obviously i don't own the ppg. if i did, this would be animated lol.

LET THE FLAMES BEGIN

prologue

turn it off

X X X

Technically speaking, they were turning eleven years old. It was a paradox that only Blossom bothered to think about, although she tried not to let it bother her too much whenever it gained control of her formidable attention span. She certainly didn't feel eleven years old; none of them did. They had been "born" at five with all the intelligence and emotional maturity to be found in that age bracket – more than their share, in some cases. After all, how many five-year-olds would have the mental stamina to save the world before bedtime? Most children that age had their hands full battling imaginary closet monsters and under-the-bed boogeymen; the PowerPuff Girls dealt with the real deal on an at times daily basis, and the monsters they faced didn't disappear as they got older. In fact, it was just the opposite.

Bank robbers and giant robots, mutated monkeys and effeminate demons, yuppies and snot goblins and frizzy gingers with more money in their trust funds than warmth in their hearts…all of these seemed like small potatoes compared to the horrors of the Real World – the adult world. Blossom secretly marveled at the extent to which Professor Utonium had managed to shelter them, despite the myriad villains they had confronted. It wasn't until they were seventh graders at Pokey Oaks Junior High that they truly began to understand the enormity of their seemingly smaller actions. The man next door might not appear to be much of a threat when standing next to a zombie magician, until you find the three women he has chained up in his basement.

Kidnappers. Rapists. Serial murderers. Animal abusers. Child pornographers. The real monsters, the girls had learned, the most insidious, depraved, perverse and malignant criminals were the ones who hid in plain sight, living under the guise of being ordinary people, banking on the stereotype of the innocent bystander.

The realization had changed them, all of them. Buttercup had become more and more aggressive, with a chip on her shoulder that someone weaker might have called a mountain. On the flip side, Bubbles had grown more withdrawn, afraid anymore to look for the good in everyone, protecting what innocence she had left from the knowledge that sometimes there just plain wasn't any. And Blossom, Blossom had become a dangerously extreme version of herself, doing her damnedest to be perfect, because if she couldn't fix her sisters, it was up to her to compensate for what they had lost. She had to. She was the oldest, she was their leader, and if she fell apart, the other two would tumble right after her like dominoes.

She was barely fifteen, down twenty pounds from her normal weight owing to a steady diet of coffee, insomnia and stress, when the professor checked her out from school one day right before the lunch bell rang.

"Is something wrong?" she'd asked, immediately on high alert. She didn't have a doctor or dentist appointment that she could remember, and the professor had never taken any of the girls out of school for no good reason.

"It's lunchtime," he'd said simply. "And today I decided I wanted to have lunch with my favorite redhead. It's been a while since we had any decent father-daughter bonding time."

"Okay…" she'd said, confused. "But you're taking me back to school afterward, right? I have a biology test fifth period, and then I need to turn in my homework assignment to Mister George—" The sentence ended in a sharp gasp. "Oh, crap! I fell asleep before I could finish the extra credit part of the assignment last night; I was going to finish it at lunch! Dad, turn around, I have to get my English book!"

"Blossom, honey, it's going to be a little difficult for us to bond if you're hunched over your textbook the entire time. That's the nice thing about extra credit – it's not going to hurt your grade if you don't do it."

"Yes it will!" Blossom screeched. "If I don't do the extra credit, I'm not going to get above a 4.0! If I don't get above a 4.0, I don't stand a chance of making valedictorian! And if I'm not valedictorian, I can't be sure I'll get into an ivy league school!"

"Sweetheart, don't you think you're overreacting a little? You're only a freshman; you've got a whole three and a half years to build up your GPA. One missed extra credit assignment isn't going to be the end of the world."

It was exactly the wrong thing to say – or exactly the right thing, seeing as it had triggered the meltdown that had been building for months inside Blossom's overactive brain. She'd screamed, cried, and if it hadn't been for her adoptive father's highly developed sense of perception that had him hitting the door locks not a moment too soon, would have leaped from the car while it was still moving and flown back to school herself, where no doubt the police, her sisters, and some form of sedative would have been required to restrain her.

As it happened, Professor Utonium had pulled over and parked the car on the shoulder of the road, and pulled his frantic little girl into his arms.

If his words had sparked the initial explosion, his embrace opened the floodgates that dowsed the flaming wreckage of Blossom's peace of mind. For close to an hour, Blossom could do little more than shake with sobs as everything poured out of her alongside her tears: her fear that her sisters would end up imprisoned, both literally and figuratively – that Buttercup's rage would someday grow too large for her to contain and end up killing someone, and Bubbles' distrust of the world at large would leave her a paranoid, agoraphobic self-seclusion; the tremendous burden she felt to keep it together, to lead by example with the hope that the intensity of her self-control could somehow keep the other two from becoming completely unglued.

She admitted how much she hated growing up, how the complexities of life had her questioning her status as a hero; how fighting crime had actually been easier when they were children, when black and white were so starkly and obviously different, but now there seemed to be new shades of gray popping up every time they turned around and who decided which ones were dark enough to punish and why?

And how long would they be the PowerPuff Girls, anyway? Would they be expected to become the PowerPuff Women? The PowerPuff Old Biddies? When would it stop? Would it ever? Would they even get to go to college, have jobs, get married, have kids of their own? Would their lives ever really be their own to lead?

Even the professor had had tears in his eyes by the time she'd trailed off into the occasional sniffle. He apologized for not noticing her unhappiness sooner, and for not recognizing its severity when he did at last catch on. That had been the underlying purpose of their impromptu lunch date, he admitted – so that he could fish for whatever seemed to be bothering her as of late. He'd had no idea she was in the middle of a full-blown existential crisis.

