Chapter 9: Nightmare

Cha-ching!

Another Sacagawea dollar dropped inside the already overflowing bag of cash that Buttercup had already been building up so fast. She had no idea earning money could be such a rewarding thing. She now fully understood why Mojo was always robbing banks! This right here was just too much of a good thing to stop. She grinned to herself as she thought about the total sum of earnings. This was surely more than enough for her punching bag now. Hell, she could probably add an entire training gym right on top of it! And how far could she take this gravy train? The possibilities seemed practically endless.

As Buttercup continued to fool around with her carefully hidden sack underneath the bed, she seemed to get a bit of news that would mean an even greater potential for cash flow.

"What? No way! I don't believe it. Really? That's terrible." Blossom was on the phone with the Mayor and at first it sounded like a regular call. But then the nature of the crime was revealed when Blossom said, "Girls! The Townsville Museum's collection of priceless prehistoric pearly whites is about to be plundered!"

And Buttercup's interest in particular was immediately piqued. "Priceless?" She repeated, with an irresistible, greedy grin. A temptation like that was much too good for her to willingly pass up so she was the first one out of the house, faster than even either of her sisters.

Buttercup burst through the ceiling of the museum in practically record time and said, "Alright Mojo, lose the tee-!" But there was something horribly, horribly wrong. It wasn't just Mojo who was there but a whole lot of people with missing teeth. Fuzzy, the Gang, Him, and every other criminal and bad guy Buttercup had ever had a history with involving the painful removal of their teeth for cash. They didn't look happy to see her and they were all itching to enact their brutal revenge.

Suddenly losing all her nerve from before, Buttercup looked up nervously at her sisters and said, "Uh, girls? Uh, a little help here?" None of them looked too keen on helping her, with Blossom giving her a look of cold judgement and Bubbles looking downright vindictive. They wanted this to happen. In fact, it was more than likely that they set it all up in the first place.

"Sorry Buttercup," Blossom replied, folding her arms out in front of her. "But you know what they say: An eye for an eye."

"And a toof for a toof!" Bubbles finished, a bit of spit flying out of her gap between her own front teeth.

Buttercup looked at them for a while longer, waiting for them to tell her that they were just joking, but when their expressions didn't change, Buttercup slowly realized that they were both being completely serious. That only left her with the advancing crowd's wrath. Buttercup let out a nervous chuckle as their shadow loomed menacingly over her, but none of her queasy smiles or laughter were enough to save her from this.

She tried to go through her options, of which there truly weren't many. Could she fight these people? Maybe the pushovers but not any of the villains. Besides the fact that this would be a heartless thing to do, even Buttercup knew she wasn't a match for an enraged Fuzzy Lumpkins, an already satanic Him, and a pissed off Gangreen Gang, especially where someone like Big Billy was involved. Could she maybe try to ... run? That was the most cowardly of options. Taking a look up at her sisters, Buttercup figured they would just try to thwart any attempt if she tried. Besides, as she watched the angry figures circling her, she saw that the only potential way out was 'up' anyway. Beyond that, she knew deep in her heart that she wouldn't be able to run from the consequences of what she did forever. Eventually it would all catch up to her and she'd have to pay the price for her deeds one way or another.

She knew this was coming eventually but how was she supposed to deal with it when it was finally here. Finding herself growing desperate, Buttercup finally tried something she hadn't tried in reality: she begged.

"W-Wait!" Buttercup said, holding out her hands for possible mercy. "Just hear me out! I'm really sorry for hurting all of you! I didn't mean for things to get this bad!"

Her contrition was served far too late for the villains who had already made up their minds.

"Aw," Mojo cooed, his drool from a terribly swollen mouth dripping down to the floor. "You're sowwy? Well sowwy's not goop enough!"

"Oh we'll make sure you're real sorry alright," Ace Copular promised darkly, cracking his brass-laden knuckles in front of the trembling girl. "Sorry you evah thought ta mess with us dat is!"

"You're not sorry yet." Him growled, ditching his effeminate voice entirely. "You have much suffering to do first, my dear."

Buttercup trembled with fear and did a second glance up at her sisters, searching each of their faces for even a hint of possible mercy. None of them held any sympathy for her and they weren't trying to put a stop to any of this either.

"P-Please," Buttercup said. "I've got plenty of money left... I'll use it to pay all of your dental bills!"

"I think you'll need all of that money to pay the rest of your own." A pantyhose-over-the-head wearing criminal said gruffly, his body stinking of heavy liquor and tobacco smoke.

The crowd got ever closer still. "Please..." Buttercup said. "P-Please don't hurt me!"

She took a single step back - and that was a single step too many for the already enraged Him. "DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO RUN AWAY!" The terrifying, flamboyant demon bellowed, and it didn't really matter at that point whether Buttercup was actually trying to do so or not. The demon took control over her entire body anyway, and forced every muscle in her system to obey the red creature's demands. At first the girl was paralyzed and rooted to the spot, and then she was forcefully manipulated to come forward.

It was like being yanked brutally by a string and the first strike that came to her face with that sharp, red claw of a pincer already did its job of removing one tooth. Buttercup also cut the inside of her mouth and she spat out a good wad of blood along with the dislodged pearly white tooth. Her face was pressed against the floor for only a moment before Fuzzy picked her up in his large, meaty hands and slammed her down face-first into the tiles again, much, much harder than she'd gone down before. He snatched her by the back of her hair to do this and the force at which he smashed her into the ground was enough to break several more of her teeth.

