Chapter Text
Blossom Utonium’s forehead began to drip with sweat, beading down her face as her eyes widened in terror. The room began to close in on her, and her heartbeat escalated, thumping harder and harder against her rib cage with every single breath she took. Her stomach had suddenly turned into a deep, dark pit: empty and hollow, a chasm of hopelessness.
These were, of course, unusual feelings for the brave and stalwart leader of the Powerpuff Girls to have, and she briefly wondered where her usual cool composure and confidence in the face of adversity could have suddenly flown off to. It didn't make any sense. She was a superpowered warrior who had stopped the most destructive of natural disasters, had taken down the mightiest of monsters, had thwarted the evilest of evil villains… but this was it, she thought. Fear seized her whole body as she felt herself quake. This was what people predicted when they spoke about how terrifying the apocalypse would be. It was the end of the world, and all that was missing was the fire and brimstone.
Every single victory, every personal accomplishment, all that she had worked so hard on for her entire life seemed to be hurtling away from her grasp at supersonic speeds, and she struggled to make sense of the horrific situation that had just been announced to her. Through clenched teeth, she repeated the nightmarish words now echoing loudly through her brain.
“What do you mean, I’m not going to graduate?!”
Blossom clutched at the armrests of the chair she was sitting in, continuing to feel as if she was going to fall off the face of the Earth. The woman sitting in front of her, her student counselor, slid her glasses away from her face and sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation.
“Blossom, settle down,” she groaned. “I didn’t say that...”
“Well, you essentially implied that I wouldn’t!” Blossom exclaimed, almost breathless as she continued to cling to her chair for dear life.
It was only the beginning of the year, and her first counselor session for her high school senior year was already, to put it lightly, a complete and utter disaster. She’d never in all of her life hit any sort of academic roadblock. Not one. At this point, she didn’t even care if her voice was audible from outside of the counselor’s claustrophobic office for the entire school to hear. It didn’t matter. It was all over.
“No, I didn’t imply anything either.” The counselor swiveled the computer monitor on her desk to face Blossom, gesturing towards it. “All I said was that you haven’t met the required amount of community service hours in order to graduate.”
The screen displayed a tally that looked as empty as Blossom’s stomach felt: 0/40. Her wide pink eyes shifted back and forth from her counselor to the monitor, dumbfounded. Was… was she kidding? Was this some kind of sick prank? There was no possible way she could be missing any community service hours! She leaned forward in her chair, an audible crunching noise emanating from the metal armrests as she subconsciously grasped them tighter with her super strength.
“I don’t mean to undermine your authority,” she said, slowly calculating her words, “…but maybe, just maybe, and I really don't mean for this to sound rude… it might have slipped your mind over summer break that I’m the leader of the Powerpuff Girls.”
“Blossom, that’s not relevant to–“
“It’s entirely relevant! I’ve surpassed forty hours of community service this month alone,” she exclaimed, and she began rattling off a list, counting each point off on her fingers. “My sisters and I work at the Townsville Soup Kitchen and volunteer every weekend at the Pokey Oaks Retirement Home. We partnered with Townsville Public Television last week for their yearly telethon and fielded hundreds of calls for donations. We just helped Townsville Museum start a program where we return improperly obtained artifacts back to their rightful owners! Need I even mention that all three of us have selflessly volunteered as the town’s sole crimefighting team since we were born?”
“But none of that is on. The official. List.”
Her counselor reached down to her keyboard, quickly typing as a website popped up on the screen.
“You need to complete 40 hours of approved service projects on the Townsville Volunteer Center website,” she curtly explained. “Then you’ll fulfill your community service hours for this year.”
“But–”
“No excuses. You have to remember that not everyone has the same opportunities and superpowers you have. You and your sisters still need to follow the same rules the rest of the students follow.”
Blossom stared in disbelief at the screen. This was ridiculous. No one, not one teacher or classmate, had told her that she needed to complete any sort of mandatory volunteer requirement specifically for graduation. Was someone trying to sabotage her? Maybe it was the work of some villain? There had to have been a mistake, and it couldn’t have been one she’d made. She was Blossom Utonium. She didn’t make mistakes!
...but if rules were rules, she supposed she would have to swallow her pride and follow them. Not that there was anything wrong with being an overachiever or doing too many good deeds, but an institution making her complete the same kind of work she had already done countless times over– work she had genuinely done out of the kindness of her heart, to fulfill a quota – seemed fundamentally unfair. She hadn’t even used her superpowers for half of them!
Blossom slumped her shoulders and leaned back in her chair. She didn't see any use in debating her counselor about it further.
“Okay. Then... if I choose something to do on the website and complete the work, I won’t be in danger of not graduating?”
“Exactly. That’s the last requirement you’ll need.”
Her counselor reclined in her chair as she casually steepled her fingers.
“And if you continue with your perfect grades and extracurricular activities, you’ll be on track to graduate as valedictorian. We can discuss what colleges you’d like to apply to later this year, but as far as I can see, aside from your outstanding volunteer hours, you’re well on your way toward success.”
The pit inside of Blossom’s stomach began repairing itself as she breathed a huge sigh of relief. 40 hours of volunteerism did sound like a lot, but maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Five weekends of an afternoon’s worth of volunteering should just about cover it, and she had the whole year. At least it wasn’t actually the end of the world, but she was beginning to feel guilty for getting so dramatic about it.
