A/N: To view the artwork embedded near the bottom in this chapter, go to the same chapter in the Archive of Our Own version of this story
A/N: (11 MAR 2020) Edited Buttercup's food choice to account for her facial injuries.
Chapter 87: Memories
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Sal's Milk Bar.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1621.
Mister Mullens and company's next meet-up with the Powerpuff Girls was unusual. Normally, they were all chatterboxes whenever they'd meet, but now, everything was unusually quiet. But that wasn't the only change in tone.
For one thing, Mister Mullens had brought half his task force over to the bar. Though Sal, the owner of the bar, was glad to have his store patronized by an influx of cops (accompanied by the Powerpuff Girls, no less!), he couldn't help but worry that the kids and teenagers that formed his usual customer base sitting in their little corners were intimidated - it'd mean having his business affected in the long run.
Blossom couldn't figure out why Mister Mullens would change up their weekly meet-up this way. She could already tell that it wouldn't be as fun. Leaning carefully against the back of her seat on her less-injured shoulder, she waited for her strawberry milkshake to arrive. It wouldn't be too long now, as she observed that half of Mullens' Lombardi task force hadn't ordered anything beyond light snacks and mineral water. She observed the crowd in the room. They were mostly plainclothes officers, but everyone in Townsville knew how a cop looked like, and Blossom was fast catching up. Some of them were staring back at her, and some of those people were giving her the look - a kind of condescending, accusing glare.
She turned her eyes to the outside in an attempt to find something less distressful to look at. Her eyes followed an apartment up to its roof, then to the billboard, and it was here where she noticed another oddity of the day.
It was her! And it wasn't just her! Now, even Bubbles and Buttercup were pictured on the billboard. They weren't illustrations either. They were photographs. Young though she was, Blossom could tell the difference. This time, all three of them were posing as if they were in the middle of a firefight, though it was clearly just photography.
'The Powerpuff Girls - Storming the breach against crime!' the title and subtitle read respectively.
Blossom couldn't remember ever posing for such a photograph. What on Earth was going on?
"You look too bored for someone so young," a familiar voice said to her. An old, gravelly voice. Blossom turned to it. Garrett Mullens, the old detective. He slipped into the seat opposite her, looming over her like a giant.
"Hi, Mister Mullens…" Blossom greeted him again. She'd previously done so when she got out of the family sedan.
"How are you feeling? I'm surprised your Dad allowed you to leave the house, considering," he said.
"I'm fine…" Blossom muttered nervously. She found herself playing with the napkin on the table she was sitting behind.
"Are you?" the detective said cryptically. There it was again. He sounded skeptical about something. Blossom didn't dare look at him.
Silence prevailed for a minute. The waitress came and went, delivering milkshakes to the both of them. "Enjoy," she said absentmindedly before walking away to serve another batch of lactic goodness.
"Is there something - anything - you want to tell me?" Mister Mullens asked him. There was a vague undertone of desperation, barely felt by Blossom. The detective was not one to beg, even when it came to a little girl, or an enhanced uber-human, whichever took precedence.
"I missed you…" Blossom mumbled and forced a smile. "That's all."
Mullens didn't look convinced at all. He leaned back, decided to back off. There was no sense ruining the party atmosphere - or at least what remained of one after the maiming of the Girls, after the change in their professional arrangements. Picking up his milkshake, he took a sip from the straw and winced. He was still not used to the taste, the texture. He hadn't drank milkshake for decades before he met the Girls. His beverage of choice had been hard alcohol for a long time until recently, that had changed thanks to the Girls too.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Sal's Milk Bar.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1624.
Bubbles, on the other hand, was playing with her milkshake, unable to face the being sitting on the stool next to her.
"Raren't you gonna ralk to re?" he said. Bubbles didn't reply immediately. She didn't know how to even begin. Ever since the resolution of her drug problem, she hadn't really talked to Stanley, not during their third month's birthday, not just now, when he was there alongside Mister Mullens to assess the damage she and her sisters had done to the Chinese Triad. "Rurrles?"
"Are we still friends?" Bubbles finally managed to squeak, almost swallowing her words as she wasn't sure if she had chosen the right words. Every word felt like a landmine.
"Rof course, Rurrles," the talking dog said. With some difficulty, it enclosed the straw sticking out of its cup of milkshake with its lips before taking a suck of the flavored milk. Human tools were weird for him. He then puts its foreleg around Bubbles' shoulders before continuing: "Ri runderstand rhat you rere going through. Ri ron't blame you for hurting me. Resides, Ri'm rall better r-now. Took just days to heal."
Bubbles didn't reply again.
"Are you rokay, Rurrles?" the sentient dog asked again. He whined under his breath, tried to keep the expression of his worries down to a minimum. With his animal instincts still strong, the fact that he could keep his reactions under control was herculean in itself.
