Buttercup liked to call it 'The Beginning of The End.'

Blossom liked to call Buttercup a drama queen.

The whole Boomer bearhug incident thing had been weird. But then Blossom had trouble pulling away from Brick's grasp. That had been weird too, but the fact Blossom began to panic had made it bad.

They'd lost to the boys before, in fact, they'd lost the last fight, but she and her sisters hadn't been scared of them in years. In fact, Buttercup suspected she wasn't the only one who looked forward to seeing her counterpart. The entire city of Townsville didn't even seem care when they fought once the boys stopped causing trouble, supposedly because it was 'too easy.'

And when Butch reached for her, she hated how she moved back. Butch was the last source of a good fight she had and now what? She was scared of him?

So, when they got back home, her reaction was, in fact, perfectly acceptable.

"Professor!" She yelled as she flew into the lab. "The world is ending!"

"I doubt it is!" Blossom yelled as she followed.

"Girls?" The Professor asked, looking up from a collection of colorful vials. "What seems to be the problem?"

One explanation later, the Professor had a contemplative look on his face.

"Okay," he said. "Let's run some tests."

An hour later, the professor was looking at some papers with a grim face.

"So…" Buttercup said. "Is there something wrong with us?"

"Well, no."

"Ah, so the boys just found a way to get stronger?"

"Well, you'd have to get them in here to run more tests, but honestly, I doubt it."

"So, what's your explanation then?" Buttercup asked.

The professor sighed. "Sexual dimorphism."

Blossom's face dropped. Buttercup raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"It means boys and girls are different," The Professor went on, "and on average, between muscle development, bone density and other factors, human males are physically stronger than females."

Buttercup started at him. She understood the words, but they didn't make sense.

"We're not average at all," she declared.

"Neither are they," The Professor said. "If it's any consolation, this should only be significantly apparent when it comes to your physical stats. Not your powers."

"But we fight monsters all the time. They only fight us. And each other."

"Buttercup, do you even remember the last time you had a difficult fight that wasn't against the boys? Something that could be even slightly approximating a workout?"

Buttercup opened her mouth. Then she closed it. Then she opened it again. "Him's last round of mind games."

"So… when you were seven?" It was a question, but it didn't feel like one. "Quite frankly, Chemical X is the only reason your muscles have developed this far."

"So that's it?" Bubbles asked. "They just hit harder?"

Professor Utonium shrugged. "I honestly wasn't sure how Chemical X would affect the difference. Ideally, it would negate it. But I guess if you're supposed to be perfect boys and girls, it would wind up carrying over."

"They are far from perfect." Blossom interrupted. Which wasn't like her. Then again, they didn't act the same when the boys were involved.

"But that makes me wonder how else it could affect you," The Professor continued. "What are the chances you could get the boys in here?"

"Well apparently, lower than I would have thought this morning." Blossom answered.

"You know what? No!" Buttercup declared. "I won't accept this. I can still totally kick Butch's ass."

"Buttercup," Bubbles gasped.

"Language," The Professor snapped.

"If you want to fight him, you need to rely on things other than the fly in and punch him method," Blossom reasoned.

"Good idea." With that, Buttercup flew to the training room. Then she flew back. "Like what?"

Blossom cocked her head. "Surely, you have an idea."

Buttercup stared blankly. Then she flew back to the training room.

/

Waiting for the next rematch was hell. And the boys were taking their sweet time to do it too.

When they finally showed up, Buttercup was glad and livid.

"I can't believe you guys went into hiding after last time," she taunted as Butch spun out of the way of her side kick and grabbed her arm before tossing her in the air.

"Nah, we just thought we'd give you girls time to recover from the shock," Butch said conversationally, hands in his jacket pockets.

Buttercup sniped at him with her hear vision, but he simply deflected by generating a shield before flying at her, energy gathering in his arms.

She responded in kind, both of them colliding in a massive green explosion that lit up the sky.

As the light subsided, Buttercup was blindsided by a kick to the side and an uppercut that sent her tumbling through the air.

She blinked as she recovered. Then she grit her teeth. "You held back," She snarled.

"No I didn't," Butch responded. Yoo quickly

"What's wrong? Don't want to beat me up?" She taunted.

"I mean… not really? I want to fight you, that's-" He was interrupted by an impact to his face.

One second, the green Ruff was in the sky, the next he was in a crater in the woods.

"What the…?" He asked stupidly, his hand gripping his bloody nose. Then he looked up at the floating Puff.

Chemical X granted several abilities. And the Puffs and Ruffs were discovering new ones every year. At this point, energy manipulation was second nature. But how they used it wasn't.

Buttercup's entire lower-half and arms were wreathed in flame-like energy. She wasn't even using her flight ability, just propelling herself upwards and steadying herself with her arms. And yes, it was inspired by Ironman.

