Fanfic / Villain

This was it. This was my fate. So I was a monster, huh? So be it! If that's what Townsville wanted to call me, then that's exactly what I would be. They called me a monster to mock me, but now I would make certain that they called me that out of fear. (...)
I was a monster.
And I laughed

— Buttercup, Chapter 1

Villain is a 2007 The Powerpuff Girls fanfic by Yay Ninja Bob and published on FanFiction.Net. The story is a Dark Fic, with graphic descriptions of violence and a pretty large kill count.

After a tragic accident, Buttercup is left horribly scarred on her face and arms and suffers from a damaged eye. Her new appearance leads the citizens of Townsville to ostracize her. Because of this she grows into her teenage years to be much more bitter, resenting the ungrateful people she's defending every day and her sisters, who get all the love and fame while she has to deal with daily doses of mockery, bullying and disgust.

One day she snaps.

Willingly entering a path of villainy, Buttercup teams up with Mojo Jojo, to tear down the town and kill her sisters, rejecting her old name and becoming Jojo Jr.

Has a sequel entitled Villain: The Epilogue, dealing with a new generation of Powerpuffs, one of whom might be on the same path to villainy Buttercup once walked.

In 2019, the author began a rewrite of the fic called Villain: Redux. While it shares the basic premise of the original, Villain Redux greatly expands the plot and changes numerous details to become a far more slower-paced Protagonist Journey to Villain tale, as opposed to the original's beginning with Buttercup already deciding to make a Face–Heel Turn. It still retains its share of lovingly detailed violence and gore, however.

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Villain, its sequel, and its remake contain examples of:

Villain and Villain: The Epilogue

• A-Cup Angst: Comes up only once, but Buttercup describes her breasts as nonexistent.
• The Bad Guy Wins: The first story ends wih Jojo taking over Townsville and starting her campaign of world conquest.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Turns out that Buttercup never manifested a special power like her sisters because hers is dependent on hatred and a desire to kill, which she never felt before turning evil.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Between Mojo and Jojo, and Him, who controls the society of supervillains. They win.
• Body Surf: Turns out Him is capable of this. When his body is killed by Buttercup, Princess and Mojo, he eventually ends up in Princess, who is able to resist his control, but keeps him contained and gets access to some of his power.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: What Bubbles and Blossom believe happened to Buttercup. They are wrong.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Sure, picking on the mentally scarred girl who can bench-press a mountain just because she's disfigured is such a great idea, Mitch.
  • The teacher from the sequel had it coming, trying to force Cat over and over to repeat the world "ugly" in sign language.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Buttercup jokingly calls Princess' big breasts one of her greatest assets at one point.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: The sequel focuses on Cat, who seems to be on the same path as Buttercup. But where Buttercup was consumed by her anger and ready to give up her old ways for evil, Cat is more confused and the feelings that overtook Buttercup, while still there, are not that strong in her.

