He’s an easy mark, at least in this part of the city. Sticks out in the crowd with his brown corduroy blazer. He’s tall. Thin with springy brown hair. Distinguished. Aged beyond his years by some unknown traumas. Silly sideburns. Soft, brown, empathetic eyes. A long, bushy mustache. Thick-framed brown glasses. A dark purple bruise on the side of his nose.
It tells her a story.
Most importantly, he’s trans. She can tell. Something to do with the eyes. She sees that, and she knows this is someone who will almost certainly be nice to her if she gets caught.
She’s small. Her face is round, tanned from living in the streets. Lots of baby fat left. She’s a seven-year-old kid. With brilliant green eyes that pierce through everything. Her clothing is dirty, damp from sweat, and shredded from the occasional contact with sharp objects. She wears an adult-sized pageboy cap that eclipses her head, veiling her hair from sight.
While this neighborhood is officially called Westreya, its community has christened it with a different name: The Oven. The streets are dirty. People are everywhere, moving in waves, while the air itself distorts from the second extreme heat wave of the year. She squeezes between passersby, hardly noticed by anybody due to her height. She’s careful not to step on anything. Like a broken bottle. A person. Shit.
She sees his matching corduroy trousers (This guy needs to get a room, she decides.) and moves in. Reaches forward, dips her hand into his pocket, brushes her fingertips against the cheap leather wallet…
Her mark grabs her by the wrist. Harshly at first, but as his thumb presses into the veins of her frail wrist, his grip softens instantly. He turns around with startling agility and drops down to his haunches. Looks her in the eye. She looks away. Searches him for more details. A dark green shirt, a black tie, a lanyard with his name on it, surrounded by a rainbow ring of colors. She wishes she could read. If she could, she’d see that he’s Lucius Gawain, Volunteer Coordinator with the Estreya LGBT Center. She looks back up at him. Considers him then swats his hand away from her wrist. He sighs, offering her an exasperated glance. All the while, people surround them all over, moving in all sorts of directions. It’s dizzying.
She stares at his disappointment head-on. “C’mon, it wasn’t that bad.”
Lucius scoffs at her, but he performs it with enough self-awareness for it to read as a joke to her. He returns to her fondly with a warm smile and a gentle voice. “Maybe… or maybe I’m just the wrong kinda guy to pickpocket, little one.”
“Clearly,” she groans.
“Listen, son,” he says. “Can I… do anything for you? You need money? Food?”
She narrows her eyes. Son, he calls her. Everyone calls her that. Or buddy. If she just took her cap off, they would understand.
But she doesn’t want to get into trouble over that again.
“You trying to work me, mister?” she asks snidely.
“No,” he says quietly, gently shaking his head. His eyes burrow into her, wide with emotion. She sees sympathy. And fear. Concern. The same emotions she’s used to seeing from empathetic people, the same emotions that annoy her to no end, but something’s different about this man. He talks to her like she’s a fellow adult. It makes her smile a little, but she stows that away fast. She needs to be tough.
“How long have you been doing this?” he asks her seriously.
“Two years, I think,” she says.
Lucius’s expression softens, though his face strains from the predicted sympathy. “Okay. Then yeah. I’d say you could use help, and I’d love to get you a hot meal if you need one.”
Her eyes widen slightly, but then she remembers the new rule and shakes her head. “You’re not allowed to. I’m homeless.”
Lucius offers her a weak smile. “Listen, I don’t care about the rules right now. I got some friends down the street, we’re running a home, it’s the Drop on Schrader, you might have heard—”
She frowns. “No thank you. People get beat up there.”
And he forces a smile. “It’s usually just me. I understand—”
Suddenly, she turns away and walks in the other direction. “You’re a weird guy. I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.”
Staying down on his haunches, Lucius lifts his knees up high, as if he were in a square dance, and crab walks over to her, blocking her way. He extends a hand to her.
She eyes the hand with disgust. “What?”
Lucius takes a deep, nervous breath. “If you come check it out with me, I’ll teach you how to be a better pickpocket.”
She rubs her chin. Looks up at the sky, eyes darting back and forth while she weighs her options. Looks back down—
“So I found this boy on the internet,” Kim explains. She projects a slideshow she made onto her parents’ living room wall. Pictured is Wade plus a massive list of his qualifiers. Her parents sit together with rapt attention. Ron stands off to the side as moral support.
Kim continues, “He’s going to be in charge of all my gadgets, and don’t worry, it’ll all be safe.”