The blows just kept coming after that. Punches and kicks from too many parties to count, weapons like baseball bats, crowbars, and brass knuckles being added into the equation. Strikes that took her from one side of the room to the other, and she hardly even kept track of where she ended up in the aftermath before having the process repeated all over again.

Her beating seemed so much longer than it had been the first time. Buttercup continued to make choked cries of pain, some of it being gurgled by the blood she was constantly having to spit out of her mouth along with the teeth. She started screaming at the blows that nearly broke her bones, some of her teeth being broken in half, some being ripped to the point of taking a chunk of nerves and gum tissue with them.

At one point she looked up tearfully at Blossom and Bubbles, silently begging them to help her with her eyes, but they only gazed back down at her with a set of cold, apathetic looks, fully condoning this brutal beating of hers if there was a chance she would learn her lesson.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the beating was over. Buttercup received one final boot to the face that knocked out the remaining front teeth she had in her mouth, and then she was left curled up on her side, covered in both sweat, tears and her own blood.

She took a moment to cough, spraying the floor with more fragments of teeth and the redness of her own blood. She struggled to breathe, clutching her pained stomach tightly, but Bubbles and Blossom spared her no pity to her pain.

"So Buttercup," Blossom asked coldly with firmly crossed arms, floating above her curled up sister like the pinnacle of justice. "Have you learned your lesson about why it's wrong to go around senselessly hurting people for money?"

"Y-Yes." She made sure to say it without a hint of possible attitude or sassiness with Blossom, lest her sister deem her lesson "unfinished" and sick the villains back on her again to make her hurt some more. "I've learned."

She stopped herself from crying just barely in front of her sisters too, sure that they would only see such a display as weakness from her. "You can dish it out but you can't take it" was a taunt she could definitely see them making if she made the mistake of letting them see her tears.

"Alright then." Blossom finally nodded, satisfied for the time being.

Buttercup struggled to lift herself from the ground, trying to retain at least a shred of dignity, but her sisters beat her to this, grabbing her by the arms each and dragging her out of that museum and horrible place.

"We're going to the Professor." Blossom told her. "And then you're going to tell him everything that's happened here today."

Of course she would be dragged at his feet, forced to confess to her crimes and what a sorry, awful excuse of a daughter she was.

Buttercup didn't hold it in this time. This time she cried out loud and she made no effort to hide it.

"Aah!" The green Puff cried, waking up with a sob on the couch she was previously laid on. She sat up straight and clutched a hand over her chest, trying to remember where she was at and why she was here.

She saw no prehistoric artifacts, no large dinosaur bones or priceless pearly whites surrounding a museum of lost history.

Buttercup forced herself to calm down, realizing she had had nothing more than a nightmare. A nightmare about events that had already transpired and were long gone by now. She wasn't at that wretched museum anymore. She wasn't surrounded by a mob of angry villains. She didn't have to spit out blood from her mouth on the ground along with fragments of teeth as she was relentlessly battered around. That day was over.

Buttercup checked herself all over for wounds; aside from what had already happened (her broken teeth and the lingering bruises), she was fine. It was all just a dream, or in her case, more like a dream memory. There were differences of course; she hadn't actually tried apologizing to all those bad guys she hurt or offering to spend her money on their dental bills instead of hers, but the rest of it was more or less accurate. Too accurate in fact. Painfully so.

She scrubbed an arm over her face, furiously scrubbing away her lingering tears. There was no need for them. It was just a stupid nightmare. Nightmares couldn't hurt her. She sat up and pulled her knees into her chest, burying her head into them as she tried to slow down her racing heart. It almost felt like she would die from how fast and hard it was beating. Her forehead was drenched with sweat and the tears kept coming no matter how many times she tried to wipe them with her sleeve.

"Buttercup?" Wednesday was revealed to be standing over her bed.

Buttercup looked up at him with an openly vulnerable face, tears still flowing from her eyes. She didn't even try to look tough in that moment; she simply looked small. Small and scared.

"I'm sorry." Buttercup apologized meekly, only to have Wednesday stoop down in front of her to wipe away her tears. His hand was more calloused than the Professor's, much larger, but that didn't make the action any less tender.

"Why are you sorry, Buttercup?" he asked as he did this, implying that she didn't have anything to be sorry about. Even though his touch was gentle, Buttercup recoiled away from it. She didn't want someone else taking care of her. It felt too... weak. And the one thing Buttercup didn't want to be was weak.

"I... I don't know. Sorry for waking you up, I guess."

"It's in the middle of the day, kid." Wednesday reminded her. "You're not waking anybody up."

Buttercup blinked at this. Did she really have a nightmare in the middle of the day? It kind of rendered the whole "NIGHT"-mare part irrelevant.

"I just... nothin'. I'm sorry I'm such a pain, I guess."

"Having a simple nightmare doesn't make you a pain, kid."

She shrugged at this.

"Mind telling me what your nightmare was about?" Something in his tone suggested that he wasn't asking the question entirely out of ignorance, but more to see if she would actually be willing to tell him.

"It's nothin'."

There was a pause for a while, and then, "You're safe here, Buttercup."

"I know." She replied a little forcefully. "I'm not some baby, you know."

"I never said you were."

There was another heavy pause. "I heard warm milk can help with bad dreams."