"I can still feel it, Mister Talker," Bubbles said. Her hands tightened around whatever they happened to be grasping; her cup and her napkin.
"Feel rhat?" Stanley asked.
"It's still inside me," Bubbles mumbled. Just thinking about it made her hands shake. Seeing Master Pang had reminded her of her own addictions, brought it up to the forefront once more. Those red eyes on him were very much like hers, veins popped up, glowing red.
"You rean the drugs?" Stanley asked, but it was more of a rhetorical question. He knew what she meant.
"I still want it," Bubbles said hungrily, and she wasn't thirsting for her milkshake. "Even though it doesn't feel as bad."
"Rut you're fighting rit," the talking dog tried to encourage her, and could only hope that he did.
"I know its wrong. I don't want to hurt Daddy again, or Blossom, or Buttercup, or B-" Bubbles stopped the moment she realized who she was going to mention. General Blackwater had expressly told her not to discuss Bunny with anyone else but those who already knew about her. He'd repeated that order again when he realized it was milk bar day with Detective Mullens.
"Ror who?" the talking dog asked, and when Bubbles remained quiet, he assumed that she was just struggling with her unresolved addiction and couldn't talk right.
"Nothing," she finally said.
"Ri can runderstand. Ri used to want to reat ranimals ralive," Stanley confessed. It was back in the days when he had just escaped confinement from the USDO, then named Organization. He had to resort to desperate measures to survive, hunting to fill his stomach, sometimes chomping down on his hapless prey even while they were still squawking and struggling. As he was constantly on the run, he didn't have the luxury of executing his prey painlessly. He was already sentient then and understood how inhumane it was. It ate at him just like how he ate his prey. The satisfaction of the hunt got to him, but if dogs have souls, then it felt as if he might have lost a part of it. It was said that all dogs go to heaven, but Stanley wasn't so sure about that back then.
"Oh… That's bad… Do you still want to? Eat other animals, I mean…" Bubbles muttered, still trapped in her own little cave of misery.
"No, not really. Besides, reating ranimals raw don't taste as good as cooked meals," Stanley said. "So you see, Rurrles, rit won't be bad forever."
For some reason, Bubbles didn't quite find the talking dog's account of his struggles with 'addiction' comforting.
In the meantime, Buttercup was being accompanied by Junior Detective Olivia, but not much had been going on between them, no conversations to be had. Instead, Buttercup had been taking full advantage of Mister Mullens' generosity. She was sipping up her second glass of mint chocolate milkshake, and that was after having a banana split, though that was no match for the chocolate sundae she had at first. The best part? They weren't hard on her fresh Glasgow smile!
"So… I take it that the food's great?" Olivia said for the lack of topic of discussion.
"Yeah, and the milkshake too," Buttercup said in between sips.
"I bet the massacre at Wuxia Street's even better…" Olivia muttered sarcastically under her breath. She was still bitter over the kills Buttercup had made at the Chinese restaurant where the Powerpuff Girls had raided the Chinese Triad's front. Many were killed where they would have otherwise been more useful alive.
"Of course it is," Buttercup said, surprising Olivia. She'd muttered really quietly, and Buttercup wasn't supposed to hear it. Unknown to her, Buttercup's hearing was enhanced, and all she had to do was focus it to hear even the faintest of sounds. In the end, Olivia had put it down to her own carelessness, however, thinking that she had spoken too loud without knowing it.
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Smith Cottages.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 2213.
Bunny had scarcely the time to recover from her grief when she was called upon to execute another operation. This time, it was a raid on a police precinct that was tipped off to be staffed predominantly by corrupt cops, which was made known to the USDO by its intelligence agents. It was a chance to hobble the insiders in the Townsville Police Department. While it wouldn't destroy the top echelon of its hierarchy - only temporarily paralyze its middle managers - it was a step in the right direction towards gaining the upper hand… especially if she could take the police chief there alive for interrogation.
She had arrived a distance from the Smith Cottages as usual, as dictated by standard operating procedures pertaining to black ops and stealth missions. She was briefed in a USDO safehouse by a USDO intelligence agent, who directed her towards the area via the underground metro tunnels. As she had to approach the area undetected, it was the only way. It had been days into her intervention on crime in Townsville, and it was projected by USDO intelligence that all the elements of crime might already be suspecting her involvement.
In the metro tunnels, she had free reign to dash at high speeds towards the Outskirts, but she had to get out of the way of incoming trains every so often. It was a new experience for her, but something she quickly got used to. At least it didn't involve killing innocent people - that was something she was grateful for.
