Chapter 118: Flight of Icarus (Part 3)
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Payne Avenue.
11 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 1221.
Blossom had been feeling exhausted, but the acute sensation was puzzling. She hadn't even exerted herself that much at all. The heat beams she had been shooting at the giant balloons weren't even that strong; it didn't take much to burst those rubber bubbles, and she had only blown up twenty of them.
Looking at her sisters, Bubbles, and Buttercup, they looked a little pale and spent. Bubbles was panting a little from exertion. What's going on? Blossom thought.
Blossom rubbed her eyes. Her vision was swimming and had become blurry. Noises and voices became muffled, echoing as though she was in a valley. She could barely hear Mayor Wilford cheering her on from the radio. One of her pink giant balloons was rising, and she was missing it out. She felt faint, and she would have collapsed had Bubbles not held her up.
"Are you okay, Blossom?" Bubbles asked, concerned about her leader sister. The strange thing was, she felt heavy, which shouldn't have been the case. It was normally a few hundred pounds before carrying something required conscious effort. "I could take you back to Daddy if you want…"
"Nothing, just… tired, I guess," Blossom said. She didn't want to ruin the parade, not when people worked hard to make it happen. She didn't want to disappoint her new friends - millions of them in number - by leaving prematurely.
That was when Bubbles could sense something. Like a moth drawn to a lamp, she let go of Blossom and turned to the source. It was a strange sensation. It wasn't something she could feel, not with her senses nor her thoughts and emotions. It wasn't even physical. She turned to the apartment buildings to her right, filled with cheering people even at the windows, but she wasn't even paying them any attention anymore. She looked up at the rooftop to see a strange figure up there, standing among the dark clouds, and increasingly heavy falling snow. It was somehow familiar to her, but where had she seen him before? She could vaguely make out red skin, dark hair, red clothes, black belt…thigh-high shoes, but that was just a view from afar. She knew he was monstrous.
"Blossom, Bubbles! You're missing your balloons!" Buttercup scolded the two of them as she was leaning against the railing, herself tired but trying her best to hide it.
Bubbles was fixated on the figure on the rooftop. She could hear him, hear him so clearly, even though he wasn't even speaking. The figure raised his arms, and it was only then did she realize that the figure didn't have hands. He had claws for hands instead.
"Rise, rise on my word!" the red-skinned thing said.
"Awaken and serve your Master unto death!" He said.
"Shoot your stupid balloon, you stupid Bobble-head!" Buttercup yelled at Bubbles, but she stopped when she noticed that she was standing like a statue, and her eyes were starting to glow red.
Looking all around her, Blossom noticed that the cops manning the barriers on either side had turned to look at her, all with glowing red eyes. Even some people in the crowd had gone silent and glowed bright red in the eyes.
"Bubbles?" Buttercup murmured to her meek sister, intimidated by the change in her ocular bioluminescence. She didn't respond immediately and continued to gawk at the sky with her jaw hanging open, but when she looked down to regard Buttercup, she did so with steely, unfeeling eyes.
"I serve the Master unto death," Bubbles droned in a cold tone, something that sent a chill down Buttercup's spine.
"W-What are you talking about?" Buttercup stuttered; she could feel her blood going cold.
"And he demands death and destruction!" Bubbles asserted before seizing Buttercup by the neck with both hands and lifting her off her feet, choking her.
"B-b-bu-" Buttercup couldn't even speak; she could feel her windpipe constricted, and she couldn't even breathe. She couldn't even resist, as she realized then that her strength had somehow been sapped almost entirely, or at least more than Bubbles.
"Bubbles! What are you doing!" Blossom cried. She took Bubbles by the arms, trying to break her hold on Buttercup, but Bubbles simply shifted Buttercup to her left hand and elbowed Blossom in the face, nearly sending her over the railing.
For a moment, all Blossom could see were stars, but the next moment she could see something she would rather not. Buttercup had taken the opportunity to break free from Bubbles' grasp. She aimed two punches at Bubbles, her fists connecting with her face, but doing nothing. Bubbles grabbed Buttercup by her bob cut, wringing her hair and slamming her head against the railing before slugging Buttercup in revenge over and over again - three times, then four, then five, until bruises were visible instantly.
