Chapter 107: Ambition
The City of Townsville. Warehouse District. En route to Sander & Son's Imports.
08 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1119.
Following the smoke coming from Blossom, Bubbles flew downward, diving towards the ground to intercept her before she hit the floor. Bubbles had never fallen from this high before, and she wasn't sure if Blossom could take such a height without getting injured.
The only good thing about flying high was that it gave Bubbles plenty of them to reach Blossom before her leader sister reached the floor first. Fifty floors, forty-five, forty. Bubbles had never been this afraid of flying ever since her first time traversing Townsville by flight. Thirty-five, thirty. It was as if the ground was rushing towards her, and not the other way around. It was as if the district full of warehouses was a wall of concrete, coming towards her.
Twenty-five, twenty. Bubbles was getting closer to Blossom. Just a few more yards… Fifteen, ten floors. Bubbles force herself to fly faster, but it was exhausting. eight floors. Six floors. Blossom had fallen into a valley formed between two warehouse-offices. Four floors high, Bubbles swiped for Blossom's arm, only to miss. Her heart skipped a beat when that happened. Three floors above ground, Bubbles made another attempt when she managed to inch a little closer, grabbing Blossom frantically by the Kevlar vest. Spinning herself upright, Bubbles flew in the opposite direction.
She could have sworn she could feel the street below with her toes just before she had beaten her inertia and started ascending. A close call, too close. Pulling Blossom up close, she hugged her from the back before airlifting her up to the roof of a nearby warehouse-office before setting her down.
Despite the massive forces at work, Blossom hadn't come to yet. Bubbles knelt down beside her and tried to shake her awake, but even that did not waken her. Putting two fingers on Blossom's neck, she felt for a pulse - it was hard at first, something which frightened Bubbles as she thought that Blossom was dead, but she found it after the initial scare. It was slow, but it was there.
Bunny's purple infrared beam had burned Blossom in the shoulder - at the very least, Bunny did not aim at any vital areas. Still, the heat was strong enough to melt a part of Blossom's vest. Concerned, Bubbles began stripping off her sister's vest. Underneath, Blossom's red uniform was burned too, so Bubbles had to remove Blossom's shirt.
What Bubbles found underneath that was both a concern and a relief. Blossom's shoulder had been burned red, but it wasn't severe. Still, it was a concern as the impossible happened: Bunny had injured Blossom on purpose, and it was all in the name of protecting her. It was something Bubbles couldn't agree with, no matter how mean Blossom was being towards Bunny. Why did it have to come to this?
While she waited for Blossom to return to consciousness, Bubbles set to work treating her, cutting off a fine layer of dried, partially-blackened dead skin before applying antiseptics and a roll of bandages from her personal medkit. Blossom had slept through all this, which was, again, both a concern and relief to Bubbles.
When she was done, Bubbles sat down on the floor, her knees pushed up to her chest as she hugged her legs. Something terrible had happened. Scratch that - lots of terrible things were happening. Bunny had injured Blossom, and she had flown off to fight the Russian Mob on her own. Now, Blossom wasn't waking up… Tears spilled out when the reality of the situation struck Bubbles hard, the trauma of both Blossom and her close call with the ground returning for the debt it was owed. Bubbles cried, alone and unsure of what to do.
Time passed, and the only way Bubbles could measure it was by her teardrops.
"This is Flight Control Five. What's the situation, over?" Bubbles' radio came to life, exactly when she wanted to be alone. Bubbles wanted to report what had happened at first but thought hard about it. She didn't want to get Bunny in trouble, no matter how wrong she was in doing harm to Blossom. She'd heard what Bunny said. She didn't hurt Blossom out of malice but did it out of misguided protectiveness.
Bubbles took a deep breath and tried her best to stop crying. Flight Control Five was impatient, however, and he continued to hound her while she tried to regain her composure.
"N-nothing, Mister Flight Control Five, we were just talking about how we could beat the bad guys," Bubbles lied.
"Why are you and Bravo-Four-Seven stationary while Bravo-Five-Zero is at the mission site? Over," the man behind the flight control questioned. How did the flight control people know about their locations and activity? The mystery of it resurfaced in Bubbles' mind. Had they been watching them? Bubbles did not recall ever seeing anyone on rooftops tracking them with binoculars or similar devices.
"We're… waiting for the signal from Bunny…" Bubbles lied. She had learned the art of deception during her darkest days. While it wasn't something she was proud of, putting it to good use was one way of making up for her past mistakes.