And she was there within minutes, despite having to dash all the way to the end of the line. Under the cover of underground darkness, she made her way through service tunnels and staff rooms in a route she memorized with a map shown to her by Rook. The only event of note on the way was when she had to knock out a metro maintenance worker before he noticed her. Rook had allowed her to - just - incapacitate any innocents in the way, something she was grateful towards him for.
After going through the sewers and ending up in the basement of a maintenance station, she stopped for a minute to prepare herself. It was that time of the day again when she'd have to start killing for the good of her family, and for good people in general. She was just terrified, terrified that she would have to silence any innocent people caught in the crossfire.
She sat there with her knees tucked up to her chest, hiding behind a shelf, rocking herself like a lunatic. She closed her eyes, tears threatening to spill. She thought back to the past. 'Think happy thoughts', her Dad once told her, back when she barely knew how to speak. But there was a more recent memory, one that gave her so much hope where there was little in the first place…
The City of Townsville. Suburbs. The House.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 1514.
"Bonk!" Bubbles imitated a Puppet Pal, Mitch, as she tried her best to control the actual puppet version of the TV character. She couldn't help but giggle after that when she saw that she had actually managed to hit Blossom's puppet Clem.
"Bonk who?" Blossom imitated her own TV character, though her tone was anything but a match to Bubbles. Instead, she sounded like she was going to cry. It'd made Bubbles upset to see her sister this way.
"What's wrong, Blossom?" Bubbles asked, putting down little puppet Mitch. The purple-skinned, top hat-wearing skinny puppet clattered on the mini-stage they had set up. Blossom and Bubbles had even arranged an elaborate puppet stage for the 'show'. Blossom did the same, letting his shorter, fatter Clem drop. Bunny had been watching them control the puppets and found it sad that she couldn't watch the show that Bubbles promised to put up for her. "Did I do it wrongly?"
"No, it's just…" Blossom tried to explain, but she found it hard to.
"You were good, Blossom," Bubbles said, thinking that perhaps Blossom wasn't confident in her own puppeteering skills. "You were the one who taught me how to move Mitch, remember? After I got Dad to buy us the puppets at the puppet show?"
"It's not that!" Blossom suddenly yelled, causing everyone to jump. The only person who was spared this sudden outburst was Buttercup, who had confined herself in the walk-in closet after their late lunch and meeting with General Blackwater. Despite getting an injection from Dad reluctantly, she was still in pain, and last the other Girls checked, she was sitting in there and hugging 'Blankie', a torn towel that used to belong to Mom. Like how Blossom was starved of Dad's attention, Buttercup hadn't been able to spend much time with Mom at all, partly due to Bunny but also partly due to her.
"I… I'm sorry," Blossom apologized quickly after yelling. She quickly fell back into herself, unaware of her surroundings. "It's just… Those people we killed…"
"Blossom!" Bubbles gasped, her hands going up to her hands. She turned to look at Bunny, shocked. She was expecting Bunny to react in the same way, except she didn't. Instead, she just looked concerned about Blossom. "We weren't supposed to talk about that in front of Bunny…" She'd said that with resignation. The damage was done. Bunny heard.
"Talk about what?" Bunny asked, her slightly deeper voice sounding like some kind of warning. But it was too late.
"We… we've been killing criminals," Bubbles said, herself feeling as culpable for everything that had happened since she had always been in the position to stop Blossom and Buttercup from killing anyone else. It just didn't feel right, knocking out her sisters after what she nearly did on the behest of the Fairy Godmother back when she was hooked on His Secret 2.0.
"I know it was all to help the three of them turn a new leaf, and… for Townsville's good but…" Blossom mumbled again. "Killing is bad and… I've been killing… I'm confused."
Bunny got up next to Blossom, putting her hand gently on her shoulder. She knew exactly how Blossom felt. She'd wished that she could talk all about her missions and what she'd been doing out there, to show Blossom that they were in the same boat together, but it was impossible. Her missions were all classified.
"Killing isn't wrong as long as you're killing the right people and keeping us safe. That's what General Blackwater said," Bunny said, before putting her head on Blossom's shoulder. Bubbles stared at Bunny, refusing to believe what she had just heard. "You're not wrong, Blossom."
Blossom looked like she was ready to explode, something which terrified Bubbles more, and when Blossom pushed Bunny away so hard that she ended up skidding along the ground and slamming into the wall, Bubbles jumped.
"Go away!" Blossom screamed. "You're terrible! Don't talk to me!"
The sudden shock of it had left Bunny crying on the ground.
"Blossom!" Bubbles shouted, still in shock and unable to believe what Blossom had done, and what Bunny had just said. Had she been killing people too? For a time, she was just frozen there, unsure of what to do - it felt as if everyone was guilty of something. Who should she help then?
