blossom

At her suspicions towards his suggestion for them to start a drinking game, all the green Rowdyruff did was lazily shrugged. “Duh, of course I want to get you drunk.” Butch shamelessly stated, not bothering to hide his intention for the game. It was a drinking game, any kind of drinking game had one of two goals, and that was either to not get drunk at all or to get super drunk that you’re totally shit-faced. And he was not about to advocate them not trying to get drunk as there would be no fun in that. But either way, by propositioning it as a game, at the very least he could make it seem like he was still offering Pinky the chance to not drink as much. “That’s why it’s called a game.” He added, before leaning back against his chair. He has yet to answer her first question, which in return, his grin widen. “Because I know you don’t trust me, I’ll keep it simple for you. How about a game of 'Truth or Drink'? Clean version. Though, if you do want to get a little frisky yet a little less drunk, it can be a game of 'Truth or Drink or Strip' instead?.”

The fact that he was so blatant in his intentions to get her drunk caused Blossom to raise an eyebrow, unimpressed. As if she would be at all interested in getting drunk with a Rowdyruff Boy? His idea for a game, however, made her think he was the one getting in over his head. Truth or Drink didn’t sound too difficult to the leader of the Powerpuff Girls—she prided herself on her honest nature. She could answer truthfully for any question Butch threw her way, and he’d be the only one likely to drink a drop. Partly because of that thought, and partly due to her competitive nature, she found herself tempted to go along with his idea. The only thing that delayed her agreement was Butch being disgusting again and trying to up the stakes by throwing in a potential Strip option to the game; Blossom wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Public indecency isn’t really my thing,” she deadpanned. “Truth or Drink and Keep Our Clothes On is good enough.”

charicloacupid

“—Remember, you only live once! And what better way to spend it than with the person who stole your heart!” The pink haired radio show hostess commented to her current caller. As the person on the other line agreed with her claims, she gave a satisfied nod to herself and smiled. “Great! Thanks for calling and best of luck to you!” And with that, the call disconnected. “Enjoyed listening to that killer advice and dying to hear some more?” She then spoke to her mic, making a small pause as if she was waiting for a reaction when it was only just her inside the room. Still, her smile grew as if someone had responded to her before she continued. “Just wait! After this next song, we’ll head straight into the next caller for On the Air with C.A. Cupid! And if you want that to be you, call this number and maybe we’ll be hearing you on the radio!” With that the song began to play, giving the hostess a moment for a quick water break.

Once the song came to an end, Cupid pressed another button, connecting herself to her next caller. “Hey! You’re On the Air with C.A. Cupid! What love advice are you looking for, dear caller?” She recited one of her usual tagline's, leaning back against her chair as she allowed the caller to speak. The caller, Bella, proceeded to explain how she has feelings for a friend of her’s—the hostess nodded her head, a common occurrence among her callers—but then how this friend, Hugo, asked her out years ago and Bella had turned him down at the time. Intrigued, Cupid’s brows raised, but she kept silent until Bella was completely finished. After Bella expressed being afraid of Hugo being over her now and how she doesn’t know how to breach the fact that she has feelings for him, the hostess shook her head to herself. “A little bit of awkwardness won’t ruin a close friendship.” She began, breaking the silence from her end. “If he stayed as your friend after you rejected him years ago, that just tells me he values having you in his life regardless if you want to be romantically involved with him or not. So why not take the risk and confess? You won’t know how he truly feels until you do. And who knows— he could have feelings for you that has only grown stronger throughout the years, but he hasn’t tried to confess again because he’s scared to make things awkward again himself. I mean, even if you hadn’t developed feelings for him, would you stop being friends with Hugo if he were to try confessing again?”