"Very well, Bravo-Four-Nine. Flight Control Five signing off," the voice in the radio said.
"Bunny… Stop…" Blossom mumbled in her unconsciousness, loud enough that Bubbles heard it. Turning around, she scrambled to Blossom's side. However, as she was afraid that Blossom might still be in a bad mood, she kept a distance and waited.
"Blossom…?" Bubbles murmured to her. Blossom's eyes fluttered open. The first thing she saw was the steely gray sky above, and a blob resembling… someone. Was it Bunny? Bunny! Blossom pushed the Girl she thought was Bunny away from her, before scrambling to her feet and backing away, a hand cupping her burn wound. She screamed in pain as the burning sensation returned. "Blossom, it's me!"
"Stay back! Stay away from me!" Blossom yelled defensively, her back meeting the roof railing. Her vision took time to clear.
"I'm Bubbles, don't you recognize me?" Bubbles tried to reassure her. It was only when Blossom's vision was sharper that she calmed down a little. The leader of the quartet clutched her head. It, too, was burning, and she could feel a headache coming on.
"What… happened?" Blossom asked, leaning against the railing behind her. Her short-term memory loss terrified Bubbles, who thought that Bunny had broke Blossom beyond fixing - or something.
"It's Bunny - she's gone off to fight the bad guys on her own…" Bubbles said, anemic. For all her powers, she felt helpless. There were so many problems - too many for her to handle.
"The- the Russian Mob?" Blossom said, rubbing her head. Slowly but surely, it was all coming back to her now. She was really mad, so mad that she couldn't immediately remember all the terrible things she had said to Bunny - or maybe it was just that she was coming out of her heat-induced fainting spell. But she remembered she was arguing with Bunny. There was a flash of purple after that, and the next thing she knew, she woke up where she was - where was she exactly? It didn't matter - it was all back now. "Bunny! How long was she gone?"
"I don't know… A long time ago?" Bubbles said, now feeling useless. She hadn't checked the time despite wearing the watch Agent Blake gave her.
"We have to go now! Bunny- the bad guys-!" Blossom slurred a little as she gave herself a running start to flight. Picking up Blossom's stuff, Bubbles hurried along beside her and pulled her to a stop.
"Are you sure you should be flying, Bloss? You don't look so good…" Bubbles said while handing Blossom her military top, jacket, and vest, which Blossom threw on haphazardly. "Remember what Dad told us? We shouldn't be flying if we're too tired, too hurt, or too sleepy…"
"Thanks, Bubbles," Blossom said as she was wiping sweat from her forehead as she adjusted the multiple layers of fabric she had just donned, leaving some opening for her still-sensitive burn wound. Bunny had done a number on her, and it was only a single burst of heat beam, likely one that wasn't very strong judging from how Bunny took practically no time to charge up. "Maybe you could hold my hand while we fly? I really don't want you to have to carry me. I can do it on my own… I just… need a minute."
The City of Townsville. Warehouse District. Sander & Son's Imports.
08 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1143.
Even before Blossom and Bubbles had landed next to the Sander & Son's Imports warehouse, they both already knew it was too late. Too much time had passed, and though it had only been half an hour - a mere moment to an adult - it felt like forever to the kids. Smoke was rising from shattered windows. There were dead bodies at the entrance. The entrance was a cargo bay door, and it had been torn open, the gigantic shutters left on the ground.
Touching down, the Girls inspected the bodies - there were six of them in all, and they had all sustained gunshot wounds, some to the head, others to the chest…
20 minutes ago…
Bunny looked over her shoulder again for the umpteenth time as she flew headlong towards Sander & Son's Imports at maximum speed. She knew she was slower than them because of her limited flight hours, and she had that paranoid feeling that Blossom and Bubbles were going to catch up to her in an attempt to stop her, but she was proven wrong every time she looked behind her.
She couldn't believe what she had just done. It felt like a crime, knocking Blossom unconscious with her heat beam - a technique Blossom herself had taught her after her birthday party. It felt like a betrayal, but it had to be done. If her previous tirade was anything to go by, Blossom wasn't being very rational despite her intelligence, and that could easily have gotten her killed. History had proven that Blossom (and Bubbles, and Buttercup) were not natural fighters, and what was more, her own recent failures had proven that the stakes were higher, and missions more difficult. The bad guys were fighting with teeth and claws to survive, and the Powerpuff Girls didn't have the teeth and claws to match.
