Chapter 1: That's Enough, Girls!

"GIVE IT BACK, BLOSSOM!"

"YOU DON'T NEED IT! USE YOUR BRAIN, BUTTERCUP!"

Professor Utonium sighed. He could hear those two arguing all the way down in his lab. They had been doing this off and on for nearly a week now and it was starting to wear on the man's already frayed nerves. Buttercup and Blossom were just so headstrong when it came to their separate personalities. Whoever said 'opposites attract' clearly hadn't lived in the Utonium household for the past 7 days.

He knew he'd have to break up whatever they were fighting about before things got ugly, and possibly some things ended up breaking. The scientist ascended the stairs to the living room, ready to climb up another flight and enter into the battlefield that was the Girls' shared bedroom.

Discipline was always a tricky thing in the Utonium household when it came to the Girls and there were some methods of dealing with the girls that worked better than others. The first weapon in his arsenal was always a good old fashioned timeout. Whenever the Girls were fighting each other and getting way too worked up, sometimes the man's solution was to put them each in a separate corner to cool down and think about their actions. It worked when Buttercup and Blossom had actually got into a physical scuffle with each other after a hard day's work of crimefighting apparently gone horribly wrong.

'You recklessly endangered people's lives!'

'Did not!'

'And failed to follow orders!'

'Well! I should be the leader anyway!'

'Girls! Calm down!'

'NO!'

No amount of verbal judo was working for them so the Professor had resorted to a timeout.

'That's enough! I'm gonna separate you two! Go have a timeout!'

It almost seemed laughable to send two superpowered children to a timeout area when they could both easily lay him out flat, but nonetheless, the method did work.

Sometimes, rarely... he had to yell at the girls. Scare them a bit. He never liked it, but sometimes they did need a scare.

'I remember when I brought a puppy home to my parents. And do you know what they said?'

'They said yes?'

'They said... NO!'

There was that time during Daylight Savings where he had tried to make the Girls actually 'save the world before bedtime' and things didn't quite work out well there either.

'Townsville's fine! Oh just look at it! So quiet, so peaceful.' It was actually on fire, but the Professor never noticed that. He also didn't notice all the screaming and the panic going on outside. 'Thanks to you, Townsville's as safe as safe can be.'

'Now you just shut those sleepy eyes and hop aboard the dreamland express.'

'But!' The girls all cried in objection, trying to point outside.

Instead of making things an argument, the Professor chose to shut things down by yelling at them. 'HOP ABOARD THE DREAMLAND EXPRESS!'

And by golly it worked. They fell asleep in seconds. But looking back on it, it really wasn't something he could see himself doing to them a lot. He really didn't want to rule a household through fear.

He tried to be more reasonable when Bubbles had her 'problem' of always bringing animals home. He never yelled at her when she did it but he did try to make her understand why this chronic behavior of hers was not acceptable.

'Oh Bubbles, I understand that you want to keep all these animals but you just can't. They need to be free, not locked up in a closet. So you have to let them go, okay honey?'

'Okay.'

'Now run along.'

Of course, when he tried to use reason, Bubbles had actually found a way to work around his reasoning. Since he told her that she couldn't keep an animal in a closet, she decided to bring home something even bigger that could barely fit into the house, let alone a closet.

A giant freakin' baby whale.

Even then, he didn't want to yell at her so he tried again to make her understand. 'How can I make you understand? If I sent you away to live without your sisters-'

'You wouldn't do that!'

'Oh, of course not! But you'd feel terrible, wouldn't you?'

'Yes.' Bubbles acknowledged.

'Look, I know you love all these animals and you want to take care of them-'

'But!'

'But if you really love them you must set them free, so they can return to their family that loves them, understand? Now I think we both know what you need to do.'

Everything seemed to work out fine when Bubbles dutifully set off with the whale in tow back to the ocean where he belonged, but then she seemed to take his words of 'freeing' the animals that she loved directly to heart and freed every animal, especially the ones out of the Townsville Zoo.

Oh what a mess that had been. Maybe he would've been better off telling Bubbles no more animals or you're grounded. That was how he got the Girls to use the Dynamo after they were beaten by the giant pufferfish.

