It's been a long, long, long time since I've posted a story here, but this one just popped into my head one day and refused to leave until I got it all out. This is a two-shot story featuring only Bubbles and Buttercup, and they are the same as they were in the show. It's rather dark, and I've never written a dark story on this site, so it might be a bit...rough. Still, I hope you enjoy it!
I don't own any of the characters that appear in this story.
Buttercup awoke with a start, eyes wide open and awake and alert, as though she had just come out of a nightmare...except she hadn't. She didn't know what exactly had woken her up, and the fact annoyed her-usually the girl slept like a rock through the whole night. She rolled over and looked at the clock next to her; 2:38 glared back in bright red numbers. Buttercup rolled back over and groaned - it would take her ages to get back to sleep. She stared at the ceiling a bit before deciding to get herself a glass of milk to help speed things along. She flipped the covers from on top of her and climbed out of bed, floated to the door and opened it carefully so as not to make too much noise, and stepped onto the balcony that overlooked her living room.
She never once noticed the unoccupied space in the middle of the bed.
They came at her in droves, attacking her from all directions, but she kept fighting. Her shirt was ripped across her back, the skin beneath scratched open and red with the threat of blood. Her blonde hair had long since been loosed of its usual pigtails; it crashed down towards her shoulders in a disheveled heap, wet with sweat and darkened with debris. Her face wore a fierce snarl as she concentrated on all enemies coming her way while also trying to come up with a way to make it to the big creature who kept spawning these things. She wasn't used to taking on an assault like this alone. She didn't have her sisters here to back her up, to help her-it was just her and them.
And it was her choice for it to be that way. She needed this.
The creatures looked to be mounting another attack, but she wasn't going to wait for them. Steeling herself, she flew straight up from off from the ground, just as they lunged at the spot she used to be. Those creatures that were able to fly went after her; the rest followed her flight path on the ground, waiting for her to come back down again. Still, as she could out-fly the beasts, this bought her a bit of time to think of a course of action.
She looked back at the hoard of beasts flying after her and found that they were falling behind. She looked forward, about to breathe a sigh of relief, when she realized that there was a second group of monsters directly in front of her, heading her off. They attacked her before she could maneuver away, dragging her back towards the ground and all the creatures waiting hungrily below.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Buttercup grabbed herself a cup, opened the refrigerator and pulled out the gallon jug of milk. She put everything back up after pouring herself a glass, then sat at the table and drank in the dark. The girl stared absently, taking a sip periodically and listening to the silence...and then she realized that it wasn't absolutely silent. There was noise coming from...somewhere, Buttercup wasn't quite sure. It was soft, as though someone had left the television on in a far-off room. Perhaps that's exactly what had happened; she decided to investigate.
Leaving her unfinished milk on the table, Buttercup floated out of the kitchen and looked around the living room. Everything was all quiet here, but the noise was just a tad bit louder. Focusing her hearing, she noticed that the sound was coming more from her right. She looked in that direction to see a door ajar, and a faint light coming from inside.
The Professor's lab.
Buttercup wondered if the Professor was downstairs performing an experiment...but no, he wouldn't be, he had to be up early the next morning. So why would the door be open? There were very few explanations for it, and only one that made any sense: thieves. Narrowing her eyes, Buttercup slowly proceeded to the door, staying cautious and alert as she slowly opened it wider and looked down the stairs in front of her. It sounded like there was definitely a rustling of some sort going on down there. Readying herself for a confrontation, Buttercup crossed the threshold and floated silently down, watching for any movement, the light getting brighter as she made her way to the floor.
She almost called out, "Show yourself!" to the possibly-hidden intruders, but she saw right away that it wasn't thieves making the noises, nor were it flashlights that provided the glow. In fact, both were coming from the Danger Grid, the high-tech combat training simulator that the girls used to hone their fighting skills when Townsville's criminals decided to take a week off. It was currently in use...and as Buttercup floated up to the large viewing window, the shock of what was going on inside was enough to steal her breath away.
She writhed and struggled in their grasp, but found it exceedingly difficult to pull away. This wasn't happening! Was it really going to end this way? Was she going to let it end this way? No...she couldn't. She wouldn't. Not after what had happened today. Not after the shame and guilt. If it ended now, with the creatures victorious, there would be no way she could deal with the grief; she would suffocate under its weight. No, she had to survive. She had to succeed. She had to have this release. Only then, she knew, would she be free of her terrible deed.