Before Blossom could do anything, Bubbles had already thrown Buttercup overboard and vaulted over the railing to pursue her. Blossom surveyed her surroundings again, only to witness the chaos. The tanks up front were opening fire with their turret cannons at cars charging at them, taking them out. Machineguns atop the turrets, manned by USDO tank crews, began opening fire at red-eyed police officers and civilians as they charged the tanks. Though poorly armed compared to the USDO tanks, they were too numerous and they were everywhere, and the machine-gunners atop the tanks were picked off one by one by small arms fire. Unaffected officers were quickly killed off, and the spectators who were previously cheering for the Powerpuff Girls began to scatter amid the violence.
Behind her, mayoral bodyguards and USDO soldiers began opening fire to cover Mayor Wilford and Miss Bellum, slaughtering the red-eyed while they, too, were being mowed down by the dozens, all the while getting swarmed. While the mayor was driven away in a hurry, running over more hostile red eyes, the few surviving mayoral bodyguards and USDO soldiers that were left were held down and beaten up with fists and feet. They were stabbed and clubbed to death. Those in the humvees and APCs were more fortunate, and could only do so much with their machineguns before they, too, were swarmed. However, they were able to save themselves by driving off.
Blossom would have cried on the spot because of how her parade was ruined, but her attention went back to her sisters. The float had stopped long ago; the driver had likely fled as soon as the near-supernatural event started. At the foot of the float, Bubbles was still savaging Buttercup, kicking her over and over when she's down.
"Bubbles! What are you doing!? Stop hitting Buttercup!" Blossom cried out to her meekest sister, wondering why she was acting out all of a sudden. When Bubbles wouldn't listen, Blossom vaulted over the railing and landed on top of Bubbles.
Bubbles, however, was unrelenting. She tried to push Blossom off, but she was lying on the floor face-first, which made for an awkward position, and Blossom was able to restrain her arms. When Buttercup saw what was going on, she helped Blossom by restraining Bubbles' legs. All the while, a battle between the addicted and the pure raged on. Slowly but surely, a wall of red glow was closing in on them.
"The Master must be pleased! I must bring Him pleasure!" Bubbles yelled madly as she continued to struggle to no avail. Blossom flipped her over and pinned her arms to the floor again.
"Bubbles, stop! You're scaring me! Why are you doing this!?" Blossom tried to reason with her. She'd seen her eyes once more, which was glowing red, but she couldn't understand what was going on. Had Bubbles been sneaking in more His Secret 2.0 again?
"Betrayer! We are one with Him! We must join him!" Bubbles screamed. Blossom couldn't understand what she was blabbering about. Him? Who's Him?
"Wake up, Bubbles!" Blossom shook Bubbles, inadvertently freeing one of her hands. Bubbles took the opportunity to deliver a punch across Blossom's lower jaw, at which point Blossom learned her lesson and restrained her free arm again… with difficulty and only after taking another hard punch to the face. "Ow! Bubbles! Don't you remember me!?"
Bubbles' struggle didn't stop immediately. She continued blabbering something about a 'master' and 'serving Him', but eventually, it all came to a stop, as if she was coming out of being hypnotized. Her eyes, however, were still glowing red.
"B-Blossom?" she cried, confused. "W-what's h-happening to me?"
"Bubbles? You were hitting Buttercup and your eyes, they're-" Blossom said, but a change in Bubbles' eyes interrupted her. The reddish glow was fading away.
"I- I'm so sorry, Blossom- I felt really angry all of a sudden- angry at you, I couldn't control it!" Bubbles cried. "I wanted to kill you- you and Buttercup both- I still WANT to kill you!" She struggled against Blossom again, pushing with a burst of strength. Even Buttercup had to hold on to her legs and brace against it to keep her from freeing herself.
"No, Bubbles! You don't want to! Remember all the fun we've had? How we helped each other?" Blossom said. "I'm sorry for everything I've said about you! I shouldn't have! I've forgiven you, I really did! We've forgiven each other, haven't we?"
