth - Bossman or Don Exposito, and which part was the truth. Stuff like that always made her head hurt. Why couldn't people just be honest?

The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.

24 FEB (Friday) 1989. 1838.

"Bunny on bike!" Bunny squealed excitedly as Professor Utonium was leading her along the pavement outside their home while she was seated on a young girl's bicycle. With the snow thin enough on the sidewalk, the professor thought that it was the perfect time to teach Bunny how to ride a bicycle. Seeing the bicycle in the mall while they were shopping had given him the idea. Considering that Bunny had mastered walking really quickly, and running not too far behind, he believed it time that he introduced her to biking - besides, it might teach her a better sense of balance sooner. She would need it, considering how General Blackwater was very hasty in appropriating her for his own uses… "Bunny loves bike!"

"You're doing great, Bunny!" the professor encouraged his fourth daughter.

"Woo-hoo! You're absolutely flying, Bunny!" Selicia shouted from the lawn. She had been watching Dad and daughter having their moment.

Bunny was a natural. The moment she was introduced to her bicycle and shown how it worked, she knew exactly how to work it. The professor understood why. With normal children, remembering things was a feat on its own, a skill to be mastered. It was not so with Bunny. Furthermore, physical fitness was never a concern, and so all that remained to be trained was muscle coordination.

The bicycle Bunny was pedaling fitted the Girl pretty well. It was purple, with similarly-colored tassels on the ends of the handles. 'Power' was written on the bar just below the seat, in pink. Bunny herself was wearing a purple dress, which was of the same design as her elder siblings', with a black sash at the waist, and like them, she was wearing a matching jacket over it, and winter boots over white pantyhose and black Mary-Janes. She would have blended in very well as a normal 8-year-old, had it not been for her glowing purple eyes and prodigious size and pretty well-toned muscles. She looked like she had been going to the gym twice a day, every day, way before the age a girl should, and she was just two days old.

It was at this time that three lines of pink, baby blue, and lime green streaked across the sky and towards them. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup was finally done with fighting crime for the day. They descended down next to Professor Utonium and their younger sister, hovering in place as they watched the new development with the newest addition to the family.

They couldn't believe their eyes. They simply couldn't, and not in a good way either. They had seen parents teaching their kids how to ride bicycles in the park and were hoping one day for their own Dad to do the same with them. None of them had asked for it, being too busy with everything that had happened ever since jumping down the rabbit hole with fighting crime for Townsville.

And Bunny got to do just that with Dad on her second day with him.

"Hey Dad," Blossom greeted her father as she flew up next to him. Bubbles and Buttercup were speechless on either side of her, their mouth agape at the luxury Bunny was given. Professor Utonium didn't acknowledge her immediately.

"Yeah that's it, keep it in the center," he said to Bunny, still pulling her up behind him by the bicycle handle. The elder Powerpuff Girls had to trail behind them all the while. "My, using your X-thrust already?" By this, he meant the faint purple light emanation, barely visible, coming out of either flank of Bunny whenever she needed to balance herself. She was able to keep herself upright just by doing this, despite the slow speed.

"Oh hey, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup," the professor finally deigned to speak to them, but the Girls' feelings were already hurt, not that they let him know, nor did the professor noticed any signs of this while he was busy teaching Bunny how to ride a bike. "Look at the great strides Bunny's been making! She's riding a bike now!"

It was unfair, all of it.

"Bunny loves bike!" Bunny squealed again in her low voice, which Blossom and Buttercup each independently thought was annoying, especially considering the unfairness of it all. Bunny then turned to them. "Bunny loves Blossom, Buttercup, Bubbles!" Despite Bunny meaning well, Blossom and Buttercup each independently thought it was a slap in the face that they were second to a bicycle.

"But Dad! Why didn't you get us all bicycles too?" Blossom objected. The professor's focus, however, had returned to Bunny. He was pulling her forward faster. Blossom was upset, but it was lost on him. "We could have learned how to ride bikes in a day too!"

"Come to think of it, the thought did cross my mind," the professor reminisced about it with a smile plastered on his face, one that Blossom was shocked herself to find that it annoyed her too. "But you know how it was - those were dark times back then, and by the time I decided that I would do just that, why, the three of you started flying all over the place. I don't think you three need bikes when you can fly, right?"

"Can't Bunny run as fast as us?" Bubbles asked, though without the same tone as Blossom.

"Why yes, definitely - but she'll be faster on a bicycle, I believe," Professor Utonium said, his attention, once again, split between Bunny and the original three. "Hmm… wear and tear might be a problem for the bicycle. Ah well, I guess I'll just have to buy loads of spare parts, crates of them! Maybe even a few backup bicycles!"