In the end, she decided that none of them were beyond help. Blossom had taken the leap to forgive her for a crime that would have been unforgivable otherwise, and Bunny was far younger than they were. She remembered how ignorant and innocent she was back in the early, helmet-wearing days of their involvement in crime-fighting. She had let her sisters down and fled when she should have been helping to fend off the bad guys.
Walking over to Bunny, Bubbles took her by the hand, pulling at her to signal for her to move. Even while crying inconsolably, Bunny knew what to do. Together, they got out of the room. Without access to their own playing area, there was little they could do, but Bubbles had some ideas.
They went down to the lab together, past Mom, who was setting up some metal shutters at the windows of the living room. Bubbles got Dad, who was otherwise occupied with his computer, to come along as well.
"Dad, I need help with something," Bubbles had asked politely. "Please?"
"And what would that be, young lady?" the professor, despite working on something seemingly important, had entertained her candidly.
"I want to show Bunny the tunnel," Bubbles said. Professor Utonium looked at Bunny expectantly, with a smile on his face, but it quickly leveled out to match her still-present sadness. Bubbles saw that Dad had noticed, and quickly explained it away: "Blossom and Bunny were fighting, so I brought her down here instead."
Bubbles had considered finding a less implicating excuse but decided that any further lies on top of the ones Blossom had been feeding Dad about their activities outside would be intolerable.
"It wasn't that bad…" Bubbles said, thinking of her leader sister too, who she thought had been brave in the way she had been making all the decisions for them. "She was just really upset and so was Bunny…"
"You've always been sugary sweet, you know that, Bubbles?" the professor praised the kindest, gentlest of the quartet. After ruffling Bubbles' hair, he got up to accompany her to the 'tunnel'. "I'll have a little talk with Blossom later, but for now, let's go on our merry way to the tunnel."
The 'tunnel' had turned out to be the massive wind tunnel Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup would use to practice flying at home. The professor took his place at the control panel while Bubbles opened the reinforced glass door of the machine before entering the massive tube section. This time around, she had decided to forgo the use of her flight pack, seeing that the wind conditions in the tunnel would be predictable.
"Are you ready, Bubbles?" the professor asked over the mic on the control panel that would broadcast his voice into the tube section of the machine. Bubbles jumped and hovered in place before giving the professor the thumbs-up.
"Look at how I fly, Bunny!" Bubbles called out into the mic within the tube. Her voice was channeled out through a radio, electronically filtered. The professor would then activate the wind tunnel before turning up the speed to eleven - the machine wasn't designed for something as fast as the Girls. It was only through modifications made to the fan and circuitry that allowed the machine to match their current speed.
Bubbles would fly in a straight line at first, baby-blue X-haust particles leaving via her feet, forming a straight, fluorescent line. But then she would begin spinning, making a double-helix pattern with her baby-blue X-contrail.
It'd made Bunny forget her woes at the moment. She smiled and laughed as Bubbles maintained her aerial acrobatics. For the finale, Bubbles gave herself several micro-boosts, something The Three had been working on during the numerous times she had to fly to crime scenes, creating huge orbs in her X-contrail every time she boosted her speed.
But that wasn't all. After a short break, Bubbles would then carry Bunny on her back and fly again in gentler windows. The two Girls would giggle and laugh while they were at it, something which endeared the professor even more to them.
Blossom would visit belatedly, only to get an earful from the professor. It wasn't a pleasant experience - she was helpless in explaining herself as she couldn't mention Bunny's admission to killing for fear of revealing her own. She was forced to apologize to Bunny. She'd kept her resentment to herself in the meantime, though not well enough for it to be invisible to Bunny.
Before Mom took Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup out to meet Detective Mullens, Olivia and Stanley Talker at Sal's Milk Bar, Bubbles would tell Bunny a story at Dad's study. It was a story of their first attempt at fighting crime in the First Battle of Townsville Central Bank. Bubbles recounted how humiliating it was to be the first to go down, and after what would now be considered an inconsequential attack - a shotgun blast to the eye, although painful, wasn't enough to even scratch her. Bubbles would tell Bunny about Blossom and how her first thought was to rescue her despite Buttercup's protests and General Blackwater's disapproval...
(To view the artwork embedded in this chapter, go to the same chapter in the Archive of Our Own version of this story)
"Blossom isn't a bad sister," Bubbles concluded. "She loves us, and I guess she's just really sad…"
What had saddened her, though, was how Blossom seemed to have changed such that her memory of her was better than her current form…
The City of Townsville. Outskirts. Smith Cottages.
03 MAR (Friday) 1989. 2214.
Bunny opened her eyes. Yes, her sisters were good. Bubbles had been kind to her, and so was Dad. Come to think of it, Mom was sweet to her when she bade her farewell just before driving her elder sisters to Downtown for their milkshakes. If only she could join them!
Yes, her family had been good to her, and the time had come to protect them…