Author's Notes: When I was writing out different versions of this story, I was debating whether Buttercup should feel guilty right away for her actions or if she should remain stubborn for a bit before eventually softening and realizing how much she hurt Bubbles once her sister and Ms. Keane lay it out for her. If Miss Keane had just taken a punitive approach, I don't think Buttercup would've learned anything about her behavior or why it was wrong, so I'm glad I decided to make her more open and understanding here.

Chapter 2

Two Sides to Every Story

Nobody breathed or moved after Bubbles flew off. The children simply stood there like statues, not really speaking to one another or even trying to continue their games. It didn't feel appropriate to. The atmosphere was simply too heavy with everything that had just happened. Things had escalated so quickly, turning into an ugly mess before anyone could do a thing to stop it.

Miss Keane had to hold an anxious hand to her racing heart as well, astonished by what she had just seen. Even as an authority figure, she didn't really know how to handle what had just proceeded. It was... shocking, to say the least, for everyone involved.

Blossom was the first to spur herself into action, primarily darting towards Buttercup first, looking to assess her health. She saw the green puff lying in the furrow made by Bubbles tackling her, holding both hands to her throat and coughing roughly. Blossom quickly helped her sit up, running her hands over her body to feel for any problematic injuries.

"Buttercup," She asked quietly, temporarily forgetting about the previous anger she had held towards the girl. "Are you alright?"

After a few more coughs, Buttercup gruffly strained out, "Y-Yeah, (cough) I'm fine."

Blossom wasn't so sure and gently removed Buttercup's hands from her neck, checking that spot herself for any swelling or noticeably forming bruises. "Is it sore?" she asked gently.

"A little," Buttercup hacked out. "But it'll heal." Their injuries always did, faster than a normal person's by several times. But that didn't take away the emotional pain of it all. "I'm alright." she reassured again.

Once she was sure Buttercup was relatively fine, Blossom let out a deep breath. "She could've killed you." It wasn't spoken like a question, but a sheer, undeniable fact.

"I'm tougher than that." Buttercup dared to brag.

Blossom didn't think it was any laughing matter. "Bubbles shouldn't have done that... but you shouldn't have pushed her."

"I know," Buttercup replied regrettably, hanging her head, but Blossom didn't feel that this was good enough.

"No, you don't. You don't understand! You're always pushing her! You're always being mean to her and treating her like your personal punching bag! I've lost count of all the times you ended up teasing her or calling her a baby!"

"Hey!" Buttercup shouted in defense mode now. "You're not exactly Little Miss Perfect with her either! Remember that time Bubbles had to wear those big, stupid glasses and you told her she looked like a nerd? You were laughing at her geeky little glasses the same as I was! Were you being a good sister when you did that to her?"

"N-No," Blossom agreed, taking a moment to bite her lip more than a little guiltily at that unfortunate reminder. "I wasn't. But this isn't about me right now! I know I could've done better back then and I know I can do a whole lot better now, but the question is, are you going to do better? This isn't the first time you've done something like this Buttercup! You never take the time to think through your own actions; you're always acting on your worst impulses, and then you never want to take responsibility after the fact! You always double down and try to find some lame excuse!"

"Oh yeah?" Buttercup challenged. "Other than this, since when?"

Did she really want her to list everything?

"Oh gee, let's see." Blossom replied with sarcasm, placing a thinking hand on her chin. It didn't take long for her to come up with something. "Did you THINK before you chucked that giant snake monster at me and almost SERIOUSLY injured me, along with the Mayor and Ms. Bellum?"

"Hey, that wasn't on purpose! I didn't try to-"

"I don't care what you were TRYING to do!" Blossom harshly interrupted her. "I care about what you ALMOST did! And do you know what you said to me after I tried to call you out on it?" She put on a near dead-on impression of Buttercup's surliness: "Well, if only you could catch!"

Buttercup took a moment to look aside for a moment and scratch the back of her head, blushing with shame. She did remember saying that, word for word.

"You know what you said to Elmer after you chucked that paste at his head? Well, you shoulda ducked!"

Both Elmer and Buttercup winced at that memory, but Elmer now had the courage to speak up and said, "Y-Yeah. You did Buttercup..."

The green puff looked at him with contrition.

"And I can just guess what you were probably thinking after you did what you did to Bubbles! Well, that's what she gets for drawing her stupid pictures over the blacktop! Is that about right, Buttercup?"

Okay, that just wasn't fair. Buttercup crossed her arms in grumpiness now.

"Okay, okay, I get it alright? I messed up and I suck eggs! I'm a giant friggin' turd! I don't need you to keep rubbing it in!"

Blossom finally relented with this and backed off. "Alright, I won't." But she placed a firm hand on Buttercup's shoulder. "But you do need to fix this."