A few backup bicycles. If the fact that Bunny had her own bicycle hadn't stirred some jealousy in the elder Girls, it had now. Only Bubbles was immune to this.

The professor and the Girls - all four of them - had reached the far end of their only neighbor's house by then. On the porch, Mister Smith, the father, and husband of the neighboring household had been enjoying a bottle of whiskey when he saw them. The man, whom they couldn't really get to know, swiftly disappeared into his house upon seeing them.

From there, the professor helped Bunny make a U-turn on the pavement.

"It's been a long day fighting crime, Dad," Blossom said, painfully aware that the professor hadn't asked about it.

"Now, Bunny, why don't you try cycling on your own from here?" the professor instructed the fourth Powerpuff Girl instead, and it'd rubbed Blossom the wrong way. Bubbles felt it too - for her, it'd been a long day, but in a different way. It wasn't just long. It was brutal, considering what had happened with Blossom, and what it meant. When Bunny took off, the professor still hadn't turned to his original three creations. "I'm sorry, you were saying something, Blossom?"

Blossom had to repeat herself, while at the same time trying not to shout or break into tears.

"Ah, I see - how is it?" the professor asked generically, something that made Blossom and Buttercup felt like they weren't special anymore. Again, Bubbles felt this one too.

Blossom had to pause. To pile on one flaming wreck on top of another, there was nothing good she could tell her Dad. The only positive thing to come out of it was that it was a distraction from the fact that Bunny had usurped their place in the professor's life.

Buttercup stared at Blossom, afraid that she would tell Dad everything about what they had done to the Exposito family today. They had killed nine men today, all on the word of another criminal on the helm of an even larger crime family.

"It was terrible, Dad. I'm tired of seeing people hurting each other…" Blossom opened herself out as she recounted, with perfect clarity, the day's activities. On top of killing Don Exposito and a few of his underboss, and allowing Buttercup to kill when she shouldn't, they had to stop a skirmish between two gangs in a turf dispute in the Tenements, witnessing wanton collateral damage that resulted in huge casualties. Bystanders were hurt. There was a suicide bombing perpetrated by a disgruntled and depressed national guardsman, and again, many innocents were hurt and killed as a result. When they arrived on the scene, he was already dangerously unstable, and they couldn't talk him down from killing himself and blowing up a grocery store that he alleged was a criminal enterprise, a front for mob activity. "It's bad in the city, Dad. A lot of people died today - and… and they were hurt, and really sad…"

If Buttercup was sitting down, she would have been on the edge of her seat. It sounded as if Blossom might spill everything, and then she would be back on the Duranium table, with all her powers drained. It was terrible, getting disempowered - the lethargy, the sense of powerlessness, the feeling of sickness and the suicidal contemplation weren't things she would look forward to.

Instead, Blossom broke into tears, losing the Duranium-hard exterior and melting quickly into pudding, unable to take it anymore - there were just too many things as if Bunny monopolizing Dad's attention and love - with zero effort on Bunny's part - wasn't bad enough. It was only then that - finally - the Dad took notice.

"Blossom! God, I'm so sorry - I didn't mean to ignore you," Professor Utonium said as he gave Blossom a one-armed hug. "It's just… a lot of things. Come here, the three of you." Bubbles and Buttercup joined in. The professor stared into the distance, where Bunny had just reached. She was learning everything so fast, and he had so little time with her before General Blackwater would spirit her away to be turned into another child soldier.

That was what the professor explained when he brought the Girls inside and sat them down for a family discussion with Selicia and Bunny present too.

"So you see, Girls, that is why I've been spending so much time with her," the professor ended off his explanation, before continuing, with the Girls sitting in the long couch on his right - he was on the one-man easy couch. Bunny was sitting in Selicia's lap, opposite him. He leaned back, but the comfort his top-grade furniture provided did little to ease the burden on his shoulders. "She'll be going away for training the day after tomorrow. In half a week after that, she'll be fighting crime, just like the three of you. But if she does it well enough, the three of you might not need to do that as often as before. It's what I promised the three of you - your way out." He turned to Bubbles specifically. "Remember what I said, Bubbles? Before the cinema, when you couldn't take it anymore?"

"Yes…" Bubbles admitted sadly, begrudgingly.

"But…" Blossom wanted to say something, only for her voice to trail off.

"Isn't this what you want?" the professor said. "Blossom?"

