❛ running makes you look guilty. ❜ / @sxrgeant
that is the stupidest goddamn thing she's ever fucking heard , and the worst part is he's right.
it doesn't matter that the justice systems of the world have a horrible history of destroying innocent people. it doesn't matter that an accusation is often enough to doom someone. it doesn't matter that she's literally done nothing wrong outside of no longer baring her stomach to the world in the hopes that it might start treating her right. running — hiding — is all the evidence anyone needs to make her and her sisters look guilty. saying NO is enough.
they knew that.
this wasn't a decision made lightly , no matter what government propaganda is spewing. they've been fighting monsters created by cast-off nuclear waste the american government was too lazy to properly clean up for two decades. they've been battling aliens and demons before they knew how to spell. it's the only LIFE they've ever known. walking away from it was always going to be hard. devil you know , and all that. it was a conversation they had a million different times — at first just bitter comments on her end , building to irritated backlash from blossom , whispered what-ifs from bubbles , until it was finally months of conversation involving the whole utonium family.
( those conversations were the first time jojo had so much as looked at their father without spitting at his feet. )
it took a family of geniuses and superheroes to even start rolling out a plan.
the plan started with a more concentrated effort to get townsville to make CHANGE. petitions to pay the powerpuff girls for their work. presenting a schedule of working hours and vacation time. attempting to rebuild townsville's defunct monster fighting units. every single attempt ignored or laughed at in the townsville capital , sara bellum's shocked giggles the most painful sound. so they moved on to strike , refusing to answer the hotline for anything other than a rampaging monster — until the mayor , behind closed doors that his constituents would never know about , started asking for the things to come , dangling even more lives of shitty townsville citizens over their heads. bubbles and blossom almost cracked. the underdeveloped , overgrown townsville police lost a lot of lives , their own and civilian.
the federal government officially stepped in.
their little strike — a desperate attempt to get even a semblance of control over their lives — had quickly grown out of hand.
they would crack if they stayed. they would have gone back to weeks of sleepless nights , struggling to get by on the professor's meager guest lecturer salary because no one would hire three superpowered women who would have to leave their posts at any second for the greater good. women without college degrees because they couldn't dedicate enough hours to studying. one who doesn't even have a high school diploma. they'd go back to a life with NO future because playing second fiddle to someone who belongs more to the public than they ever will to themselves gets old quick. no future because anything they wanted to do would take a back seat to whatever the government wanted of them , like it had for two decades now. they'd go back on a tighter leash , because now they had proved they HAD tried to change things , and god forbid they'd ever get that bright idea again.
it was better to leave.
to run.
and they can hide for a while. everyone's always looking for color-coded , uniformed girls midflight. as long as they're in civvies , as long as they don't go out together , as long as they remember to keep their feet and their neon eyes on the ground , they can be NORMAL.
whatever normal means to them now.
being branded traitors and treasonous was a risk they knew they were taking. governments don't like being told no , whether that's a local city governance or the federal. more than that , they don't like having weapons out in the world , uncontrolled.
buttercup didn't think the government would involve other heroes , though blossom and jojo blatantly disagreed. what , tell them what happened and have them realize that they , too , could leave ? but more , some stupidly optimistic part of her — a piece she didn't even realize she still had — really thought heroes wouldn't bother hunting them down if the government DID tell them. who could understand this rebellion better than other heroes ? she thought they'd be on the powerpuff girls' side. at the very least , she thought they wouldn't care.
it was STUPID of her.
because here's another government-owned living weapon — just like them — staring at her dead in her dead-giveaway eyes , and she can't fucking tell what he's thinking. if he's going to fight her , try to use her as bait for her sisters.
her heart is THUNDERING in her ears. if there's no fight coming , she doesn't want to start it. an enormous battle will just make it that much easier to find them. she and her sisters can get away quicker than most — but not entirely unnoticed , since the faster they fly , the more color-coded lights they leave behind. buttercup doesn't move , doesn't even twitch , worried that the movement of her eyes would give away the direction her sisters went. they have to get away. have to sweep their little apartment clear of any evidence of them , just in case.
she has to give them time.
this whole damn thing was her idea. she has to give them a shot. she'll find them when this is over , however long it takes. buttercup rarely experiences fear , but it SLAMS into her at full speed.
“ they decided i was guilty before i ran , ” she argues , her voice thin from lack of air.
lmm brainrot (2024).
