Author's Notes: I think this is the worst thing Buttercup has ever done to Bubbles and the way Bubbles cried after the fact was just so heartbreaking to me. The voice acting from Tara Strong just made it sound so real. I didn't really care about all the stuff with the chalk monsters and Him manipulating Bubbles after the fact. I wanted to explore the ramifications of such a thing without the additions of supervillains or a fantasy plot so here it is. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
Shattered Sisterhood
The day was a sunny one at Pokey Oaks Kindergarten School as all the kids were playing merrily and blowing off steam on the playground outside. The boys and girls were chasing each other in games of tags, skipping along in games of hopscotch, jumping over ropes to the time of rhythmic songs, and as was the case for Buttercup and Mitchell Mitchelson, getting into the climax of a fierce game of dodgeball.
That left our ever-loving Bubbles expressing her artistic talents with her trusty pack of chalk across the blacktop. Both sisters were quite happy to be invested in their current activities, but unfortunately for them, they were both about to invade each other's space in a way that would eventually lead to an irredeemable fight.
"No mercy..." Buttercup muttered, and then she pitched her first fastball special at Mitch's poor unsuspecting face.
There was nothing he could do to avoid it; it was coming at him much too fast. So all he could do was stand there and take it, absorbing a nasty hit to the face that flipped him right off of his feet and onto his head. Buttercup spared him no pity for his pain.
"Aw, come on, Mitch!" She shouted mockingly at him. "The game's called dodgeball! If you wanted to play catch and instead, just tell me!"
WHAM!
Right when Buttercup least expected it, Mitch retaliated with a pitch of his own, nailing Buttercup right in the head. "In your face, baby!" Mitch taunted, pointing at her with the successful blow.
This time the ball ended up bouncing and rolling until it came to a stop at a particular blonde little girl's feet, a blonde who had been currently kneeling over the blacktop and putting the last finishing touches on her current artistic masterpiece. She had drawn a lot of things up until now; a choo-choo train, a rainbow cloud, the Professor in an orange shirt as a happy little boy and so many other joyous, wonderful things. But this tiny little ball rolling to her briefly broke her out of her reverie and got her attention.
Bubbles curiously turned her head to the object and innocently picked it up, only to be greeted by the sour, scowling face of her sister Buttercup glaring down angrily at her just a second later. "What are you doing with my ball?" Buttercup asked accusingly, staring down at Bubbles with nothing but sheer aggression.
"Huh?" Bubbles asked in befuddlement, before having the ball roughly snatched away from her by Buttercup's impatient hands before she could even get a word out to defend herself.
"Give it! We got a game goin' on!" Buttercup barked at her, going on to inspect her ball before muttering grumpily at what she had seen. "Aw man, you got chalk all over it! You know Bubbles, this is a playground not a drawing ground!"
"Yo!" Mitch Mitchelson called out from behind her. "What's the holdup?" Clearly he was in a hurry to get back to their original game. Buttercup was too and she quickly called out to him, "I'm comin', I'm comin'!" before racing to his side and announcing loudly to him, "Bubblehead is just doing her stupid chalk stuff again!"
Bubbles scowled at her for that remark. Bubblehead. That was one of Buttercup's favorite derogatory nicknames for her sister, Bubbles. That, along with such gems like "Bubblefingers" and "Bubblebutt", all said as a means to demean and deride her. Sometimes Bubbles couldn't remember the times when Buttercup wasn't doing something to try to hurt or tease her.
And of course everything Bubbles did for passion or fun or just a general hobby was considered stupid to Buttercup. Her ability to talk to squirrels was dismissed as "south-of-the-border-rodent speech". Her drawings were always childish and overwrought. Her love of all things cute and cuddly made her a baby who simply refused to grow up. And there was even a time where Buttercup had ragged on Bubbles for her very hair once after the green puff had won a race between the three sisters: ("I didn't have to cheat! I'm just more aerodynamic than you! I don't have big powderpuffs to slow me down!") Nothing Bubbles did was ever good enough for her. It was like she couldn't find even one thing about her to genuinely like.
Bubbles felt angry at Buttercup for her rudely sarcastic words, but she decided not to say anything back that would end up starting an unnecessary fight between her and her sister. Bubbles hated fighting in general, at least when it came to the Puffs as a family, and she wasn't about to starting picking fights now. At least Buttercup had left her alone for now to continue to draw again in peace, and Bubbles tried her very best to ignore the taunts and resume her task in doing just that.