'Girls! I beg you! Use the Dynamo! Oh for gosh sakes, you need her!'

'Aw man! I could still kick his bu-'

'Use the Dynamo or you're all grounded.'

Perhaps the most extreme thing he ever did was kick one of the Girls out of the house. This wasn't a task he had performed lightly either. Buttercup was getting so unbearably stinky from refusing to take a bath for so long that it was either that or buying a hazmat suit for each and every one of the family.

'Buttercup, you stink. Take a bath.'

'What's the sudden interest in my personal hygiene? I'm NOT taking a bath! And if you don't like it, THROW ME OUT!'

The Professor and her sisters had decided to make good on her little taunt and indeed kicked her out... at least until she agreed to change her mind and clean up her act.

'You can come back when you're ready to change your mind, sweetie!' Professor had called out after her before slamming the door to his home shut.

'Yep!' Bubbles giggled, 'We'll have that water nice and warm for ya!'

Surely, she wouldn't keep this up for so long that it would look like abandonment if they left her to her own devices for a while, right?

'How long do you think she'll last?' Professor asked his two remaining daughters.

'I'll give her a week.' Bubbles said, being generous.

'I'll give her 11 minutes.' Blossom deadpanned.

It turned out being a day and a half before she finally ended up changing her mind, agreeing to take the "stupid bath", as long as she got to fight monsters again.

Another extreme method he tried to employ to get the Girls to behave was the idea of "scaring them straight". It wasn't by yelling though... it was by creating a scenario so scary that the Girls would have no choice but to regret their bad behavior. This is what happened when he found out the Girls had been taking advantage of his sleepwalking episodes to make him unconsciously steal toys for them at the toy store. Every morning they would wake up with an avalanche of kiddie paraphernalia. It was an addiction they had a hard time kicking. When the Professor found out, he had been so heartbroken at being played like a fiddle by his own children that he decided to get back at them by doing something that was arguably a little mean.

He faked getting gunned down by the police in the toy store after he had held the Mayor hostage and the Girls were so heartbroken after the fact that they immediately confessed to their crimes.

'It's all our fault! It's all our fault!'

'And just what is THAT supposed to mean?' The Mayor asked.

'We knew it was the Professor!' Blossom cried.

'But all the toys!'

'And we couldn't stop!'

'And all the toys!'

'And now he's... he's... GONE!'

Perhaps it was a little much, but it definitely got the point across. Actions have consequences and crime doesn't pay. The Girls certainly never tried to take anything without permission ever again, least of all toys. He had also made sure to give them plenty of cuddles after the fact, making sure they weren't too traumatized after such a 'prank'.

As he thought about how he would handle this latest spat, he finally made it to the Girls bedroom and slammed open the door, hoping to scare them into calming down and giving him their full attention.

"Girls, what is it this time?" Professor demanded.

Buttercup immediately pointed the finger at Blossom and said, "Blossom won't give me back my freakin' calculator! I need it to solve these math problems!"

"You weren't solving them!" Blossom countered. She scowled fiercely at her sister. "You were cheating by putting them all into a calculator! You need to learn how to do your arithmetic problems without one, Buttercup!"

"Miss Know-It-All! Just because you're some stupid math wiz doesn't mean you get to tell the rest of us how to do our homework!"

"You're never going to learn if you don't use your brain!"

"Alright Girls, settle down!" The man commanded. Thankfully, at his raised voice, they did.

"Now Buttercup," Professor began kindly, walking over to his sulking green-clad daughter. "Would you like me to help you with your homework, sweetie?"

"Ew! No!" Buttercup refused, seeming squicked out at the very idea. "I don't NEED any help! I just need my freakin' calculator back!"

Professor tried to see things from Buttercup's point of view. "Blossom, honey, do you really think it's your place to try to tell Buttercup how to handle her math problems?" He hated taking sides but Blossom did seem a bit unreasonable in how she was trying to dictate how Buttercup was 'supposed' to be doing her homework.

"Ha!" Buttercup said, glad to hear that her father was on her side for this one.

