With a butter knife attached to her hand as if it were a magnet, Blossom smeared the dressing on the slices of bread. She felt less like a teen and more like a mother in that moment, fixing food while in a red blouse and black trousers. She layered thinly slices pieces of ham, one over the other. A slice of lettuce on one sandwich, a piece of cheese on another, a couple pieces of tomatoes on her own...
Blossom sighed to herself when she realized that she had, in fact, all but prepared three sandwiches, instead of two, so habitual was this act of food preparation by now. Frowning at her own mishap, Blossom grumpily slapped the top slices of bread onto each sandwich, sealing two of them in plastic baggies and placing them in a noticeable location in the somewhat empty fridge. Ugh. Grocery shopping. She would have to squeeze that act in somewhere in the next day or two, inbetween everything else on her plate.
To think that their money troubles once revolved around things as trivial as tooth fairy donations, or over-priced golf clubs to win Daddy's affections. Thanks to Mayor Bellum's generous act, a motion had been passed to grant the Utonium girls what was akin to social security checks in light of their father's inability to work. The years of service they had put into the town had certainly swayed over the officials who voted on the act. But tax money was not an infinite resource, and with Bubbles' super-powered, insatiable appetite growing by the week and the unknown future ahead, Blossom couldn't help but wonder if she would soon need to be dipping into her own college savings to start making ends meet. She was well aware that the matters she was dealing with were quite far apart than the average sixteen year-old, but of course, the Utoniums were far from average, weren't they?
Superpowers might've made monsters or even household tasks speedy work, but they only did so much to keep the doldrums of day-to-day care-taking at bay. For instance, the agonizing wait in the checkout line always drained Blossom's brain when she had to do it alone, which had been the past few times in a row.
She longed for the days past when they were but tikes, and their Father would take them grocery shopping. She could still remember the way he'd carefully educate them on the nutritional values of different foods, going into their material composition when Blossom would request it.
Her brain warped back to one instance in particular.
They had been traveling as a familial unit, years back, and while venturing through the snack and candy aisle for a single container of juice, Blossom thought to ask aloud what she had wondered for a while.
"Why is so much sugar bad for you?" she'd asked. The very idea that a component used in her own creation could be unhealthy for her was baffling.
"Haha, well, Blossom," the Professor had begun with that warming, amused smile. "Sugar has a very complex molecular structure – it gives us lots of energy, but-"
"Yea, tell me about it!" Buttercup jeered, cutting him off. "Remember last month when I ate all thoseboxes of cookies at once?"
"Oh?" The Professor seemed concerned, having no recollection of this event, given that the girls had never bothered to tell him about it.
"Teehee!" Bubbles giggled. "Yea, Professor! It was funny! Buttercup was sooo crazy that she beat up the Gangreen Gang all by herself, lickety-splits!"
"Heh." Buttercup puffed up her tiny frame in boast. "Wouldn't be the first time. But it was a lot quicker than usual."
"Well, yea," Blossom jumped in, "but then you had a sugar crash later that day, and me and Bubbles had to fight that giant, multiplying slime monster without you."
"Mmph," Buttercup shrugged off her lack of foresight. Blossom insisted on driving her point home, waving her hand up matter-of-factly.
"It was a valuable lesson in self-control and the dangers of over-indulgence," Blossom proclaimed, receiving a grouchy leer from Buttercup.
"Wh...When was this?" the Professor shakily wondered.
"Oh, a few weeks ago," Bubbles dismissed casually. "It was no biggie."
"Oh, I...see," the Professor mumbled warily. Blossom was perhaps the only one keen enough to pick up on his worrisome expression. "I suppose you girls are growing up fast, aren't you? Having...all sorts of adventures that I maybe don't...know about?"
"Don't worry, Professor!" Blossom tried to ease his concern with pride. "We're the Powerpuff Girls," she insisted, swooping to her siblings and pulling them close. "We can take care of ourselves, no sweat!"
Her sisters chimed in:
"Heck yea!"
"You betcha!"
Blossom found comfort in their Father's warmed smile.
"I suppose you can," he conceded.
