#powerpufftober 2020

[renaerys]

PPG One-Shot: You Going to Todd’s? (Brick/Blossom)

My Powerpufftober fic! Still rocking the high school AU for this, so consider it a part 5 to the Shooketh, Not Stirred series. As always, can be read alone, but happens in the same universe as part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4. This is also posted on my AO3.

Summary: Brick and Blossom go on a Halloween scavenger hunt. It sucks.

xxx

Blossom checked her watch for the fourth time in ten minutes. It was already a quarter past 9 p.m., her Frankentini was going flat in its plastic neon martini glass, and she was starting to regret coming to Todd’s overhyped Halloween party at all.

“Oh, hey Blossom,” said Harry Pitt, ferrying three bright glasses of the same watered down mixed drink Blossom was too preoccupied to enjoy. “You hanging out?”

Blossom smiled politely. “Hi, Harry. Just waiting for someone.”

Harry’s extra padded shoulders slumped in his pinstripe mafia boss costume. “Oh, let me guess.”

Blossom frowned, a reply on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it when precisely at that moment, Brick stormed through the front door like he was running from a zombie horde and desperate for a weapon. Todd himself spread his arms with a “What, your hairdresser keep you late?” and was almost mowed down with a cursory “Shut up, Todd.” Curiously, Brick made a beeline for the unpopulated second floor. He didn’t even see the other high school Seniors who barely dodged his path. Todd grimaced in his fake vampire fangs and chugged the rest of his beer. “Cool, catch up with you later, bruh!” he said, but no one was listening.

“Sorry, I have to go.” Blossom didn’t have time to feel bad about Harry’s dejected sigh as she ditched her drink and followed Brick upstairs. The Spotify Halloween playlist booming in the speakers faded to a low bass din as Blossom rounded the corner in the upstairs hallway. “Brick?” she called, a little annoyed.

No text, no call. He could have at least told her he’d be late so she could have timed her arrival better. With a mouthful of grievances and a heart full of him, she pushed open the lighted bathroom door at the end of the dark hall. “Brick, did you hear me calling—”

A fluttery and spine-chilling laugh slithered past the crack in the door and sank into her flesh like a snake bite. It arrested her where she stood halfway over the threshold, shackled in the throes of a very specific terror she could never forget.

Brick stood at the pedestal sink, his fingers attempting to fuse with the porcelain as he gripped it hard enough to crack and stared with manic focus at the mirror. All around them, the lyrical voice reverberated:

“Poor, angry boy, there’s yet no end to your suffering! For this next task, I want you on your knees groveling. Hide your tears And sharpen your shears— To save your brothers, make me a true offering.”

Brick snarled at his reflection, as if his demon might appear there in the mirror to throttle. But there was only him in the glass, furious and frothing under his red hoodie. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”

It took only a moment for Blossom to shake her stupor as instinct and training took over. “Brick,” she said, crossing the small bathroom to touch him.

Red eyes narrowed at her approach until the moment he recognized her beneath her smeared costume lipstick and dark eyeliner. “Blossom?” he rasped. His surprise made sense when she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the mirror. Crop tops, fake bloodstains, and fishnets weren’t her normal style, but in a parallel nightmare universe perhaps they could have been.

The blushing eighteen-year-old boy in him went straight for her midriff, but his distress stayed his hand. “Fuck.” He rubbed his eyes.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Nothing, just— Let me get in there.” He reached around her to pull open one of the drawers next to the sink in search of something.

“It’s not nothing.”

He didn’t answer as shut the drawer and checked the one below it.

“Brick, hey. You could have called me—”

With a snarl, he slammed the drawer closed and glared at her. “I was a little busy.”

“Talking to Him?” Blossom held his glare like a hand grenade with her thumb through the pin, ready to pull. “I’d never forget that repulsive lilt. Tell me what’s going on.”

He chickened out of answering her and dove for the drawers on the other side of the sink, where he found what he’d been looking for. Blossom barely had time to question the large scissors he’d pulled out before his hood was down and his man bun toppled into the sink with all the finality of a guillotined head.

Blossom gasped. “Brick!”

Somber as a corpse, he fished out his shorn bundle of hair from the sink, and Blossom watched as it burst into flame in his palm. Smoke curled through his fingers and rose high above them in an angry, red miasma. Its stink was saccharine and brought tears to Blossom’s eyes.

And then, it moved. In swirling, bloody tendrils, it slithered through the cracks above the bathroom door and down the hall as though it had a destination in mind.

