Author's Notes: This is probably my darkest idea yet, Mommy Fearest going very, very wrong for the little girls involved. Also if you couldn't tell, I put a little nod to some Incredibles dialogue here, and also added a bit of Disney's Hercules just for good measure to a fitting situation. I love those two movies and can quote them for days.
Chapter 1
What the Hell Are You Doing?
The city of Townsville... and the girls are in some serious, serious, serious trouble! What sort of trouble could've befallen our dear girls to put them in such a perilous spot? Was it a horrible rampaging monster? A twisted, unspeakable evil? Some dastardly supervillain plot?
Unfortunately my dear friends, I'm afraid the answer is far, far, far worse. For you see, our precious little crimefighters have all been... grounded.
Grounded, you say? Now why would our good, selfless, kind, noble and helpful little girls ever be grounded?
Well let's just say it has everything to do with a certain mistress who has decided to take control their lives after a date with the Professor gone horribly right. A lady with a secret, horrible identity. The alias of this woman? Goodlady. Ms. Ima Goodlady.
"That's it!" Ima shouted in a rage at the three little girls who had blatantly disobeyed the orders she had enforced on them before. "You... three... are... GROUNDED!"
In the middle of her rant, she suddenly heard the Professor coming down the stairs, having been woken up by Ima's shouting. He was clearly still tired and not in a completely clear state of mind, letting out a yawn before asking, "What's going on down here?"
Ima's demeanor changed instantly. Her eyes softened up into shimmering pools of emerald green vulnerability, she leapt into his arms, and then she began to spin a yarn of her own telling of course about what really happened, painting herself as the true victim in all of this.
"Oh Professor!" Ima sobbed softly, embracing him by his waist. "I-I went to check on the girls, and they weren't in bed! So I waited and waited, oh!" She stopped to place her face in her hands, feigning concern she had never truly felt. "I was so worried!" Her eyes filled with tears as she put her hands on his chest and claimed, "They purposely disrespected me and left to fight crime!"
"Oh! I just want to be good to them!" Blossom couldn't help but roll her eyes. Buttercup simply scowled beside her, crossing her arms, while Bubbles covered her mouth, waiting with bated breath as to what the Professor's response would be. "So... I... punished them!"
Ima continued to be melodramatic in the most puke-worthy fashion imaginable, then she made a show of being overwhelmed with emotion, stuttering out, "I just! I just!" before fainting in his arms.
Oh brother, Buttercup thought. She needs to go to acting school, or maybe audition for some cheesy soap opera! There's no way the Professor is gonna buy tha-
"Girls!" The Professor angrily shouted, actually turning on his daughters! "She's only looking out for your best interest!"
"But! But! But!" The stunned little girls babbled, unable to believe their father had taken the side of a woman he'd barely known for under a week.
"No buts." The Professor told them. These next words he struggled to say: "You're g-g-g-grounded."
The final gavel was slammed down. With a secret grin of success, Ima reveled in her victory over the girls as the sad little crimefighters floated up in defeat up the stairs to their rooms.
Ima absolutely loved the power she could hold over them, all because they had such a sap of a Professor.
Whatever are our special little girls to do now? Could this be the end of the Powerpuff Girls?
"Oh girls!" Ima called out sweetly, after the girls had finished a rather unsavory dinner of liver and onions, all served on purpose to make them as miserable as possible with their least favorite foods, "I've got lots more things for you slobs to clean up today!"
The Professor had conveniently stepped out for the night to buy more groceries for the house, so Ima was predictably mean and nasty to the three little girls that she should've seen like daughters.
The girls were just about reaching their breaking point with this woman, tired of dealing with her tyranny. Blossom in particular grit her teeth in irritation before bitterly responding, "Do it yourself."
"EXCUSE ME?" Ima bellowed, marching back into the kitchen to glare down at the little girl who dare to oppose her like a dragon would gaze at its prey. "I believe I told you to clean up your messes!"
"You're the one who made the mess!" Blossom retorted. "You always break stuff on purpose and then you make us clean it up!"
"Is that so?" Ima challenged smugly, her lips curled up into a cruel smile. "Well which one do you think the Professor is going to believe if I decide to tell him how you left the living room a complete mess today just to spite me? Me or you?"
The answer to that should've been obvious, though they already had evidence to the contrary.