"But Professor," Blossom went back to her initial question, leaving her sisters back by the tiled floor of the grocery store. "Even though we all know now-" She patted Buttercup's head with condescension. "-how too much of a good thing can be bad for you...How come that stuff happens with sugar, in particular? Why'd she get so tired like that? And how come you say that too much sugar is bad for us? Because we'll get...tired? I'm looking for specifics, here."
"Hm, well, from the sounds of it, Buttercup must have had a mild incident of hypoglycemia, which is when the bloodstream has a deficit of glucose...-"
Buttercup's eyes would roll as soon as Dad's mumbo-jumbo started up. Bubbles would stand there stupefied, her mouth agape, her thoughts probably drifting to...rainbows, and octopi, and unicorns, and...whatever it was that Bubbles thought about.
Blossom, on the other hand, would get misty-eyed and fascinated by the magnitude of her father's science-babble talk. Even at her young age back then, most of it still made sense, and it helped her feel a connection to her Father. It was science and knowledge that had brought her into existence, after all, why wouldn't she care about it? Back then it was a foreign concept that other kids in her age range couldn't comprehend even simple principles like the difference between covalent and ionic bonds. Then again, it was also weird for her to think that most kids never went to the library to spend their free time just for the sake of reading and learning. What kind of person wouldn't want to learn things?
The kind of person like Buttercup, who'd swipe cookies from the cookie jar without asking, and sneak candy to school, and such manner of mischievous things, all in spite of their Father's explanations.
Blossom heaved out a heavy breath, returning to the present as she set the ham-and-cheese sandwich into the fridge, bitter that even in her jaded state of mind, she would still make her inconsiderate sister a meal. It had been days since she had so much as spoken to her estranged, green-clad sibling, and their last interaction had been exponentially worse than the spat Blossom and Bubbles had experienced earlier that evening.
No more than an hour prior, having awakened from her sob-induced nap, Blossom had attempted to call Bubbles, only to notice that the addle-brained girl had left her phone at home. But Blossom had sat and wallowed in self-pity long enough. Bubbles would probably be fine. She's probably make a fool of herself, of course, but then again, this was the trend for all three PowerPuff Girls as of late, so what was another stupid mistake to add to the pile, right?
Blossom gently closed the fridge door and stared at the blank notepad magnetized to its surface. She drifted in quiet consideration for a few seconds before making her decision.
She summoned the pencil attached to the notepad's side and scribbled a message in careful, efficient cursive writing, obeying the unspoken laws of the ruled lines on the yellow sheet.
Bubbles,
I'm going to find Buttercup.
Dinner's in the fridge.
I'm sorry for being mean today.
It's because I'm scared about Daddy.
Please do not eat anything in the freezer.
I will be back soon.
Love, Blossom
Blossom studied her own writing, re-reading her note twice over and trying to predict how her sister would react to it. Part of her was worried that Bubbles might not understand the line about their Father, but at this point, she was done trying to appease Bubbles' repression. It wasn't helping, so perhaps some reinforcement of reality was what was needed.
Blossom squinted at the note, then drew a concise little heart shape beside her name, filling it in meticulously. Satisfied with her work, she attached the pencil back to its velcroed position on the notepad's side and went to her makeshift dinner, swallowing it down with a glass of water. A napkin's touch, a paper towel's swipe, and all traces of her meal were gone, the counter relatively clean. Agh, but there were some spots and light stains forming, and when she looked at the sink, she noticed that it still contained Bubbles' dishes from lunch, and...ugh, no. She couldn't waste all day nit-picking over house-cleaning.
With a decisive intake of breath, Blossom left her house, taking for the sunset skies of suburban Townsville. Within seconds of hyper-speed flight, she hovering above the downtown sprawl. There was one reliable way she could think of to track down Buttercup: the girl's loud mouth.
Closing her eyes and tuning into her super-hearing, Blossom scanned the cityscape's sounds.
Two dogs barking at each other.
A baby's cry.
Children's laughter.
A couple murmuring sweet-nothings to each other.
Disgruntled beeps and shouts from a traffic jam.
A startled scream.
An old-...Wait, a scream?
In a blink, Blossom whizzed through the sky to the source of the sound.
Two normal-enough looking high-schoolers in an embrace.
Huh?
"-can't believe you!"
"C'mon, babe, it was funny."
"Was not! You scared the heck outta me!"