• Deconstruction Fic: The story takes some small hints of how Buttercup has often been treated unfairly in the original cartoon and takes them to their logical extremes.
• The Dreaded: Buttercup notes this is how the Powerpuffs had always seen Him. At the end of first story, when the new Powerpuffs meet Jojo for the first time, they run away. She concludes Blossom had warned them how dangerous she is.
• Evil Costume Switch: Mojo makes a new costume for Butercup. It's actually a surprisingly sweet moment because she really appreciates how much care he put into it.
• Eye Scream: Buttercup gets a damaged eye.
• Gender-Blender Name: Jojo for Buttercup. With "Joey" as a nickname of sorts.
• Generation Xerox: The new generation of Powerpuffs has clearly taken the traits of the previous one. And Buttercup was the one to add Chemical X to their creation, just like her father Mojo in the creation of the original Powerpuffs. Leading her to believe that one of girls, Cat, will turn out just like her.
• Green-Eyed Monster: It's pretty clear Buttercup's turn to villainy is partially fueled by jealousy of the love her sisters are getting from citizens and the Professor.
• Hypocritical Humor: Mojo, in the sequel, tells Jojo that if he was still alive, he would have her commited to mental asylum — having halucinations of your dead father is a clear sign of insanity. Jojo points out that Mojo himself was insane, and when the halucination protests, she brings up him thinking she was a boy.
• I Have No Son!: After Buttercup kills the entire school and all her friends, Blossom stops thinking of her as a sister. Subverted with Bubbles, who still doesn't want to fight her, even after the incident. Double subverted in the finale. Jojo is about to kill Bubbles first, saying she'll spare her knowing the pain of seeing her sister die. Bubbles says she knew the feeling, since Jojo killed Buttercup.
• Irony:
  • Buttercup really resents Him, however in the end, she becomes the only villain the new Powerpuffs fear, just like old ones feared Him.
  • Buttercup openly comments how stupid it was for Him to forbid villains from killing the Powerpuffs. Yet in the sequel she sets up the same rule for her group, because she wants one of the new Powerpuffs to turn out just like her.
• Legion of Doom: One of these actually exists, having been founded by Mojo. However, they are horribly ineffective because Him took over and keeps it from actually being a threat. When Mojo and Jojo take over, it becomes much more effective.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe for Blossom — it's the moment when Buttercup kills the entire school that she considers her sister beyond redemption.
• Not as You Know Them: The fic starts when the girls are fifteen, with Buttercup horribly scarred and ostracized.
• Official Couple: Buttercup/Jojo and Princess.
• Scars Are Forever: Buttercup and also Princess. Cat in the sequel.
• Parental Substitute: Buttercup starts treating Mojo as her father, finding in him the acceptance and affection she never felt from the Professor.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The story shows quite well what would happen if somebody as powerful as a Powerpuff Girl turned evil.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In their last fight, Blossom actually beats and almost kills Jojo. However, Bubbles and the Professor got killed, and Townsville has fallen into the hands of villains.
• Replacement Goldfish: Mojo decides to treat Buttercup as his son. When she protests, he says he once had three of them, but they were destroyed. Leads to some funny moments when Buttercup gets romantically involved with Princess and Mojo still acts as if she were a boy (saying he started suspecting his son might be gay and warning her to not get Princess pregnant, among other things). He comes to accept her as his daughter in the end.
• Rival Turned Evil: There are shades of this relationship between Blossom and Buttercup after the latter switches sides.
• Sanity Slippage: In the sequel, Jojo is slowly losing her mind, causing her to have conversations with her long-dead father Mojo. And even those halucinations call her on it.
• Self-Made Orphan: Played with. Buttercup kills the Professor, but at this point it's already hammered down that Mojo is her father as much if not more than him.
• That Man Is Dead: As Buttercup starts thinking of Mojo more like her father, she rejects her old name and uses Jojo Junior, or Joey.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Princess is so stubborn she can resist Him's mind control. The shrapnel embedded in her spine helps.
• The Unfavorite: How Buttercup feels the Professor's been treating her. There are hints she might be wrong. Not that it stops her from killing him.
• Unreliable Narrator: At first you might think some characters are written out of character, but then you realize it's because the story is told from Buttercup's really jaded and frustrated point of view.
• Vampiric Draining: Buttercup's power, only on a boderline WMD level.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Blossom and Bubbles make some bad calls by assuming some things that would be more typical to their usual adventures — like that Buttercup working with various villains are just different team-ups and not part of a bigger picture.