“I… I’m sorry…” she apologized, glancing down at her hands in her lap. “It’s just that… I can’t believe I missed these hours. I'm always on top of everything, and the thought that I wouldn’t achieve what I’ve worked so hard for is… well, it’s just–”
“I know, Blossom.” Her counselor leaned forward and gave her a sympathetic smile. “You've always been very responsible. Don’t worry. As long as you complete it, everything will be fine.”
A sense of calm began to settle over Blossom, but she hoped this oversight hadn’t sullied her good reputation with her counselor.
“Well, thank you for letting me know about the volunteer site,” she graciously replied, returning her counselor’s smile. “I’ll search for an opportunity on there and complete my hours as soon as possible.”
She stood up, pushing herself off her chair to leave, but as she did, the armrests she had crunched in her worry fell to the floor with a loud, metallic clang. Blossom froze, looking back at her counselor in wide-eyed embarrassment, and winced.
“…sorry...”
Her counselor slowly frowned as her eyes landed on the broken armrests.
“That’s… okay.” She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I keep telling myself to get more Powerpuff-proof office furniture…”
Blossom exited the counselor’s office, making sure to very carefully close the door behind her as she did so. She couldn’t afford to accidentally break the doorknob along with the chair she'd ruined. How embarrassing would that be?
Bubbles and Buttercup, her sisters and partners in crimefighting, were waiting outside, just where she’d left them. All three of the girls had their first counselor appointments of senior year scheduled for today, and Blossom's had been the last one.
“Sounded like it got tense in there, huh?” Buttercup asked, irritation in her voice as she leaned against the wall of the school hallway.
Blossom grimaced.
“Just a bit less than it did for you. I bet they could hear you cursing all the way in Citiesville.”
“Whatever.” Buttercup stretched her arms above her head and let out an annoyed sigh. “At least now that you’re done with all of your yapping we can finally go home.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about you two, but I’m starvin’!” Bubbles announced, holding her stomach as the three sisters began floating down the school hallway. “Wonder what we’re going to be having for dinner tonight…”
“I bet the Professor’s cooking you up a niiiiice juicy steak, extra bloody.”
“Ewwww, Buttercup!” Bubbles stuck out her tongue and gagged as Buttercup laughed. “I think I just lost my appetite.”
Blossom barely listened to their conversation, choosing to preoccupy herself with repeating the talk she had just had about her volunteer hours in her head. It still didn’t make sense that she had missed something so very important. It wasn't like her to do something like that. Her counselor had been right: she was responsible. Very, very responsible. ...but maybe the stress from all of her responsibilities over the years had finally made her lose her mind...?
“What’s wrong, Blossom?” Bubbles asked, tilting her head as she noticed her sister’s silence.
“Oh, just… y’know, I was thinking about this whole volunteer hours thing,” Blossom replied, still slightly preoccupied with her thoughts.
“What, you mean the online ones?” Buttercup asked.
“Yeah.”
“Didn't you finish those over the summer?”
Blossom halted in midair and stared at her sisters in disbelief. Had she just heard Buttercup correctly? Finish them over the summer?
“…wait, did you guys know we had to do volunteer work!?”
Bubbles shrugged.
“Sure! Who didn’t?”
“Me!” Blossom exclaimed. She felt her blood begin to boil as she curled her fingers into fists at her sides. “Why didn’t one of you say anything to me about it?!”
“Why would we have to tell you?” Buttercup exclaimed. “They told us about it last year at the closing assembly! Remember?”
Bubbles’ eyes widened, and she grabbed Buttercup’s shoulder, muttering in her ear.
“Closing assembly…”
“Oh! …oh, no…”
The girls both bit their lips, looking at each other guiltily. Blossom clenched her teeth, suddenly realizing what they had done… or rather, what they hadn’t done.
Before school had finally let out last year, they’d had a gigantic battle with a fearsome, crab-like space creature that had started razing all of the skyscrapers downtown. A stray supersonic shout from the beast had blasted Blossom, causing her to have such severe ringing in her ears that she had to sit out for the rest of the assembly. Bubbles and Buttercup had promised to fill her in on everything she would miss… but clearly, she fumed, that hadn’t happened.
“And you two just decided not to fill me in on something we needed in order to graduate from high school?!”
“Well sorry, we forgot!”
“It wasn’t on purpose!” Bubbles squeaked. “We swear!”
“Besides, you’re always on top of that kind of junk!” Buttercup argued, crossing her arms defensively. “How were we supposed to know that you didn’t know what we knew, you know?”
Blossom slapped her forehead in exasperation. Unbelievable. Part of her was slightly relieved that it hadn’t been her fault, but her disappointment in her sisters was currently at an all-time high.
“So then I assume you both completed all of your hours?” she asked wearily, trying to hold herself back from chewing them out.
“Yeah! I helped Mrs. Lipschitz take care of the kittens at the animal shelter!” Bubbles cheerfully replied. “Ugh, I just wanted to take them all home and love them and kiss them and…” She melted, pressing her hands to her cheeks as she sighed happily at the memory. “I really miss ‘em. I hope they all get adopted…”
Blossom suddenly remembered how she had noticed more claw marks and scratches on Bubbles’ arms than usual over the summer… not that it was something that had caused her any alarm, of course. Bubbles had a lifelong love of animals and was always trying to befriend them, so despite her super ability to communicate with all of animal-kind, she occasionally got swiped at a bit if they were initially wary of her.
“And I helped out at the old folks' home teachin’ ‘em jiu-jitsu. Had to reign it in a bit, but hey, they were doin’ pretty good by the end of August. Almost made the mistake of teaching Mertle and Gangie the Killing Chop. Hyah! Kapow!” Buttercup exclaimed, grinning as she chopped wildly at the air, then at Bubbles’ shoulder.