Blossom sighed, leaving the prankster and his love life to their business. A small part of her insides twisted with envy – there we was again, feeling sorry for herself, and over what? A boy? She had far more important things to be doing with her life. But it sure must've been nice, having that kind of thing to distract one from th—argh, no. She had to stop doing this to herself. She couldn't afford fussing over not having a 'normal' life, because she had a greater calling.
She sure wished that 'greater calling' had been more prevalent recently.
It was kind of strange – she'd actually been hoping that someone had been in danger. Something for her solve, someone for her to save, some reassurance that her supposed 'gift' still had a purpose in her life. But it had been weeks since so much as a theft or robbery had taken place. That should've been good, and yet Blossom found it ever-so-slightly aggravating.
Did that make her a horrible person? Oh, no. It did, didn't it? Wanting people's lives to be in danger, just so she had some excuse to swoop in? Just so she could hear that rallying cry of, "And once again, the day is saved...!" So she could verify her identity as a leader, as a super-hero, as a 'perfect little girl?'
Or had she been hoping for a crime to solve just so she could simply deal with something she actually knew how to fix? Something she wouldn't just fail at? It did make her a horrible person, she was sure of it.
She hadn't come out here to continue bathing in self-loathing or pity. No, she was supposed to find her lost, confused sister. Upon a moment's reflection, she acknowledged to herself that this description could indeed fit any three of the PowerPuff Girls. Who was she to decide what was best for her siblings when she could barely keep herself together as it was?
Frowning in self-disappointment, Blossom refocused her hearing, steadily floating onward as she swept through the noises of Townsville.
A bouncing basketball.
A pedaling bicycle.
A minivan door sliding closed.
Heavy footsteps of a middle-aged man's jogging.
For minutes, Blossom sifted through the urban soundscape, but before she had all but given up hope, she heard it.
"Ahahaha!"
There it was. Buttercup's snarky little laugh, a solid footprint in the sands of Blossom's life.
Blossom whisked herself toward the voice, now that she had it locked from her periphery to her main attention.
"Nice one, Brick!"
Blossom's heart sank at the distant sound of her sister's words, as she knew full-well who 'Brick' was. Bubbles' guess had been right: Buttercup was with those awful boys. Not quite as awful anymore, of course, without their powers, but still...certainly a bad influence. What was Buttercup thinking? What would possess her to spend time with those creeps?
Blossom halted, hovering high above the shopping mall entrance. Ugh. That figured – the mall? Really, Buttercup? Blossom strained her eyesight, using her hawk-like vision and hyper-hearing in tandem to survey her sister's actions from afar.
There Buttercup was, dressed in low-cut jeans and a high-cut tanktop. Ugh, she looked like a proper mall-rat, her matted, ragged hair messily cut in layers, standing amongst her little entourage of equally bug-eyed boys. The RowdyRuff Boys, once created as equal-but-opposites to the PowerPuff Girls, were now reduced to mere freaks, their powers drained and their seemingly incurable blood lust giving way to sloth and indifference. In the months of fallout from the incident with HIM, the boys had more and more become playthings of Buttercup's whim.
"Heheheh," chuckled one of the boys, his black hair spiked up like a porcupine. "Ch-check out this lady! Wh-what's up with that bonnet, huh?"
Blossom immediately recognized him as Butch, and he still twitched with those muscle spasms of his. Blossom almost pitied him. Argh, she did pity him. She shouldn't – he didn't deserve it – but she did.
"I kinda like it," mumbled the meek blond boy, his parted hair spiked off sideways. "It's got a nice pattern, I mean look at-"
-Thwap!-
"Boomer," whined the ever-annoying voice of Brick, the boys' previous 'leader.' "Shuddap, man!" He fidgeted with his oh-so-lame backwards baseball cap, his ratty-edged red ponytail tussling from the movement. "You're gonna embarrass us."
"Yea, Boomer, don't be such a retard," Buttercup scolded him under her breath.
Blossom dropped an audible gasp at her sister's vocabulary. Where had she gotten off using such language?
"Hey, Grandma!" Buttercup jeered at the passer-by, an elderly woman barely making her way by with a cane. "What's the deal, lady? I didn't save this city so you could go wobbling around, wasting up space. Go to an old-people's home, where you belong!"