“Oh, shit.” Brick dashed after it, and Blossom dashed after him down the stairs. His hand was hot in hers when she caught it and yanked him back. The split second in which their eyes met was an eon of understanding, bone-deep and cauldron-brewed. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He looked like he needed a friend.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

“Blossom,” he tried to argue.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Blossom, hey babe, wanna flip some cups on my team?” Todd sidled up to Blossom with a stack of solo cups. Then he noticed Brick’s serrated haircut. “Buddy, what the shit happened to your hair?”

“Please go away,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Choke on my dick.”

She grimaced at Brick’s vulgarity, but Todd took a step back. Before he could snap back, he noticed the red smoke wafting through his house out the open window. “Oh shit, fire?”

“There’s a fire?!” someone else exclaimed, and panic ensued.

Blossom was about to intervene when Brick snatched her hand and dragged out the front door. “Where did it go?” he said, squinting in the dark.

Blossom swallowed her instinct to calm down her fellow partygoers (there was no fire, they’d be fine, surely…) and looked around for the demonic smoke. “There! It’s heading east.” She rose into the air to fly after it, but paused when she noticed Brick hadn’t followed her. Instead, he jogged down Todd’s cul-de-sac toward the main road. “What are you—hey!”

She landed on the ground in front of him, cutting off his dash. He tried to go around her, but she easily blocked him. It was like he wasn’t even trying to move past her, unless…

“You’re powerless,” she said.

That was the wrong thing to say. “It’s just a temporary setback,” he said in the same choke-on-my-dick tone he usually reserved for Todd.

When he tried to get around Blossom again, she put her booted foot down and cracked the asphalt. He didn’t try to pass her again. “I’m not going to ask you again.” Then, more gently: “Please, let me help you.”

The last of Brick’s petulant pride dissolved to ashes just like his ruined hair she knew he loved, and yet he’d viciously cut it off anyway. Hesitant, yet stubbornly determined, he held her gaze. “It’s Him. He’s fucking with me. Sapped my powers and said my brothers and I will pay the ultimate price unless I solve this idiotic scavenger hunt by midnight.”

“…Wow.”

“Yeah, so it’s not like I have much of a choice.”

Blossom cupped his cheek. His chopped hair was not a total disaster, but it needed cleaning up. All that time he’d spent growing it out again…

Brick sucked in a sharp breath at her tender touch. He was as rigid as a pole, gritting his teeth hard enough to shatter. Blossom’s gaze hardened, and an old but fierce fire ignited in her Super-powered veins. “We’ll beat Him’s game. I promise you. Nothing’s going to happen to you or your brothers.”

Brick let his eyes fall closed as he touched his hand to hers, and that was probably the most intimacy she was going to get out of him in the middle of a murder-y scavenger hunt on Halloween. Maybe after they booted Him back to whatever pit he’d been living in all these years she could salvage what should have been a fun, romantic date with her sort-of boyfriend.

Blossom cleared her throat. “So, evil limericks?”

Brick just groaned from the bottom of his tortured soul. He took her hand and led the way after the demonic smoke before they could lose its trail. The smoke led them to Townsville High School a few blocks from Todd’s, specifically to the annual haunted house experience the Senior class spearheaded every year. Plenty of students dressed in their ghoulish finery crowded in the lawn socializing and lining up to take a turn through the haunted house.

Bubbles was on duty as part of the social committee in charge of managing the exhibit. When she spotted Brick and Blossom headed for the cafeteria door that had been transformed into the haunted house’s black-curtained foyer, she bounced over to them. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you guys here tonight! I thought you were going to Todd’s. Wait, Brick, did you cut your hair?”

“It’s a long story,” Blossom said.

“Whoa! Slow down. You can’t go inside without a costume.” Bubbles blocked Brick’s single-minded steamroll inside after the last of the curling, red smoke slithered past.

“Bubbles, move,” Brick spat.

“No way. You can be a party pooper at Todd’s all you like, but you’re not bringing any of that into my super scary haunted house that I spent all day decorating.”

“I swear to god—”

“Bubbles, do you have any eye liner?” Blossom interrupted before Brick could say something to her sister she would make him regret for the rest of his life.

Bubbles, dressed in glam trash Powerpunk solidarity with her sisters for the night in fishnets and glitter, grinned as she dug in the pockets of her spider web-patterned black tutu. “Great idea, Blossom! C’mere, you.”

“What—hey!” Brick was literally powerless to stop Bubbles from manhandling him into a quick makeover. “There, it’s purr-fect!”