Villain: Redux

Cover Page by Pastelgothicorn

• Accidental Murder: Mr. Morbucks in Chapter 3 and Ms. Keane in Chapter 6, when Princess and Buttercup, respectively, are unable to control their emotions and lash out during a conversation.
• Adaptational Backstory Change:
  • In the original story, Buttercup was scarred by a random criminal with an acid-like substance when the girls were 11 and trying to stop a museum robbery. Here, a 13-year-old Buttercup had been temporarily depowered by Blossom using Antidote X on her after a bout of Power Incontinence while the two were on Monster Island unauthorized. Blossom leaves her behind when Buttercup reveals she's going to tell the Professor of their trip out of spite, at which point some chemical bombs are dropped on the island as part of a regularly scheduled monster cleansing operation.
  • In the original Villain, all the criminals were still roaming free and had formed a collective that meets on a regular basis. Here, the Professor created a special Villain's Ward in the city prison to house them for the girls' tenth birthday, as well as a special grated dome to contain the beasts of Monster Island, leaving Townsville free from both supervillains and monster attacks for six years. The only members of their Rogues Gallery who weren't imprisoned there for life are Ace (who has completely reformed) and Princess (who's playing the long game with her latest plan).
  • The original story had Mojo Jojo rename Buttercup "Jojo Junior" (or Joey, for short) as part of inventing her identity now that she's a villain. Also, he really wanted a loyal son. Redux has Buttercup herself come up with the "Joey" alias as a Line-of-Sight Name when talking on the phone with Princess, seeing a copy of a Joe Strummer biography on her nightstand.
  • In this story, Princess is still as obsessed with the Powerpuff Girls as ever, and loves practicing her weapons in her mansion's training room. Back in the 2007 fic, she'd abandoned villainy after the fight that left her back permanently scarred, having gained a fear of combat and only getting back into both things once she starts dating Buttercup.
• Adaptation Expansion: Redux spends a lot of time fleshing out the backstories, motivations, and thought processes of several characters while following Buttercup's descent into villainy. To put it in perspective, the original Villain and Villain: The Epilogue are 155,000 words combined. Redux surpasses that by Chapter 9, by which point Buttercup has only just committed her first intentional criminal act greater than shoplifting. And it's a prison break, which pales in comparison to the string of mass murders she'd already committed by Villain's ninth chapter.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Buttercup becomes ostracized by everyone in Townville outside her family and Ace's circle of friends after the accident at Monster Island disfigures her face and arms, to the extent that a person who's dangling from a broken rollercoaster car refuses her help and tries to struggle out her grasp.
• Berserk Button: Princess Morbucks has anyone else even mentioning the Powerpuff Girls as this, causing her to fly into violent rage. In one instance, this unfortunately leads to her murdering her own father with a bullet to the head after he reveals that he was the one funding the reconstruction of Mojo Jojo's lair into a PPG-centric museum.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Buttercup turns out to be this, to everyone but Ms. Keane's surprise, rivaling Blossom in genius-level intellect when the girls take an aptitude test. She deemed smart enough to skip high school and go straight to college, though Professor Utonium staunchly rejects the idea. Buttercup herself isn't aware of any of this, as she's never told the results and continues to assume that she's the least intelligent of the sisters.
• Cool Teacher: Ms. Keane is already close family friend, but Buttercup admires her immensely due to her not underestimating her abilities like her family does. Before the Time Skip, it appears that Ms. Keane would serve as an important mentor going forward, until Buttercup losing control of her powers causes her to inadvertently kill the teacher as the older woman was comforting her.
• Deconstruction Fic: Of several PPG elements, with situations that would have otherwise been cartoony or Played for Laughs in the normal show turning out to have or lead to sadly realistic conclusions in this fic.
• Disney Death: In Chapter 14, Professor Utonium is bludgeoned, then drowned to death by Sedusa to be a human sacrifice to Him. It doesn't stick though, as Him decides to resurrect them for shits and giggles only a few minutes later.
• Foil: Princess and Buttercup. Both have some sort of physical disfigurement (shrapnel embedded in her spine and acid burns, respectively), are incredibly hot-tempered to the point that they killed a loved one in blind rage, and are adrenaline junkies who are loathe to take responsibility for their actions. However, the former is a Spoiled Brat who is incapable of seeing any mistakes as her fault and is laser-focused on a singular goal, while the latter suffers from an Inferiority Superiority Complex, is racked with uncertainty and self-loathing after killing Ms. Keane, and is completely unsure what she wants out of life.