"I know. I'll..." She made to get up. "I'll go talk to her."

Both Blossom and Miss Keane were quick to step in to stop her from trying to do this however.

"Actually, I don't think that's such a good idea. It's too raw right now." Blossom stole a glance out to the forest where Bubbles had fled. "I'll talk to Bubbles, and then I'll bring her back here to make things up with you. It'll be better if I go."

"I think you and I need to have a private talk in the classroom anyway, Buttercup." Sandy Keane went on, placing both of her hands on her young student's shoulders. "Will you come inside with me?"

Buttercup let out a sigh. She didn't really feel like she had much of a choice right now. "Yes, Miss Keane." she replied dutifully, taking the teacher's hand and preparing herself to follow her inside.

"Blossom, try to do what you can for Bubbles, and if you can, make sure she comes to me to get a change of clothes and a nice clean up. I'm sure she's gonna need it."

Blossom nodded, remembering that awful episode of vomiting from her sister and the mess she had left behind. "I will, Miss Keane."

"Good luck."

Nearly forgetting the rest of her class, Sandy now addressed them vocally, feeling their eyes on her face, looking for guidance in the aftermath of sheer chaos. "Kids? Um, you have 10 minutes left of recess so... try to do the best with it, okay? Everything will be alright in the end. I promise."

As reassuring as she tried to make her words for the children, they didn't really seem entirely convinced, slowly going back to their original activities almost like one would expect a group of zombies to, or a group of droning robots. There was no more joy or distraction to them. Only mechanical actions.

With that matter taken care of, Miss Keane turned her back to the kids and led her fellow charge back into the main school building.

Bubbles got herself to stop crying a long time ago. Now she was simply sitting with her back against a tree stump, staring shakily at her own hands. The same hands that had previously been wringing Buttercup's very neck, nearly putting an end to her right then and there. She still couldn't believe she had actually done that; she felt so detached to it while it was actually happening, like she was watching someone else do those horrible things.

But it was her. It was all her.

I really do have a problem. she thought, thinking over all those other times she let her anger and frustration get the better of her.

"Oh Bubbles!" The Talking Dog begged to her, his battered body quivering in the street. "Have mercy!"

"Mercy is for the weak!"

Remembering that incident still made her shiver. She'd made her apologies and made her amends to all the people (and animals) that she'd hurt that day, but she never forgot all the pain she had caused. It only made her want to repress her often hidden anger even more, burying her less desirable emotions. If she never gave herself a chance to get angry, then she'd never end up trying to hurt the people she loved, right?

Unfortunately, life didn't work out that much. She couldn't stuff down her feelings forever, especially when things made her really really mad. Like Buttercup. Why oh why did she have to do that? Why did she have to be such a jerk? And why did she have to smile after she did what she did? It was that that Bubbles was sure ended up driving her to the edge in the end. She just wanted to wipe that smug little smirk right off Buttercup's fat little face. But she went too far in doing so. Way, way too far.

What's wrong with me?

At least the forest was still standing. That had to be a good thing, right? It at least meant Bubbles wasn't going on some wild rampage or tearing through everything in sight.

Blossom counted her lucky stars for that and continued to wade her way through the woodland area. She eventually heard the fellow sound of breathing with her super hearing, hinting at Bubbles' possible location. She didn't hear sobs or any ragged, anger fueled breaths so again, that had to be a good thing, right?

It didn't take long for her to see the Puff, sitting with her back against a tree stump and staring out into space, carrying such a lost and forlorn look on her face. Blossom decided to approach her with caution, letting her know that she was there first.

"Bubbles?" Blossom asked warily, poking her head out from around the tree she had partially been hiding behind. Part of her felt like she was intruding on something private, a sanctuary of sorts for her ailing sister. She started to step closer to her like one would a scared, wounded animal.

"Everything's okay now, Bubbles." she started to reassure her. "It's just me. Are you feeling better now?"

Bubbles slowly turned her head towards her, and she wore such a melancholy expression. It tore at Blossom's heart. She almost didn't know what to say to such an expression.

"Blossom," Bubbles began slowly, poking a tongue out over her dry lips. "I-Is Buttercup...?"

"Buttercup's going to be just fine, Bubbles." Blossom answered her unspoken question. "You didn't hurt her; not really, that is. It was nothing more than a freak accident."

"I shouldn't have done that. I didn't mean to," She took a moment to look at her own hands again, watching them tremble. "I was just..."

"Angry. I know. And it made you lash out. The same thing's happened with all three of us, remember? Like the candy." Blossom brought up. "Remember how it made us make a deal with Mojo in some back alley and help him break out of jail to keep committing crimes, just so we could go to the Mayor's office and be rewarded with candy? Then when the Mayor lost it we even yelled at him and we beat Mojo to a bloody pulp for stealing from us even though he was already in jail. That wasn't the finest hour for any one of us..."

