24

There was banging coming from somewhere. Blossom groaned as she rolled over and tried to block out the sound. It was still early; she didn't have to get up yet.

"Just leave me alone," she muttered, burying herself deeper under her covers. However, she heard the door opening, and a few seconds later, Bubbles was shaking her.

"Blossom, come on, I've been knocking for ages." Bubbles was waking her up. That was new.

"What time is it?" she mumbled, levering herself upright and dragging her hair back from her face.

"Eleven. Anyway, I went into town this morning to take a look at dresses for Tuesday and I think I've found the perfect one for you. Red satin, very glamourous."

Eleven o'clock, really? Blossom thought, feeling bewildered at how late she'd slept. Sure, she didn't have anything in particular that she needed to get up for, but she didn't make it a habit to sleep past ten. Bubbles was continuing to babble on about dresses and shoes and would Blossom need a handbag if she was going to be on stage most of the night? Blossom swung her legs out of bed and stretched herself.

"Oh, and Brick's waiting downstairs. Actually, that's the reason I came to wake you up. Guess I forgot; you know how much I love talking about clothes." She gave an airy laugh as the blood drained from Blossom's face.

"Brick is what?"

"Oh, he turned up like ten minutes ago, but he said-" Blossom blurred past her sister and into the bathroom as fast as possible. Awake less than ten minutes and it was already a bad day.

xxx

As she finished dragging her brush through her hair, Blossom tried hard to avoid looking at her outfit in the mirror.

You are wearing this dress because you need to do your laundry. That is the only reason. You are not trying to impress him. You don't care what he thinks. You don't even like him. Well, certainly not like that anyway.

She pulled a face. Was she really having that old cliched internal debate? She thought that only happened in movies and books. Glancing at her watch, she sighed and stood up. Whether she liked it or not, Brick was helping her practice for this concert, and she didn't trust herself to practice alone for this anyway; her playing had improved a great deal since he'd started helping her, and she didn't want to risk it slipping.

When she reached the living room, she found him apparently losing rather badly at whatever Xbox game Buttercup had probably demanded that he play. That said, it was hard to tell who was actually winning; both competitors were swearing rather a lot.

"Brick?" At the sound of her voice, Brick immediately paused the game and turned a wide grin in her direction. To her disdain, her stomach gave a small twist at the sight of it. She also had to try and ignore the way his eyes flickered down and then dragged back up along the length of her legs. Stupid, stupid dress.

"You should have told me you were coming over," she continued, flattening whatever silly acrobatics her stomach was trying to pull. "It's impolite to just show up univited." Brick opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off as Buttercup spoke for him.

"He's a Rowdyruff, what does he know about manners?" Brick raised an eyebrow at her.

"And I suppose you are well-versed in all rules of etiquette?"

"Hey, I got plenty of manners, I just choose not to use 'em." Blossom rolled her eyes. Since when did Buttercup get along this easily with people? Especially people who until a few years ago had delighted when beating the tar out of the three of them. One of them still did.

"Anyway, Brick, I suppose you're here for practice?" He nodded.

"Sure am, but I thought we could go use the town hall today. They have a piano there; thought it might help you get the pieces down properly if I played them with you." He winked at her, and she fought the urge to roll her eyes. Yes, it did help when he played along with her, but he didn't have to be so damned smug about it.

"Welll, get going then, will you? God, you're making me feel ill." They turned to look at Buttercup, who winked at Brick and gave them both a lopsided grin. "Seriously, any longer with you two in the room and I'm gonna get diabetes or something."

xxx

"I cannot believe her sometimes. As if it was anything like that. I mean, she knows-"

"Blossom!" he yelled finally. "Are you actually going to play the violin or not?" She glanced down and found that she was holding it at her side again. Every time it had made it to her shoulder, she'd suddenly had an urge to rant about her sister's teasing.

"I'm just saying..."

"You've been 'just saying' for the last half hour. Keep it up, and Puff the Magic Dragon is gonna be the star piece, I swear."

"Fine, let's get on with it then."

They played their way through three short pieces and two longer ones, stopping every now and then to discuss the order and whether or not they should look at some other options. While she enjoyed the planning of it, and she enjoyed playing the pieces, Blossom still felt uncomfortable with the idea of actually performing them. It was just going to her, all alone on that stage. What if she froze up? What if her playing was boring? How did you even make a solo violin performance interesting for more than one or two pieces anyway?

"Blossom?"

"What?" she didn't realise how lost in her thoughts she actually was, and jumped about a foot in the air at the sound of his voice.

"You stopped again."

"Oh." She was starting to feel thoroughly frazzled by this point, only made worse by the fact that she was good at organising things. This sudden inability to organise herself was stressing her out even more. Suddenly, her phone started buzzing in her pocket.

"Oh, goodness, that's my phone." She fumbled it out of her pocket, praying for a monster attack just so she could get out of this. Her heart leapt at the sight of Miss Bellum's name on the screen. "There must be some kind of emergency, so I guess we'll just have to cut this short for now. Hello?"