"Well, I never!" snipped the woman. "You've become quite the brute, haven't you? You think just because you have super-powers, you can just waltz around and-"
"Kick your butt? Yea, I can, if you don't leave! Take a hike, wrinkle-face," Buttercup dismissed her, eliciting giggles from her entourage.
Well, well, didn't she just look sooo cool, with her hands in her jean pockets, leaned back against the trashbin, all...trying to look smooth-like. Or something. Urgh. It was a disgrace. It looked more like someone from the Gangreen Gang than a PowerPuff Girl.
Blossom had enough. In an instantaneous blur of red, she dropped a hundred feet or so, landed right in front of the collective of teenage punks.
"Is there a disturbance, here, Ma'am?" Blossom asked the elderly woman, glaring at her sister all the while. Buttercup gave her a surprised and irate look.
"Oh, Blossom!" the woman cried, wriggling her cane at the green-eyed girl who'd insulted her. "Someone needs to get this crazy young lady under control! Why, I never..." She seemed to be shuffling off as quickly as her old limbs could take her.
"'Oh, I never!'" Buttercup mocked, rolling her eyes. "Yea, I never met a lady so stupid to backtalk to me like that..."
"Buttercup!" Blossom snapped, arms stretched with expectation. "What is wrong with you?"
"Tsh." Buttercup nodded her head to her compatriots, cool as a cucumber – the boys looked less-than-excited to see Blossom, however. "She wants to know what's wrong with me," Buttercup muttered to them, shaking her head. "Can you believe that?"
"Listen," Blossom firmly presented herself, keeping her distance. "I just want to talk."
"Yea, I bet," Buttercup defied. "You and the entire damned city. You come here to try arresting me, too? That it? I didn't fall in line, so they asked you to do it, huh? Well, I ain't comin', so you can piss off."
"Buttercup!" Blossom reeled at her sister's profanity.
"Oh, grow up," Buttercup scoffed, pulling her hands from her pockets and crossing them over her chest. "We're not in kindergarten."
"I'm not...-" Blossom was a bit stunned by Buttercup's accusation, simultaneously trying to process what she was referring to. "I came on my own, and I told you," Blossom huffed, trying her hardest to keep her cool. "I want to talk with you."
"Whatever," Buttercup shrugged defensively. "Go for it, then." She stood still, her trio of boy-toys all wide-eyed at Blossom, who they knew could whip them in an instant without their powers.
"In private," Blossom insisted.
Buttercup's enormous eyes lulled back in her skull with a hot puff of impatience.
"It's about our Dad," Blossom darkly specified.
Buttercup's lips fell open ever-so-slightly, and she eyed her sister with a hint of fear. Yea, that had gotten her attention, hadn't it? The RowdyRuff Boys exchanged confused glances with one another behind Buttercup's back.
"Fine," Buttercup bit on Blossom's lure, levitating herself off the ground and drifting toward her red-headed sibling. "Let's talk, then." She sharply turned her head around and gave the boys a stern look. "Don't go anywhere, I'll be back in a sec."
"You got it, Butter-Boss!"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
"Y-yup-yup!"
Blossom shuddered at this interaction, and a second later, her sister was gone, a green beam of light trailing to the clouds. Blossom vanished upward along with her. Buttercup was aimlessly sailing through the sky, a frown glued to her face. Blossom glided by her side, glancing over to her awkwardly.
"...Butter-Boss?" she scorned.
"Oh, can it," Buttercup growled back defensively.
"Is there something going on with you and...-?"
"Ew, no," Buttercup immediately protested. "Who? Which one?" Buttercup grunted in disgust. "Those guys are gross, they're just...fun to hang out with."
Blossom believed her sister's blunt words, given the girl's often straight-forward nature.
"I guess they're not the only gross ones around here, then."
"Pff, whatever, like you have any right to lecture me anymore."
"Buttercup, it's been a long time since we've worked together – I get that maybe you're bored because the city's been so quiet, but...that? What was that? Hanging around with that lame idiots? Picking on old ladies? You're better than that."
"I'd rather hang out with people stupider than I am than someone who's all stuck-up and constantly tryin' to prove how much smarter than me she is..."
"Buh...-" Blossom's face contorted. "No, I don't do that! And besides, I can't help if I'm-"
"Damnit, you're doing it right now!"
"Hey! What's with you and the language?"