"He'll believe his daughters!" Blossom replied staunchly, though she was starting to have doubts after yesterday.
"Oh really? Then is that why he sided with me when I sent you girls to bed early or when I told him how I had to punish you when you deliberately disrespected me?"
She had them there, and the kids could only glare scornfully at her for the power that she held over them, all because she had their father wrapped around her little finger.
And so it was another day of the girls being pushed around by what felt more like an evil stepmother than a loving caregiver. Another day of the girls performing domestic chores around the house without the aid of their superpowers, making such a task much more arduous. All while Ima kicked back her feet on their couch and flicked through the TV channels with their remote control, treating herself like a queen. She even had a bowl of chips and a can of soda with her.
This was after telling the girls they were no longer allowed to have snacks while watching TV in the living room but of course she could. She always allowed herself plenty of special privileges that were not likewise granted to the girls.
After all of this, one of these girls had finally had quite enough, and it wasn't the one you would most expect. It was not Buttercup who ended up exploding, but Bubbles, the joy and the laughter.
"This is STUPID!" Bubbles finally shouted, breaking the broomstick she had previously been sweeping with over her knee. Buttercup and Blossom looked up from their current tasks, shocked, but not all that surprised at their sister's fed up actions. One of them had to snap sooner or later.
"What was that?" Ima asked threateningly, piercing the girl with her wicked green eyes. She made to stand up from the couch.
"You heard me!" Bubbles answered. "This is stupid! We're the Powerpuff Girls! We're not supposed to be stuck in the house all day doing chores! Don't you know we're supposed to be out there saving the world and stuff?"
Ima was not impressed and narrowed her eyes, beginning to approach the girl with menace only to see that they were eye-to-eye when they really shouldn't be. Bubbles had blatantly defied the "no-superpowers" rule that she had previously enforced on all three of them.
"It's about time you brats stopped playing superheroes!" She spat scathingly at her. "This is a NORMAL society you live in filled with NORMAL people and you will live and behave like NORMAL little girls!"
The girls couldn't believe their ears. Blossom openly gaped while Buttercup loudly snorted at this woman's utter audacity. What kind of stuff was this lady smoking for her to believe that Townsville was in any way a normal society? This was a city that regularly got attacked by kaiju monsters and superpowered weirdoes every other day!
Bubbles openly screeched, "Do we LOOK like normal little girls to you?!" spreading her arms wide just to emphasize how truly different she really was.
She had no fingers on her hands, no toes on her feet, no ears on the side of her head, and no nose in the middle of her face. Her eyes were ginormously large and her head wasn't too far behind. She could also bench press a city bus like it was no more than a mere paperweight at the tender age of five. That was about as far away from normal as you could possibly get.
"I don't know if you got the memo, but our dad made us in his lab! He used sugar and spices! We were born as five-year-olds! We have ultra superpowers that make us stronger than the average person by at least a bazillion times! If you think any of that makes us normal, then you're just plain STUPID!"
Bubbles' voice was practically at a shrieking pitch and it was all Ima could do just to cover her ears against it, hating that little brat for her overly squeaky and annoying voice.
"I would correct that tone if I were you, young lady!" Ima warned darkly, but Bubbles chose to ignore this warning and crossed her arms defiantly.
"I don't have to correct my tone, you big fat meanie! You're the one pushing us around! We're the Powerpuff Girls and we're never gonna be normal! DUH!"
Ima could feel her blood boiling. If this little brat told her "duh" one more time, she was sure she was gonna snap and strangle her.
"The Professor told us that our powers made us special!" Buttercup spoke up boldly in agreement with her sister. She too defied Ima's rules, taking flight in defiance of it. "He never made us feel ashamed for having them!"
"That's right!" Blossom spoke up righteously too, making her the third to defy orders. "The Professor told us that our powers were what made us who we are and that we should use them to try to make the world a better place!"
"I bet if the Professor were here, he would agree with me!" Ima countered smugly, crossing her arms with confidence
"That's because you always lie to him and make yourself out to be the victim!" Buttercup pointed out, sneering at her with disgust. "You make like you're so great when you're nothing more than a spoiled brat!"
This already annoyed the snow-haired woman, but Buttercup decided to twist the knife in even further, hitting her where it actually hurt for once. "If the Professor could see you for the monster that you really are, he wouldn't want to spend one second around you! No one could ever love someone as disgusting as you!"