They did eventually make it to lunch. Blossom had more than missed her chemistry test, but at that point was too exhausted and emotionally drained to care. She could make it up later, after all, and to be honest, the overwhelming relief she felt at having finally laid all her cards out on the table didn't leave much room for any lingering anxiety.

Over cheeseburgers and strawberry milkshakes, they discussed what had to be done. It was almost more like a powwow between a general and a squad commander than a heart-to-heart between parent and child, but Blossom didn't mind. Talking "business" was her comfort zone, an objective place where she could allow the analytical part of her mind free reign, and at the moment she was grateful for the emotional distance it allowed her.

First things first, the professor would talk to each of the girls alone, as he was doing with Blossom now, because making decisions about their lives without their involvement and consent would be seen as a betrayal of their trust, and only make things worse; second would come therapy, both solo sessions where the girls could talk out their feelings to a nonjudgmental third party, and family meetings to better iron out their group dynamic; and third…

It didn't have to be permanent, the professor stressed. They could change their minds at any time. But they needed a vacation. They needed time to just be normal teenagers, with only normal teenage things to worry about. What was the point of doing good deeds if it didn't feel good to do them? Doing things to avoid potential guilt from not doing them was a one-way street towards resentment and discontent, even fighting crime. Townsville had gotten along just fine without the PowerPuff Girls before they were born; it would continue to survive in their absence. Besides, who knew what the future held? It was wrong for the city officials to rely solely on superheroes to save the day.

This was the case the professor and the girls had presented to the mayor two weeks later, after confirming that Blossom's sisters shared the majority of her frustrations and fears. The little man had argued against it, of course, only to be informed that there wasn't anything up for negotiation. Townsville hadn't been under threat of a major villain for nearly two years, and the girls had more than earned their independence. If, when they were legal adults, they decided of their own free will to return to wearing the mantle of defenders of justice, they would – but only by choice, and not by obligation. They deserved that much, at the very least.

Later that night, Blossom had watched Professor Utonium fill a syringe with Antidote X with a pounding heart. The grip of her right hand on the arm of the chair she sat in was strong enough to turn her knuckles white and dent the metal underneath the beige leather upholstery. She did her best to control her shaking as her adoptive father gently swabbed the crook of her left arm with alcohol before placing the needle against her skin, just above the periwinkle squiggle of a vein.

"Are you sure you want this, sweetheart?" he asked her one last time.

Sweating, Blossom nodded firmly. "I'm sure. I'm ready."

She didn't feel any different, at first. A little woozy, and suddenly very tired, but she didn't feel any of the things she'd expected to feel – a cold feeling behind her eyes, snuffing out the lasers they could produce, or the warming of the air in her mouth and throat and lungs, melting away the freezing capabilities of her breath. She didn't feel heavier, subject now to the law of gravity, or physically weaker, although her days of punching through concrete as easily as paper were, for the time being, over.

She felt…normal.

And she was: completely and utterly ordinary.

It had been a long year of adjustments. The first six months had been therapy-intensive, with each of the girls going once per week, plus bi-monthly family sessions. They took a trip over the summer to Disney World, an honest-to-goodness family vacation, and came home with an extra suitcase full of souvenirs and their very first sunburns. The start of their sophomore year and the tapering down of therapy appointments afforded the girls a surplus of free time after school, and they happily filled it with extracurricular activities, dates with friends, movies, parties, naps, and practices.

Blossom, for all she relished her newfound freedom, desperately missed being able to fly, and so joined the school's cross-country team. Running alone, pacing herself, letting the wind whip through her hair and indulgent daydreams through her busy brain, wasn't quite the same as taking to the air, but it filled the void inside her well enough. To balance things out socially and keep her competitive edge, she took up tennis, and found a new way to look cute and keep her reflexes sharp and action-ready at the same time.

Bubbles, whose name all but demanded it, auditioned for the glee club and swim team. On stage and in the pool, performing with her fellow cast members and cheering on her teammates, her own defensive bubble of isolation gradually thinned until one day she awoke to find it had popped completely. She was in her element surrounded by loving and supportive friends, and everyone agreed that she had never looked happier, which was saying something.

Things were more difficult for Buttercup. She was still tough, no doubt about it, but she had the most trouble reconciling her more violent urges with her newly fragile body. She worked out almost daily, fearful of blunting her edge any further, and for a time it seemed as though she would be the first to request the return of her powers. It was Bubbles, of all people, who convinced her otherwise.

"It's easy to act tough when you've got the muscles to back it up," she'd said, standing at the threshold of the warzone of dirty clothes, video game debris and empty energy drink cans that Buttercup called her room. "But to accept the parts of you that are vulnerable now, and not be ashamed of them, that's real strength. You've never been afraid to be yourself, Buttercup. Please don't start being afraid now, even if things have changed. You're still you, and no matter what else you might lose, nothing can take away the power in your heart."

Buttercup had told her to stop trying to make her gag, but the words had helped more than she would ever admit. She cut back on the workouts and focused her energy on skateboarding, which required technique in addition to stamina. She picked up a used full-size bass and a small amp at a garage sale, and found her own form of meditation in patiently teaching herself the chords of her favorite songs. And when she just had to hit something, she took it out on the punching bag the professor allowed her to install in the basement.

And so here they were, one month away from their technically-eleventh-but-still-sweet-sixteenth birthday, just a trio of average, remarkably well-adjusted high school girls with a lot of good friends, a few catty but ignorable non-super-powered enemies, a solid family bond, and one hell of a party to plan.

At least, they were, until first period chemistry, art, and trigonometry one Monday morning brought with them three faces from a not-distant-enough past, and pulled the rug out from under the sisters' recently righted world.