"Ugh, you're not my mother."
"Well, we don't have a mother, so I guess one of us has to step up and-"
"Oh, so it's always gotta be you to be in charge, right?"
"W-well...Yes! It's what I was made to do, isn't it? I'm the oldest!"
"Just because you were named first doesn't make you any older than me."
"I act older than you, so I think that-"
"At least you got a real name that means something, not just...because it starts with a 'B.'"
"Wh-? Are you actually going to bring this up again?"
"Like you care! Miss Perfect..."
"Yea? Well, if you want," Blossom declared with prim aggression, "I can think of another word that starts with a 'B' that's a good name for you."
"Oh? Oh, yea?" Buttercup's face lit up, with sadistic amusement. "And what is it, huh?"
"...Um...It...-"
"No, no, go ahead and tell me," Buttercup jeered with a wry smile. "I'd love to hear it."
"...N-nevermind," Blossom sputtered, backpedaling on her own attempt at insult. Her teeth were starting to chatter and her shoulders were trembling. Geez, it couldn't be that cold up here, could it?
"Yea, I thought so," Buttercup puffed, turning her gaze back to the whistling clouds ahead, the pair still soaring across the landscape.
Blossom sighed bitterly, and a cloud of icy-cold breath was what escaped. Startled by this unintentional act, Blossom swallowed hard and tried to speak.
"A-any...Anyw-way, I...I just...-" Talking was proving to be a task with her ice power strangely deciding to act out of line, sputtering snowflakes from her mouth as she spoke.
"Man, whatever," Buttercup grunted. "You think I'm still jealous of your stupid little ice trick?" Buttercup curled her tongue out at her sister irritably. "There!" she spat. "We done playing that game? It's not like Daddy's here for you to try making me look stupid in front of, anyway..."
"I-...Th-that's...-" Blossom was rubbing at her chilled arms as they flew.
"What...-!" Buttercup halted her flight on a dime, arms furiously crossed. "-...do you want?" she finished, watching Blossom slow to a stop ahead of her. "Huh? What's going on with the Professor? Let's just cut to the chase here."
"Buttercup..." Blossom's lips inadvertently pouted a bit at her sister's resistance. It ached her to the core to feel so helpless and disconnected like this. Bubbles couldn't help it, but Buttercup was choosing to segregate herself. That burned deeper than any injury that could be sustained in a supernatural fisitcuff/laser/energy fight.
"You brought him up," Buttercup stated solemnly, staring at Blossom with expectation. "What? Is he getting better? You here to tell me things are gonna magically go back to normal, and I should grow up or something?"
Blossom's eyes quivered, and she looked down with uncertainty, the words hanging in her frigid throat. She swallowed again, dredging up heat from her own body to clear up the crystals that had formed. After taking a deep, normal breath of validation, Blossom looked up at her now wary-eyed sister, and shifted gears in conversation.
"What ever happened to dedicating our lives to fighting the forces of evil?"
Buttercup's worrisome look transformed quickly into a spiteful frown.
"In case ya haven't noticed, there aren't any more 'forces of evil' around here," she declared, waving up her stubby arms. Blossom couldn't help but wonder if she was looking at one right then and there, but that thought didn't sit well with her at all, and she tried to push it away.
"There are always evil people-" she began.
"Not in our town," Buttercup insisted. "Not anymore. Thanks to me." She pressed her fingerless hand into her chest firmly.
Blossom squinted at her sibling's arrogance with some disgust.
"Thanks to you? Buttercup, you're...a murderer, you-"
"Oh, please, like we've never had to off anybody before."
"W-well, sure, but, I mean, those were, like...monsters, freaks, not actual peop-"
"Freaks? Freaks?!" Buttercup closed the distance to her proclaimed leader, those huge green spheres cutting into Blossom's soul. "Like us, you mean. Why do you think I hang out with those guys?" She gestured an arm over her shoulder. "'Cuz they're the only freaks like us still left in this town...After everything that's been going on, I wanted...I wanted to just be a normal teenager for, like, five freaking seconds. They were the only people I could feel 'normal' with, because...they're the most...like us...out of anyone I know."
"We're...-" Blossom couldn't even finish, because she whole-heartedly agreed. They were freaks, the PowerPuff Girls, and the RowdyRuff Boys were indeed about as close as anyone came to matching them. "But...They're bad guys."