“Can we meet this boy?” James asks.
“Not in person,” Kim replies. “He doesn’t, um, do that. But he’ll gladly meet with you through Skype. You’d like him, Dad. He’s really smart with science stuff.”
James smiles warmly.
Ann slides a hand onto his chest. “How will you get around? We could maybe give you a ride sometime, but not always.”
Kim nods. Smiles. “We’re going to build a support network. I won’t be asking the people we help for money. Instead, I’ll ask them to pay it forward and help us out with a ride if our paths ever cross again. It’ll be rocky at the start, we’ll be limited to the Tri-City area. But as we pick up more, uh, clients, we’ll be able to travel the, um, world.”
Ann leans back, maybe a little unconvinced. “This is great, Kimmie. Really thoughtful work here, but I’m sorry to say, we’re still concerned about your safety. For you to be unsupervised out there, I don’t think I could sleep at night. I’m sorry.”
Kim stares at her mother, the conflict within her keeping her silent. On one hand, she’s devastated. This is her dream. On the other hand, she feels…
…relief.
Someone finally said no. They stopped the crazy train.
And that’s when Ron steps forward.
“I’ll protect her,” he says in a small voice. He walks up to Kim and stands at her side. “I’ll be KP’s sidekick.”
Immediately, alarms go off within Kim. Startled, she turns towards him.
“Ron,” she whispers. “What are you doing?”
Ron shrugs. “Kim, we all want this to happen. If this is what it takes, I’m in. Besides, this’ll let us hang out more.”
“But that’s not the—” Kim starts, stopping when she sees the earnest expression on his face. It’s classic Ron. Dopey smile and love in his eyes. She takes his hands in hers, causing both of them to blush. But this is important. “—are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Ron says, his voice warm.
Kim’s eyes don’t leave him. “If we ever get in over your head, you tell me. Do you understand?”
He nods.
Kim looks back at her parents, shaking from nerves. “Well?”
Ann takes a deep breath. There’s a glimmer in her eye, a melancholy glow. It’s like she’s losing something, but Kim doesn’t understand what that could be.
“Is this what you really want?” Ann asks.
Kim looks at her parents. Imagines what the future might hold. Looks at her mother. Her father. She sees unconditional love. Maybe a little hope. Their daughter is a hero.
She steps forward, clenching and unclenching the hem to her shirt.
A scene: Kim learns Shego is staying at the same prison as her.
(an excerpt from chapter 8 of my fic, I'm Scared Too)
Kim stands with her arms slack at her sides, staring drearily at the bright blue sky overlooking the prison yard.
“Hey! Move it!” one inmate shouts. It takes Kim too long to register it, and the man shoulder checks her to the side. She pats the spot where he struck her and drags her feet forward.
She knows it’s a gift to be allowed outside. She knows there are things to do here that she might excel at. Games. Exercise. It would be good for her.
But Kim doesn’t care. She doesn’t care much about anything right now. So she trudges along, her mind so occupied with dread, that she hardly processes anything in front of her.
Which is why it takes Shego three tries to get Kim’s attention.
Prison Yard: GJDC
September 9: 3:54PM
“ Princess! ” she shouts.
Kim blinks rapidly. Looks to her right and nearly jumps at the sight of Shego standing across her in an orange jumpsuit.
“Yeah.” Shego throws her hands on her hips. “Small world, eh? Well, not really. This is one of the only prisons in the world that can handle two destructo gals like us.”
Kim nods gently. “I guess so.”
Shego frowns. “Anyways, I was going to ask, but Lucre already got to me. Sorry to hear about your sentence.”
“Th-thanks.” Kim puts the bare minimum energy she has into talking, speaking barely past a whisper. “Yeah, it, um… sucks. S-sorry I didn’t take your advice.”
“Don’t be sorry, it’s not like it’s my problem,” Shego says. She turns away from Kim and plays not caring, though the conflict on her face says different.
Kim, so ready for the other shoe to drop, doesn’t pick up on it. “Oh,” she grunts.
Shego shrugs. “I mean, it’s not on me for you to make good choices. Me? My guy got me down to fifteen years… not that I, uh, intend on serving all fifteen, if you catch my drift.”
Kim blinks. Breaks from the conversation to let her eyes wander up the high, high walls of the prison. There are towers in the corners. Watchtowers with spotlights. At night, those lights are always on the move. Not to mention the fact that the prison is crawling with feds.
“You think I can’t pull it off,” Shego says.
