A/N: I apologize for the late update. I must say, this has got to be one of the most difficult chapters I have ever written. Apart from the fact that this chapter is somewhat plot-critical (only somewhat), the fight choreography was difficult to execute. I have to admit that I am over my head here as I have only rudimentary martial arts training, far less so than my military training, and I'm not exactly that big on martial arts films since I found my passion in horror instead. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter regardless of any failings on my part.
Chapter 85: One Too Many (Part 2)
The City of Townsville. Chinatown. Wuxia Mă Lù.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1158.
"Why are you fighting us, Mister... urm…" Bubbles asked, but fell short when it came to the man's name.
"You may call me Master Pang. I belong to many disciplines of Wushu. I hesitate to show them to you, but I won't hesitate if you murder my brothers again," the man introduced himself, though without the typical bow.
"Your brothers are bad people, Mister Pang," Blossom told him without hesitation.
"Yeah, and we're going to have to kill them all," Buttercup pushed him thoughtlessly, eager to get into the action again and settle the score with this 'Master Pang'. She could still feel his bo staff in the back of her head, a constant, unceasing reminder that she had a score to settle with the jacked-up martial artist.
Buttercup had attracted the menacing red-glare of the master.
"And who told you that?" he replied, calmer than Blossom expected. She was expecting him to fly at her at any moment. It was a surprise when he didn't.
"It was…" Blossom's voice trailed off very quickly the moment she spoke. Deep down, she knew that the Amoeba Boys weren't the most trustworthy of people in anyone's eyes. It felt like something to hide. She swallowed a bitter glob of saliva before biting the bullet and continuing: "Detective Mullens."
The moment she did it, she hated herself for it. Lying wasn't something she liked, nor was it something she thought she was really capable of until the day she started helping the Amoeba Boys and lied to Dad about it.
"There are some bad ones, but many are good people with no place to go," the martial artist exclaimed, gesticulating wildly and animatedly with his free hand. "Those police officers know nothing about true hardship! About true rejection and hopelessness!" He'd been watching Bubbles intently, scrutinizing her for signs of weaknesses so obviously displayed. He then turned to Blossom, studying her, as if seeing right through her. "And you know nothing. I know the hands guiding you. One more chance. Leave."
Blossom frowned. She hated being told she was wrong. It'd made the feelings in her go bad, and those that were already bad had gone worse. The doubt inside her, for one, that seemed to be pointing to the fact that she had been wrong all along, and Bubbles had been right. It was something she didn't want to believe in. It was something she couldn't believe in. She was the leader, and she was right.
"No! You're bad! Your 'brothers' are evil!" Blossom yelled with her eyes closed, tears spewing out as she fought herself on the inside.
Master Pang didn't dilly-dally around the moment Blossom revealed her stubbornness. Leaping forward, he swung his staff at her, but she was able to duck out of the way and counter-attack with a punch while flying forward, which Pang blocked with his staff held out. The force, however, caused him to slide backward even when he braced against it.
"So, you have chosen death!" the master yelled as he jumped and spun in the air, delivering another blow at Blossom, who blocked it with an energy-expensive shield. Buttercup launched towards the man, but he knew she was coming, and jammed the back of his staff into her eye without looking. Bubbles was firing ion beams at him, but he had gotten behind Blossom and she couldn't get a good shot as she was afraid of hitting her own sister.
Blossom began throwing rapid punches at him, all of which the master blocked with his staff, but his grunting told her that she was tiring him out. She fired a surprise heat beam, and on seeing her eyes glow bright, the master tried to dodge it, only to be burned in the upper arm. But it was a quick shot, and Blossom couldn't build up much heat.
Snarling angrily, Master Pang gave Blossom a spinning kick, which she blocked easily without shields. Bubbles flew to another corner of the room to find a better spot to shoot. But things were happening too quickly. The master launched into a fury of staff strikes, and it didn't matter that Blossom was putting up mini-energy shields or blocking with her arm; he was too fast, and she could barely keep up! Until she couldn't. Before she could even prepare for it, she felt the end of his staff in her eye, and she fell to the ground, twirling, rolling until she came to a rest, clutching her eye in excruciating pain. It felt worse than just 'harmless' pain. She could feel her eye swelling up, and she was sure that the staff strike had given her a black eye.