"That was different." Bubbles replied, shaking her head. "We were addicted to the candy. It made us act funny. I was still me when I did what I did to Buttercup."

"Yeah, well," Blossom stopped to sit down next to her sister, wrapping an arm around her small frame. "You're not the only one who's lost your temper with her. I've lashed out at her too once, remember? How I zapped her with my eyebeams all for what I called 'insubordination'?"

Oh yes. Bubbles did remember that now that Blossom had brought it up. That had been awful. Buttercup and Blossom had been fighting more than ever during that time and eventually things got so out of hand one day that their verbal spats became a physical one, and the Professor ended up being the main one who had to break it up. He also sent the girls quite appropriately to time-out.

"I'm not proud of that." Blossom admitted. "In fact, it's one of my greatest regrets as a leader. I'm supposed to be the one stopping fights between us not helping them get started. But I messed up that one time just like you did here, Bubbles. It doesn't make you a bad person."

"B-But at least you weren't trying to kill her."

"You weren't trying to kill her. You simply lost control. When you saw what you were doing you stopped right away, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but... maybe... maybe I shouldn't have drawn all over the blacktop in the first place." Bubbles sniffled, swiping a hand across her eyes. "M-Maybe Buttercup was right to get angry. I w-wasn't thinking about how I was taking up space."

"That still doesn't give her the right to try to destroy your things. That wasn't okay no matter which way you look at it and I can promise you right here and now that she's going to pay you back for it, no ifs ands or buts about it. Even if she has to use her weekly allowance."

Bubbles seemed to think about it for a moment, then she adopted that same empty, morose expression all over again. "Even if you do that," She told her sister Blossom, "S-She's just going to do something d-different tomorrow." Her voice started to crack and tears filled her eyes again.

"No she's not." Blossom told her firmly, tightening her hold on the girl. "I haven't been doing a good enough job of keeping her in line or defending you from her teasing but she's not going to keep doing stuff like this. She needs to know there's a limit. If you come back with me, we can start laying out boundaries. Things that just won't be tolerated no matter what. It'll help her stop. And..." She thought to add. "You don't smell so good."

Oh right. In the midst of all this excitement, Bubbles almost forgot about being sick entirely, though she still had the drying evidence all over her clothes. The pink Puff was hoping to make her laugh a bit with the comment, or at least lighten up a bit, and it did work a little.

Wiping the last of her tears, Bubbles agreed, "I am pretty yucky. Okay. I'll go back." She still didn't sound all that cheery but it was still an improvement from how she'd previously been.

Blossom nodded her head approvingly and gently took her sister's hand, flying at a slower pace than usual with her since she was still probably feeling queasy, or recovering from such feelings.

Meanwhile, Miss Keane had Buttercup sitting on a stool in the classroom, a box of juice in her hand and a cool sponge dabbing her face. It seemed to be doing a good job of helping her calm down at least.

She wasn't being punished, at least not yet, because it didn't seem fair or even productive to do such a thing before Miss Keane knew all the facts.

"Buttercup," she said finally, looking her student in the eyes. "Can you try to explain to me, in a way I can understand, what exactly happened out there a few minutes ago? I know I should've been more attentive to the entire class while you were out there, but it's not always easy to keep track of 20 little kids, so I have my moments of not always paying attention."

She thought about that whole debacle with the Gangreen Gang too as she admitted her flaws; how she let them get away with so much bullying, simply because she was too absorbed in her own activities to see exactly what they were doing. It was something that still made her ashamed to think about it today.

Buttercup took a deep breath before she decided to start from the very beginning. "I was... bullying Bubbles, on the playground today. I-I didn't mean to but... I got mad at her for getting in the way of me and Mitch's game. I just hated how she was doing all of her stupid dra—er, drawings over the blacktop, and how she even got her chalk all over my ball!"

She took a moment to scowl at the reminder, before allowing her expression to soften. Miss Keane nodded, following along with the story so far. She decided to interject a bit with her thoughts.

"Buttercup, when you got frustrated with Bubbles and how close she was drawing to the game Mitch and you were having, did you try asking her politely if maybe she could do her drawings somewhere else? Or maybe how the two of you could've worked out some space?"

When she put it like that, it all sounded so simple, making her previous actions even worse for their now unnecessary cruelty.

"No." The green puff admitted guiltily. "I called her a 'Bubblehead' and told her that a playground was for playing, not for drawing."

Of course she did. Miss Keane couldn't help her disappointed sigh. Things like this were why Buttercup got into trouble so much, but of course, she hadn't even heard the worst part yet.