Blossom listened to the radio host’s response with rapt attention, looking for all the world like she used to in class, front row with her notebook open to take notes of everything the teacher said. Most of what C.A. Cupid was saying were things Blossom knew already: the awkwardness of a failed confession wouldn’t ruin their friendship, because it already hadn’t when things were flipped around. (But that didn’t mean she wanted to go through all that painfully awkward tension again if it wasn’t necessary.) She knew Huey cared about her as a friend before a potential love interest and that they’d make it through this blip too if their feelings weren’t mutual, even if it was unfortunate then that their timing just sucked. What she wasn’t sure about was that he had any lingering feelings for her after so many years had passed. Maybe it was Bubbles and Morty getting back together that had gotten into her head and made her do such a dangerous thing as hope—now Cupid was growing that hope, suggesting that Huey’s feelings may have only gotten stronger throughout the years.

“Of course not,” she answered the question Cupid posed automatically. “We’ll be friends no matter what.” She paused, then continued before the host thought she was done talking. “There’s something else, though…He and his family have been going through a lot lately, and he might not be in a good place mentally to deal with me confessing even if I do work up the nerve. I don’t want to be selfish and put more on his plate when he’s already stressed enough. Is there a sensitive way to go about this, or…should I just wait?” Blossom felt like she was potentially asking too many questions, finding too many problems instead of just thanking C.A. Cupid for the advice and moving along, but there was a lot to think about—and who better to ask than a love expert?

#ic #cupid #cupid1

Watching as he made the Puff even more flustered, Butch snickered. It's amusing how easy it was to get under her skin with his lewd comments. It was almost as fun as whenever he got under B-Cups skin, only difference was that by now the redhead’s sister would’ve tried landing a hit on him with how annoyed he had gotten her. But when it came to Blossom, she tried the ignoring him tactic, yet when it didn’t seem to work, she threatened him with a good time of having an ice bath. “You’re offering to give me one?” Butch cheekily asked with a raised brow despite her not looking at his direction anymore. Jokes on her, an ice bath would do the complete opposite of not making him horny. But then again, the Ruff was horny 24/7— that’s why he was at this joint in the first place. He planned on finding his next victim for the night, that is, until he came across Pinky, and now here they were. With another laugh, he finally moved back, still staring at her direction as she actually gave him an answer to why she was here. “And you think not finding someone to fuck wouldn’t be fun? Your loss.” He commented, boredom already starting to hit now that he finally got his answer. Then a new thought had struck him, and the Rowdyruff grinned once again. “Alright, you want some fun? How about you and I play a drinking game then? It’s on me.”

Blossom didn’t think Butch was on the same page as to what her threat of an ice bath entailed. He seemed almost interested in the idea, as if picturing her lathering him up in an actual bath; she was talking about freezing him whole inside a block of ice. Not quite the same. She exhaled a small puff of sparkling frost, her thoughts manifesting her powers, and promptly decided to abandon the idea before anything actually came of it. As frustrating as Butch could be just by virtue of his personality, he wasn’t doing anything illegal or being a public menace at the moment, so there was no reason to overreact and start a super-powered fight in the middle of a bar. She just kept telling herself that he must have one redeeming quality, if only one had the patience to find it. For half a second it appeared that Butch was done messing with her, but then his grin was back and he was suggesting a drinking game—which sounded like just about the last thing she should ever get involved with when the other player in the game was Butch Jojo. Her answer was immediate suspicion, although not an outright denial. “What kind of drinking game? Are you just trying to get me drunk?”

buttercuppg

It was rare when Buttercup showed her sweet side. Anytime she did, she preferred that no one drew attention to it either — yet everyone always did thus ruining the moment, making Buttercup roll her eyes and revert to her usual attitude. “Don’t get used to it,” she said at first, her words not as harsh as they could’ve been. She took offense to her sister’s question though, even if she was right — she did want advice, but why did Blossom have to be such a know-it-all about it? She wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of being right so easily. She shot her sister a stubborn glare. “Who says I need something?”