Meanwhile, things were finally hitting the last round of sudden death for Mitch and Buttercup in their heated game of dodgeball. This was the shot that would decide the whole game. Buttercup stood in front of the sweating boy confidently, her arms crossed in front of him.
"Okay Mitchie, give it your best shot." She encouraged him. "If you miss, you gotta play with Bubbles and her chalk!"
Of course. She just couldn't resist putting that little jab in there, could she?
Bubbles snapped her head up to glare at Buttercup with annoyance for the second time that day, though she still tried to hold fast on her vow of not rising to the bait. Bubbles wasn't a fighter, but she swore that Buttercup just loved to push her buttons at times like this. Was it all one big game to her? What was so wrong with playing with chalk in the first place? At least Bubbles actually knew how to draw. Was Buttercup jealous because she didn't know how to draw her way out of a paper box?
Sweat dripped from Mitch's face as he did his best to concentrate on the task at hand, worrying his teeth over his bottom lip and gripping his fingers over the rubber of the dodgeball. He took a deep breath, made his decision, and then wound his arm back for a throw he hoped was fast and hard enough to hit Buttercup dead on.
Instead Buttercup barely even blinked as she casually moved her head to the side, making the ball ricochet out of control in all different directions, first smacking Mary in the face, then hitting the school's flagpole, four more kids playing near the sandbox, a window that quickly cracked upon impact, and finally slamming back into Mitch's very gut, making him slide on his head until he came to a sudden stop, skidding over Bubbles' hard work in the process.
Needless to say, Bubbles wasn't too happy about this. "Hey!" She exclaimed with indignation, her brows furrowing with anger. "You erased my drawings!"
"Uh, sorry?" Mitch proceeded to apologize, awkward in his delivery.
"What are you apologizing for?" Buttercup demanded. "She shouldn't draw her stupid pictures over the blacktop if she doesn't want 'em played on!"
"I have every right that you do to be here!" Bubbles finally shouted, tired of being Buttercup's punching bag for the day. She stood right up from the ground to defend her position.
"Oh yeah?" Buttercup challenged, getting right up in her face. "Well I don't-!"
"I don't care what you think!" Bubbles interrupted her. She wasn't about to be pushed around by this big green bully anymore.
"A playground is for playing!" Buttercup insisted.
"And drawing is playing, you ninny!" Bubbles shouted at her in turn.
Their fighting began in earnest now:
"You can't draw because you don't know how to draw!"
"Playing is not drawing!"
"You couldn't draw anything!"
"Drawing is not playing! It's not the same thing!"
The other kids started to be drawn in like moths to the flame of their ensuing argument. They crowded around the bickering girls in a big circle and began to chant eagerly, "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!"
Blossom ended up getting an earful of this argument too and she was quite keen to break it up rather than fan the flames. After pushing and shoving her way through the crowd of jeering kids, she shouted above everyone else, "Alright, break it up! Break it up!"
She assumed her traditional position of authority, hands on hips, as she asked both her sisters sternly, "Now, what's going on here?"
"Well, SHE started it." Bubbles claimed.
"SHE was the one drawing all over the place!" Buttercup accused.
And back and forth they went from there, to the point where Blossom had to silence them all over again with a loud shout of "SHUT UP!"
She hated having to raise her voice but they weren't going to get anywhere if all Bubbles and Buttercup wanted to do was shout at each other. They needed some kind of diplomacy. Maybe it would be better if they each took turns sharing their side of the story. "Bubbles, you first!" Blossom allowed first.
"Well, I was just minding my own business drawing..." Bubbles began, taking on the role of the innocent party while Buttercup pointed an accusing finger (sort of) at her and shouted, "You see!" as if that automatically made Bubbles guilty.
Blossom was annoyed by this and told her, "Buttercup! Let Bubbles finish!"
"Just fight already!" Mitch said.
Bubbles ignored him for the time being and tried to carry on with a sliver of common decency. "Buttercup has to share the blacktop just like everyone else!" she pointed out.
"That sounds fair to me." Blossom agreed, finding no downsides there.
"No way!" Buttercup shouted, decidedly not taking the same opinion. She went on to rant, "I'm not sharin' nothin'! This is a playground! There's plenty of paper in the classroom! She doesn't have to mess up the blacktop with her scribbles! You know what I think of Bubbles and her drawings? You know what I think?!"