The speed-boost was unreal. It had taken a ridiculous amount of practice just to learn how to hit a stationary target within 50 meters, but she'd done it, aiming the top of her skull for his stupid face.

"Didn't see that coming, did you?" she asked as she floated forwards.

"No," he admitted. "I did…" he trailed off. "Buttercup?"

Buttercup stopped before reaching for her cheek. She wondered what kind of face she was making.

In a flash, she was sitting on him, pinning his arms to the ground. "Don't you dare hold back on me again," she warned. "I can kick your ass. Anytime. Anywhere."

The two stared at each other for a few seconds. Long enough for Buttercup to notice how intense his eyes were.

Butch's own arms erupted with energy as well. And then they exploded, launching her back.

Buttercup recovered immediately before adjusting herself to avoid an energy blast. The Ruff was smiling, his own energy barely coalescing around his body. It was what she'd looked like the first time she'd tried it.

In a flash, she positioned herself crouched in front of him. As his head began looking down, she kicked upwards, her foot slamming into his chin and sending him in the air. She didn't use her boost. Without practice, it'd probably have broken her leg.

As she looked up at his retreating body, she set her foot down and winced. It stung.

Shaking her head to release all the traitorous thoughts, she flew after her counterpart. Then stopped.

He wasn't looking at her. He'd recovered in the air and was looking into the city as if she didn't just send him flying.

"Look at me!" She yelled rocketing at him. But she hadn't kept a calm head and missed, barely nicking him before tumbling through the atmosphere.

As she steadied in the air, she found herself looking down at Townsville. It looked so small. From so high in the air, it was barely the size of her hand.

"You're staring," Butch said as he caught up with her.

"I can't deal with being weak," she said. She didn't know why she admitted it.

"You aren't weak."

"You weren't even looking at me."

"Yeah, because Boomer was buying your sister Ice-cream."

That snapped Buttercup out of her funk. "What?"

"I know. He thinks he's smooth or something."

Buttercup looked back at the city, activating her X-ray and telescopic vision. After a while, she found them.

"Look," Butch said, rubbing his nose. "If you were weak, I wouldn't be here. And even if you are, clearly, you're too stubborn to let that stop you. So stop sulking and come punch me in my perfect face. I think I can dodge you this time."

"I headbutt you."

"Ah, that explains it. You always did seem hard-headed."

Buttercup laughed despite herself. "Brick and Blossom have joined them," she said.

"Really?" Butch asked. "With what money? We live in the woods."

"I have money," Buttercup said, feigning nonchalance.

And thus began what Robin later would call, 'The first non-violent group date.'

"That implies that all our previous fights were just violent dates," Blossom had protested.

"Yes." Robin had replied, nodding.

/

Buttercup didn't think the house party was her fault. At least she was pretty sure it wasn't.

Was letting everyone goad her into an arm-wrestling match she knew she couldn't win against Butch a smart idea? No. But between his shit-eating grin and the fact she'd left him eating dirt in their last sparring match, she was feeling slighted and confident.

Of course, they couldn't do it in the house. Whatever they were touching would collapse before they got serious. But they'd figured out a system that kind of made it an event.

First, one set of colors used their energy to harden the ground. Then the next set created a hardened block on top of it for the two to rest their elbows. It had been her idea.

"Wow," Brick had said, "So the promise of fighting is all it takes for one of you idiots to become experts at something?"

He and Blossom stood with the crowd, their energy seeping from their feet to the ground and making it stronger. Boomer and Bubbles has their hands extended, shooting out the energy that formed the block the greens were on.

She and Butch steadied themselves before clasping hands. Buttercup stamped down the part of her mind that observed how much bigger his hand had gotten. It was far too late to make logical decisions. Then she stamped down the part that realized they were technically holding hands. It was not welcome.

"Ready," Mitch said. "And… go!"

Both immediately locked in and moved.

They remained stationary for a few seconds before it began to tilt in Buttercup's favor. Excitement began to well up inside her as she realized he was yielding. Then she looked at him.

Butch wasn't paying attention. And normally, she would have snapped at that, if not for the fact that he was staring. Right. At her.

She wasn't quite sure what happened next, but by the time she became aware of her surroundings, Butch was gone. Well, that technically wasn't accurate. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he was probably at the end of the huge split in the ground that burst through Stacy's backyard and into the woods behind her house.

Buttercup stared at her empty hand. Then she slowly turned her head to the crowd.

Everyone was staring at her in shock.

Okay. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe.

/

And thus ends all the setup. Now that we have the backstory, we can move forward into all the ideas I have.

I really have to do some introspection on why my reaction to what are essentially smut-prompts that come to me in dreams is to write things like this so I can dig into the characters.

Buttercup was oddly easy to write.

Thanks for reading. Please leave a review and follow me on twitter at WriterImmigrant.