Despite the possibility of Brick’s gruesome end by satanic evisceration looming at the end of the night, Blossom could not help but laugh at the cute nose and whiskers that transformed Brick from grumpy boy to grumpy cat.

The flash on Bubbles’ phone went off.

“Hey!” Brick was redder in the face than his ruined hair.

Bubbles preened as she easily danced out of Brick’s reach before he could nab her phone and delete the evidence. “You look so cute!”

Brick turned to Blossom as his final saving grace, but there were tears in her eyes as she tried to pull herself together. “I’m so sorry, but she’s totally right. You look very cute right now.”

“Fuck this,” he grumbled, bright as a tomato as he shoved past a floating Bubbles and stormed inside the haunted house.

“Oh no—Brick, wait!” Blossom tried to tone down her giggles as she ran after him. “Bubbles, come on, this is actually serious.”

The sisters headed inside to a spooky banshee screams playlist past Ms. Keane’s bubbling cauldron and the football team zombified in a cardboard graveyard, until finally Mr. Green welcomed them to the final stop with a frightful flourish. “Step on up, boys and girls. See your future, if you dare. Mwahahahaha!”

Brick took one look at the over-eager demon teacher and tried to leave. “Maybe I should just let Him kill me while I have some dignity left.”

Blossom caught up to him and slipped her hand in his before he could turn back. The sobering reminder of why they were even here sent a chill all the way to her fingers, and she squeezed his hand in what she hoped was reassurance. “I’m not letting that happen.”

“What’s going on?” Bubbles asked, peering around Blossom’s shoulder.

But Blossom was too preoccupied by the unnatural red smoke swirling around the final, purple-draped room and its sole occupant: Robin Snyder in a truly rocking dead fortune teller costume. “Come in, come in! Let the spirits foretell your Halloween future!”

Bubbles giggled and skipped inside. She planted a very loud, very adorable kiss on Robin’s head.

“Bubbles, what’re you doing in here? You’re supposed to be on welcome duty!” Robin complained, but she reached for Bubbles’ hand and pulled her down into the chair next to her.

“I wanted to see you, obviously!”

Brick’s hand in Blossom’s squeezed uncomfortably tight, and she soon realized why: the red smoke had descended upon the ouija board set up on Robin’s table and absorbed inside it. Bubbles and Robin did not seem to notice it at all.

“All right, let’s get this shit over with,” Brick said, taking one of the empty seats across the table.

“Wow, such enthusiasm,” Robin said flatly.

Blossom took a seat next to Brick and asked their costumed host, “How does this work?”

“It’s a séance. We’ll ask the spirits what we want to know, and the board will do the rest. Everybody put a hand on the planchette.”

The moment everyone’s hands touched the plastic planchette, red smoke bubbled up from beneath it and swirled around them. In a panic, Robin tried to pull away, but found that she couldn’t. Everyone’s hands were stuck to the planchette.

“What—” Bubbles sputtered, but Him’s cotton candy creep show voice slithered from the smoke and stole her breath:

“This clue is not for the fainthearted: Unearth your next destination uncharted. Absent any confession, To the board pose your question And divine who among you just farted!”

“What the hell was that?!” Robin said at the same time as Bubbles wailed, “Oh nooooo!”

Before Blossom could respond to Robin’s very reasonable question, her arm was yanked across the board still stuck to the planchette: “B”.

Brick’s smoky cat-eyes were wide and slightly manic as he looked at Blossom, and she looked at him. She flushed so badly that she nearly swallowed her own tongue to say, “It wasn’t me!”

“Well, it sure as shit wasn’t me,” he shot back. And then, understanding dawning, they both looked across the table.

“Bubbles?” Blossom said.

“I DON’T WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE!” she screeched.

“Bubbles definitely farted,” Brick deadpanned. He dragged the planchette and everyone’s hands still stuck to it toward the “U” and then back to the “B” until the board spelled out Bubbles’ name. As soon as the planchette settled on the “S”, it released everyone’s hands in time for the heady, red smoke to engulf the board entirely.

Bubbles, distraught, shot out of her chair and covered her eyes in shame.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Robin tried to coax her back down from the high corner she’d flown to. “Come on down from there—Bubbles, really, I can’t even smell anything!”

“You’re just saying that because you love me!” Bubbles complained.

“Oh my god,” Blossom said, too preoccupied with the board to worry about her sister’s mortification. “Is that—”

“A map of the city?” Brick finished her sentence.