This actually stabbed Ima directly in the heart, as rotten and black as it happened to be. She clenched her fists to the point of her nails cutting into her palms and sank her teeth into her lip to the point of tasting blood. This girl didn't know it, but she was actually treading over some very real issues that Sedusa often dealt with in secret; her lack of self-love and her low self-esteem.
"Buttercup's right! You're pathetic!" Blossom agreed.
Ima's body was trembling with barely contained rage. Her eyes blazed with fury. Her teeth gnashed against each other. She could only see red. She didn't know how much more of this she could take without absolutely exploding.
"Face it, Ima dummy." Bubbles teased, actually getting nasty with her in a way no one would expect from the usually sweet five-year-old child. "You don't have a leg to stand on! We're not gonna let you push us around anymore!"
"Shut. Your. Mouth." Ima ordered through tightly clenched teeth.
"No!" Bubbles refuted, tired of listening to anything she had to say. "You're just a big fat bully! You're nothing more than a two timing,"
"Stop it!"
"No good, lying, scheming-!"
"SHUT UP!" Ima finally screamed, rearing back her hand and striking Bubbles hard across her face. The Puff's head whipped to the side with the blow, and the sound reverberated across the entire room.
A split second after that loud smack that left the girl's cheek bright red, Ima Goodlady suddenly felt her back crack painfully against the opposing wall where a certain green puff had violently slammed her into it.
As she let out a grunt of pain, she saw out of the corner of her eye Blossom taking action too. Instead of lashing out at Ima however, she immediately grabbed her sister into her arms, holding her in a protective hug. The look over her face as she glared at her step "mother" was absolutely furious.
Of course she should've expected those little brats to retaliate. They never did have any proper discipline after all.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" Buttercup screamed at the woman, not even caring that she had used one of the words the Professor had told her she should never, ever use under any circumstances.
This creature had crossed a line. She could try to make them go to bed early, forbid them from fighting crime, push them around, and make their lives miserable, but the moment she tried to hurt one of her own sisters, all bets were off.
"Don't you dare swear at me, you brat!" Ima hissed at her, trying to regain some form of control.
"And don't YOU dare hit Bubbles, you WITCH!" Buttercup thundered right back, never remembering a time where her heart had beaten so hard inside of her own chest from so much wretched anger.
"Buttercup's right!" Blossom agreed once again. "How dare you hit Bubbles?! How dare you hurt our sister?!"
"That little brat deserved it!" Ima Goodlady snarled back, completely unrepentant as she pointed at the softly sobbing girl. "She shouldn't talk back to her mother!"
"You are not our mother!" Blossom angrily retorted, holding her sister as protectively as a mama bear would one of her cubs. "You! You! Not-so-good lady! You never tuck us in at night!"
"You never read us any stories!" Buttercup added.
"You never pack our lunches!" Blossom continued.
"You never take us to the park!" Buttercup piled on.
"And you sure as heck don't love us!" Buttercup finished. "You just boss us around and make us clean around the house like slaves! But the one thing you're not gonna do is put your filthy hands on our sister!"
"You brats will regret everything that you've said to me." Ima, now feeling herself slipping into Sedusa promised darkly. She stood up and took up a menacing stance.
"The only thing we regret is ever letting you into our home or the Professor's heart!" Blossom responded. "It's obvious you're no good for him and you're nothing more than an evil snake!"
Meanwhile, Bubbles still had a hand laid over her smarting cheek. Her eyes were full of tears and she tasted the salt of her own blood inside her mouth. She could've easily retaliated when Ima struck her but the shock prevented her from doing so. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. This wasn't what having a mother was supposed to be like at all.
"I j-just wanted a mommy..." she sniffled softly, burying her face deeper into Blossom's chest. Her sister stroked the back of her head while Sedusa looked on with disgust.
"Oh, you'll get a mommy alright." She told them all with a twisted smirk, advancing on the girls who were all ready to fight her. Little did they know, that the supervillain-in-disguise had a few tricks up her sleeve and she was one step ahead of them.
With a stab of her hand into her pocket, and the reveal of a flask of Antidote X she had stolen from the lab due to the Professor letting her have free reign of the house, Sedusa screamed, "A MOMMY WHO ISN'T PUTTING UP WITH ANY OF YOUR SHIT!"
And she doused the three girls in the neutralizing chemical.