“Hey, quit it!”
That’s why she’d been so much friendlier towards the old folks when they volunteered at Pokey Folks over the weekends. Plus it explained why some of the residents had inexplicably started calling her sensei. Blossom sighed deeply, massaging her forehead.
“I swear, sometimes you two drive me–“
A loud buzzing noise interrupted her, cutting sharply through the air. It was a noise that had come from various telephones over the years, but was now coming from their wrists as the girls' eyes shot down to their watches. The Mayor’s face appeared on each tiny screen, screaming: his usual greeting to them in times like this.
“Girls! HELP!” he hollered, waving his arms frantically in the air. “Fuzzy Lumpkins is lumbering around the Townsville lumberyard, lifting logs and literally launching them at loads of citizens! He’s absolutely livid!”
“It’s unlawful lunacy down there, ladies,” Ms. Bellum’s husky but hurried voice added, her body rushing into the frame behind him. “You better leave lickety-split!”
“…oh, and, uh… while you’re at it…”
The Mayor sheepishly lifted a pickle jar into the air, pointing at it pleadingly.
The three of them all groaned in unison.
“Don’t worry Mayor, we’re on it. C’mon, girls.” Blossom glanced back up at her sisters, readying herself for flight. “Let’s flatten Fuzzy fast so we can fly home and fill our faces with food!”
The girls launched out of the school, leaving three teenage girl-sized holes in their wake... and an irritated school janitor to clean up the debris.
Action-packed crime-fighting mixed with the mundanity of everyday life - as mundane as it could get in this town, anyway - was their usual, normal routine, and it had been this way for as long as Blossom could remember. This was just what life was like for her and her sisters in the city of Townsville: a crazy, hectic place where you could be discussing your boring, run-of-the-mill school career in one breath, and be dispatched by the Mayor to stop a pink, fluffy maniac from hurtling logs all over the place the next. Sometimes Blossom envied the fact that, despite having to deal with the messy consequences of their battles, the rest of the citizens of Townsville never had to bother with any of the real heavy lifting.
They arrived at the lumberyard, watching as screaming Townsvillians ran helter-skelter to escape Fuzzy as he rampaged. Piles of broken lumber were scattered everywhere, and the girls dodged the gigantic logs that Fuzzy was chucking wildly into the air.
“What the heck!? Fuzzy’s gone plumb crazy!” Bubbles shouted in surprise, somersaulting over an airborne log.
“What else is new?” Buttercup groaned as she punched another log hurtling towards her into toothpick-sized smithereens. They’d been through this song and dance with the heinous hillbilly before, but this was turning out to be one heck of a hopped-up hoedown.
“What’s the deal, Fuzzy?!” Blossom yelled at him over all of his frenzied grunting and growling. “Why’ve you been throwing logs at innocent civilians this time?”
The pink, furry terror whipped his head around to snarl at the girls, his eyes crazed and teeth bared, foaming at the mouth with rage. He flexed his gigantic muscles at them, beating his fists on his denim overall-clad chest as he hollered.
“Ahm fixin’ to fix my house with some of these here logs, but I got told I gots to pay fer ‘em! Pay! Can y’all believe that?! Wood should be free !” he hollered as he stamped his feet into the dirt. “Nature don’t have no price, y’hear?! Y’all have been testin’! Mah! PATIENCE!!!”
He chucked a log directly at Blossom, who yelped in surprise as she spun out of the way. Regaining her balance, she shook her head and sighed. Fuzzy was in such a frenzy that it looked like yet another fight the girls wouldn’t be able to reason him out of. Fists would have to serve as the solution once again.
As Blossom directed her sisters to perform one of their standard attack patterns on Fuzzy, she couldn’t help but begin to inwardly reflect on how the crime-fighting side of their everyday lives had gotten… well, kinda stale. It was something she had first pondered right after the end of junior high, when saving babies from burning buildings and busting bank robbers and bad guys slowly began to morph into tasks akin to brushing her teeth, or laying out her clothes for the next day: tasks she successfully repeated over and over again, bland but necessary parts of her daily routine. She began to consider them to be inevitabilities: things she knew that she would have to perform every day, no matter what, that always had the same predictable beginning, middle, and end. Even now, as she dodged another flying log and swung her fist into Fuzzy Lumpkins’ kidney, she checked her watch to estimate how much longer he’d be wasting their time. She hated thinking about it, but as she continued saving the day on this routine basis, with this routine mindset, she had stopped feeling any real sense of making the town a better place anymore.
Of course, it wasn't as if things in town were necessarily getting worse. Her and her sisters' mere superpowered presence ensured that Townsville was a relatively safe place for the rest of the citizens. However, the fact that she’d even had such a thought, that saving the town had become a chore, was enough to trouble her. Sure, it was still at least a little exciting to defeat whichever villain or criminal had decided to try to terrorize Townsville on any given day. Plus, every time they succeeded, she would always get a satisfying warm feeling in her heart, a tiny flutter, knowing that she had ultimately done the right thing. But to her, it seemed like most of the villains had succumbed to their own routines and weren’t really trying anymore, either. A handful of them still put in a small amount of effort, yet continued to fail in their pursuits to defeat the girls. Continuously losing against her and her sisters didn’t give bad guys much of an incentive to take as many big risks, so those cases were few and far between. Overall, at least in Blossom’s opinion, it was an unspoken truth that evil was mostly something that the villains and criminals of Townsville did, almost like a job: clocking in and performing villainous acts because they were expected to, with no regard for whether or not they ever succeeded at it.