She wouldn't be firing heat beams for a while.
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1255.
While she was listening to her elder sisters' story, Bunny could not help but think back to her own difficulties with what had happened during her crime-fighting operations. After coming back home straight after basically murdering a police officer and his family, she wasn't exactly quite herself when she was ringing the doorbell. After Dad opened the door, she'd greeted him all too meekly before entering looking a little shell-shocked, walking past him a coldly, as if he didn't exist.
"Don't you want a hug?" Dad had offered, putting a hand behind her back, only for her to brush it away and avoid answering his question. All she could think about was the man she had killed, along with his wife and child. He had actually been nice to her, letting her inside to ward off the cold, offering to buy her entire stock of girl scout cookies.
"Bunny, what's wrong?" he'd asked when Bunny walked ahead of him all alone. Instead of answering him, she'd dashed upstairs. "Bunny! Wait!"
It didn't take Dad much time to find Bunny. She had been standing in the balcony, looking at the otherwise ignorantly beautiful suburban horizon, in the middle of swimming in her own tears. He remained silent, deciding that saying anything would do nothing for the kid, and instead came up next to her. He watched the horizon with her, admiring the strength of the slowly-unveiling sun, the eternal sky, and its many elements. The snow was still there, but they would be gone in weeks, and he would be able to bring the quartet out for a spring picnic.
"Fighting crime is hard," Bunny finally opened up cryptically. Her strength, like the eternity of the sky, was admirable for a creature not even half a month old. She'd wrapped her arms around Dad's waist and he gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I hate the things I have to do."
"I know. You're a nice girl, Bunny, and nice girls don't hurt and kill people - but they leave you no choice. These bad people, they-"
"I didn't kill anyone," Bunny interrupted adamantly. "I really didn't."
"It's alright, I believe you," the Dad said, though without really believing her, not because he didn't believe she was honest, but because he knew General Blackwater and some in his staff were surely compelling her to keep quiet about the activities of her operations. He took a peek at Bunny, and from the looks of her, she didn't look comforted by what he'd said at all, nor did she looked like she believed in herself.
"I had to do it. I have to protect Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. I have to protect you and Mom," Bunny repeated to herself. She had been saying the same thing ever since she left Rook's temporary base of operations at 3 Willow Street.
"Yes you do," Dad seemed to agree. But he knew that he was just trying to comfort his youngest adopted lab-grown kid. Whether what she was doing was really good for her elder sisters, or if it was simply what the top brass wanted was another question entirely. There was so much that he wanted to say - that whatever she did, he was sure she'd done it in good conscience - but for the first time, it felt as if he couldn't speak freely any longer. Without knowing what she'd actually done, words might hurt her as surely as Duranium bullets.
Bunny felt starved of the same comfort that Daddy provided. Normally, things would automatically be fine whenever he was around, but now, even her Dad felt small in the wide world. Everything she had done in the name of the law and protecting her family was all coalescing into a glut of bad feeling she couldn't get rid of. She knew she had done some good, but along the way, she knew that it wasn't all good. She had blood on her hands and she knew it, and worse yet, she had to deal with it on her lonesome self, even though her family was often right in front of her.
"Hey, I think there's a cartoon on," Dad offered while Bunny was trapped in her own inner purgatory. It'd dragged her out of there, good old Dad. "I just realized you haven't watched the TV all week. I think you should give it a try. If only you've seen Bugs Bunny! You up for it?"
Good old Dad, making her smile even though she was sure she would never do so again.
"Sure, Dad," Bunny said.
The City of Townsville. Chinatown. Wuxia Mă Lù.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1202.
When Bubbles saw Blossom go down, she stopped firing her ion beams and rushed in, believing that she was in peril. She flew in at full speed to tackle Master Pang, only to feel his staff in her midsection. In a fraction of a second, she found herself flying into the ground and skidding a distance. The master had ducked and sidestepped her ever so slightly that all she had done was shred the arm of his tunic.
Buttercup ran up to him after that and launched into a flying kick. Just when she thought she had caught him unawares, she felt his staff in her shin; she crashed into the ground. Getting up quickly, she blocked the master's top-down staff strike with her forearms; the pain forced her arms aside and before she could even behead him with her laser beam, she found herself already knocked aside by his staff to the ear. She couldn't hear anything after that, and the only thing she accomplished was bisecting a Chinese wooden table.