"But Professor!" Blossom began in a defensive tone. "I was only trying to get her to grasp the actual concepts! She can't just use a cheat sheet or a shortcut for everything she happens to struggle in!"

"I suppose that's true too," Professor acknowledged, rubbing a hand underneath his chin. "But were you really helping her Blossom or were you bossing her around?" He knew that his daughter had a tendency to 'rule the roost' a bit when it came to 'leading' her sisters at times, even in matters outside of crimefighting.

Blossom opened her mouth to answer but Buttercup beat her to the punch.

"Bossing me around!" Buttercup answered for her, earning her a scowl from Blossom.

"No, I wasn't!" Blossom defended. "I was trying to help her out with the use of my school abacus but Buttercup wasn't biting!"

"Abacus my foot!" Buttercup scoffed. "How is anybody supposed to learn anything from some stupid beads on a rack?"

"I'll have you know," Blossom began in her typical lecturing tone, "That the use of the abacus goes back to ancient times! The Sumerian abacus appeared between 2700—2300 BC and around the world-"

"Oh God!" Buttercup complained, throwing back her head in a huff. "You hear that, Professor? Now she's trying to lecture me in history too!"

"Well it's not like you don't need it!" Blossom snapped back at her, forcing the Professor to act as the main referee between the two bickering sisters yet again.

"Girls, please! Please just stop all this arguing! Haven't I taught you to handle matters like this peacefully between each other? Communication is key!"

The girls both let out a "Hmph!" sound and turned away from each other, crossing their arms with stubbornness. The Professor sighed in defeat.

When all else failed, there was always the tried-and-true method.

"Buttercup," he encouraged her. "Don't you love your sister, Blossom?"

"...yes." Buttercup eventually grumbled, hating having this card pulled on her whenever the two fought. It was just so mind-numbingly sappy.

"And Blossom, don't you love Buttercup?"

"... yes." Blossom reluctantly gritted out too.

"So why don't you two kiss and make up?"

"Ew!"

"Oh, you know what I mean. Hug it out."

"Oh, come on!"

"Do we have to?"

"I'm sure whatever differences you have can be solved with a hug."

"Or a barf bag."

"Do we have to hug?" Even Blossom whined. It wasn't that she was adverse to hugging Buttercup, it was just that it was really embarrassing to try to do it like some married couple after they had just had a fight.

"It's better than fighting." The Professor sternly said, now crossing his arms. "Especially when these fights of yours get physical! I've had to repair too many holes in the wall from you Girls and your needless fighting! Even poor Bubbles has to walk around the house with headphones on at all times just so she can block out all the screaming!"

Neither one of the Puffs was willing to take accountability for that, each one of them bitterly muttering out a form of blame for the other one.

"Well maybe if Buttercup weren't so bullheaded..." Blossom muttered.

"Well maybe if somebody wasn't such a stuck-up bossy princess!" Buttercup growled out in return.

"Either way, I suggest you Girls try to look past your differences and be civil towards each other! Otherwise the day is going to come when one of you ends up seriously hurting the other!"

Seriously hurting the other? Blossom and Buttercup looked at each other doubtfully.

"Yeah right, Professor! We're way too tough to actually hurt one another!" Buttercup dismissed, finding the very concept ridiculous from its outset.

"Don't be so quick to dismiss it, Buttercup!" Professor warned her. "It's easy for things to get carried away. Take it from a man who's been through scenarios like that in his own childhood."

Blossom said nothing during this exchange. She actually seemed to be thinking his words over.

"Anyway," The man said, scooping the young child up in his arms despite her rather weak protests. "I think you might want to reconsider that offer about me helping you with your homework, Buttercup. I'm not that much of a stick-in-the-mud and Blossom is right about one thing. You do need to learn to get better with your arithmetic."

Buttercup crossed her arms in a huff and looked off to the side with a scowl, but then she slowly began to accept these conditions. "Fine!" She eventually accepted. "At least you won't be as much of a fuss bucket as Blossom!"

As the Professor smiled at her for this sensible choice, Blossom stuck her tongue out at her spitefully and childishly with Buttercup returning the gesture in full spirit.