Still, as long as all of those villains continued their evil-doing, the girls had to be around to protect the town. It was just the way things were. This was the status quo. Some kind of mysterious force made it so that villains were compelled to continue contributing chaos to the city, while another unknown force kept her and her sisters consistently motivated to protect the town despite it all. She had accepted her role as a heroine since she first saved the city long ago, and her unflinching sense of justice ensured that she would never let evil befall any innocent people… but the whole thing was something that had started to weigh even more in the back of her mind, especially as she was at the beginning of the end of her high school career, just starting to plan out her future, trying to figure out where she’d even be going from here. Could all of this impede any of her future goals one day? Was she destined to continue fighting crime forever? Was the seemingly Sisyphean task of saving Townsville over and over again ever going to end?
…were things always going to have to be like this?
“Now say you’re sorry to the nice lady whose business you inconvenienced,” she reprimanded Fuzzy once the battle had been won. She dangled his battered, bruised body to face the owner of the lumberyard, a hulking mass of a woman who was angrily staring him down.
“…’pologizes, ma’am,” he mumbled out of his swollen mouth, as a loosened tooth spilled out from his lips.
“Uh huh, sure,” the woman gruffly replied, wiping her brow of sweat with a checkered handkerchief as she surveyed the damage to her yard. Her work crew was already busy cleaning up as Buttercup and Bubbles assisted in fixing the more serious damage. She turned her attention to Blossom, giving her a sour look. “Hasn’t been the first time this has happened. Got a feeling we’ll need ya back here again in the future.”
“Probably.” Blossom gave her a sympathetic smile. “But don’t worry: you know you can always count on the Powerpuff Girls to help!”
“Sure, sure.” She sighed wearily, still watching the girls and the rest of her crew as they finished up their work, and gave Blossom a disappointed frown. “Try to get here a little faster next time, alright kiddo?”
Blossom’s smile fell into a grimace as the owner trudged away. Townsvillians: always taking her and her sisters for granted. Maybe she should tell her how to do her job…
Once everything had been taken care of, the girls headed off to Townsville Prison. Blossom led her sisters as Bubbles carried Fuzzy by the straps of his overalls.
“Oh, Fuzzy,” Bubbles sighed as she shook her head in disappointment. “Why do you keep doing things like this? You did the same thing at the hardware store like two weeks ago!”
“Weren’t you yelling about how you couldn’t find any cheap hardware?” Buttercup thought out loud. “At least complaining about that made sense. A tree is one thing, but it’s not like you can get nuts and bolts for free in the forest.”
“Hmmm. I guess the squirrels could give you their nuts…”
“Not those kinda nuts, you nut.”
“I agree, it doesn’t make sense that you felt the need to harass the folks at the lumberyard for something you could have chopped down in the woods,” Blossom commented as she glared at Fuzzy. “Things are bad enough for women-owned businesses these days.”
Fuzzy glared back as he crossed his arms and huffed.
“I likes the smell o’ pine, and we don’t gots none in my neck of the woods. ‘Sides, I ain’t gettin’ my house fixed any faster if’n y’all keep tryin’ to stop me from gettin’ nothin’!”
“We could help you fix your house," Bubbles cheerfully offered.
“‘ey!” He jabbed a finger up at her and furrowed his brow. “There ain’t no way I’m lettin’ none of y’all varmints–“
“Touch your property,” the girls groaned in monotonous unison.
“Then try to find a way to fix up your house without breaking the law?” Blossom asked, even though she knew it would probably be another request falling on deaf ears. “It’d benefit us and Townsville and you if you did.”
“But I weren’t breakin’ the law!” he asserted.
“Well, if you keep it up, we’ll break your jaw. Got it?” Buttercup growled, shaking her fist at him.
Fuzzy resumed crossing his arms as he gave her an unimpressed look. Just like the girls were used to fighting villains daily, every villain in town was more than used to Buttercup’s violent threats by now.
“Y’all can say them nasty things to me all ya want, but when I gets out of the slammer, cross m’heart, I’ll show y’all what fer.”
Just like every villain always says they’ll do, Blossom thought to herself, and then the ever-repeating cycle would restart itself aaaaaall over again.
They finally reached the jail as they hovered over the roof of one of the prison buildings. Bubbles held Fuzzy over her head, primed to throw his body through the prison ceiling into a cell, but as she was about to toss him, a wave of realization suddenly swept across her face.
“Ooh! Hey, Fuzzy, tell Wuzzy I said hi the next time you see him,” Bubbles cheerfully said as she smiled up at him. “We all gotta jam again soon!”
Fuzzy craned his head towards her, and Blossom almost thought he was about to start hollering all over again. Instead, he grumbled a little, his shoulders drooping a bit.
“ …fine, I’ll tells ‘im.”
And with that, Bubbles cheerfully chucked him with all of her might as his hulking pink body smashed through the roof of the prison. Through the Fuzzy-shaped hole, the girls could faintly hear the satisfying sound of cuckoos chirping, signaling that once again, they’d saved the day… and could now perform their next day-saving task at City Hall, even if all they were doing was opening a stubborn jar for a particularly pickle-obsessed politician.
“Wuzzy, that sounds familiar,” Blossom thought out loud as the three of them made their way through the skies of Townsville. “Isn’t that one of Fuzzy’s kin?”
“Yep,” Buttercup confirmed, rolling her eyes. “Remember? Bubbles and Fuzzy used to do those stupid jugband jams with him and those other two nephews of his.”