Ignoring the pain sprouting from her eye, Blossom saw an opportunity and leaped for it, seizing Master Pang's Duranium staff. They struggled for a while; with her strength waning from the pain that no little girl should feel, they were in equilibrium despite her sustaining knee strikes from the master's attempt to get her off.
"tú dì men! Chū lái bāng nǐ te shīfu ba!" the master ordered - to who, Blossom did not know. But the recovering Bubbles did. Something in her mind had filtered it, made it understandable. She got up, alarmed.
"Blossom, watch out! They're coming!" Bubbles warned. She wanted to intervene, but two more martial artists had come bursting out of the kitchen, and one of them was leaping towards her, winding up for a hatchet strike. She could see the unusual glow of the ax-heads those new fighters wielded. Those were Duranium too.
The other was running straight for Blossom, who had heard Bubbles but couldn't quite tear the Duranium staff away from Master Pang as he'd been punching and kicking at her while they wrestled for control over the strange staff.
The one going for Bubbles swung his ax at her, but she was able to float aside for every blow aimed at her. Bubbles couldn't even think about counterattacking; the hard and sharp Duranium was freaking her out. However, with time, she found an opening and kicked him towards the recovering Buttercup. The man fell flat on his back after losing his balance. With a wide killer grin plastered on her face, Buttercup stomped on the man's face…
But he'd rolled out of the way quick enough to avoid a brainsplosion. In one smooth motion, the master's disciple had rolled onto his knees, and as Buttercup was charging him, frustrated by her near-hit, brought the blunt side of his ax across Buttercup's ax, knocking her down. She shrieked on the way and tried to get up as fast as she could - only for the disciple to bring his ax down on her thigh.
Buttercup screamed. The ax had gone in deep, and it was a surprise there wasn't a spray of blood. The master's disciple had likely missed the artery by a narrow margin. Buttercup gave him a rough, out-of-form right hook out of panic and reflex, but it was enough to stop him from pulling the ax out.
In the meantime, the other disciple had gone for Blossom. He buried his hatchet in her back, causing her to let go of the master. Bubbles was only able to tackle this second disciple to the ground after the fact. Falling to the ground as she was too distracted by pain to maintain her hover, Blossom reached behind her to pull the ax out, wincing and crying as she did. The axehead was splattered with blood. Her hand shivered as she dropped the thing. She could feel her strength waning.
But Master Pang wasn't letting up. He was leaping for her so fast he might as well be flying with his staff at the ready. But Blossom had learned her lesson. She sidestepped the downward strike aimed at her before kicking off into a hover and launching herself downwards on his staff, forcing it out of his grasp. Jumping up and whirling in the air, she gave him a spinning kick to the chest, sending him flying and screaming into a table, which cracked in two. It looked as though, surely, that this Master Pang had been defeated.
Buttercup and Bubbles, in the meantime, were squaring off with a disciple each, and with their axes out, they both pulled out their weapons, which shined with the same otherworldly glow as their axes. More Duranium.
"Oh, c'mon!" Buttercup exclaimed when she saw it, not even aware that she had just learned to sense Duranium as keenly as her sisters. Her opponent launched at her with his sword held low. Kicking into a hovering position, she dodged left and right as he began slicing his sword at her, and when he went for a wide, horizontal left, she had no choice but to block the blow with her arms - and she regretted her tactic instantly as she felt the skin on the back of her forearms split.
She fired a quick laser beam in response, but she couldn't catch him as he'd already seen her eyes turn red and darted left, cutting her in the upper arm in the meantime.
Bubbles had opted to back away in the meantime, flying to a table far away with her enemy disciple hot on her tail. When she found plates on the table she had landed on, she began chucking them at him, but the martial artist was able to deflect them with his sword, sometimes, cracking them in mid-air. When he was close enough, she became desperate enough do a sonic scream, forcing the man to cover his ears as he was blown away into a pile of furniture. He crashed hard and didn't move after that.