In the distance, Bunny could already see Russian Mobsters guarding an entrance. She had zoomed her vision in, so she was still too far away for them to see her.
There was simply no time to plan the operation thoroughly. For all she knew, Blossom and Bubbles could be zipping towards her at any moment now. A frontal assault was in order.
Bunny turned invisible the moment she felt like she might be seen. Raising her MP5 in flight, she took aim and fired. The guards were far out of effective range, but with her visual acuity, hand-eye coordination, and flight altitude, it mattered little. She began firing while she was 1,500 feet away from the guards. Like a fighter jet, her ammunition was felt first before she was seen. At such a distance, she couldn't always make the shot and so she shot the men several times over.
By the time she had reached the effective firing range of her weapon, there was no longer the need to fire it.
Flying up to the building, she landed close to the cargo bay area. The men were guarding a cargo bay door in particular, not that it mattered. Gripping the shutters by a corner, she tore the whole thing off with a grunt. Sparks flew as the metal and mechanisms operating the shutter tore and broke under her post-Herculean strength. Her cloaking field dissipated by her will - now was not the time for stealth. More Russians were shouting in surprise from the inside. When the cargo bay door came loose, she threw it a fair distance away and rushed inside…
The City of Townsville. Warehouse District. Sander & Son's Imports.
08 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1145.
Walking into the warehouse with their guns drawn, Blossom and Bubbles came across more bodies, but these were different. A few of the Russian mobsters were shot dead, but beyond them, the affair became far more grisly. A few were split in half, their entrails lying in bloody heaps on the floor, or strewn about like ropes for lifting cargo. Still more were either beheaded or cut up with massive rifts in their bodies.
Looking behind them, all they saw were bullet holes, craters in the walls and floor, dying fire and shattered furniture. The mobsters had fought back, and on picking out the battlefield for weapons, saw that Bunny had been right about how dangerous it was. Using their Duranium vision, they could see Duranium firearms among the corpses, alongside some serious-looking firepower, even if they were conventional. AK-47s and RPGs, various machineguns, and even an anti-tank cannon emplacement. Awed though she might have been by the array of weapons, Blossom wasn't convinced that she couldn't handle it. Bunny was wrong at every front, that was Blossom's verdict, completely wrong. She was older, and the leader; she knew best.
Hovering up, the Girls searched the surrounding for more clues, and Bunny. However, she was nowhere to be found. Had she overcome them without losing her life? Across the aisles of warehouse shelves, the door leading into the office was open. The door had been torn off its hinges, a clear indication of who might have passed through the frames…
20 minutes ago…
Coming in from a corner of the cargo bay door, Bunny fired the remainder of her MP5 magazine into the first few men who had come to investigate. Three men were gunned down this way, and their return fire, sparse and rushed, had come to nothing.
There were more behind them. Bunny squeezed the trigger of her MP5 at one of them, only for there to be a dry click. Letting go of her MP5, she drew Ace's katana, gripping it two-handed.
She'd seen the shine of Duranium behind the men she killed initially. Dashing into the shelves to avoid the Duranium firearms, she let her invisibility field wash over her again as she scaled the shelves. Bullets, both conventional and Duranium, flew past her…
Except for one, which drove itself through the side of her Kevlar armor, drilling right through and grazing the soft skin there. Bunny winced as she reached the pinnacle of the shelves. Jumping down, she brought the sword down on the left-most mobster, splitting him from shoulder to stomach. For some reason, her cloaking field had come down - perhaps from the impact.
Rushing to take advantage of her second surprise attack, she sliced the next man closest to her just as he was turning his gun on her - the sword went right through his waist, splitting him in half, like a block of butter, in a shower of blood and entrails.
They were onto her now. She felt the tapping of machinegun shells on her armor as she sprinted to the next man, swiping her sword upwards to sever both his arms as he tried to shoot her with his Duranium rifle, before bringing it about and slicing open his stomach, spilling both blood and stomach fluid in equal measure.
There was, still yet, a third row of men, and she felt one of their Duranium bullets in her leg as she launched herself through the air, rolled on the ground before thrusting her sword upwards, stabbing another man in the heart - there was almost no resistance as if the man's flesh was air.