She raised her shoe in demonstration of what she was about to do, and the events that happened next seemed to go by in slow motion for Bubbles. Buttercup raised her foot... and then she ruthlessly brought it down, stomping Bubbles' beloved chalk into nothing more than fine powder.
A deafening silence filled the playground after the deed was done. Everyone across the board was shocked into silence, that is everyone except for Buttercup, who went on to boldly declare "That's what I think."
So that was how Buttercup truly felt about Bubbles. About all the things that she cared about. It was a heartbreaking thing for the blue Puff to realize. It was the very thing that made her sink to her knees in utter despair, bowing her head low as she quietly lamented her loss.
Then her head snapped right back up again angrily, her gaze filled with an utter fury that she hadn't felt since her "hardcore" days. Blossom actually looked intimidated by such a gaze, but not Buttercup. Buttercup was just as smug as ever. She grinned at Bubbles, daring her to do her worst.
That only served to infuriate Bubbles further. She began sweating, breathing heavily as she glared at the horrible creature standing right in front of her. The one who had tormented her all of this time, and now finally, she was sure that she could take no more. This stopped today. She was sure she was about to explode. Sure she was about to put Buttercup in her place exactly where she belonged, but that infuriatingly smug smirk never left her sister's visage.
Something about that smile just knew. Knew that even as Bubbles snarled and grunted, panted and sweated, and screeched with anger as she lifted her hand in preparation for a blow... that she didn't truly have the spine to carry out her unspoken threat. She just knew Bubbles wouldn't hit her.
And dang it, she was right.
Because instead of striking her, Bubbles backed off and closed her eyes with a whimper, feeling the familiar flood of tears stinging her eyes. Buttercup always won in the end. That nasty, horrible bully she was forced to call sister always ended up winning, and Bubbles was always left in a puddle of her own tears.
And now she was about to cry in front of all these kids, all of her fellow peers. In front of Miss Keane, in front of her friends, even in front of some of her enemies. The only good thing about today was that Princess Morbucks wasn't here to revel in her misery, but that only made it a smidge better.
As if it weren't embarrassing enough that she had started a fight with her own sister out on the playground, a fight that so many others had egged on. As if it wasn't embarrassing enough to watch Buttercup bully her in front of a live audience when she usually reserved such things for home. And now... now this?
The humiliation was simply too much for Bubbles. She did more than cry. She opened her mouth and heaved, splattering the asphalt with all the contents of her stomach right then and there.
She couldn't see it, but that was finally when Buttercup stopped smiling. In fact, everyone's mood changed then.
Bubbles vomited, and it wasn't in a fun or pretty way either. She didn't have a trash can nearby or a nice empty brown paper bag. All she had was herself and she sprayed her leavings all over her body. She threw up all over her clothes and over her once pristine white tights and shoes before any of it ever hit the blacktop. Then she dropped back down to her knees, buried her head in her hands, and wept more loudly and despondently than she ever had before.
She wailed like a day-old infant with loud, heartbreaking cries, scrounging up not even an ounce of dignity left to her name. She was broken.
The other kids loudly cried "EW!" at this sudden onset of illness and backed away in disgust, holding their noses against the unbearable stench of it as well. Others stayed behind and just watched the Puff with pity. Mitch Mitchelson was one of them. All of his excitement over encouraging the sisters to fight was pretty much gone now.
Blossom was downright horrified and stood with her hands covering her mouth. "Oh my God..." she whispered, watching Bubbles both be sick and cry her utter heart out. The scene was... indescribable.
Buttercup was simply shaken altogether. She couldn't talk, move, or really do much of anything at all. It was like she had simply turned into a statue, petrified and frozen. All she could think of was one thing: My God, what have I done?
She was reminded of the time she went that extra step too far with bullying Elmer, throwing a glob of paste at his head in a way that had made him cry. As the rest of the kids stared at her in accusation, she had that same sinking feeling now of doing inexcusably wrong.
Mary decided to run for help, taking Hairy Pitts and Mike Believe with her. "Miss Keane!" The three of them shouted, as they ran for the teacher. "Bubbles is throwing up!"
"What?!" The teacher asked with alarm, a veritable distance away.
"Buttercup made her cry and now she's throwing up!" Mike Believe explained.