The ouija board was transformed into a mini map of Townsville, if a preschooler had drawn it in crayon.

“Here we are at THS.” Blossom pointed her finger to a collection of buildings scribbled in blue crayon. “And here…” She followed a crosshatch path to the edge of the map where a horned, red, devil face sticker grinned up at her. “The cemetery.”

Brick stood up so fast his chair fell over. He stood there for half a second, his face screwed up, and then: “Goddamnit!”

He’d forgotten he couldn’t fly.

“I can carry you.” Blossom held out her hand.

“Is everything okay in here? Robin, the next group is waiting.” Mr. Green poked his horned head through the thick drapes and sniffled. “Ew, what’s that smell?”

“Oh my god!” Bubbles turned beet red and disappeared in a flash of blue, knocking down the rest of the chairs and Brick too, if Blossom hadn’t caught his elbow before he could break his nose on the tiled floor.

“Bubbles! Sorry, Mr. Green.” Robin dashed after her.

“Wait just a minute—”

In the chaos, Blossom let Brick slip out of her grip, and he stormed out the opposite door back outside.  

“What are you doing?” Blossom asked when he stopped at the sidewalk.

“Calling a Lyft.”

“I just said I can fly us both.”

“Hard pass.”

Blossom crossed her arms over her chest. “What’s wrong with it? Flying would be faster, and it’s free.”

“I’m not letting you carry me like some damsel in distress.”

“Honestly, Brick. There’s a demon threatening to kill you and you’re worried about your masculinity?”

“No, I mean—look, this isn’t your problem, okay?”

“You did not just say that to me.”

He scowled so deeply that it should have given her pause, but the painted whiskers somewhat ruined his menace. He clenched his phone hard enough to crack if he’d still had his powers. “I didn’t mean it like I don’t want you here.”

Blossom materialized inches from his face in an unnecessary display of power that nonetheless felt fantastic. “That’s better.”

Brick flushed, but not from anger. When she slipped her hand over his, he eased his grip and relinquished his abused phone.

“That’s better,” she said again, more honey than venom this time.

Like hell was she going to send him off to his possible doom alone, powerless and with a really bad haircut painted like a cat.

“Blossom, I’m—”

Her kiss shut him up, and with it any further excuses to go it alone. And despite his increasingly desperate situation, he kissed her back like he’d never get the chance to again.

A car horn honked. “Hey, are you Brick?” asked an older guy in a Honda Civic with a fuzzy, pink mustache attached to the front bumper.

Brick very briefly broke their make-out session to reply, “No,” and then tightened his arms around Blossom’s waist and got right back to it.

The Lyft driver squinted between the profile picture on his phone and Brick. “Wait, really?”

“Never heard of the guy,” he mumbled against her lips, proving that if she wanted to get something done, she’d have to do it herself.

Blossom rolled her eyes and removed his hands from her. Before he could do anything about it, she hoisted him onto her back and hooked her arms under his knees. “Come on, let’s go thwart your imminent murder.”

The Lyft driver watched them take off in a blur of pink. “Goddamn teenagers.”

He canceled the Lyft order and left Brick a one star rating, which was probably fair.

xxx

When Blossom touched down near the entrance to the graveyard, it was back to business. “How much time do we have?”

Brick checked his phone. “About an hour and a half.”

She jogged to keep up with his longer stride as they made their way deeper into the graveyard. “Okay, that’s plenty of time to figure this out.”

A peal of laughter stopped them in their tracks on the gravel path for the split second it took them both to recognize that particular manic cadence.

“Butch,” Blossom said at the same time as Brick said, “Motherfucker.”

Beyond a small hill near the base of a huge oak tree, Brick’s brothers, Buttercup, and Mike Believe sat among the granite tombstones with a pillowcase full of candy passing a joint around. Buttercup had just blown a smoke ring in the shape of a star.

“Bitch, I’m too stoned for this fucking tongue witchcraft,” Butch said. He made an appropriately chilling sight all in black with his face painted black and white in the design of a skull.

“Hey, can you blow a heart?” Boomer asked.

“You sap.” But Buttercup took another drag and hopped off the tombstone she’d been sitting on. Moonlight glinted off the spikes on her black leather jacket as she reeled back and blew three perfect, concentric hearts from her red-painted lips.

Boomer sat up from his place under Mike’s arm and snapped a picture on his phone. “You officially have the greatest special power out of all of us, no contest.”

Mike laughed and accepted the joint when Buttercup passed it to him. “I’m gonna have to agree with that one.”