With the second row of Russian mobsters down, bunny ran towards the third. One of the bad guys had an RPG launcher. In his panic, he'd taken a quick aim at her and fired, but Bunny had ducked on her way towards another mobster with a heavy machinegun, the RPG flying over her head harmlessly before detonating at the back of the warehouse. The whole building shook as the glass was shattered and a fire started. There were more explosions as stored ammunition was ignited. It had started raining bullets and guns as cargo fell from the shelves.
Bunny brought Ace's sword across the machinegunner, who shielded his head with his massive gun - only for the gun's barrel to be sliced off… along with his head. Another rushed up to her with a Duranium machete, bringing it down on her, but Bunny was able to fluidly block the attack. With minimal strength, she pushed the man back with her sword one-handed. Stubbornly, the man came forward with another swing coming from another angle, which Bunny was able to block again - except she had a surprise this time in the form of her fist punching through his liver. Gripping the organ, she pulled it out before bringing her sword down on the stunned mobster. The blade had gone right through him vertically, from the skull to the middle of his chest.
That was when another Duranium bullet slammed into her - right arm. She dropped Ace's sword unwillingly. Thankfully, the Duranium gunner's rifle was bolt-action, giving Bunny time to charge up her ocular laser beams and slice through his neck, beheading him.
But it wasn't over. There was one more man, and he was sitting behind what was essentially a small artillery piece. He turned the massive thing towards her, but Bunny grabbed her sword and flew away before he fired it. The shot ended up making a huge crater in the ground. The warehouse shook once more. From the air, Bunny fired her twin laser beams, only to shave off the blast shield mounted on the anti-tank emplacement. The artillery piece fired once more, but once more, Bunny had flown out of the way. This time, it had made a hole in the wall.
The artillery's weakness was apparent. It was like shooting a fly with a cannon. Flying behind its firing arc, Bunny swooped down on the man behind the artillery piece, tackling him against the weapon, crushing him between herself and the artillery. When she backed off, the man fell on the ground in an awkward pose, like a broken twig, his torso bent at an unnatural shape. He screamed as he clawed at the ground, trying to get up, but his back was shattered and so it was an impossibility.
Touching down, Bunny walked up to the man and promptly stomped on his head, which burst like a watermelon. Blood and gray matter spilled in all directions, along with shattered pieces of bones and various other crushed organs.
Silence fell, but Bunny knew there was more. There was always more.
The City of Townsville. Warehouse District. Sander & Son's Imports.
08 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1146.
Blossom and Bubbles approached the door. It was dim inside, and the lights were flickering, besides. As they passed through the door, Bubbles hid behind Blossom, mewling and murmuring for Blossom to be careful, terrified of what they might find - terrified of both either finding Bunny or their enemies. More light was coming from the dying fire within than from the ceiling lights above. The warm firelight had given its color and glow to the many corpses all around the office, mostly in the middle where the furniture had been cleared and the circumference lined with chairs.
They could hear the sound of blade hacking flesh. The moment they turned a corner, they saw Bunny at the end of the office, but her back was turned. Bunny raised a weapon over her head - a fire ax - before bringing it down on a body again, burying the ax head deep into its torso. They inched closer towards her, despite being on the opposite end of the office, and as they sneaked closer to Bunny, Blossom kicked something cylindrical at her feet. The cylinder rolled towards a desk, banging the wooden support of the cheap furniture.
Looking down at whatever she had kicked, she saw that it was an expended flashbang. Looking up again, she saw that Bunny was turning around. She was soaked in blood - her face, her armor, her uniform - everything was painted red. Dropping the fire ax, Bunny picked up her sword again, her eyes glowing red.
Blossom and Bubbles were shocked.
"Who's there!?" Bunny yelled, shaking with rage, sword held at the ready. Upon spotting two vague shapes coming towards her, she sprinted forward, stopping only when she could get a better glimpse at whoever it was who sneaked up to her from behind.
It was Blossom and Bubbles. Panting aggressively, Bunny lowered her sword, the glowing red in her eyes fading away into purple.
20 minutes ago…
When she got to the office door, Bunny twisted the doorknob so hard that the lock broke. Pulling the whole thing off, she punched another hole in the door, on the opposite end of where the knob used to be. Finding purchase in the holes, Bunny pulled the door off its hinges and threw it away. Unclipping a couple of flashbangs simultaneously with one in each hand, Bunny primed the grenades and threw them into the office, one further away than the other. Bullets were fired in her direction, some Duranium, some conventional, but none had struck her.