#ic #buttercup #buttercup2

The only response Blossom offered her sister was a knowing (but patient) tilt of the head. It said, “We both know you want something, so let’s not waste time pretending otherwise. Now do you want to tell me about it or not? I may be a know-it-all, but I’m a good listener,” without needing to say anything at all. Buttercup wasn’t the kind who could be pushed into anything, let alone admitting to needing help—which Blossom highly suspected was what this was about—and she had already annoyed her by calling it out. She wasn’t going to say anything to make it worse.

@charicloacupid

Calling a radio station for love advice wasn’t just a random whim. Blossom had carefully planned what she was going to say long before actually gathering the nerve to dial in. Of course she had: there was no other mode she operated in than meticulously prepared. She even had an alias to introduce herself with, despite the fact that Cupid’s show automatically applied a voice changing filter for guests—hers wasn’t that common of a name to feel comfortable stating it on air along with the other details she would need to provide in order to receive advice on her situation. She knew some of her friends and family listened to this show at least occasionally, and couldn’t risk any of them knowing it was her if they were tuned in today. The whole reason she was anonymously seeking guidance from a love expert was because she didn’t want the people in her real life to know her situation until she figured it out herself (or at least, with the help of Cupid…)

“Hello!” she started as soon as she was prompted by the radio host. “I’m Bella. Long-time listener, first time calling. My dilemma is that I…” Blossom usually didn’t hesitate when speaking, especially when her words were already prepared. But this confession made her uncharacteristically shy, even if she wasn’t speaking with her own voice. She took a breath to center herself and continued, “I think I have feelings for my friend, but I don’t know what to do about it. This friend, Hugo, asked me out years ago and I turned him down. Now that I’ve started to realize I might want to be more than friends, I’m afraid he’s…well, he’s probably gotten over me a long time ago, right? I don’t know if I should be straight-forward and tell him how I feel, or if I should test the waters first…I’m not really the best at flirting, but I’m scared of making things awkward if he doesn’t like me. Do you have any advice for someone in my situation?”

#ic #cupid #cupid1

hubertducck

Huey was aware that the way he’s been thinking and feeling lately was a little illogical. For as much as he wished he had been there at the hotel to prevent that wall from falling onto Louie and crushing his leg, he couldn’t be so sure that anything different would’ve happened if he had been. But the fact that he wasn't there was haunting him— the reality that he not only was the last one among his siblings to even know about what was going on or why Dewey, Louie, and Webby were all inside that hotel in the first place but also the fact that he wasn’t even given a choice to have been there in the first place or not. So hearing Blossom ask him if he really thought he could’ve stopped Louie from getting hurt if he had been there at the time, the most Huey did was take in a deep breath as he stared back at her. “Maybe.” He replied. “Maybe I could’ve been able to push Louie out of the way in time, or notice the sound of the bombs ticking before they had set off and could’ve warned everyone we had to leave…” Even saying that out loud, the eldest Duck triplet could hear how farfetched that sounded.

Huey could’ve gotten hurt himself if he had been there, but the way he’s been feeling, his mind has been telling him that getting hurt would’ve been a risk he was willing to take because at least he could’ve still tried. That’s what he wanted Blossom to realize in where he was getting at. The fact that he had been stripped away of ever even having that choice of being there— because Dewey was so selfishly focused on this mystery about their mother without bothering to even tell him or Louie about it…. Once again, he shook his head at her. “Of course I don’t blame you for being there. But this is different, Bloss— I was never given the choice to be at that hotel! It’s one thing if I had been asked and I had decided to reject the offer,” Though that would’ve been a whole different kind of feeling he would’ve ended up feeling if that had been the case “—But I didn’t know about any of this! And I should’ve! I should've been there……yet I wasn’t even aware of when they all left for the hotel that day.”