Returning to Blossom's fight, as the dust settled, Blossom squinted at the unmoving Master Pang. Just then, as quickly as he'd landed on his table, he rose, pulling out his MAC-10 and firing at her on full auto. Blossom brought up her energy shield, but some of them had gotten through before she could, stinging her in the chest. She didn't dare let up even when the bullet hailstorm stopped. Taking advantage of this, the master got up and closed in the distance, reloading his machine pistol in the meantime at speeds that would be unattainable to a normal human and firing once more, putting Blossom on the defensive.
When he was close enough, he'd chucked his MAC-10 at Blossom to draw his dao - his was an ornate Chinese single-edged sword. Duranium, of course, from the way it shone. It resembled a frighteningly huge machete. Bringing it across, he sliced at Blossom's energy shield, which gave way after suffering too much abuse from his firearm. He sliced at her once more, and Blossom blocked the next blow with her arm guards. The Kevlar couldn't hold up well to the Duranium, but it'd protected Blossom.
Spinning around like a dancer, he hacked away at Blossom with overhead blows, and over and over, Blossom blocked his devastating strikes with her arm guards until they gave way and the blade drew blood.
Leaping backward, Blossom drew her pistol, only for the master to cut it in half as she fired it, resulting in a chamber explosion that backfired on Blossom.
In the meantime, Buttercup was panting and slumped as she stood before the disciple she was fighting against. She could feel blood dripping down her body at multiple points. She had sustained a few more cuts. The man she was fighting against was likely one of Master Pang's best, and it showed. He was so fast that she even had trouble tracking him with her laser beams.
But she was going to try again anyway. Lighting up her eyes, she fired another laser beam, which the disciple ducked away from, and when she looked down, he would roll way out of her sight and out of view behind a fallen table which she would cut in two only to find no trace of even half a disciple - she'd hoped that she would cut him in two. Instead, the man sat up from the lower half of the fallen table and threw a Duranium dagger at her.
Buttercup was quick enough, however, to catch it in midair by the handle no less. She threw it back at him with an annoyed shout, but the man was already running towards her again, closing the distance, and had deflected the dagger with his sword. With his running start, he leaped into the air and twirled, directing a spinning slice at her, which she dodged. He continued stabbing and slicing at her, distracting her from firing another laser beam while attacking at the same time. She would feel another slice on her ribs, bypassing her Kevlar plates. He would then lean forward for a powerful stab, which she avoided by facing her side.
An opening! Buttercup grabbed him by the sword arm and gave it a hard twist. The man screamed as both of them could hear bony snaps from his arm. He would punch her in the face, but it was far from enough to stun Buttercup, who returned it with interest before lifting him off the ground by the broken arm and slamming him down on the ground. Straddling him, she began punching his face repeatedly, caving it in over and over, and she didn't stop there. She screeched like a mad little girl as she continued pounding his head in until there was nothing but a small head-sized crater in the floor… filled with blood and bone bits and brains.
Exhausted and out of options, Blossom had been on the retreat the whole time, with Master Pang constantly a knife's edge away. The dining hall of the Chinese restaurant was turned upside down the whole time, no longer resembling what it once was.
Blossom stopped and turned around, firing a quick and weak heat beam at the master at the cost of hurting her swollen eye, only for him to block it with his Duranium dao. The huge machete-like sword didn't even look like it'd been heated. When it was for naught, she kicked herself up into a hovering position once more, dodging another swing before swinging her fists in turn, but each of her strikes was met with cold Duranium, and it was hurting her fists.
Bubbles emerged behind Master Pang, having overwhelmed his second accompanying disciple with her sonic scream, but he'd heard her all too well and threw another slice in her direction, hacking her in the side, sending her rolling on the ground once more, this time with an alarming amount of blood splashing in her wake.
"Bubbles!" Blossom shouted, afraid of her sister, before putting on a frown and starting up a renewed flurry of punches and kicks aimed at the master, who continued blocking her blows with his annoyingly smooth and perfect moves. He then counterattacked unexpectedly, hacking at her side as he did with her sister, the agonizing wound causing Blossom to back away, returning to the ground as she clutched her side.
Master Pang's face had been cold all the while, but it'd melted when there was a lull in their fiery exchange.
"I give you one more chance, girl. You leave and I won't chase," the master offered once more. Blossom was actually tempted, but her past experience with a certain other sword-wielding villain had informed her well on what she should do.
"No!" Blossom screamed before running away.