Men screamed and yelled warnings to each other when the flashbangs detonated. Reloading her MP5 so quickly it took only a second, Bunny stormed the room, firing bursts such that there was no room for error. She knew that this was it - this was where the bosses and their Brigadiers were holed up in. Four guards were killed that way before they could even recover from the blinding light and deafening bang, and this was followed by some among the leadership.
By the time the Russian mobsters in the room had recovered their sight, Bunny was done firing bullets and had switched to firing her ocular beams, first ion beams to disable as many radios as she could, then laser beams - cutting men up in the process, opening chest cavities, halving men and beheading some. Only then did the remainder of the Russian mafia leadership returned fire.
Dodging bullets and running into cover in a cubicle, however, did not prevent Duranium bullets from piercing through her cover, so she stayed on the move. Sensing a gnawing sense of exhausting, she'd decided to switch up her tactics. Once again, she pulled her sword out, but something felt different…
Before she could understand the sensation Ace's sword was giving her, however, something exploded just behind her cover, blowing it up and sending her into the wall, cracking the concrete. A grenade launcher. Bunny had seen the grenadier while she was sliding down the wall, and he was reloading his grenade launcher while she struggled to get on her feet.
Scrambling on her knees, she noticed that she had lost her grip on her sword but it wasn't far away. Grabbing it, and once more feeling some kind of strange sensation building inside her, she sprinted around the office, under the protection of cover, hoping to reach the grenadier before he fired off another grenade.
Yes, yes! Bunny understood now. She felt much more driven, better motivated to kill. Focusing on the office cubicles, she was able to see through them. The grenadier had just closed her grenade launcher and readied it. He was about to fire! Jumping towards the wall, Bunny began running on it with the help of her flying ability, narrowly avoiding the epicenter of the blast that ensued. Men flanking the grenadier and behind him were firing at her, but her angle of approach, speed, small stature, and their panic made her an impossible target.
Letting herself fall, Bunny hacked a man vertically in half, exposing organs from the brain to intestines, before laughing maniacally from the power the sword had given her and putting a horizontal slice into the grenadier, who narrowly dodged her attack.
The other of the grenadier's defender leveled his rifle at Bunny, but the enhanced Girl was quicker than his trigger finger, rending both his arms and rifle in half before he could fire. A diagonal slice had nearly split the man in half, but it didn't matter as blood and organs spilled out in great amounts.
"Umri, suka!" The grenadier had pulled a machete out in the meantime and brought it down on her - somehow managing to connect with Bunny, nearly missing her face when she flinched away from the blow, making a downward, shallow cut on her cheek instead, before embedding it in the shoulder of her (un)powered armor. He simply didn't have the strength to split men in two like Bunny did, despite the machete he was wielding, which shone in multiple colors, as Duranium tended to do.
The machete was stuck, and the grenadier couldn't pull it out. Bunny swung Ace's katana upwards in an attempt to chop off the man's head, but he had leaned back to avoid the fatal blow. Bunny still had one more trick up her sleeve though - pulling her knife out, she stabbed the man in the heart.
There was no escaping it this time. The grenadier fell over, dead. Whoever was left alive had begun running. Bunny pursued them out of bloodlust. The sword! It was driving her forward!
There were only two men left with their backs turned to her. Soon, there were none. Returning to the grenadier that had made her life so difficult, she pulled a fire ax from the wall and started hacking him up; taking perverse pleasure from it that she had never felt before…
"Yes… Yes… Succumb to what you've always enjoyed DOING!" the sword seemed to tell her in her own mind. How it did, it didn't matter, for she was taking pleasure in the fruits of her labor, all alone now…
The City of Townsville. Warehouse District. Sander & Son's Imports.
08 MAR (Wednesday) 1989. 1147.
"Bunny! What happened to you!?" Bubbles exclaimed in shock.
"Have you been taking drugs?" Blossom questioned Bunny, but all she did was smile.
"It's okay, you're safe now," Bunny said with her silly smile, which graduated to an unhinged giggle. She opened her arms up as she approached Blossom, expecting a comforting hug. "You're safe. I protected you."
Blossom wasn't pleased. Not at all. Bunny had attacked her, dead bodies were everywhere in the warehouse - she counted over twenty - and now, there was a distinct possibility that Bunny might have gone down the same road as Bubbles. Her eyes had turned red and she was mutilating a dead body, both of which were sure signs of some kind of corruption.
Walking up to Bunny, Blossom punched her across the face, flooring her. It also had the intended effect of 'waking' Bunny up. But Blossom wasn't done yet, and as Bunny stood up, she began slapping her several times-
"Blossom! Stop!" Bubbles screamed, shocked once more now that Blossom, too, was backsliding as well. "Stop hitting her!"