"Bubbles was annoyed with me, but she didn't really say or do anything back until Mitch ended up getting hit with a rebound on the ball that made him slide on his head and ruin Bubbles' drawings. She was so mad at him about it, but I didn't think that was fair so I told her that if she didn't want to have her stupid drawings played on, then she shouldn't scribble them all over the blacktop in the first place. That's when she yelled at me that she had every right to be there that I did but... I didn't want to listen to her."

Bits of that fight were coming back to her now. How Buttercup had heckled and teased Bubbles even before things had reached a boiling point. How she yanked the ball from her hands, talked to her rudely, and called her art stupid, even making fun of Mitch and telling him his punishment if he lost would be to play with Bubbles and her chalk.

She went on, "We both started yelling at each other, and then Blossom stepped in to try to stop us and see what was going on, and when Bubbles said that I had to share the blacktop just like everybody else, I just didn't want to. I wanted it all to myself and I saw that chalk as an obstacle in my way, so like an obstacle, I smashed it all to bits."

"I didn't even feel sorry about it or anything. I felt proud. Triumphant. And when Bubbles nearly blew up at me, I just smiled in her face because I thought she wasn't gonna do anything but cry."

Miss Keane frowned. "Buttercup, that's exactly how a bully thinks. They usually pick on people who they think either won't or can't fight back so that they can feel dominant over them. It's how they operate. I'm sure that's why the Gangreen Gang mostly picks on kids too. So they can feel bigger and stronger than them."

She hated to bring up a group of hoodlums as an example to her point, since Buttercup most certainly was not a delinquent, but she did need to understand how serious this kind of behavior was, and how wrong it was too. The last thing a superhero needed was to carry around hypocrisy.

Being compared to the Gangreen Gang definitely had Buttercup feeling bad, but she couldn't deny the similarities between the two at times.

"Y-Yeah. I shouldn't have smiled. I think that's what sent her over the edge. I saw her mouth tremble and how she was fighting so hard to hold back tears... and when she finally cracked, I never expected her to get sick and t-throw up like that. I literally made her sick and I didn't know what to do. I tried saying I was sorry but..."

"That's when she attacked you?" Miss Keane finished gently.

"Yeah. She really let me have it to. Not that I didn't deserve it."

Another sigh escaped the older woman's body. She placed a hand over her student's face. "Buttercup, this is why I would've preferred if you came to me with this problem instead of trying to take it all out on your sister. It was wrong for Bubbles to do what she did but it was wrong for you to bully her too. It seems like after so much pressure she finally snapped." And it wasn't pretty to say the least.

"Blossom tried to stop us too," Buttercup pointed out, hanging her head down low with shame.

"And Blossom is wonderful for that." She often did take on the role of the older, more responsible sister, even though the three of them were technically the same age, and mostly tried to keep the peace between them. "But Blossom's just a kid just like you. There's only so much she can do. Sometimes it's better to get an adult who can see the bigger picture involved in these types of conflicts. That way things don't get so ugly."

All valid points. Rational. Reasonable. Blatantly ignored and hardly even considered until the damage was already done. Hindsight was so cruel.

That's when the two heard a soft knock on the homeroom door, and an equally soft, familiar voice accompanying it. "Miss Keane?" Blossom asked. "We're back."

Oh, this was glorious news! At least for the teacher it was. Buttercup was more wary. Not because she didn't want to see her sister but because she was worried about her reaction to seeing her again, especially after those last parting words: "I hate you Buttercup!"

Miss Keane let them back in and the first person her priorities went to was the one that was blue, both physically and emotionally.

"Bubbles, I'm so glad you're back, sweetie. Are you feeling alright?" She still had dried vomit from her shirt to her shoes and the smell was still pretty awful.

"Yes Miss Keane," she answered softly. "I'm sorry for breaking the no fighting in class rule."

Miss Keane looked off to the side for a bit, weighing in that particular admission. "Well technically it wasn't in class," She pointed out. "But it was still wrong regardless. But I'm not here to lecture you about that right now. I just wanted to get you cleaned up and into some new clothes and make sure you're okay after..." She stole a glance behind her to a rather subdued and evasive Buttercup. "... everything that happened."

"I'm okay." A squeaky voice answered back tremulously. It wasn't too convincing but Miss Keane didn't feel like pushing her. She simply put a comforting hand on her shoulder and said, "Okay sweetie. Why don't we get you cleaned up then and then I'll... call the Professor, to pick all three of you girls up from school."

It wasn't meant to be a punishment. It was simply meant to help the trio settle down after such a harrowing day. Even Blossom, who was usually a perfectionist when it came to things like her school attendance didn't find herself objecting to this idea. In all honesty, they did all need a cooldown.

"That sounds like a good idea, Miss Keane."