“That’s because you’re one hundred percent whipped,” Butch said.

Mike shrugged. “Eh.”

“Buttercup.” Blossom approached her sister. “You’re smoking here? What if someone catches you?”

“Somebody just did,” Boomer said under his breath.

“Damn, Blossom, you girls doing a three-way theme tonight?” Butch slipped off the tombstone he’d been draped over to admire her fishnets and then Buttercup’s matching set. “I like it.”

“Give me that.” Brick took the joint from Mike and snuffed it out under his foot.

“Whoa, whoa,” Mike said. He stood up, and at his full height in a 1920s-style adventurer’s costume, he was a Sight™ to behold, if Blossom was being completely honest.

“Brick, what’s the matter?” Boomer peered around Mike in his homemade mummy costume. “And why the hell are you wearing cat makeup?”

“Oh shit, he is,” Buttercup said with a snort.

Before Brick could lose his temper, Blossom said, “Brick, the clue. We don’t have all night.”

“What clue?” Boomer asked. He peered at them seriously. “What’re you two doing here, anyway?”

“Yeah, I thought you were going to Todd’s,” Mike said.

“Todd’s parties blow,” Buttercup said.

Blossom ignored them. “Something about unearthing a destination uncharted. What could it mean…?”

Brick made for quite the adorable pensive cat as he considered. He seemed to come to the answer at the same time as Blossom.

“No,” Blossom said. “There’s no way.”

“We’re going to have to,” Brick said. “What else could it mean?”

“It’s extremely illegal.”

“Yeah, well, I’m fucking cursed!”

“We can’t dig up a bunch of graves!”

“Wow, so that’s what that creepy limerick meant?” Robin approached the group with Bubbles looking windblown and totally ready to get her hands dirty digging up some goddamned graves.

“Bubbles,” Blossom said. “Look, I’m sorry about before—”

“This is Him’s doing,” Bubbles said flatly. “I recognized the voice when I calmed down and we followed you here. Just tell me what the plan is.”

“Did you say Him?” Boomer said soberly.

Buttercup put her hands up. “Okay, what the fuck is going on?”

Brick pulled down his hoodie and revealed his ridiculous haircut. “This is what the fuck’s going on.”

Boomer looked close to tears at the sight of Brick’s mangled hair.

“Him cursed Brick, and we have to solve a scavenger hunt before midnight or he and his brothers will pay the ultimate price,” Blossom said.

“The ultimate price?” Mike said, aghast.

“What the fuck.” Butch advanced on Brick. “What bullshit did you get us into this time—”

Blossom materialized in between Brick and Butch before the latter could carry out whatever violence he intended. She tapped him hard on the chest, and he stumbled back, probably too stoned to hold his normal balance against her Super strength. “Not today, Butch. Him took Brick’s powers.”

“Shit,” Boomer said. Blue sparks jumped in between his toilet paper-wrapped fists. “Okay, what’s the plan?”

Blossom looked to Brick, who was clearly outnumbered and they both knew it. With a groan, he ran his hands through what was left of his poor hair. “We’ll split up,” he said.

“And do what?” Buttercup said.

“Somewhere here, there’s bound to be a clue left by Him. I know that’s not a lot to go on, but it’s all we’ve got right now,” Blossom said. “Split up and cover as much ground as possible.”

“And what are we looking for?” Robin asked.

“Red smoke, demonic laughter, a general feeling of imminent disembowelment,” Brick said.

Bubbles cracked her knuckles and tightened her pigtails. “The usual, then.”

“Fuckin’ right.” Butch began to crackle with pent up green power.

With four other Supers plus Mike and Robin helping cover ground, Blossom hoped they could at least glean some inkling of what Him’s last clue meant. She stayed with Brick since he didn’t have his powers anymore, and together they wandered deeper into the graveyard. Lampposts along the gravel path cast a saturnine glow amidst the trees, fey and eerie on this most eerie of nights.

“Blossom,” Brick said softly. “If we don’t figure this out before midnight—”

“We will,” Blossom said.

He stopped, and Blossom turned to look back at him. Even powerless, there was a presence in his red eyes, beyond mortal and brimming with fire. Even as enemies, even when she couldn’t stand to breathe the same air as him, she had recognized that counterpoint in him, that tranquil confidence that there was nothing in this world he couldn’t overcome. It was a part of him and no one, not even Him, could take it away.

“But if we don’t,” he pressed.

Blossom’s throat wrenched to see him so calm. Not much scared Brick, not truly, but his softness spoke volumes here where only ghosts could hear them. Go, his eyes entreated her, forget about me and go before it gets you too.