“Well, uh…” Bubbles’ voice grew softer as she glanced away, hugging her arms to her chest as she flew. “We used to, but we still sometimes kiiiiind of do, too…”
“Seriously?!” Buttercup snorted derisively. “Ha! You dork! I can’t believe you still do dopey stuff like that!”
“Only sometimes,” Bubbles exclaimed, a bit of an edge growing in her voice. “At least when Fuzzy isn’t being a huge butt like he was being today. What, is that not cool enough for you?”
“Listen, sister, I know what cool is, and bein’ in a little jugband jamboree with Fuzzy Freakin’ Lumpkins and his kin is totally not it.”
“It totally is!”
“It totally isn't!”
“Oh, what, are you just jealous that I can be friends with bad guys sometimes, Ms. I Hate All Villains ‘Cause I Got Jilted By One Once?”
Buttercup’s face immediately fell as she clenched her teeth, her fingers curling tightly into fists as she glared at Bubbles.
“Don’t you even start–“
“Girls, knock it off,” Blossom sighed, sensing a fight beginning to escalate between the two of them. “The sooner we get the Mayor’s pickle jar open, the sooner we can go home.”
“Oh, please, Blossom, we were only having a conversation,” Buttercup growled. “You got a problem with it?”
“Yes, because the last time you two had a ‘conversation,’ we got blindsided by a surprise attack from Him while I was trying to break you guys apart.” Blossom frowned at the memory. “Which may I also remind you made me too late for that book signing in Citiesville I had planned to go to for months…”
“Wow, first the volunteer thing, now this? You’re blaming us for everything today, aren’t ya?”
“You both just make it too easy,” Blossom bitterly grumbled under her breath.
After they had zipped over to the Mayor’s office and successfully opened up his pickle jar, the girls arrived back home in the sleepy suburbs of Townsville, grateful that they hadn’t gotten any extra emergency calls.
“Welcome home, girls! Hope you’re hungry… it’s spaghetti night!”
The Professor greeted them with a smile as they tiredly flew into the kitchen, more than ready to sit down for dinner. He’d recently begun cooking, the gentle rumble of boiling water for their spaghetti dinner greeting them as the delicious scent of garlic toast in the oven wafted in the air (much to Bubbles’ relief). He was the same wonderful, perfect dad he’d always been - although his hair had grayed just a touch - and certainly not any less overprotective of them, as evidenced by how he patted their heads and fussed over them as they all sat down at the kitchen table.
Dinner was quite the affair tonight, with her sisters fighting over the Parmesan (she swore Buttercup barely ever said “please”), and dish-cleaning duty being argued over afterward (Bubbles lost the bet this time). Soon, after finishing up with homework, they were all decompressing in their bedroom, bedecked in their pajamas as they found some time to relax. …well, her sisters relaxed, at least, in their own noisy way as they gabbed and gossiped with one another. Blossom was sitting on her bed, hunched over her laptop, quietly busy trying to find a volunteer opportunity so she could get her ridiculous school requirements over with.
Privacy was a luxury that Blossom had always craved, but alas, not something realistically attainable in the Utonium household. The house had been bought long ago by the Professor when he had been a childless bachelor, and it just didn’t have the space to expand once he’d become a single parent, so she and her sisters had been forced to continue to share the same bedroom they’d shared ever since they’d been born. Each of them had finally gotten their own twin-sized beds when they were preteens, and had claimed three separate sections of the room for themselves at the expense of the space becoming even more cramped as they had grown. She had always wished she could have a fortress of solitude of her own, a place to get away from everyone at home for a while. Then again, she guessed, momentarily glancing out one of the circular windows at the nighttime sky, if she really wanted some peace and quiet, she could always fly to her little nook on the moon. When she was a little girl, she’d found a special crater on the lunar surface that she would camp out at now and then, mostly when things at home got overwhelming. It was the closest thing to a quiet escape that she could ever get… but the moon didn’t have a comfy bed for her to sit on while she worked. Unfortunately, it also had a lousy wireless signal, so it looked like she was stuck here for tonight.
“Ugh! He’s pooping all over the place again!”
Bubbles groaned in misery as she tapped the buttons on the little onion-shaped toy in her hands. Buttercup was lounging on her bed in the corner of the room, her hand hanging off the side of the mattress as she furiously tapped the buttons of her obnoxiously loud video game.
“Stop feeding it and it won’t,” she replied angrily.
“I can’t let him starve, Buttercup!”
Another one of Bubbles’ many virtual pets began chirping from the shelves on her wall, stacked with dozens of other plastic electronics, along with tons of old and new stuffed animals. They’d had so many terrible run-ins with evil animals over the years that those were the only kinds of pets the Professor allowed in the house. Bubbles, being the animal lover she was, was a huge collector... although lately, her collecting was starting to get a little out of hand.
“That’s what you said when we had Beebo, and look how he ended up.”
“Tamaneggi’s aren’t anything like Beebo.” Bubbles gestured towards her toy as if it were some priceless artifact. “First, they’re a lot less dangerous, and second, put a sock in it and let me take care of my baby in peace.”
“Fine, but you need to quit complaining about what it’s doing or just start over. It ain’t like it’s real…”
“He’s real to me! And we're having a meetup at lunch period tomorrow to swap Tamaneggi codes.” She began rapidly pressing buttons on the toy as cheerful little beeps began to chirp from it. “Renaldo has to be in perfect shape for his busy day of matchmaking and getting married. He’s almost close to hitting maturity!”
“At least he is,” Buttercup grumbled, fussing with the buttons on her console. Bubbles’ eyes narrowed at her.
“Oh, you wanna start another ‘conversation,’ sister?” she growled. “Plenty of people at school have these.”