"What? Not anymore! Not since they lost their powers! They're just...lazy now. Jerks, I guess, but...-"
"Buttercup, we're not like them. You? You are not like them! We fight for good."
"Hell yea, we fight for good. We fight." Buttercup pounded one stump into the 'palm' of the other. "Sometimes ya gotta let loose some whoop-ass to get the job done. They all had it comin' to 'em."
Blossom's lips wrinkled with disdain at Buttercup's vocabulary. She put her chin up and tried her usual holier-than-thou approach.
"Oh, so that old lady-"
"I didn't hurt her, did I? Didn't even touch her, that was...just me having some fun with the guys."
"So instead of playing sports or fighting crime, you've stooped to being a bully to have fun."
"Fine, I don't...even care right now." Buttercup shook her head, shrugging the matter off as she acknowledged the facts.
"W-well, I care!" Blossom pleaded. "I mean, what if you get put in jail because of all this?"
"Please. Like there's a jail cell that can hold me."
"You seriously don't feel guilty? At all?"
"No! I don't! I just told you, they deserved what they got."
"Buttercup, I know that-...I mean, I guess HIM deserved what he got, after what he did to Bubbles, but-"
"And after what he made her do to the Professor? He deserved to die twice, if you ask me!"
"He was...pure evil, Buttercup, I...I agree, and...I'm sure the world's a better place without him, but...-"
Blossom's heart was heavy at the memories twisted, gnarled inside her round skull.
"But nothing!" Buttercup hissed. "You're not innocent, ya know – we took him out together."
"It was your idea to...to...-" Blossom couldn't even form the word with her lips. Buttercup eagerly obliged in finishing the thought.
"Kill the bastard? Yea, and I'm glad I made that choice. And I'd make it all over again!"
"Fine!" Blossom snarled, defenseless against Buttercup's wrath. "But the rest of them didn't-...I mean, what was wrong with putting everyone in prison like usual?"
Buttercup sucked in a deep breath and sighed out her impatience.
"Obviously, prison was not solving anything, Blossom, with the way those creeps kept escaping."
"But that's not our call, Buttercup, we have to obey the law, or otherwise what makes us better than them?"
"C'mon, don't give me this Batman junk. I never shot down a man just so I could steal the watch off his hand!" Buttercup snarled. "I never kidnapped children so I could sell them for ransom! I never put someone in danger just for the heck of it, or because I...lost my temper."
"You have so cause trouble from losing your temper! We all have. All three of us have made mistakes. Weren't you just saying that I'm not innocent? We've caused enough damage on our own, too. Do you know how much destruction we've caused this town over the years?"
"Yea, but not nearly as much as what would happen if we'd done nothing, 'cause we were looking out for this greater good that you wanna keep pretending is a real thing."
"It is a real thing, and it's our job to uphold it."
"We don't have to do anything if we get rid of all of the criminals – which I did, by the way."
"You really are proud of that, aren't you?"
"Yea! Ya know, I am! It was a long time coming."
"And Mojo Jojo? He wasn't even doing anything when you invaded his home..."
"Don't be stupid, Blossom, he was gonna pull something. Especially with Bubbles the way she is now, he could've taken advantage of-"
"But he didn't."
"He was going to," Buttercup insisted through grit teeth. "He always was up to something."
"Yea, maybe...building model ships in his bathrobe, but not scheming any-"
"Ohhh, well, excuse me for catching him on the wrong day of the week!"
"I...I can understand HIM but...Mojo was always more of a nuisance than-"
"What, you actually feel bad for him, now? He's always been trouble, and he was just going to keep-"
"You don't know that."
"I know no one's gonna miss his stupid rambling, or his stupid plans, or his stupid-"
"You murdered him, Buttercup! He wasn't up to anything, it had been weeks since he'd so much as built any kind of-"
"Ya know what? I don't care!"
The air had shaken around Blossom, Buttercup's mouth roaring out a supersonic burst. Blossom's hair whipped furiously from the force, and she nearly lost her aerial footing. She gradually opened her eyes through the tense silence.
Buttercup was on the verge of tears, eyes squinted while her arms were trembling with pent up rage. Blossom's heart raced at the sight, harkening back to the day Buttercup had taken her along on that horrible rampage.