"Oh good, I tried phoning your house but the Professor told me you were out. Anyway, I was just phoning to tell you that I've sorted out the venue plans for the concert next Tuesday. Also, I think it would be a good idea for you to prepare a thank you speech for the after party. It might encourage a few of the more... frugal of our guests to donate a little more generously. Every little helps and all that."

"Uh, I... yes, of course. Umm, thank you Miss Bellum."

"Not at all dear; this is a wonderful thing for the school, and for Townsville too. I'll need to speak to you and your sisters about the security arrangements, but we can save that for another time. Saturday evening perhaps."

"Oh, of course."

"Good. Alright then, speak to you soon. I'll call again if anything else comes up." She hung up, and Blossom felt her heart sink again. This was just not her day.

"Nothing major," she said weakly. "Let's get back to practice."

Xxx

Despite the fact that she was still telling herself not to get too comfortable around Brick, she had to admit that it was getting much harder not to do so. It didn't help that he had just gone out and brought back two boxes of noodles, a box of doughnuts and two cups of coffee back for their lunch without letting her split the money with him. Of course, she knew this may partly be to do with his grand scheme to make her go out with him, or whatever the end goal of his plan really was (there was no way it could be that simple, surely), but all the same, free lunch was always nice.

Also, these noodles were fantastic. When she asked where he'd got them from, Brick just shrugged, and mentioned that he may have flown over to Thailand. When she started spluttering, he just laughed and told her that, no, it wasn't Thailand, just a quick trip to the next town over.

"Had you going for a minute there though, didn't I?" She narrowed her eyes and swiped him on the arm, but she laughed at the same time. Before, something like that would genuinely have annoyed her, but now it didn't seem to matter. Was there any sort of significance to that? Her stomach started twisting around itself again, and she hastily ate more of her food to try and calm it. No use thinking about something like that, just focus on the show.

Just then, her phone started buzzing again, and at the same time, Brick's phone let out a blast of what sounded like an AC/DC track (Blossom couldn't be sure; that was more Buttercup's taste in music).

"Hello?"

"Blossom! Blossom you have to get home now. Butch just showed up and Buttercup's freaking out and Boomer's out there trying to stop him but I don't know if it's working and-"

"Bubbles, stop. I'm on my way." She hung up, and shot a look over to Brick, who hung up his call seconds after she did, his expression suddenly deadly serious.

"Boomer?" He nodded.

"Bubbles?"

"Yes. We need to move."

xxx

They had flown out of the city centre as fast as they could. Blossom could feel her eyes start to stream in the wind as she urged herself to fly faster. However, as they neared her street, Brick suddenly grabbed her and pulled her to the ground, hiding them both behind a hedge around the corner.

"Wait a minute," he said, frowning. "It's too quiet. They aren't fighting." Blossom felt herself pale.

"You don't think-"

"No, I don't think anything's happened. The whole place would be in ruins." She nodded shakily. The logic was sound enough. She fought the urge to giggle hysterically; here she was applying logic to a situation involving Buttercup and Butch.

Brick peered around the hedgerow that was obscuring the ajoining street from view. He motioned for her to look as well, and she gingerly leaned around him, holding his shoulder for support.

Butch was still in front of the house, and surprisingly, so was Buttercup. Even more surprisingly, they weren't fighting, and they didn't appear to be arguing either. However, Blossom could see from here that Buttercup was something between terrified and angry, and Butch wasn't doing much better, although possibly missing the terrified part.

"Dammit," Brick hissed. "They're talking too quietly. I can't make any of it out." Blossom chewed her lip and reached out with her power. She had no great desire to go anywhere near Butch's mind, so she tried Buttercup first. Unfortunately, her thoughts were still too fractured and abstract for Blossom to make much sense of it all. Steeling herself, she tried Butch, but his mind was almost identical to hers. A whirl of images and vague, broken words. It was all too disjointed, too overwhelming and Blossom reeled back several steps as she pulled away from their minds.

"You alright?" Brick asked, looking concerned, and slightly confused.

"Yes, I'm fine. I don't think they're going to fight, but..."

Suddenly, Butch shot up into the air and away, leaving Buttercup alone in front of the house, looking extremely shaken. She shuddered slightly, staring after him and not moving.

"I have to go talk to her." Brick grabbed her arm.

"Be careful. Don't push her; she'll never say a word if you do." Blossom nodded and stepped out from behind the hedge, approaching her sister.

"Buttercup?" she said quietly. Her sister looked down.

"You ever think you know the score, but it turns out that everything is way more messed up than you thought possible?" Her voice was flat, carefully devoid of any emotion. It made Blossom want to cry just hearing her speak like that. Buttercup let out a dry laugh.

"Go ahead. It's not like I can. Too tough; big girl like me doesn't cry."

Blossom said nothing, only stepped forward and put her arms round her sister, feeling her tense up and then sag slightly.

"You cried when your lucky blanket got torn when we were six. You cried when that huge spider appeared in the bath when we were eight and when you broke your ankle in your first basketball game when you were twelve. You can still cry Buttercup, even if you don't want to admit it."

There was a click of a door opening and closing behind them, and Bubbles joined them, sliding her arms around Buttercup without a word. They stood like that for a while, without talking, and Blossom saw a red vapour trail take off into the distance.