“Yeah, you and all the other loser dorks in school that still haven’t grown up yet.”
“It’s a video game. You’re playing video games. What’s the difference?”
“A stupid plastic onion ain’t the same thing as– agh! Crap!” Buttercup began frantically button-mashing, concentrating on her game as loud, gruesome battle noises poured from the console’s speakers. “You messed me up!”
“Serves you right, dork,” Bubbles smirked as she blew a raspberry at her.
Blossom looked up from her laptop, her tired eyes glaring at her sisters as they continued with their spat. Sometimes it seemed as if they had barely matured since they were little. Sometimes she even swore that they were aging her, even if she was only seventeen. It had gotten to the point where she would frequently check the mirror to see if bags were prematurely beginning to form under her eyes. She could certainly handle her share of extreme stress, but times like these almost pushed her to her limit. Despite loving them unconditionally, this kind of inane banter between her sisters occasionally filled her with the temptation to smack them, as if she didn’t already feel like smacking them for not informing her about this whole ridiculous volunteer business in the first place.
She tried ignoring them by focusing her attention on her task, but it was proving to be just as aggravating. Most of the volunteer listings had already been filled, and the few that hadn’t had already expired. It didn’t help that the website was ridiculously ancient and incredibly slow to search through. It had already taken almost half an hour to load five different pages.
Defeated-sounding music blared from Buttercup’s video game and she groaned loudly, tossing the console lazily on her bed as she got up from it. To Blossom’s chagrin, she floated over to her side of the room.
“So what’s the scoop, Red?” she asked, slapping her hand on Blossom’s back as she peered over her shoulder at the laptop screen. “Still looking for somethin’ you can do for that community service thing?”
Blossom shrugged Buttercup’s hand off of her as she grumbled. Oh, now she wanted to act all buddy-buddy?
“Yes. And as if I wasn’t annoyed with you two already…” She continued chewing on her pen as she scrolled through the latest page that had finally loaded. “This is a nightmare. I can’t find one single volunteer opportunity that’s available. How am I going to complete this if there’s nothing I can actually do?!”
She continued to scroll through the page when, all of a sudden, one of the listings grabbed her attention. It seemed to only have one remaining slot and, amazingly, was still open.
“Wait, scratch that!” she exclaimed, clicking on it as the details began to load. “Looks like no one’s taken this one...”
“Maybe for good reason,” Bubbles said absentmindedly, still focused on clicking the buttons of her Tamaneggi.
“Right? It’s probably something gross. You’re probably gonna get stuck pickin’ up trash or workin’ in a sewer,” Buttercup chuckled as she crisscrossed her legs, lounging in the air. “No one ever wants to do that kinda junk.”
“You’d like working in a sewer, stinky,” Bubbles teased as she looked up at her, snickering.
“Yeah, well, maybe I would've when I was a little kid. Heh. I’d pay anything to see Blossom do it.”
“Heehee, that would be kinda funny…”
Blossom ignored them again as her eyes traveled carefully over the description of the position. “DESCRIPTION: [truncated version of original submission] Complete various clerical and janitorial tasks for local business owner. Must be willing and able to perform multiple forms of ‘dirty work.’”
Dirty work? Huh. That certainly didn’t sound good. It was suspicious, even. What did that even mean? She squinted her eyes as she scanned the rest of the listing, running a finger along the screen until she found the address where the opportunity was located.
...wait...
She furrowed her brow as she scanned it over a few more times, just to make sure she wasn’t misreading it. It couldn’t be where she thought it was… could it? A quick copy and paste search of the address confirmed that, yes, she was right, and yes, it absolutely was. Anger began swelling inside her chest as she pursued her lips, nostrils flaring as she furiously glared at the screen.
“…are you kidding me?!” she spat under her breath. Now both of her sisters’ eyes widened as they leaned towards Blossom, their curiosity suddenly piqued.
“What?”
“Now I know why this one hasn’t been taken. It was requested by a villain!”
Blossom almost broke her laptop as she jabbed the address on the screen with her pen, clenching her teeth in frustration.
“And that despicable, diabolical, disgusting villain just happens to live in the middle of town at the Volcano Top Observatory!”
Blossom bolted above the city the next day after school finally let out, her brow furrowed and lips pursed tight. She was absolutely. Incredibly. Intensely. Livid. All day long she had been stewing about it– on the way to school, during classes, during lunch, during the bank robbery she and the girls had to thwart right before 6th period began– planning how she was going to give the moron who had had the guts to put in that stupid volunteer listing a piece of her mind.
Mojo Jojo, Townsville’s infamously villainous super evil genius. A villain capable of the most dastardly, despicable deeds ever dealt upon a city. One of the most formidable foes she and her sisters had ever battled against in their superhero careers. The biggest jerk in the universe. He lived in the observatory built on top of the volcano in the middle of the city, smack dab in the center of Townsville Central Park, the exact location where that fishy volunteer opportunity was listed. She knew he was as evil as a villain could possibly be, but she couldn’t believe the gall of him this time around. Using a website designed for charitable acts to recruit regular Townsville citizens into one of his evil schemes?! That was something she just could not let happen.
“Tell me again why you had to drag us along for this?” Buttercup grumbled. She and Bubbles were trailing reluctantly behind Blossom as the girls sped through the sky. “Couldn’t you have just yelled at him about this yourself?”
“Yeah, why did we have to come with?”
“You two need to be here to show Mojo Jojo that I mean business,” Blossom stated in her most serious, leaderly voice, “Because I am not going to allow someone like him to use our town’s resources for his selfish benefit. No doubt the volunteer listing he posted is some twisted component of yet another one of his nefarious plots.”