The mental track Huey was stuck looping around wasn’t helpful for his processing of the situation, and it wasn’t logical either—to the point where Blossom worried about how she was supposed to break him out of it. He was always the kind of person who favored facts and logic, but this time his emotions outweighed his sense. How could she validate him and convince him that his feelings were wrong at the same time? While she wanted him to feel comfortable opening up—especially knowing how rare it was for him to actually express instead of bottling up those feelings—she couldn’t allow him to keep thinking in a way that was only serving to hurt him instead of aid his healing journey. “Hue…The fact that you weren’t given a chance to be there makes you even less at fault for anything that happened,” Blossom insisted. “You didn’t choose not to be involved. Everyone knows you would do anything for your family. But you can’t change the past; what’s done is done and we can only move forward from here. What do you think will happen if you get stuck in the past?” She looked deep into his eyes again, trying to impress this point. “Because I think it will keep you from enjoying the present with the people who care about you.”

#ic #huey #huey1

As pinky’s cheeks began to darken, the smirk the Rowdyruff was sporting only grow. Did he actually believe that she was here for some sexual and deviant act he was assuming she was here for? Nope. The bow wearing leader was dead last among the three Powerpuffs who he would expect to see do such a thing— hell, he bet if anything that Blossom was more of a prude who thought that waiting her true love or something as nauseating shit as that was the way to go instead of fucking a random stranger. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have his fun making such claims as that. Especially after the way she looked at him after doing so— the ravenette snickering as he did so. At her question of him getting off speculating about people’s private lives, he rest his arm against the table and deliberately leaned in close to the redhead. “Uh yeah— I do.” Butch remarked, now with a taunting grin. “Come on, Pinky, just tell me! If you aren’t here looking for a good fuck, then what are you here for?”

If it was possible for her to blush even harder than she already was, Butch’s response to her attempt to brush him off with a rhetorical question about him getting off on this was enough to do it. His answer, and the way he leaned into her personal space to smirk at her like a creep. His face was all too close to hers now, so she turned her head again, returning to staring pointedly at the shelves of alcohol behind the bar. She knew the only proper way to handle this was to ignore him, but he wasn’t letting up, insisting on knowing what she was doing here if not to hook up. “Do you need an ice bath?” she asked, threatening him with her special power if he was apparently too hot and bothered to have a civil conversation. Perhaps she relied on her powers too much; she had a brain to reason with him. She knew that Buttercup was somehow able to suffer his company, so there must be something redeeming about his personality. (Or was it really just about the fighting and…the other f word? She didn’t want to think about it.) “If you must know, I’m just here to have fun. Maybe make some friends. That’s all.” It occurred to her that Butch might still not believe that she was really here to loosen up, considering he’d pushed her right into defensive prude-mode, but it was the truth. He could take it or leave it.

#ic #buttercup #buttercup2

@buttercuppg said: “You’re like the most put together person I know”

Blossom was truly touched. She put a lot of effort into being so put-together, despite how one might think that being made of everything nice would make it easy. Everything nice was actually a lot of different things, and none of them individually or collectively perfect. It was still up to her to put it all together into something organized. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” she couldn’t resist teasing, but only for a moment. Buttercup wouldn’t be buttering her up without a reason. If she was complimenting her put-togetherness, Blossom assumed she must be wanting advice. “What do you need?”

hubertducck

For once within Huey’s life, he felt completely lost by what to do. There was no rule or passage within the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook that could solve all his problems for him, and even if there was, he wasn’t even confident that it would do much to ease the way he’s been feeling as of late. A huge shocker since anyone who knew Huey knew he always resorted to his guidebook whenever he was in a pinch or felt troubled, but from everything that had occurred within his family and especially that of the actions of his middle brother? The Junior Woodchuck Guidebook could not guide Huey this time around, and that could possibly explain why his mind has been so loud since the day of the bombing. Huey hated feeling this way, and if it wasn’t his mind reminding him of how he hadn’t been there at the hotel when the bombs went off with all three of his siblings inside of it, it was then his mind taunting him of how he couldn’t do anything to protect any of his siblings! Of how he hadn’t been there to protect Louie— or at the very lest, prevent the amputation of his youngest brother’s leg. God, and don’t even get him started at what his mind says whenever he see’s Dewey. It was a mess. A horrendous and horrible mess, and Huey wanted nothing more than to turn back down and prevent all of this from happening.