But Blossom did not hear her. She went on to knee Bunny in the stomach, before giving her another hook across the cheek. Bunny fell to the floor a second time, too exhausted to resist Blossom's attacks.
And when Bunny was down, Blossom kicked her in the teeth. Bubbles pulled her back after that.
"Blossom, stop! You're hurting her!" Bubbles cried. Blossom shook her off violently.
"Like how she burned me just now!?" Blossom screamed at Bubbles, who recoiled at her wildness and borderline madness. "Look around you, Bubbles! Look at how many poor people she killed! Look at how messed up they were!"
"But…" Bubbles mewled, before falling silent. Blossom took some steps towards her aggressively, raising her hands at her, but stopped short of actually doing anything. Bubbles shrank in her presence, afraid of her own sister.
In the meantime, Bunny was rolling on the ground, clutching her mouth; it was still on fire from the kick Blossom gave her. She could taste blood, more so than before.
"Maybe that should straighten your teeth out!" Blossom taunted Bunny as she rolled on the ground. She thought it was funny, so she smiled. Crouching next to Bunny, she grabbed and pulled her ponytail up viciously so that she could face her. "Don't you dare attack me again. But you know what? I'm telling Daddy about you!" With that, Blossom slammed Bunny's face to the ground, got up, and walked away. She couldn't resist a smile. Maybe this way, Dad would pay more attention to her.
Bunny got to her knees, still in so much pain from both the battle and Blossom's abuse that she couldn't do any better. With her hands still clutching her suffering mouth, she murmured in muffled pleadings and protests, and when Blossom ignored her, Bunny crawled in pursuit.
"Blossom, don't!" Bunny finally cried. "No!"
Bubbles held her back while Blossom continued walking away.
"NO!" Bunny continued screaming.
"Bunny, stop," Bubbles said. "You can't stop her. You shouldn't."
"But… I protected her!" Bunny cried.
"No, Bunny!" Bubbles shouted angrily, pushing Bunny back. Bunny stood up, shocked that even Bubbles seemed to have turned against her. "Why? Why did you have to hurt Blossom and- and kill all these people?"
"I was protecting her - I was protecting you!" Bunny repeated herself. She couldn't believe that neither Blossom nor Bubbles seemed to understand her. "These men were really dangerous!"
"You didn't have to kill them, Bunny. We didn't want to kill. Blossom was wrong to hit you - but you were wrong to shoot her with your eye beam… and you shouldn't have killed everyone," Bubbles explained, and before Bunny could object any further, Bubbles, after some pause, took Bunny by the hand, deciding that there was no reason to be afraid of her, nor ostracize her. Truth be told, she seemed to retain more control than she did back when she was addicted to His Secret 2.0. Bunny had only done what she did out of naivete and misguided decisions, right?
"But- But-" Bunny continued to stammer in disbelief, at a loss for words at having been singled out and branded the wrongdoer.
"Come on, Bunny," Bubbles urged her youngest sister to follow. "We need to go now. There's nothing we can do here…"
Bunny reluctantly followed, but then she stopped. She started coughing, and it was serious enough that she bent double, then fell to her knees. Coughing several more times, she nearly threw up. Instead, blood dripped from her mouth to the floor, forming a small pool. At the same time, blood was dripping from her nostrils, and some had even welled up in her eyes.
But it was far more than that. Worse still, she was beginning to feel some pain in her joints, pain that wasn't there before. The pain seemed to be traveling in her blood. Lethargy overtook her at the same time.
"Bunny! Are you okay!?" Bubbles doubled back to Bunny, sinking to the floor next to her as she held her up. "It wasn't because of Blossom, was it?"
Bunny shook her head as she covered her mouth. She was still coughing up blood, until finally, after some time, it cleared up. Bunny didn't need her to say anything, however, and she didn't want her to. Dad would be devastated - already, she could imagine the look on his face just from what Blossom would tell him and the injuries she had sustained, the risk she took, and how narrowly she had evaded death. Adding her strange sickness on top of all that would be too much, excessive. She didn't want him to die of grief, as what he said he was afraid of.
"It's these men, isn't it?" Bubbles said, anger rising in her voice. "Maybe you're right after all! Still, I don't know if you should have killed them."
Pulling Bunny up, she led her out of the warehouse…