“It’s probably not a nefarious plot, Blossom. I bet it’s just Mojo being a big ol’ dumb idiot like usual,” Bubbles suggested as Buttercup nodded in agreement.
Blossom considered it for a moment. Her sister wasn’t wrong. Despite being one of those handful of villains in town who still occasionally tried when it came to villainy, there were many times when he had been a big, dumb idiot. Then again, there were times when he hadn’t. Sure, maybe he hadn’t been causing that much chaos around the city lately. Over the past year or two, he had mostly committed simple museum burglaries, bank robberies, or the occasional small-scale robot-aided bout of destruction to the town. The girls could deal with all of those sorts of crimes rather easily. However, she knew he still held grand plans of taking over the city – taking over the entire world, even – and that he could initiate those more serious operations at any moment. That was when he could be much more difficult to deal with, not to mention dangerous, especially when it potentially involved the safety of the citizens of Townsville.
“That is a possibility,” she hesitantly agreed. “But we can’t take any chances. We have to be certain that he’s just being an idiot.”
“Great,” she heard them sigh as they continued following her.
Once they reached the observatory, the girls landed on the front stoop as Blossom rang the doorbell. For calls like these, she’d typically opt for them to crash through his ceiling and confront him directly. However, if evil truly was afoot this time, he may have set up some kind of booby trap or device to get the drop on them. Entering through the door was the safest bet in this particular situation, she reasoned. One could never be too careful with his kind of villainous ilk.
Mojo answered the door, greeting the girls with a mop in one hand and a bleary expression on his face. Today he looked especially frazzled, his fur sticking out in every which way, his usual white gloves curiously missing from his ensemble. The billowing cape he often wore fell flat on his back, wrinkled and misshapen, as was his iconic supervillain tunic. It seemed that the crinkled, weary bags under his eyes were a bit baggier than they normally were, too.
“Well, well, well, the Powerpuff Girls, showing up at my home at the most inconvenient of times and disrupting me as usual, I see. Typical, which is to say that it is part of your standard annoying modus operandi,” he sneered as he glared down at them. “To what do I owe the displeasure of your bothersome visit on this occasion? If you are here to unduly accuse me of any villainy, I assure you, none of the crimes I plan to commit this week have been yet set into motion.”
He paused, his pink-tinted eyes suddenly widening as his face fell.
“ …you, uh, might have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday for those. I cannot recall which one I had decided on,” he mumbled as an afterthought, glancing upwards as he attempted to remember.
As if he already wasn’t grating on her nerves, even more irritation coursed through her as she glared up at him. It seemed that, no matter what year it was, Mojo had always ended up at least a foot or so taller than her and her sisters. It probably hadn’t been the result of a natural growth spurt. If she had to guess, he was scientifically increasing his size purely out of spite and to inflate his evil ego. She wouldn’t put it past him: he’d once jammed a hose into his brain to pump himself full of Chemical X, just so he could turn into a gigantic, city-destroying powerhouse. In fact, she knew he’d copied similar experiments numerous times after that to scientifically enhance himself and his powers. After all these years, the toll they’d taken on him had certainly made him appear all the more monstrous, although, while he was already fairly strong to begin with, it hadn’t made him that much more powerful than the girls.
Unfortunately for them and everyone else in town, it hadn’t made him any wiser either.
Blossom held up her phone at him, his phony volunteer listing displayed on the screen.
“Care to explain why you’re advertising yourself as a local business owner seeking volunteers to do your ‘dirty work’?”
Mojo squinted at the small screen, muttering the words written on it to himself under his breath.
“Hmmmm. No. I do not care to explain it. Goodbye.”
He began closing the door on them, but Blossom quickly grasped the door handle, making sure he couldn’t budge it any further.
“Not so fast, Mojo,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes at him. “Using the town’s volunteer network to recruit free labor for your evil deeds? You’ve done some pretty rotten things before, but this is low, even for you.”
“How is it low?” he asked, in a tone she figured was his attempt to feign innocence and simultaneously mock her. “I am merely requesting assistance, asking for help, seeking aid, and doing so using the services our local government provides to do so. As an occasional taxpayer, I am entitled to do whatever I wish with it.”
“Yeah, all while being deceptive.” She jabbed at the screen of her phone. “It says here that you’re a business owner. That’s a bold-faced lie!”
“What?! It is not a lie!” he exclaimed, punctuating his words by stamping the mop in his hand on the floor with a squelch. “How is what I have stated in any way, shape, or form a fib? Why would you just brazenly assume that I would have to conceal what my profession is? It is, in fact, the truth: I am a business owner. After all…”
He straightened up, puffing his chest out proudly.
“I am in the business of evil.”
The girls groaned in miserable unison. If there was anything Mojo was consistent at other than being evil, it was at being absolutely ridiculous.
“How did you three even come across this listing in the first place?” he inquired, arching his brow at them in suspicion.
“That’s none of your concern. What are you trying to do, huh?” Blossom floated upwards, craning her neck behind his shoulder to see if she could spot any sort of doomsday device readied inside the front hallway. “Trying to lure innocent townspeople into your observatory for some nefarious plan of yours? Maybe for some horrible, diabolical scheme that you’ve concocted to brainwash them into willing minions of evil to seize control of all of Townsville?”
Mojo gave her a blank look.
“I simply need an assistant to complete some chores of mine and to help clean the observatory.”
She returned his expression, floating back down to the front stoop slowly. By all accounts, it looked like he was being serious. But it couldn’t be as simple as all that, knowing him. He must have been up to something truly terrible.