"Why the hell have we spent so long protecting the retarded people of this city if they'll just sit back and-"
"Buttercup! How can you say that?!"
"-and keep doing nothing for themselves?!"
"We were born with great power, and with great power comes-"
"Don't even gimme that! I mean, what's even the point?"
"Someone has to uphold justice, it's the right thing to-"
"Well, I'm sick of it!"
"We have a responsibility to these good people-"
"They're not good people, they're...idiots!"
"Oh, but you'll hang out with idiots, instead of your own sist-"
"Stop it!"
Buttercup ended their spat with another supercharged roar, pushing Blossom back a few feet.
"Just...Stop it!" Buttercup repeated, her voice cracking. "I get it! OK?!" She thrust her arms to her sides. "You're a better person than I am! Good for you! For once, I do something that makes everyone's lives easier, and you just will not even give me that – just that one victory. So, ya know-? Great. You're still this wonderful, perfect person. Does that make you feel any better about what's happened? To Bubbles? To Dad?"
Blossom blinked meekly at her sister's harsh perspective. Tears were poking at the cracks of her eyes.
"...No," she replied in defeat.
"Then why do you still have to be right all the time? It doesn't matter! What's done is done, and it doesn't matter which one of us is smarter, or better, or whatever! It's over."
"Buttercup, you...you don't want to go back to the way it used to be?"
"No, I don't wanna...-" Buttercup paused and a held back breath heaved out. She shook her head, eyes threatening to leak water at any moment. She rubbed her knubby hand across her face and whimpered into her elbow. After a deep breath, she looked back up to Blossom, her cheeks red and damp. "I'm tired, Blossom," she squawked with exhaustion. "I'm tired of...-" She popped up her shoulders. "-...everything. We spent so many years spinning in circles...We could've ended it whenever we wanted. I just wanted to be done with it."
"Like this?" Blossom direly questioned. Droplets began sliding down her round face. "This is how you wanted it to end?"
Buttercup tilted her back back, looking up to the beautiful stars beginning to form in the night sky, the sun barely a glimmer on the horizon.
"N-no, I...I should've...-" Her gaze fell back to Blossom. "We should've ended all this before we let those crazies rip our family apart."
"Violence was not the answer, Buttercup."
"It was the only answer."
"If we hadn't kuh-" Blossom choked on the word momentarily. She shuddered. "-...killed...HIM...so quickly, m-maybe we could've found out how to reverse what he did, maybe we-"
"Maybe, maybe, maybe! And maybe he would've gotten me next. Or you!"
Blossom drooped her head, without a valid argument to contest this. Their battle against that satanic beast had been the closest call she could ever recount. HIM was always the most dangerous of their foes, even when it was three against one, but with one PowerPuff down and out? Giving it their all had probably been the only viable option, looking at it as objectively as possible.
"Blossom," Buttercup moaned, reaching her arms out toward the red-head. "After what we did – what I did – no one has the guts to even touch Townsville anymore. It's finished. There's no 'saving the day' because no one needs saving anymore, not as long as we're here. Now that they know we mean business, you can bet the cowards I let live will stay the hell outta our town."
"Because they're afraid of us, Buttercup."
"Um, hello? Duh, that's the idea! With everything we're capable of, they should be afraid."
The darkness in Buttercup's eyes when she said this made Blossom's insides churn. Could Buttercup be turning into that which they'd spent so many years fighting?
Had they been younger and more naïve, Blossom was certain that by now, the two of them would've moved on from a shouting match to a super-powered standoff. The fact that neither had initiated such a fight by now was proof enough to Blossom that her sister was still in there, that there was still hope here. How could she bring that out?
"Buttercup..." Blossom's whole body was shaking from the emotional strain of this situation. She had her hunches about her sister's feelings over everything that had been going on, but this was too much for her to bear right now, on top of everything else. Her one sister had lost her mind, and the other had callously dismissed her morals. "Don't you see what's happened?"
Buttercup had no reply to this, other than her regular frown.
"He won," Blossom shrugged, hugged at her queasy stomach. "He's beaten us – by turning us against each other, like he always wanted."
"Blossom, he's dead. I'm pretty sure that means that we win."
"But...but with what you've done, they'll-...What if they do figure out a way to lock you up? I mean, it has happened before..."