To make matters worst, Huey also felt there weren’t too many people he could go to about this matter. He’s definitely not going to Dewey about this, and while he wasn’t as angry at Webby as he was his brother, there was still a part of Huey that didn’t want to speak to the blonde either. Which was fine, because she seemed to be avoiding everyone herself as well. And he definitely wasn’t going to burden Louie anymore about all this now that he’s been in recovery. And sure, there was his Uncle Donald and Aunt Daisy, but Huey didn’t want to burden them either. So when he ran into Blossom and she noticed how troubled he looked, that was when he confessed to her on how he’s been feeling. “Not in a long time,” He replied, shaking his head at her. “Plus, I don’t think there’s even time for me to be doing any mediating! If I waste any of it doing that, than who knows what else I would end up missing or worst— who else would end up getting hurt because I wasn’t there!”

“Huey…” Blossom’s heart ached for him as he spoke of fearing what would happen if he wasn’t there next time somebody got hurt. She knew exactly what that was like, to a scale that she wasn’t even sure Huey himself could understand. She could never leave Destiny Isle or take vacation when some monster or supervillain could wreak havoc the moment her back was turned; she could never relax and turn off the hotline, because lives were at stake any time the Powerpuff Girls weren’t there to save the day. They had to remain ever-vigilant, or else be saddled with the guilt of any losses incurred during their absence forever. “Listen,” she prompted, making eye contact with Huey and holding it so he would focus on the importance of what she was about to say. “Do you really think that if you had been there, you could have stopped Louie from getting hurt? There were explosives. Part of the building collapsed. Your siblings were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but there’s nothing you could have done, and if you were present, you might have been hurt, too.”

If anything, it was Blossom and her sisters who should be taking the blame for failing to protect their friends from danger—but the bombing plot had come as a surprise to the police and the island’s resident superheroes, and the Powerpuff Girls weren’t involved in such investigations anyway. They always came at the call, but with no prior intelligence brief to alert them about certain criminal plans, they came for cleanup instead of prevention. “If I was there, I could have caught the wall before it fell on Louie. Do you blame me for not being there?” she asked Huey, trying to prompt him to see it from that perspective so he could at least absolve himself of that guilt, even if it didn’t take care of every problem. “If not, then you can’t blame yourself.”

#ic #huey #huey1

“I’d agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.” - blossom [ @blossomu ]

Opening his mouth to boast how he knew he was right, he cut himself off right on the last second when he realized what Pinky had said. “Hey!” Butch claimed, narrowing his eyes at her. It wasn’t usual for him to encounter the Powerpuff leader on his own, usually he would have his brothers and she her sisters, and even then it was Buttercup he dealt with the most. Only because Brick liked to exclusively deal with the pink one on his own, while every so often he and Boomer would trade off on the other two but stay against fighting their respective counterparts. Today was a special case, not only did Butch find Pinky all on her own, but at a bar no less. “No— I am right. You’re too boring for a place like this.” He claimed, already over the initial offense he felt as he now smirked at the redhead. “But I’ll entertain ya, and let’s say I am wrong What are you doing here, huh? Did someone break your pewny heart and now you came here to drown your misery with alcohol? Maybe with some sex? Oooh, is someone secretly a deviant and I happened to catch you just before the act?” he wiggled his eyebrows at her.

Being called boring wasn’t something rare or unusual for Blossom. She was a sensible young woman, the kind who had a respectable bedtime…Most people found things like that to be “boring,” her own sisters often included. A Rowdyruff boy’s opinion on how exciting or interestingly she lived her life held even less weight to her, so she brushed Butch’s original diss off by saying he was wrong (in cleverer words than that) and trying to move along, but that didn’t seem to be enough to satiate Butch’s appetite for bothering her. He just kept talking, saying more and more inappropriate things. Heat bloomed in her face as he made his guesses about what brought her to the bar, but she kept her gaze trained away from him, not wanting to give the satisfaction of a reaction until the last thing he said pushed her over the line. She whipped her head around to face him. “None of the above! And it’s none of your business. Do you get off on speculating about people's private lives?”

weloveyoubabygirl-deactivated20

rariatoo

PPG art collection

#insp

@hubertducck said: “My mind is so loud and I'm afraid it’ll never be quiet again.”