"Y-yeah, Bubbles, we've had lots and lots of fun," Buttercup said from below, playing along so that she could get Bubbles to calm down and get their sisterly issue over and done with. Looking all around her, she could see where the real fight was. Police officers were murdering each other. At one corner, she could see several normal-eyed officers getting restrained from the back while red-eyed officers were pummeling them with nightsticks or stabbing them repeatedly in the chest or stomach. The USDO tanks up front had stopped firing both cannons and machineguns. Red-eyed civilians and officers alike were now trying to climb on top of the tanks to reach the hatches on the turrets. Some of the 'possessed' had only just noticed them.
"We did…" Bubbles said. She'd calmed down somewhat, the red glow almost gone, replaced with the baby blue Blossom knew and loved. "But I… I can feel it inside me… S-so much anger and hate… I can't-"
"Bubbles, I'm going to let go now - don't punch me, okay?" Blossom said, before making good on her word. Letting go of Bubbles' arms, she waited, and stared Bubbles in the eyes, worried and uncertain if Bubbles could control herself.
Bubbles stared back, at first furrowing her brows in rage and hatred as she gritted her teeth. She grabbed Blossom by her long, flowing red hair - her eyes glowed red, becoming brighter at first before coming back down, disappearing entirely. Bubbles finally relaxed, breathing heavily from both exhaustion and exertion.
"Urm, Blossom, I think we need to go!" Buttercup warned Blossom, not because she cared about her, but because she needed as many hands around her as she could get with a storm raging all around them.
"Right," Blossom stood up before lending Bubbles a hand. Bubbles took it, and Blossom pulled her to her feet. However, something was wrong. Bubbles was HEAVY, too heavy that she nearly toppled over. She had to brace herself on the ground just to pull Bubbles up, and it took immense effort even though Bubbles wasn't even a hundred pounds with armor and weapons.
"We need to fly up and think about this!" Blossom decided, before kicking herself up into flight mode… Only to fall back down to the ground, landing on a knee.
"Blossom, we can't!" Buttercup said, panting. The armor and weapons she was carrying were beginning to weigh her down. Something was very, very wrong. "I think we've lost our power!"
Blossom turned to Buttercup while still rubbing her knee. It didn't take long for her to realize that she was right. The glow of Buttercup's lime green eyes was dimmer than usual, though not totally out yet. She felt uncomfortable too, and it was only now that she realized that it was due to her weight - and the weight of her gear, which felt like a slow, crushing force. Turning to Bubbles, Blossom noticed the same thing with her - the baby blue glow was really dim, almost nonexistent.
"B-but… how?" Blossom stuttered as the horror of it all began to sink in - she had never been without her powers before, and the thought of not being able to fly, defend herself, or even run faster than a creaky old bicycle terrified her.
That was when the tanks up front fire a volley of shells from their cannons. The explosive force had the effect of knocking every red-eyed officer around and on the tanks to the ground. With that, the tanks drove off in a hurry, leaving the Girls behind.
"B-Blossom, what do we do?" Bubbles mewled as she realized that all attention had turned to them. Like zombies, the 'possessed' cops and spectators were rising from where they had fallen before, hatred riddling their faces.
"Run!" Blossom yelled, before taking off for the disabled vehicles the tanks had shot at before. Bubbles and Buttercup followed, with the former tripping on a dead body midway, unused to running without her enhanced strength. Blossom picked her up quickly before they resumed running for cover…
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Payne Avenue.
11 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 1229.
Bunny had arrived at the scene of chaos by following the trail of steel barriers and Townsvillans fleeing the center of trouble. She could hear, through the near-impenetrable sound of singing crickets in her head, endless gunshots, and when she focused her hearing, she could distinguish Duranium guns among them. Stopping to hover high up in the air, she wiped sweat and blood off her nose and mouth as she zoomed her vision in to survey the battlefield.
The first thing she looked for was her sisters. She searched the ground for them, first focusing on the Powerpuff float, only to find it abandoned and in the process of getting vandalized by red-eyed citizens and cops, who were trying to pull down the plaster statues of her sisters. She followed what she thought would be the path her sisters would take to escape, only to find them way off course, hiding behind a car and exchanging shots with red-eyed cops. Why they hadn't flown off yet was a mystery, but then she saw that their eyes were dim and they appeared unhealthy. Something was wrong with them.