She marched up to him and placed her hand on his chest. Ice froze her breath to mist as her anger clawed its way out of her, and she let him see it. “Then Hell will tremble to watch me drag you back out.”

Brick said nothing. He slipped his hand over hers and curled his fingers. Even now, he was far warmer than anyone she had ever known, and she clung to that certainty.

“Come on,” Blossom said, pulling him along after her. “Let’s solve this so we can go home.”

They followed the floating lamp lights east. Fog gathered at their feet, heavy and strange, but Brick held her hand, and secretly she was grateful not to be alone in such a creepy place. When a laughter they both wished they didn’t recognize reached them on the wind, Blossom’s heart leaped into her throat and she took off running with Brick hot on her heels.

The cachinnation petered out when they came across a man in a grey uniform and hat with a flashlight. “Hey, what’re you kids doing here?”

“We were just—” Blossom began.

“Enough,” Brick said, stepping forward. He put an arm out to block Blossom’s path. “I know it’s you.”

“Brick,” Blossom said.

“Son, I don’t know what you mean,” the graveyard worker said.

Brick ignored him. “I played your shitty game. This is the end. Stop hiding behind that pathetic mask and show yourself.”

The portly graveyard worker dropped his flashlight with a heavy crunch on the gravel. Watery, blue eyes bled to baleful red, and his pasty cheeks stretched to accommodate a smile far too wide for his human face. A low chuckle built deep in his chest like termites in a kicked mound, bubbling up through his throat to bursting.

“H͓��̯ḭ̠̣d͜i̞᷊̯᷂͜n̨͇͟g̤̱͓,̼͎ a̮m̱̪̫͚͢ I̤̜̗?̨̞ T̨̳̻̜h͚̟̖̜͢a͖̻̠̜͇t̨̹ s͖i̹ṃp̨̟͈͕͢ļy̢͔͜ w̨̱o͈̜̟̠͟n̹̮̖’̳̝t̮ d̪̟̪̝o̹̠.͕̫̙̩”

The booming, sinister voice came from that mouth full of teeth, but it seemed to grow out of Blossom’s bones. She felt it in her lungs, her fingertips, as a tingle on her lips Brick had kissed. And she remembered he was vulnerable, under attack by this very thing standing before them now masquerading in a meat sack.

Well, screw that.

Blossom lowered Brick’s wrist and stepped around him. No matter how hard he pushed against her, he was no match for her power—power she leaked now like gasoline fumes hungry for a spark. The gravel at her feet froze, and her eyes faded to ghastly pink as she faced her childhood nightmare. “Hello, demon,” she said.

“Y̹o̬͟u̢̡̳.”

The lampposts flickered and popped, plunging the earthly ossuary into chilling shadows, but Blossom did not fear the cold. Her fists frosted over as she clenched them, and her step summoned an ice floe in the gravel that bridged the crevasse between her and the coward who dared to haunt Brick and his brothers on her watch.

“Well?” she said. “I’m waiting.”

His meat sack shrank back. This was no child Him was taunting, but a fully realized Super who was no longer afraid of his mind games. He closed that heinous mouth and cleared his throat with a dainty, sausage-fingered hand over his heart, and recited in Him’s more lyrical pitch:

“You’ve served all night at my gracious pleasure. Now the final test to determine your true measure: Find the lady who slumbers In her crypt sunk in umber. X marks the location of my precious treasure.”

No sooner had Him given them their last absurd clue than the graveyard worker seized and fell to his knees. Blossom dashed to catch him before he could injure himself. The man coughed and wheezed as if he’d held his breath for too long.

“What in tarnation…?” he muttered, dazed.

“Sir, you had a dizzy spell. You’re all right now,” Blossom said, clinically calm as she discreetly checked him for signs of blood or other wounds. She found none. “Maybe you should take a break.”

“Who… Hey, you kids shouldn’t be here!”

Brick growled and grabbed Blossom’s elbow to haul her back up. “Let’s go.”

“Take it easy, sir,” Blossom said, and let Brick drag her along before the man could think to call security on them.

When they were out of earshot, Brick whirled on her like he was about to get scary, but she held up a hand for silence.

“Before you get mad, I was just trying to—”

His kiss was not as unexpected as she once may have thought it would be. Feverish, frantic, like a boy about to die in twenty-odd minutes, sure, but not unexpected. “Fuck, Blossom,” he panted when they parted for a breath.