Blossom was unsure of herself. She was glad to help the people of Townsville fight crime. Whenever she had saved a life, or successfully root out crime at one spot, she would feel proud of herself. Yet she knew what it would mean if Bunny were to go away for training and law enforcement operations after that. She would have Dad all to herself - more so if the burden of fighting crime was lifted off her. Furthermore, she wouldn't have to decide the life and death of anyone anymore, criminal or otherwise. Her killing of Don Exposito and his inner circle had weighed unexpectedly heavy on her.

She was so deep in thought that she didn't realize she was raising an eyebrow, screwing her face up as she zoomed through the neurons of her brain.

"Blossom?" the professor called out to her, snapping her attention back to the material plane. "Is there something you want to tell me? You look preoccupied with something."

Buttercup was back to staring at Blossom again, with those penetrative eyes of hers. Blossom returned the look, before turning back to the professor.

"No, Dad," Blossom lied. "I'm just tired…"

"Well, sorry again," Professor Utonium replied. "I didn't mean to detain you right after your operations. Why don't the three of you go up and peel off those dreadful Kevlar and I'll be right with you. I gotta fire up the dinner with your Mom first."

Without another word, Blossom hovered up to the second floor, with Buttercup following behind her. Bubbles, however, floated up next to Bunny before giving her a peck on the cheek.

"Grow up fast, Bunny," Bubbles said to her lovingly and smiled bitterly. Unknown to Bunny and even their adoptive parents, her words were weighted more heavily than they could ever think.

"Bunny grow!" the fourth sister exclaimed, oblivious to the darkness all around her.

"Get going, Bubbles," Selicia said to Bubbles sternly, reminding her that her own Mom hated her now, and with good reason. With that, she hovered up after Blossom and Buttercup.

The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.

24 FEB (Friday) 1989. 1852.

Blossom shook herself like a wet dog getting rid of water in its fur. Bullets tinkled out of her armor and uniform. She then proceeded to remove her gear. More expended rounds for the bullet jar.

"Blossom?" Buttercup said while she was sitting in bed. She had torn off her gear faster while Blossom was still thinking about what had been communicated between her and her Dad (and what hadn't been talked about).

"What?" Blossom answered.

"Why didn't you tell Dad about Mister Exposito and his friends?" Buttercup asked. "Or the Amoeba Boys?"

Blossom took even more time to think about things. But it was fairly straightforward, such that there was little to think about - just that she couldn't accept her own deeds, her own decisions as what they were. If nothing else, Buttercup didn't look as bad as she was before.

"He wouldn't understand," Blossom said. "But it had to be done. We had to kill them. You know that, right? Buttercup?"

Buttercup smiled at Blossom - but it wasn't the kind of satisfying, happy kind of smile. It had a certain vibe to it. The smile was a sly one, a wicked one.

"I know, Blossom," Buttercup said. "I know."

It was a secret victory for Buttercup. She got to kill and maim again, and with Blossom becoming more like her when she least expected it, there might be more opportunities to do so, without the same risk of exposure.

"It's hard," Blossom broke into tears again. She quickly hid her face, but her sniffles and uncontrollable weeping could still be heard, easily. There and then, she knew she had sabotaged her own leadership with her appearing weak and hypocritical. "I can't believe I lied. And to Dad!"

Unexpectedly, Buttercup took her into her arms, patting her on the back.

"There, there, Bloss," she comforted her. "At least you're doing the right thing. The right thing's hard to do, isn't that what Dad said?" Buttercup had said this with a demented smile on her face, hidden from Blossom and Bubbles' sight, of course.

Bubbles couldn't believe her ears. Were Blossom and Buttercup conspiring together to hide the truth? She felt her past coming back to the surface, relived by her sisters instead.

Blossom withdrew herself before smiling at Buttercup. Moments like this with her wayward sister was rare. It was giving her that warm, fuzzy feeling inside here, especially when she could see it in Buttercup's face that the normally tomboyish girl was fine with it too.

"Thanks, Buttercup," Blossom said gratefully. "You're right. It's hard, but I guess I know I'm right."

"There you go," Buttercup said. "Now you know how I feel. Every single day."

"At least my wish is coming true," Blossom added. "I want the three of us together, close. And now I'm getting it."

The door opened soon after that.

"Oh, Girls! It's time for a voyage in the tub!" Professor Utonium exclaimed to them, trying to make it exciting to make up for his neglect of them in favor of Bunny. Just his presence in the room had caused that feeling in the back of Blossom's mind, that feeling that she might be wrong, to flare up again. The blissful, innocent look on the middle-aged man's face was a stark reminder of how it would change should news of her massacre get out. "Look at you, Buttercup - conquering your inner demons already!"