They weren't alone, however. Normal-looking cops were backing them up by taking cover behind more car wrecks to hold back what looked like hundreds of His Secret 2.0-affected cops and citizens.
There were a good number of snipers on rooftops on either side of the victory trail, and they were all shooting. Bunny did not know which of them were shooting at her sisters, but she could guess that the ones with Duranium anti-material rifles were aiming at her sisters. She'd decided then, that she should just take out the snipers using Duranium on the principle that they were a threat to her sisters, and those without couldn't kill her sisters anyway, friend or foe. There were two rows of them on either side of Payne Avenue, downtown.
She flew to the roof of the first building on the left, landing only to save on the time she had left to live. A sniper, a spotter, and a third accompanying officer occupied it. Without mercy, without hesitating, she shouldered her modded MP5 and gunned them down while she was running towards the next rooftop.
By the time she had flown and landed on the next building, the sniper team there were already onto her, firing freely with Duranium rifle, M16, and shotgun. She immediately felt a graze wound on her arm as she returned fire, falling them within a mere second. She crouched, pausing briefly to inspect the wound on her arm. The armor there was penetrated. Tearing it off, she saw a huge ravine carved into her left upper arm, and blood was flowing freely. It wasn't fatal, and neither did the Duranium bullet hit an artery. That was all that mattered. Wiping off more blood that was bleeding from her nostrils, she got up and ran forward once more.
The next sniper team was inside the building, holed up in the apartment's superintendent room. Vaulting over the edge, Bunny flew a curve before breaking through the window of an apartment unit next to the sniper's. Charging straight through the wall, she had caught the sniper team there by surprise, managing to charge into the sniper himself, breaking the specialist officer's back before gunning down his two friends, who fell simultaneously.
"Bunny, this is General Blackwater. Please respond, over," a voice came up in Bunny's earphones, linked to her radio. Bunny did not want to talk to him, not because she hated him, but because she knew she was operating without permission, and that it was possible for the professor to call him and convince him to get her to stop.
She had always known. General Blackwater loved her like his own daughter, even though he hadn't said it, even though he tried his best to hide it with gruff mannerisms and coldness. He wouldn't want her to die, so he would likely want her to stop.
But the temptation to speak to him one last time was too big.
"This is Bunny," she replied on the radio while she was taking cover under the window of the apartment complex she was in. "Hey, General Blackwater." She could barely stop herself from crying. It just occurred to her that she never got to see General Blackwater and Corporal Nana Weston one last time.
"Bunny, what's your status? Over," the general asked. Bunny wasn't sure what to say. Should she lie to keep him from worrying? Or should she tell him the truth, as a good girl should?
"General… Mister Blackwater… I…" Bunny said, before stopping for a moment. She wanted to say that she was fine, but her unignorable migraine headache, the constant bleeding from her nose and mouth and wounds, and the pain at every inch of her being told her otherwise. "It's bad, Mister Blackwater."
"I know. Bunny, you need to stand down. Prepare for medevac and we'll handle the rest from here," General Blackwater said. Bunny looked over the window sill and down at where her sisters were holed up at. Most friendly officers and USDO forces were either overwhelmed or routed. They were being shot at. She sunk back down to the floor heavily. "General Blackwater, I… I can't. Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup can't wait, and there are snipers all around them. It'll take too long for your soldiers to help them…"
There was a long-drawn sigh from the other end.
"Is that your tactical assessment?" General Blackwater asked, more stoic than usual, which meant that he was likely hurting inside, all torn up.
"Yes," Bunny said.
"It's flawless, Bunny," the general praised her. Walls were breaking down. "I see that I can't stop you. Go ahead, but please… stop once you've secured your sisters. I want you to get out of this one."
"Thanks, Mister Blackwater," Bunny said, and before the general could sign out, she went on: "I- I love you, and Miss Nana too. I wish I could see the two of you, but I don't think I will…"
"Don't talk like that, Bunny. You won't be defeated. We'll have a debriefing yet, kiddo. Save your unit, and I'll come get you personally," the general said, before pausing. When nothing else was being said, he signed off. "Over and out."
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Payne Avenue.
11 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 1233.
Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, by some miracle, were able to retreat to a relatively 'safe' distance before they could be piled on. Hiding behind a car, they began exchanging fire with red-eyed police officers and civilians who had salvaged firearms from the corpses of the fallen.
Being unable to use their ocular beams or even something basic like super-speed or super-strength, they were forced to fight conventionally using firearms. Blossom had long exchanged her Serbu super-shorty with Bubbles for her XM4 Carbine, while Buttercup had her Stoner LMG, though she was having difficulty wielding and firing it.
Buttercup found it heavy because of her diminished strength, so she'd clambered into the car they were taking cover in and mounted her machinegun on a door to fire from there. Blossom and Bubbles hid at either end of their car, popping off shots. The recoils of their weapons dug into their shoulders, and the weight of their armor and armaments were beginning to tire them out - had the slow disempowerment process been complete, they wouldn't even have been able to move with all the weight they had thrown on top of them, but they had lucked out.
Shots were raining down upon them, from where their float and the USDO tanks used to be, as well as from above, without them knowing it. That was until a Duranium bullet ripped through the roof of the car and struck Buttercup in the thigh. Screaming, she clutched the bleeding hole as she curled up into a fetus on the driver's seat, only to realize that there was another hole in the back of her thigh; the bullet had gone right through.
Blossom and Bubbles did not fare any better, as Duranium bullets began hunting after them. Blossom felt her ear getting ripped by a projectile, while Bubbles took one in the shoulder, slamming her against the car. Realizing what was going on, they piled into the car, firing off rounds only occasionally and through the windows. Watching helplessly, they saw that the officer friendlies who were helping them fight back the tide of 'possessed' officers and people were getting gunned down from all directions. Bodies hit the floor by the dozens as the Girls' confident hit rock-bottom. The red eyes were growing closer, and ever angrier and hateful.
The City of Townsville. Downtown. Payne Avenue.
11 MAR (Saturday) 1989. 1236.
Bunny was crouching on threes, on the roof where the last of the left-hand apartment snipers were stationed at. They lay behind her in a bloody heap, filled with bullet holes made by her MP5. She had only taken down half the snipers looming over her sisters, and she was already feeling... hollow. She had to constantly wipe blood away from her face. The blood was coming from her eyes and ears now. Her migraine was flaring ever stronger, and she couldn't quite think. Thankfully, she didn't need to think much, as there was only one thing to do: kill everyone who threatened her sisters.
Reloading her MP5, Bunny took off once more, flying to the buildings on the other side of the street. Some of the snipers were now shifting their focus on her, something that Bunny welcomed, as it meant less Duranium bullets aimed at Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup.
On the way to the first building, she flew in with her SMG blazing, peppering another three-man team with lead while at the same time avoiding Duranium with her speed. Landing on the first building to the right, she unclipped a flashbang and hurled it across one rooftop to the other, blinding some of her targets. She leaped in, slaughtering all with guns. Picking up one of the dead sniper's weapon, a conventional sniper rifle carried by the spotter, she took aim at one of the snipers on the fourth and fifth buildings to the right and fired, hitting home, before cycling the weapon at great speed and firing again, in effect turning a bolt-action rifle into a semi-automatic rifle. Three were killed before the rest hid. One of them fired back, putting a Duranium bullet through the concrete barrier she was hiding behind as well as her kidney, but Bunny didn't even flinch as she did the same thing to the rest of them.
When most of the snipers had been killed, barring just one more team, Bunny slumped down, leaning against the roof's concrete barrier, clutching her kidney, stemming the bleeding there in vain. It was as if her blood was leaking more freely now. She felt faint; she felt like closing her eyes and going to sleep for a little while - but the sound of her sisters' screams focused her concentration. There was still one more sniper team firing Duranium shells at them - she could see it when she brought up her x-ray vision.
Switching her MP5 for the China Lake grenade launcher on her back, Bunny ran towards the third building and jumped over the railing, letting herself fall. With a burst of X-energy, she thrust herself through the wall-high window of the next building, smashing through the glass whilst covering her face with her arms and curling up her legs. She landed in a roll before getting up again, only to be met with both familiar and unfamiliar faces…
Near the last team of snipers was Mojo Jojo, accompanied by a Foundation operative known as Naga, who hissed at her the moment the serpentine woman noticed her.