It didn't take long for Miss Keane to see the scene for herself: Bubbles covered in her own sickness while crying into her own hands. "Oh goodness!" she cried out in alarm. "Mary, go back into the classroom and get my ginger ale, now!"
"Yes, Miss Keane!" Mary replied dutifully, not wasting a single second.
In the meantime, while Bubbles cried herself raw, Blossom eventually raced over and placed a hand over her back, brushing her pigtails out of her face and kneading circles over her back to at least try to soothe her during her suffering.
"That's it, Buttercup!" she shouted angrily at her other sister, "You've really done it this time!"
For once Buttercup didn't try to disagree with her; she knew Blossom was right, and that was what scared her the most. Blossom wasn't finished however. She stared at her with fury and ordered her sister to, "Apologize to Bubbles, this instant!" It wasn't a request.
Buttercup wanted to. She really did. She wanted to do more than that and go back in time, prevent herself from ever going so far as to step on Bubbles' chalk. That would be like if Bubbles ripped up her blanket. Sure, she had been forced to get rid of it for her own personal growth, but it was still always around whenever she felt she needed it. Buttercup never gave Bubbles that chance. She'd simply wrecked something that she loved.
It had guilt eating up at Buttercup and she stared at her now chalk-covered mary jane shoe with regret. Why did she have to do something so stupid?
"Buttercup, are you listening to me?!" Blossom screamed at her when she wouldn't reply. "Do what I've ordered you to do right now!"
And she did. She stepped just close enough to her sobbing sister to where she wouldn't also be stepping in her vomit and softly said, "I'm s-sorry, Bubbles." She sounded like she meant it for once, and her voice was small and vulnerable.
Usually a simple apology was enough, but this time it wasn't.
"Wait til I tell the Professor what you did when we get home!" Blossom continued on, making not a threat but a promise.
Usually if something bad happened at school, it didn't get any further than Miss Keane depending on the offense, but this had been so bad, it deserved getting their father involved too.
It said something that not once did Buttercup ever say anything defiant, not once did she ever talk back to Blossom as she unloaded on her. It was because for the first time since their very creation, Buttercup knew she was absolutely right.
Meanwhile, as Bubbles lost herself in the depths of her own anguish, she blocked out the rest of the world around her. She didn't hear any of Blossom's words or feel any bit of her comforting touch. She didn't hear Buttercup's softly spoken apology or anything else that would've distracted her from all of the pain that she was feeling right now.
Why? she thought to herself. Why did Buttercup go out of her way to bully her like this? Why did she seem to gain so much pleasure from tormenting her? Weren't sisters supposed to love each other? Weren't sisters supposed to build each other up instead of tearing the other one down? What had she done that was so wrong that Buttercup did stuff like this to her everyday? It wasn't fair. It just. Wasn't. Fair.
Mitch Mitchelson took a look down on the blacktop at the remaining pieces of chalk. It wasn't much, but there was still a few salvageable pieces left. He stooped down below to start picking them all up.
In her head, all Bubbles could hear was Buttercup's scathing tone, mocking her for her crying. "Oh, why don't you shut up, you crybaby?" That was what she had said when the Puffs had all been jailed after a case of mistaken identity, and Bubbles had cried because the girls wouldn't be able to go out and save the world anymore. Yes, how dare she cry about something like that?
"I didn't have to cheat!" Buttercup mocked again from yet another memory. "I'm just more aerodynamic than you! I don't have any big powderpuffs to slow me down!" She went on to slam her hands on top of Bubbles' head of blonde pigtails, making Bubbles burst out into tears from her bullying yet again. She never liked anything about Bubbles. She even made fun of her hair...
"This stinks! There's nothing to do, there's nowhere to go, I need action! I need excitement! I need to punch!" And then she did just that mere inches away from Bubbles' face, nearly hitting her right on the spot. Bubbles cried about that too, while Buttercup only smiled in triumph. Like she had done that on purpose, just to cause that kind of reaction...
A baseball hitting her face in the next memory, with Bubbles being flung out of her bed and onto the carpet. "Oh my gosh, are you okay? I'm so sorry! That was an accident. I didn't see you there." Buttercup said insincerely. It was clear what she was looking for on the floor. A lost tooth that she could purloin for the Tooth Fairy. "Hey! Are you trying to knock outs my teeth!?" "No, of course not! I would never do that! No matter how valuable they are..."
"You're so sensitive!"
"Everyone knows you're the scarediest!"
"It's not my fault she's a baby scared of the dark!"