“…really?”
“Really.”
“And it’s got nothing to do with evil?”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, no, it does not! Cease the foolishness you are foolishly displaying! There is unfortunately nothing villainous, diabolical, or in any way nefarious behind my simple request. If my request were to be evil, I would have clearly expressed it in the listing.”
“Calling what you need ‘dirty work’ seems like a pretty clear expression to me.”
“Yes.” He held his mop up, gesturing towards it. “Because it is dirty work. Filthy. Messy. Grimy work. Work that requires much cleansing. Therefore, as I have previously stated, it is dirty. Not evil.”
“See? We called it.” Buttercup angrily groaned, pointing at Mojo in exasperation. “Just a big ol’ dumb idiot.”
“Hey!” Mojo barked, angling the mop handle menacingly at her. “What is that supposed to mean?!”
“It means Blossom was being paranoid about something stupid again for like the millionth time ever.”
Blossom glared at Buttercup, fighting the urge to explain that her so-called “paranoia” had protected them and the city hundreds of times before. But… maybe it was that simple? Perhaps he really was telling the truth this time around.
“Well…”
Her voice faltered a little, but something in the back of her mind told her not to give up. Stay strong, Blossom! She knew that if she so much as gave Mojo a hint of hesitation, he would take advantage of it in a heartbeat. It had happened before, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again.
“...well, I'm, uh, glad that I was tipped off by the fact that your address was clearly indicated on your sham of a volunteer listing!” She crossed her arms, haughtily tilting her nose up in the air. “It’s a good thing I noticed it to stop anyone else from accidentally coming here, and I can safely assure you, no one will be showing up. Not on my watch.”
…maybe she’d tried to mask her hesitation too much, because an evil, wretched smirk slowly grew across his lips... and she knew that smirk. It wasn’t a good one.
“Ahhhh, and yet, here before me on my very own doorstep stands the city’s biggest goody-two-shoes Samaritan, no doubt constantly searching for ways to contribute to the community.” He leaned down to look her square in the face, sneering through a sharp, toothy grin. “Perhaps if she is truly that suspicious of my motives, she would do the poor citizens of Townsville a favor and take up the task at hand herself. Of course,” he nonchalantly shrugged, eyes flickering towards his fingernails as he casually inspected them, “That is supposing she is remotely capable of the simple, non-evil work I require to be done.”
She snorted at his ridiculous attempt to bait her and shook her head.
“As simple as it might be, I would never stoop so low as to–“
“Welp!” Buttercup interjected, grinning as she slapped her hand down on Blossom’s shoulder. “That settles it. Guess you found your volunteer thing after all, sister!”
“What?!” Blossom gasped, her smile completely disappearing as she whirled her head around, gaping at Buttercup in horror. What the heck was she saying?! “ No, but… but I–"
“Yep!” Bubbles patted her other shoulder and nodded. “Congratulations! Looks like you won’t be needing our help anymore!”
“Oh, what’s this?”
Blossom stomach slowly sunk as Mojo’s eyes fully widened, his free hand flying up to his lips as he feigned surprise.
“Was Powerpuff Girl Blossom on the hunt for an opportunity to volunteer for her community this whole time?”
“She sure was!”
“Uh huh! For school!” Bubbles chirped. “She needs some service hours so she can graduate! She’s super desperate!”
“Yeah, at this point she would stoop to any low.”
Melting into a puddle to escape an unbearably embarrassing situation wasn’t one of her superpowers, but Blossom sure wished it were right now. The sensation of all of the color draining from her face was possibly the most unpleasant thing she’d ever felt as her sisters continued to grasp her shoulders, probably so she wouldn’t fly off. Murder wasn’t part of the Powerpuff Code of Ethics, but she swore to herself right then and there that she would kill them both over this later.
“Well! It seems like your inconvenient visit was not, in fact, as inconvenient as I thought. How delightful, marvelous, fortuitous, etcetera.” Mojo cooed, squinching his face into an insincere smile. “And how heartwarming to see such a supportive moment between supportive sisters who support one another.”
“Yes. Whatever would I do without them,” Blossom muttered furiously behind clenched teeth.
“Indeed! In fact, now that I am thinking about it…” He trailed off, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as his eyes shifted back and forth at Buttercup and Bubbles. Their hands slowly began to slide off of Blossom’s shoulders as they slunk away from her. “While I had initially planned for this to be a one-person position, a position for which only one individual would be necessary, perhaps I could use two extra pairs of hands for–”
“Well, whaddaya know!”
“Look at the time!”
“Seeya, Blossom!”
There was a loud sonic bang as Buttercup and Bubbles shot off into the sky. Of course they would fly off on her. Blossom watched their light trails disappear towards the horizon in dismay as she turned back to Mojo, his free hand on his hip as he sneered at her with a cocky grin.
She wrinkled her nose at him in contempt. Ugh, what a creep. She did not want to have to work for Mojo, especially with whatever phony “volunteer position” this was going to turn out to be. But then again, it was one of the last remaining opportunities on the list, and she was already used to cleaning up the colossal messes he made around the city. How hard would it be to clean up some smaller ones he’d made in his observatory?
And, in an annoying way, he was right. If she took the opportunity, and if this truly was part of some evil plan of his, she would be protecting others from harm. Ironically, she turned out to be the perfect candidate for the job. She let out a defeated sigh. Great. What an inconvenient time to be the protector of Townsville.
He held the mop out towards her expectantly, his irritating smirk continuing to mock her.
“Well? Shall we get started, volunteer?”