She thought of what she had done, of the moral crime she had committed. The look on his face. The rage in her mind. And the guilt afterwards. And with an anguished cry, she released it all upon the creatures that now surrounding her, biting and clawing at every inch of her body.
They never stood a chance.
Buttercup's jaw had been wide open since she began looking into the simulator, but what happened next was enough to elicit a loud gasp from the normally stoic girl. It was enough of a surprise to see that it was Bubbles, her normally bright and happy-go-lucky sister, who had activated the machine and was currently inside fighting a huge number of what looked to be ant/dragon hybrid monsters. Some of the monsters had wings and could fly, others could not, but all of them looked to be tracking her. She was flying through the air when she ran into a group of them, who took her back down to the ground.
The thing that made Buttercup gasp, though, was what had happened next. In what looked to be an extraordinary release of internal energy, Bubbles's laser eye beam shot straight up through the crowd of monsters around her, and then, after letting loose a near-primal scream, the girl herself had burst from the midst of the pile, flying straight up with creatures hanging on. She then did a complete mid-air one-eighty and shot herself straight back down into the hoard.
Then the carnage began.
Very rarely had Buttercup ever witnessed her blue-clad sister fight with the sheer intensity that she was currently fighting with, but each time she had seen it, she had been awed...and this time was no exception. Bubbles tore through the monsters like a force of nature, punching and kicking and flinging bodies away from her without regard. One had been eye-beamed to the point of exploding; another had been punched into a third with enough force to knock both of them through a building. The more that came upon her, the harder she fought, until the smaller creatures were being destroyed faster than the big monster in the middle could spawn them. Through the entire fight, Bubbles kept the same look of righteous fury and...something else, Buttercup noticed. She couldn't place it, but the look on Bubbles's face oddly reminded her of herself, and the way her sister fought had stirred something inside of her; something familiar, something that told her that Bubbles wasn't in the simulator simply to train.
The onslaught was nearly done; a few more punches took care of the last of them. Bubbles looked as though she had been through hell-scratches lined her legs and arms, and she had a nasty bruise forming on her neck. Her hair, frizzy and loose, was matted with the blood of the dozens of monsters she had just obliterated. Her eyes were red, and her face wore a look that could have melted steel. Buttercup watched her sister, wanting to help her, or end it before she got hurt, but she didn't move from her spot at the window. She didn't know why, but she felt it would be a great disservice to her sister to interfere with this exercise in any way.
Besides...with the look her sister gave the gigantic dragon ant queen right as she flew towards it, she knew it would be over soon.
The battle had been intense.
There were bodies strewn everywhere. Creatures were bleeding into the street; body parts were scattered everywhere. And in the middle of it all stood one small blue-eyed Powerpuff, panting heavily, a very unfamiliar snarl on her face, reveling in the carnage if only because it helped relieve her own internal grief. She wasn't finished, however; there was still the matter of the queen beast which stood looming ominously over the buildings in the center of the shattered virtual town, an abominable hybrid of nature that mixed a dragon's head, body and wings with a queen ant's gigantic egg sac. The battle wasn't over until that monster was dead. She wouldn't stop fighting until then anyways; only then might she be able to rest peacefully.
She flew straight towards the thing, the adrenaline pumping through her body willing her to ignore the pain that she was in. She had to hit it hard and fast; the beast spat out a sac full of smaller monsters from its ant-like abdominal egg sac every half-minute or so, ready and raring to attack and keep their queen safe. Bubbles wouldn't give it the chance to make any more.
There was no plan of attack - she just wanted to hit it with everything she had. The dragon half of the monster began spewing fire in her direction, but with a great effort, she flew through it, letting it fuel her rage. She flew all the way up to the creatures face, and with an ear-splitting scream, she released one huge punch to the monster's jaw, hard enough to get the monster to stop spewing fire and rear back from recoil. Images began flashing in the girl's mind-a human jaw, dislocated after she had punched it. She couldn't get the image out of her mind...she hadn't meant to...no. She wouldn't let it break her focus now.
She attacked with renewed fervor, hitting any part of the monster she could reach. Each strike sent another picture into her mind-black eye...loose tooth...broken rib...dislocated shoulder...all her doing. She couldn't get the thoughts to stop! She punched harder, and tears started rolling down her cheeks. The monster had all but lost by now, but she wouldn't relent; it had to be this way, she had to get this out now. Punch, kick; he pleads, she denies. The tears fell freely.