A separate voice now, apart from all the memories. "You're such a weak, pathetic, chubby crybaby Bubbles! What are you gonna do now, huh? Go home and cry to the Professor when we get home? Then snuggle up with Octi to go and cry some more? Ha! Pathetic!"
No. The boiling hot rage filled her once again, even stronger than the last time. Her tears slowly stopped and she slowly removed her hands from her face.
"Um, Bubbles?" Mitch prompted awkwardly, walking towards her with the pieces of chalk he managed to salvage in his palms. He stooped down in front of her.
"These still work, okay?" He thrust them out weakly towards her. That was about the best he could do as far as a kindness. He wasn't really great at hugging or giving out pep talks.
Bubbles didn't look at him at first, but when she finally did, the expression over her face was enough to make Mitch almost involuntarily take a step back from her. In fact, everybody backed up, even Buttercup. The look of twisted anger on her face was nearly indescribable and the tears still falling from her eyes only served to make it even worse. But she forgot all about her crying in favor of locking her now hate-filled blue eyes onto her green clad sister, and then targeting her like a heat-seeking missile.
Bubbles screamed with fury and then she tackled her sister before anyone else could stop her, using the force the girls would normally use on a hated enemy instead of a beloved family member. It was reminiscent of the time Bubbles grew angry at Blossom for taunting her during a game of Duck-Duck-Goose and then proceeded to tackle her into the dirt.
This was even worse. This wasn't dirt. This was asphalt, and the force was much, much greater. She practically split the earth into two. Once the two finally came to a stop, with Bubbles on top and Buttercup on the bottom, Bubbles saddled her sister and began to enact her violent assault. It would've been bad enough if Bubbles was only wailing on her with her fists, but she was actually doing something so much worse. She grabbed Buttercup's neck with both hands, and then proceeded to slam the back of her head into the asphalt over and over again, screaming the entire time.
The kids who had previously been goading on a fight between the two sisters now silently watched in horror as they essentially watched their wish come true, but in the worst and most brutal fashion imaginable. They realized now that this was most certainly not what they had actually wanted at all. This was nothing but pure savagery.
"BUBBLES, STOP!" Blossom cried out desperately, zipping towards her sister in a pink flash in sheer desperation to make her stop.
The problem was that when Bubbles was angry like this, her strength tended to go straight through the roof and it was hard to get her to calm her down, let alone try to stop her from such violent rages. Even now, Blossom's efforts were practically child's play; an ant trying to stop a dinosaur from going on a rampage.
Meanwhile Bubbles was screaming, "I HATE YOU BUTTERCUP!" with tears pouring out of her eyes at the same time. "I! HATE! YOU!"
She scarcely sounded like herself. She sounded like some kind of demon.
"Bubbles, she isn't worth it!" Blossom tried to say in an attempt to get through to her. "You have to stop!"
"Girls! What in the world is going on?!" Miss Keane cried out in a panic. She was just returning with that glass of ginger ale that she had requested Mary to get from inside the classroom along with some tissues she planned on using to clean Bubbles up. "No fighting! No fighting!"
"I'm trying to get her off Miss Keane!" Blossom told her desperately, even though all of her current efforts were failing.
She officially started panicking when Bubbles stopped slamming Buttercup's head against the ground but proceeded to tighten her hands around her neck and began strangling her instead.
This wasn't some half-hearted throttle either; Buttercup was really losing air, turning purple in the process.
"WHY?! WHY, WHY, WHY, WHY?!"
Blossom began desperately clawing at her sister's hands, trying to get them to release. "Bubbles, she can't breathe! Please stop!"
It didn't seem like Bubbles was truly aware of that, not until the haze of anger finally cleared from her mind and she started to regain some semblance of sanity again, her eyes widening in shock when she realized Buttercup truly could not get any air into her lungs. Her face was practically purple and her eyes were just beginning to roll into the back of her head.
Once she was aware of this, Bubbles immediately relinquished her grip, letting Buttercup finally breathe precious oxygen again. She didn't apologize for what she did though. She just allowed tears to drip from her face, right onto Buttercup's own.
"I hate you Buttercup..." she said quietly yet again, and somehow the lack of volume made her words seem even worse.
She wasn't just saying it because she was angry anymore. She truly meant it. She hated Buttercup.
Before her sister could even say a word in reply, Bubbles was already off, darting away into the forest.