"You fool!" the master shouted and gave chase, swinging his dao in her direction, missing her by mere inches. Blossom ran towards the wall before bouncing on it, dodging another swing by a hair's width. She grabbed the master's single-edged sword by the blunt side and with a heave while air-braking using her X-thrusts, threw him into the same wall. She felt his grip on the terrifying medieval implement fail, and she threw it away - without training in medieval weapons, she didn't know what to do with it.
But the Chinese martial artist wasn't done yet. Drawing his other sword - a Jian, which was a double-edged straight sword - he backed away from Blossom towards the center of the restaurant, the first true signs of pain and fatigue showing. Blood snaked down his nostrils, likely from the force of the impact. He wiped them away quickly. He got into a stance, pointing his sword at Blossom as he rested two fingers of his other arm on the blade of the Jian. The blade glowed brightly in Blossom's vision, actively discouraging her.
With a frustrated shout, Blossom charged the master, only to feel the Duranium slicing across her face as the man danced away from her crude attack. Blossom fell on her knees, clutching her face, blinded by blood and tears.
The master turned to watch Blossom but did not go on. For a fighter of his caliber, it was a huge waste of an opportunity to finally defeat an opponent. But he wasn't wearing the looks of a victorious fighter. Bubbles had been watching him from a distance, still clutching her side to stem the bleeding there, and she could see the look on his face. It was more like concern, or a kind of sadness too complex for her to understand.
"You are good fighter, little girl," Master Pang said. "And children should be cherished. I taught many. I don't enjoy this."
"Well, you're certainly not going to enjoy this!" Buttercup yelled as she charged him with a sword salvaged from one of the master's disciples. Bubbles took this opportunity to hover to Blossom. Taking her leader sister's hands off her face, she examined the wound.
It was terrifying. The master had made a diagonal cut across her face, deep enough to scrape the bone. It had started above her left brow and gone down diagonally to just below her right eye. The bridge of her nose had been ripped most savagely. The pain was so severe that Blossom was hugging Bubbles around the waist and crying into it and wouldn't let go, and Bubbles had given up trying to treat her; it wouldn't be possible anyway as they were in the heat of combat. All she could do was watch Buttercup trying to take on their toughest opponent yet.
The toughest of the three started out strong at first, swinging her sword wildly at the master from her uniquely low vantage point, which the master actually had trouble blocking because of her height. Something was distracting him too.
"You killed my disciple!" he yelled as he continued to parry Buttercup's sword strikes. He'd known what she did, but being in the heat of combat with Blossom, he could do nothing about it. Buttercup's bloody hands had reminded him of the fact.
"And I'm going to kill you!" Buttercup yelled madly as she sustained her attacks, irritated again by how elusive her enemy was. It took some getting used to, but Master Pang was soon spinning out of the way of Buttercup's attacks and parrying her blows with ease, weakened as she was by injury.
Soon, the master had gone on the offensive once more, throwing swings and slices at Buttercup, who blocked his blows clumsily. His attacks came erratically, tactically, coming from all directions and in no discernible patterns.
"Húndàn!" the master cursed before finally finding his opening and stabbing Buttercup in the chest. Bubbles gasped when she saw it. But Buttercup had sidestepped it just enough that the stab had only sliced the skin below her armpit, going through tactical gear and uniform. Still, it'd hurt like high heaven. Withdrawing his blade, he went for more slices, and with Buttercup looking like she was ready to pass out from the pain all over her body, she couldn't block them all. Soon, another cut landed on her wrist, forcing her to drop her salvaged Duranium sword. Blood spurted out from the veins there.
Jumping out of the way, Buttercup drew her pistol, but the master had seen that move before. She was able to get a shot off, but it'd missed when he knocked it out of the way with the flat side of his sword. With a spin and an accurate slice, he managed to cut off the barrel of the pistol, just like what he did with Blossom. Knocking aside Buttercup's pistol arm, who accidentally discharged the damaged pistol, resulting in another chamber explosion, Master Pang directed another slice at Buttercup's head.
But Buttercup was still conscious enough to try to dodge it. She'd only gone sluggish, but it was enough for the unthinkable to happen. Buttercup's left cheek was sliced open, extending her lips closer to the ear. It flapped like loose pieces of cloth as Buttercup screamed, her hand going up to her face, covering the grievous wound. She fell backward, falling to the floor as she continued her boyish screams.