It was understandable that Huey felt like that with all that was going on in his family. Louie’s amputation, though of course the hardest on himself, was also hard on his loved ones—for the ones who had been witness to his injury firsthand and those who had not. Huey was facing a particular brand of survivor’s guilt for not being there during the bombing…While a rational mind could recognize that there was nothing he could have done to prevent the attack even if he had been there, and so it was better he had been apart and safe from the danger, that was wasn’t what the trauma and grief involved in such a situation said. Blossom could understand how Huey felt—as the oldest, most responsible sibling in their respective families, it sometimes felt like the weight of protecting their younger siblings (if not the whole world) rested primarily on their shoulders, and when any of them was hurt it was not only a matter of feeling their pain, but a personal failing in keeping them safe.

Not to mention the already near-constant anxiety only being justified and ramped up by the accident. What could happen the next time Huey wasn’t there to keep his brothers safe? That didn’t even touch the fact that all this had happened when Dewey and Webby had been secretly searching for the triplets’ mother, Huey’s anger at Dewey over this, the fact that he was the only one of the four who Louie would talk to for a long time after the incident and had to keep his own angst to himself in the face of Louie’s situation, being strong for him…It was all so much to process. But Huey hardly needed to explain any of it; Blossom understood intrinsically. “I would be more surprised if you didn’t feel like that,” she said, her voice full of empathy. She wasn’t going to say It will get better, because that was a given, but it didn’t help now. Huey was solution-oriented. He needed positive action to take. “Have you tried meditating?”

#ic #huey #huey1

racketballz

BAND GIRLS 💖🥺🤘

#insp

#image

buttercuppg

Buttercup knew her words wouldn't be enough to get her sister off her back, but it was still worth a shot. Instead, she was met with her sister's nagging about going to bed at a decent time. How lame. Why not set practice at a decent time instead? "I don't know, I don't see Bubbles stepping up to do it," Buttercup couldn't help but point out, face slightly to the side of the pillow now so her words were coming out as more than mumbles. "Seems like you must find some enjoyment in being the worst." She was all bark and no bite of course, and Blossom knew that by now. So as she shook her sister's shoulder again, Buttercup groaned frustratedly, shoving her sister's arm off of her and sitting up with crossed arms. "Alright, I'm up! Don't expect me to be happy about it."

#ic #buttercup #buttercup1

“That’s the point, Buttercup,” Blossom retorted, rolling her eyes at the mention of Bubbles not stepping up to keep everyone in check. Neither of her sisters wanted to be the responsible one, so it was left to the “eldest” to take charge and make sure they all stayed on track. Even if she was generally happy to fill that role, she didn’t think Buttercup had half a clue how much actual work went into managing their own band, when her only job was just show up and play—and she didn’t even want to be on time for that, instead whining and calling her the worst. Blossom decided to yank the blankets off her after all, feeling a little satisfaction that the tactic worked and finally forced her sister to start getting up, even if she was extra grumpy now. “You don’t have to be happy about it, just be present. Thank you!”

deweydewdrop

Normally, Dewey didn't hesitate when it came to getting hurt. That was typically the least of his worries, more focused on his determination in the situation than the consequences. However, after what happened with Louie at the hotel .... his priorities had to change. So as soon as Blossom mentioned getting hurt, he stepped back, even if he wanted to continue to protest so badly. Louie was already pissed at him (possibly forever), so he shouldn't put himself in more danger and piss off more of his family .. He sighed in defeat. "Fine," he settled, already pulling his phone camera out to document. "You sure you got this?"