"That-! That's not gonna happen, they can't!" Buttercup shakily tossed the idea back out of her mind. "Are you kidding? I'd just break out. You'd break me out."
Blossom gasped, abhorred at the notion.
"What? No way! That'd be illegal!"
"But I'm your sister, and you're Blossom."
When Blossom frowned at her sister's assumption, Buttercup shrugged.
"Or Bubbles would do it," she theorized in an uncertain mumble.
"Oh, right," Blossom pouted. "We'd break you out, and then you'd be wanted, and we'd be wanted, and everyone would hate us. We can go live on a meteorite, then..."
Buttercup rolled her eyes at Blossom's dramatic scenario, and yet she couldn't really work out any situation that she'd label as 'OK' should she be found guilty of her crimes.
"I just want my family back," Blossom wheezed into her arms, dry sobs getting coughed out. She'd already spilled her tears out into her pillow earlier that evening. "I want my sister back...both of them."
Buttercup's frown deteriorated at her sibling's breakdown, her own face finally dripping free droplets, the cold air swiping them from her cheeks.
"...Me, too," Buttercup confessed.
Accepting these words as an invitation to reparation, Blossom whizzed into her sister, and the two tumbling through the air in a distraught hug before rebalancing their levitation.
"I'm sorry," Buttercup whispered over her sister's shoulder. "I really messed everything up...But-but I-...After what he did to Bubbles, after what happened to Dad, I was so...angry, and I just...-"
"I know, I understand," Blossom assured, clinging to her sibling ferociously. It was the first instant in some time in which she felt genuinely connected to her family, as things had used to be. She wanted it to last as long as it could. "I'm angry, too," she made her own confession.
"At me, right?" asked Buttercup.
"Well, lots of people, but especially you," Blossom explained, their hug splitting apart. "Because I know you're better than this...Because I love you, and you're my sister. And I really need you right now."
"...Why?" Buttercup wondered, recalling the entire reason Blossom had offered as the cause of their discussion.
"Because," Blossom puffed out, the briefly rekindled warmth in her eyes flickering away in an instant. "Dad's...not doing so well."
Blossom's already agonized heart was dealt an extra blow at the way Buttercup's face paled at this remark.
"They've spent a long time trying to figure out what it is, but nothing they do will work. They can't get him out of his comatose state, I can't figure it out, either, and so they asked me a couple days ago if we should-"
"You didn't tell me about this?" Buttercup gasped, flabbergasted.
"How could I?" Blossom winced out, hoping against hope not to boil this back into arguing. "You wouldn't return my calls, you let your voicemail fill up, you wouldn't come home, and you'd made it pretty clear that you didn't want to hear from me, and so...-"
"Blossom, I-...This is kind of a big deal, I mean, you could've...-"
"I've kind of been under a lot of stress, OK? Do you know how much work it is to study, and take care of the house, to be conducting the extensive research I've been doing to figure this all out, and watch after Bubbles, and try to do the community service that I volunt-"
"OK, all right," Buttercup attempted to cool her down. "I'm sorry."
"I've been...losing my mind these past couple of days. Bubbles is getting worse and worse. We had a fight today, and she ran off. Just took off! I mean, back when the doctors told me about Dad, I tried explaining it to Bubbles, and it's like it...just goes in one ear and out the other. She's not retaining anything, and at this point, it's as if she's...forgotten what happened altogether. But...-" Blossom nodded her head in Buttercup's direction. "You know...she still remembers you just fine."
Buttercup bit her quivering lip and sniffed at the air.
"She-...She does, huh?" the girl mumbled, touched by the notion, and simultaneously guilty for the way she'd practically abandoned things that week.
"We miss you, Buttercup. And we need each other right now. Will you please just...help me find Bubbles, and we can all just go home? Get a good night's rest? We can discuss this tomorrow and decide...what we want to do – all three of us."
Buttercup huffed out a deep, trembling sigh before looking backward, toward the mall in the distance. Those bug-eyed boys could perhaps relate to her, but...they weren't her family. As lost and confused as Buttercup had been since she'd slaughtered so many of their old foes, she wasn't surprised that Blossom had managed to get her back into some realm of sanity. Blossom wasn't the only person who needed her sisters at that point.