She grabbed the queen by its neck, like she had done with him. She flew up into the air with her, like she had done with him. She contemplated how she could finish it, like she had done with him. Did he deserve it? Yes, she was certain...but it wasn't her place. She had barely gotten control of herself with him; the monster was not so lucky.
Grasping its neck with both hands, and with one final, anguished cry of effort, she flipped the dragon over her shoulder and slammed it as hard as she could into the ground. Its neck snapped; its egg sac exploded; its body laid still. The battle was over; the virtual world disappeared, leaving only the white grid in the room.
The tears were still rolling down her face when Bubbles fell to her knees, head hung low and shoulders bobbing as she silently sobbed.
Buttercup couldn't believe what she had just witnessed. She could not remember ever seeing her sister fight with the ferocity that she had just seen (though there were a couple of times she had seen the aftermath of such battles). But even before Bubbles had started to shed tears, Buttercup had recognized that she was being driven by something more than just a fighting spirit-there was something that Bubbles couldn't escape that had driven her down here tonight. Buttercup knew, because she herself had done it plenty of times before. She was used to using fighting as a way to let off steam. It was strange, though, seeing the same emotions drive her sister, who usually had no problem whatsoever expressing what was on her mind. What had caused Bubbles so much stress that she couldn't simply let it out as she always did? If the emotions that had shown across her face while she fought had been any indication, it had to have been something massive.
Even though she knew it had to happen (for whatever reason), Buttercup couldn't bear watching her sister suffer under so much emotional stress. She looked for anything else to look at; her eyes eventually traveled down at the control console in front of the window that allowed one to manipulate the virtual environment inside. There was a dial on the board that controlled the level of danger that each simulation possessed. Buttercup gasped for what had to have been the fifth time that night.
The dial was currently set to Danger Level 15.
Buttercup herself had only gotten past level 12 earlier that week! Levels this high were usually only attempted when all three of the girls went into the Danger Grid together as a team, and yet here Bubbles finished it on her own. The raven-haired girl looked back at her sister. How many times had she come down here to be at the level she was at now? She certainly didn't attempt anything so difficult while her family was around, which means she had to have been coming down here pretty regularly to practice (hopefully Bubbles didn't just jump into lv. 15 without knowing what she was getting into).
Wait...Buttercup had already surmised that it wasn't practice that drove her sister to enter the Danger Grid, but some unknown, yet very powerful emotional force; an emotional force strong enough to help push Bubbles to defeat monsters that may have otherwise been out of her league. And this probably wasn't her first time down here...
Buttercup looked back at her sister, who had finally calmed herself with a deep breath and looked to be getting ready to exit the room. Her expression was rather blank, showing no hints whatsoever of either the intense fury or the immense sadness that had be prevalent not five minutes ago.
This wasn't good. Buttercup knew all too well where this road led, and it wasn't to a place of relief. She didn't want her normally joyful sister to have to deal with that; she wanted to pull her back and set her right before it was too late.
It was time for another heart-to-heart, Buttercup realized. At least she wasn't apologizing for anything this time.
Her eyes were drawn to the door of the training room as Bubbles emerged back into the lab, looking just as disheveled as she had while fighting. She appeared to be heading straight for the stairs out of the lab when Buttercup finally made her presence known.
"That was some battle you just fought," she called out.
Bubbles stopped and turned suddenly to face her green-clad sister. Buttercup smirked - it must've been quite a surprise to Bubbles to know that her sister had been watching her the whole time. She stared at Buttercup with the classic dear-in-headlights look of someone whose secret had just been found out. The shock silenced her, so Buttercup took the opportunity to walk up to her as she continued to stand motionless.
"Yeah, I was watching the whole time. Well...most of the time. But I saw enough, and I know that you don't fight like that unless you're really upset. So...you wanna...I don't know, talk about it or something?"
Buttercup wasn't good at the being the supportive sister, but she felt that this time, she might actually be the right person to help Bubbles with whatever it was that was bothering her. Bubbles still hadn't spoken, however.
"I'll take that as a yes," Buttercup answered for her. "Go get cleaned up, then meet me in the kitchen. I've got a glass of milk to finish..."
That's the first chapter. The second one is already completed-I'll put it up soon. I'm really, really interested in what you have to say about this-any comments and criticisms can only help me get better at this type of story. Whether or not you review, though, thank you for reading!