Blossom’s heart swelled at his raw emotion on full display, as rare as it was true, and she almost lost herself in it. But they had work yet to do. She tucked his too-long bangs behind his ear.

“So, a lady who slumbers,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s a special statue.”

“A crypt sunk in umber,” Brick said, licking his lips. “A mausoleum, maybe.”

“That narrows it down, for sure. Must be older if it’s sinking.”

“I saw a map of the cemetery at the entrance.”

Blossom grinned and put her fist in the air. She fired a pink blaster that lit up the night sky and would summon their siblings soon. “Let’s check it out.”

He didn’t complain this time when she carried him on her back for a speedy trip back to the entrance and a quick check of the map. There were four mausoleums in the cemetery.

“Found something, Leader Girl?” Buttercup, Butch, Bubbles, and Robin were the first to catch up to the Reds, and Blossom filled them in just as Boomer returned with Mike.

“Four mausoleums? Sounds like we need to split up again,” Mike said.

“If you find anything, send a signal,” Brick said.

Chance. Brick’s and his brothers’ lives were up to the one-in-four chance that they would find the right crypt. All around them, Him’s lollipop laughter followed them like a demented poltergeist.

“This isn’t it!” Brick slammed a fist against the innermost tomb in their chosen mausoleum. “There’s nothing here.”

Blossom was about to respond to that when a bright, blue spark crackled in the air. Boomer and Mike had found something. “Hurry!”

The mausoleum Boomer and Mike had picked was guarded by a lichen-infested statue of a woman with angel wings in a bed of grassless, brown soil, so dark it could have been umber in daylight. Bubbles, Robin, and the Greens arrived soon after Blossom and Brick charged inside.

“Check it out.” Boomer indicated the innermost tomb carved with two crossed sabers.

“X marks the spot,” Mike said grimly. “Oh crap, it’s almost midnight!”

“Move!” Brick tried to push the crypt open, but it was too heavy for him, so Blossom helped. The heavy stone slab groaned when she pushed it, and a plume of foul, red smoke burst from the opening.

Him’s maniacal laughter rose with the smoke that swirled on the domed ceiling and opened two glowing eyes and a cheshire smile. “My my, cutting it a bit close, aren’t you?”

Bubbles shoved her phone at the unholy miasma. “It’s midnight! We beat your stupid deadline, see?”

“Bubbles, please don’t antagonize the ancient evil,” Robin whispered nervously.

“Technically, Blossom met the deadline since Brick was too weak to open the tomb,” Him crooned.

“You took my powers!” Brick said.

Him’s sinister smile fell. “Oh…did I? My bad. Here you go.”

The red smoke converged on Brick and passed through him with the force of a sword through the gut, and he collapsed to his knees in a circle of fire, gagging. Bubbles and Boomer were lightning fast as they swept Robin and Mike as far away from the conflagration as possible.

“Butch, shield!” Blossom commanded, and Buttercup shoved him so hard he tripped and crashed against his own hastily-erected shield bubble. It contained the explosion of power well enough to keep the mausoleum standing.

“Tsk tsk tsk, this won’t do. All I wanted was to play a little father-son game with you, and you had to drag your girlfriend into it. Parenting is so hard these days. I’ll just have to teach you boys a lesson.”

Blossom’s heart twisted. If Him was truly serious about killing Brick and his brothers, he would have to go through her first.

“Like hell,” Buttercup spat, her fists glowing green.

Brick got to his feet groggily. He looked like he just survived a bad case of seasickness.

Him burst out laughing. “Choice words, Buttercup. Now boys, time to pay the ultimate price!”

The tomb lid slid to the ground on unseen forces, revealing the horror within. Blossom readied her pink blasters, and her sisters did the same. Brick took one look in there and recoiled. “What the fuck—”

When no hellspawn burst from the tomb to attack, Blossom approached and peered over the edge. Inside were hundreds of polaroids of young children in dresses with their hair styled as they posed like Victorian paintings. Blossom reached for one.

Buttercup burst out laughing. “Holy shit, is this you?!” She had two polaroids in her hands as she flapped them in Butch’s face.

“Give me those!” Butch snarled.

“Wow,” Robin said, torn between hysteria and horror as she gawked at a picture of six-year-old Butch with bunny clips in his hair wearing a frilly white dress. “Wait until my therapist hears about this.”

In the picture Blossom had selected, Brick’s hair was expertly braided over his shoulder as he sat on a stone throne surrounded by candelabras and horned skulls in a flowing, white dress. He did not look happy to be there. He looked even less happy to behold this childhood shame years later.