"Stupid girl!" the master said. Again, he'd passed up an opportunity to kill one of them. Instead, he just turned his red gaze on the three of them. "Your powers are no substitute for decades of training!"
Bubbles was able to get Blossom to stop bear-hugging her. She ran to Buttercup to drag her away, but the latter Girl pushed her away.
"Get off me! Don't touch me, Bobble-head!" Buttercup shrieked at her. She'd opted to crawl away on her own power, her hand still covering the unsightly tear on her cheek.
"I gave my warning," Master Pang said, though he'd made no moves. "I do not wish to kill the three of you."
"You seem like a nice man, Mister Pang," Bubbles said as she stepped forward. She'd understood. If it had been someone else, like Mojo Jojo or Mister Lumpkins, or Naga, they would have been executed by now. "But why are you helping these bad people?"
Master Pang did not seem like the type of man to fight them, to defy the law. He was far too merciful, and he didn't talk like the usual criminal types. He didn't look like them either. His unmatched martial skills aside, he appeared to be an ordinary fellow one would meet on the streets on an everyday basis.
"They are my brothers. I have family in the Triad," Master Pang divulged. "They make mistakes. But they are still family. I make mistakes too. I have no choice but to fight you."
"But you do have a choice, we all do!" Bubbles said. "Is it the drugs?" Bubbles had noticed his eyes, which reminded her of her own back when she had nearly killed her own Dad.
It was obvious from the look on his face that Master Pang was rather surprised and taken aback when Bubbles revealed that she knew about the drugs. Little girls weren't supposed to know about those things.
"Yes and no. No, and yes. That wasn't my first mistake. It won't be my last," the master said. "You might not know this girl, but even your family could lead you down a dark path. But they are family all the same."
Little did Master Pang know that Bubbles wasn't as naive as he thought she was.
"We don't get to choose family. We don't get to choose destiny. We will have to fight to the death," the master went on. "Just know that I am sorry." He pointed his sword at Bubbles. "I welcome you to make the first move."
"You don't have to do this," Bubbles insisted. "L-look at what we're doing now… We're talking. Can't we just talk some more? Why can't we all be friends? Even the Amoeba Boys-"
"The Amoeba Boys?" Master Pang interjected quickly. That name meant trouble. The reason why he was roped in by the Triad, forced into protecting it really by some subtle coercion, had been a secret, but it was all making sense now. He lowered his sword. "You're right. We do need to talk."
"You hear that, Blossom, Buttercup?" Bubbles said with a victorious smile, turning to Blossom. "We're just going to talk like friends!" She then turned to Buttercup, wondering how she would take the news. But Buttercup was nowhere to be seen! "Buttercup?"
Bubbles turned to look at Master Pang after scanning around the room. He was wearing a puzzled look, probably wondering what was going on with Bubbles when he stumbled forward. Small, gloved hands were holding tightly onto his shoulders. As he leaned forward in his stumble, Bubbles could see clearly Buttercup's head, with its raven hair and an angry scowl.
"I told you I was going to kill you!" Buttercup screeched. In his panic, Master Pang tried to throw the enhanced little girl off him, but she was too strong. He tried stabbing her too, but with her on his back, he couldn't do anything beyond damaging her uniform and inflicting a superficial cut before his sword was wrenched away from him at an odd angle. A metallic clang informed everyone involved that she had thrown his sword far away.
"Buttercup, no!" Bubbles yelled. It was only at this time that Blossom found the strength to even stand up; it was then that she realized she had lost control of Buttercup when she was incapacitated by pain. "He's a friend!"
But Buttercup did not listen. She shoved a hand into the master's mouth while he was screaming and got a grip on his upper jaw by the teeth. With her other hand, she did the same with his lower jaw. With all her strength, she began pulling them apart; the master just kept on screaming and trying to fling Buttercup off him while trying to wrench her hands off, but she was far too strong. Soon, cracking could be heard, and after that, his jaws just gave way. As if electrocuted, the master stood still, and when Buttercup pulled his lower jaw off, he finally fell to his knees.
"But…ter…cup?" Bubbles mumbled in shock as she watched her new friend sinking to the floor in a pool of his own blood. Buttercup, however, cared little about her meekest sister's feelings and stepped over the fallen Master Pang's body as she walked towards Blossom and Bubbles.