• Heroic BSoD: Buttercup at the end of Chapter 6, when she accidentally kills Ms. Keane. She spends the remainder of the chapter in an audio hallucinatory daze, listening to "Ms. Keane" instruct her on how to cover up the incident before the voice pleads for her to start taking her medication (which she had be avoiding). Naturally, she's still traumatized by the incident years later, with a stress-induced hallucination mocking her about the incident in Chapter 10.
• Implied Death Threat: Blossom delivers one of these to Ace after learning that Buttercup has been hanging out with him, believing he's been grooming her and demanding he stay away from her sister. Buttercup is naturally outraged when she learns this, while Bubbles privately questions how getting rid of Buttercup's few friends would help in any way.
• In Harm's Way: The main reason for most of Buttercup's behavior. Her disillusionment and apathy initially stems from no longer having anything as adrenaline-pumping as crimefighting to do anymore, and there's no one in her life with the time and influence to help her find an adequate replacement for this (outside Ms. Keane, but that's no longer an option). This gets worse after the Time Skip, as the public's wariness of her scars means can't even engage with rare moments of superheroics without dealing with a jeering, distrustful crowd.
• Killed Off for Real: So far, Mr. Morbucks in Chapter 3 and Ms. Keane in Chapter 6.
• Never My Fault: To an extent, with Princess Morbucks regarding the death of her father. While the Powerpuff Girls didn't actually have anything to do with it, she reasons that since she only committed the action because she holds a deep-seated hate towards them. So while she does feel intense guilt about the deed, she maintains that the girls also carry some of the blame.
• Noodle Incident: How the people of Townsville view what happened to Buttercup. The Monster Island incident was kept secret, and the public doesn't believe the "training room accident" explanation that was given, leading to several theories developing over what may have exactly happened. The most popular of which boil down to "she's become or is becoming evil".
• One-Gender Race: Buttercup as non-binary. When she's with Princess under her secret identity, the heiress asks if she's a boy or girl, since "Joey" is a masculine name, but she's aware from overhearing a conversation that one of Buttercup's nicknames is the feminine "Fea". After some thought, Buttercup decides that she doesn't identify as either, but also doesn't care how others refer to her either.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Unlike the original fic, where Buttercup has already decided to become evil in the first chapter, this fic spends more time examining how she is becoming slowly disillusioned with heroics due a bevy of factors.
• Reformed Criminal: Ace, who now owns a legal weed dispensary, is a band leader, and raises Arturo's daughter. Come the Time Skip, he also works part-time in construction. He's completely done with dishonest work and regularly reprimands Buttercup and his other band mates whenever they commit petty crimes like shoplifting.
• Secret-Keeper: Mojo discovers Buttercup's Secret Identity as Joey at the end of Chapter 10, before revealing this fact to her at the end of Chapter 11.
• Sibling Triangle: Buttercup and Blossom both have feelings for Robin, with neither knowing how to navigate this. Especially since prior to the Time Skip, Robin clearly gets along better with Buttercup, leading the other girls to believe that she is romantically interested in her. Downplayed when Buttercup reveals that she feels uncomfortable asking Robin out even once Blossom decides to step back, and it turns out Robin doesn't like Buttercup that way regardless. Bubbles revealing Buttercup's crush to her temporarily damages their friendship, and post-Time Skip, Robin is secretly dating Blossom.
• Time Skip: The first six chapters take place when the girls are thirteen, with the rest of the fic taking place when they're sixteen.
• The Unfavorite: Buttercup feels like this when it comes to the Professor. While her rejecting his occasional attempts to bond doesn't help, and he does clearly care for her well-being, it's also made blatant that he understands Buttercup far less than he does Bubbles and Blossom; being incredibly confused at the idea that she's intellectually gifted and ignorant/forgetful about her likes and dislikes.
  "Sixteen", she thought. "And after all these stupid birthdays, he can't remember one thing: I fucking hate strawberries."
• What Were You Thinking?: Upon learning that Buttercup is the one who committed the prison break after seeing the footage on television and recognizing her as being "the Alien", Ace reprimands her for not thinking it through: because she was seen talking at length to Arturo on the security cams, the police and other Powerpuffs think he helped plan it and are searching the most intensely for him. On top of that, should the authorities learn Ace is harboring the Gangreen Gang, then he'll also be sent to the Villain Ward, meaning Sophia would have to go into foster care. Buttercup assures him and Arturo that such a thing will never happen, and the two resign themselves to Buttercup being too naive to fully understand the consequences of what she's done.
  Arturo (shaking his head): Yo, man, the kid just doesn't get it, and she's not gonna. Sabemos que ella nació en una cuna de oro.

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