“I burned those,” he said in a voice from beyond the grave to no one in particular.

“I made copies!” Him sang. “And now, all of Townsville will get to see you in your pageantry finest!”

“I’m gonna fucking kill you!” Butch screeched as Buttercup took off flying with a fistful of polaroids laughing her ass off. “Get back here!”

“You know, I think I look pretty cute in these, actually,” Boomer said.

Mike laughed. “Yeah, you totally do.”

“This is what you meant by paying the ultimate price?” Blossom asked the incorporeal demon head floating above them.

Him grinned. “Why, of course. Oh! You didn’t think I would murder my own sons, did you?”

The sinister glint in those yellow eyes told a very different story, one that may have ended poorly if she hadn’t forced Brick to involve her in whatever was going on.

Or maybe Him was just bored of his perpetual existence in a hellish void where a cute photoshoot with his re-spawned Super sons was the most exciting thing that had happened in a millennium, and he was feeling nostalgic.

The tomb erupted in flames all of a sudden when Brick breathed fire over all the polaroids.

Bubbles gasped. “Brick! Those were a work of art, how could you?!”

Brick glared at her with glowing, red eyes. “We’re never speaking of this again. Give me those.” He snatched the photos Robin was holding and burned them too.

Blossom hastily pocketed the picture she’d nabbed of baby Brick before he could notice.

Him disappeared in a swirl of smoke and laughter. “Happy Halloween! Remember to brush your teeth…”

“I can’t believe I came all the way here for this,” Robin said. “Literally, the weirdest shit is always happening to you guys. Can we just have a normal Halloween, like, one time? Just once?”

Boomer laughed. “Tall order, Robin.”

A loud explosion outside told Blossom the Greens’ fighting was going too far, as usual.

“Brick? What’re you doing?” Blossom asked as she and the others followed him outside.

“Helping Butch destroy the evidence your sister stole.” He took off in a blaze of red.

“What a killjoy,” Bubbles pouted.

Blossom bit her lip and revealed her pilfered polaroid. Bubbles’ smile turned downright sinister as she greedily snatched it. “Blossom, I love you.”

“That’s for emergencies only. I mean it, or he’ll kill me.”

Boomer threw an arm around her shoulders and grinned. “Nah, he’d never turn on his girlfriend.”

Bubbles gasped. “Oh my gosh, you’re right!”

Blossom flushed. “But we’re not exactly—”

“Him said it, so it’s gotta be official by now,” Boomer teased.

“Ooh, true. There’s nothing more official than a primordial force of chaos acknowledging your relationship status,” Mike said.

“Hey, you damn kids! You’re not supposed to be here!” shouted the no-longer-possessed groundskeeper from before. He had a shovel that he shook at Brick, Butch, and Buttercup locked in a game of cat and mouse as the brothers tried to reclaim the evidence of their dignity.

“Time to go,” Blossom said.

“Hey, party at Todd’s?” Mike asked.

“Great idea!” Bubbles chirped as she gave Robin a leg up onto her back.

As Blossom found herself back at the same party where she’d begun the night on the sofa next to Buttercup regaling everyone who would listen with the story of Butch’s child beauty pageant past (sans evidence because Brick had managed to burn it, unfortunately), she found her gaze drawn back to Brick. He was up getting them drinks, his haircut cleaned up thanks to Boomer, snickering at something Mike had said.

“Blossom, where are you going?” Bubbles asked when she got up.

“Just going to talk to Brick,” she said. “Officially.”

Bubbles lit up and grabbed the nearest hand to crush her feelings into, which happened to be Butch’s. “What the—ow, woman, let go!”

Brick saw her coming and stared at her growing smile like the baffled teenager he was underneath it all. With all their friends’ eyes on her, she walked right up to him and kissed him in front of everyone.

Let them see, she thought. Let anyone who was watching and biding their time to strike see, and let them try.

Lyrical laughter echoed somewhere on the edges of hearing over their friends’ laudatory cheers and loud calls for celebratory shots, but Blossom tuned it out as she smiled into her kiss.  

xxx

Like Boomer, I am a sap who loves a happy ending. Reds are finally official in this AU?! Took us long enough. Also, I always saw Him as this weird dichotomy of ancient murder-y evil and chaotic good mom. I feel like trolling the Boys would be a favorite past time of his. Might write more Him in the future and explore that more.

Happy Halloween y’all. Get spooky, and stay safe!

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• The Powerpuff Girls