"Ew… He's gross," Buttercup commented before throwing the master's lower jaw over her shoulder.
"Why did you-!?" Bubbles couldn't even finish her sentence. The sight before her was too horrifying. Well, more horrifying than the others that came before it. "You didn't need to kill him! He was my friend!"
"Your friend!?" Buttercup cried before wincing. Her hand went up to the gaping wound in her cheek. It would hurt whenever she so much as open her mouth slightly. The feeling of her skin flapping like flags or window blinds made her uneasy, pain aside. "Your friend did this to me, Bubbles!" She showed the meek one her split cheek, more out of scorn than to prove a point. Predictably, Bubbles shrunk away from the sight of that wound, horrified. She could see the rest of Buttercup's teeth through the wound, as well as the inside of her mouth more than she normally could, even if briefly.
"I'm going to have so much trouble eating…" Buttercup muttered and winced. She spat a fat glob of blood onto the ground. Her hand went back up to the wound, covering it. Her gloved hand had been soaked instantly, and blood was dripping down from it.
Blossom, in the meantime, was silent. The blood and gore were far more than she anticipated. It wasn't just Master Pang. Looking around her, there were numerous dead bodies. One of the master's disciples lay on the ground, headless with the remains of his head all around the neck, pulp-like. Flies were already beginning to swarm around the grey matter and red.
The police would arrive soon after. Mister Mullens and his task force would pay a surprise visit, but beyond a simple greeting and some much-needed hugs, he wasn't as talkative as he used to be. Much of his talking was done when he told them that the Triad's leadership was intercepted and killed by an unidentified drive-by convoy shortly after they vacated the restaurant, and he'd told them with a hint of accusation, something that had affected Blossom most deeply. After answering some questions and showing the police investigators around the restaurant, the Powerpuff Girls flew away for some much-needed medical attention and love from their Dad, Professor Utonium.
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1348.
"And- and- he was actually nice too but we were fighting and I don't feel good that he's now dead even though we were fighting…" Blossom cried towards the end of her story; she was barely able to make any sense, but the professor understood. He wrapped a towel around her after finishing up with the stitching and application of antiseptics and painkillers. "I'm sorry I had to kill someone but I didn't want to-"
"Blossom, stop," the professor comforted the Girl. "I understand. Whatever motivation they had, it doesn't matter. Just look at the three of you! Look at how they cut the three of you up!" He gestured to Buttercup, who had long passed out in her hospital bed from a mix of exhaustion, pain and the effects of her medication. He had to tend to her first as her split cheek was the worst injury between the three of them.
"Thanks, Dad," Blossom replied sullenly. She'd kept her eyes closed to stop herself from crying. She felt Dad's hand on her shoulder, and despite the pain all over her body, she managed to smile when she felt the professor's love once more. It was precious, considering how rare he'd been expressing it lately, what with Bunny hogging it all.
But the feeling didn't last. Opening her eyes up, the first thing she saw was Bunny, who had been assisting with the professor's medical work, transporting instruments and medication, doing little things like that to help. Selicia - Mom - was beside her, rubbing her hand against the back of her head as she was cleaning Duranium instruments at the basin. As if she knew, Bunny turned to return her gaze, and they made eye contact.
Bunny's gaze felt judgemental, but then Blossom knew that it was all her all along - despite her honesty this time around, she was still being deceitful all around. She had painted herself as a victim this one time and had neglected to mention that she had been the aggressor all along, and working with Townsville's biggest trio of crimelords, to add to her guilt. Good ol' Dad had assumed that she had been working with the police, and remained a victim for every single one of her operations because of how she had been dragged into law enforcement since her creation.
It hardly felt like it, but Blossom thought it would be worth it. Townsville would be safe after all this and Bunny would be left with just the remnants of the various criminal factions to deal with. But most importantly, at least Dad would be paying more attention to her whenever she fought crime. Yes, he'd comfort her, and be proud of her. And that was the only thing that mattered.
Still, it felt as if she had killed one too many…
A/N: That was long. Due to the length of the fight, there was no clear way to separate this into two parts. The only option is to leave it as one part. Do let me know if I can execute this chapter any better if you have any ideas.