Kim looks over at her, unimpressed. “I think you’d be hard-pressed. Especially with those inhibitors on your wrists.”
Shego glances down at them. “Yeah? Well, I’ll think of something. I’ve done it before. Several times.”
“Uh huh.” Kim allows herself the shadow of a smirk. “I’m pretty sure at the end, you were just waiting for other supervillains to drag you out.”
Shego narrows her eyes. “What can I say? I’m a woman of opportunity.”
Kim’s smirk grows into a smile. Warmth swells in her chest, and she laughs.
Shego smiles back. But only for a second. Her gaze drops from Kim and wanders away. Shego grinds her teeth against her lip, thinking. Then turns back on Kim.
“Y’know, this is fun and all, but I’ve had some time to think about it,” Shego explains dryly. “And I’m… pretty mad at you.”
Kim frowns. Already, her throat closes in. Gets dry and scratchy. Her eyes water.
Shego continues, “I mean—it was the perfect hit. I could’ve killed the guy and bounced before anyone knew what happened. But you … you just had to interfere. And why? To save me? Princess, my soul is already torched. You know what I’ve done, and yet… Christ.”
Kim’s lip twitches. Difficult, complicated emotions overcome her very quickly.
Shego continues, “You have no right to interfere in my life like that. You are not my friend. Capiche?”
Kim erupts into tears. Shego, at first, is taken aback. She looks around for help, her eyes falling back onto Kim only when she can’t find a way out.
Shego sighs. “Hey, are—are you okay?”
Kim shakes her head, her face flushed. “No,” she manages to say through tears. “I did the same thing to Ron. I tried to control his future by manipulating him and interfering with his life. I’m an abusive, toxic, evil person. And I deserve to be here!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Shego says quietly. “You don’t deserve this. You’re Kim Possible, okay? The world owed you a solid, and they didn’t give it to you. You should be mad.”
“I am mad!” Kim shouts, turning a few heads. “Everybody turned on me! They set me up.”
Shego crosses her arms.“From what I heard Kimmie… you didn’t really give them a chance? I don’t know, I’d need to see it to know.”
Kim stays silent.
Shego continues. “Lucre also told me that you had a mental breakdown in court… and on television?”
Kim nods, feeling very exposed.
Shego nods back. Eases into her idea nice and slow. “You know, if you wanted to play this smart, you could probably use that to justify a mistrial.”
Kim shrugs weakly. “What’s the point? I already lost everything.”
Shego’s disappointment slowly turns to disgust. She speaks harshly. “Listen, I got enough problems on my plate. I can’t deal with this right now, so unless you decide you want to be helpful in getting me out of here, buzz off.”
Shego turns on her heel and walks away. Kim hangs back, stunned.
Like this excerpt? Read Chapter 8 on AO3! Or start at the beginning here.
IDK if anyone reading I'm Scared Too on AO3 follows me, but there won't be an update for Chapter 4 until next week I'm predicting. I've been having a really hard time breaking the story for this one, and getting the character interactions just right, so get ready. This one's a doozy.
Green flames rise off the body, scorching the remains. Flesh and bone blacken into charcoal, feeding and fueling the emerald blaze. The body rests peacefully in the dark, silhouetted by its own blackened form.
The bonfire only has eyes for the body; it does not catch on the corpse’s bedsheets. Embers spit off the inferno, elegantly gliding down to hardwood floors, promptly fading away into soot. It’s controlled destruction.
Shego stands over the body, breathing heavily, her world spinning. Light catches on her ghostly white skin, illuminating the heartbreak in her dark gaze. She backs away skittishly, tripping against the back of a chair. Her flaming hand brushes against a tablecloth, accidentally setting it aflame. Panic spasms through her body, and she crushes out the green spark with her gloved hand. She steps back towards the window and silently boosts it up. Hoists her legs onto the window sill. Turns towards the cold, starry night, hair blowing in the gentle breeze.
It’s a long drop. She takes a deep breath.
A voice calls out. “Father? I think I smell smoke. I’m just going to—”
She grits her teeth and takes the dive—
—just as the son’s shadow creeps into the master bedroom.
She lands in the wet sand on all fours. The dark tide rolls in and out, and the son’s blood curdling scream splits the air.
Shego trudges down the sands, her jaw clenched, her eyes wide, her pupils dilated. She mutters rapidly under her breath. Steps out into the ocean, the inky tide washing her footsteps away. She looks out at the horizon. Sees the black blip that is her getaway vehicle. Sighs.
She’s supposed to burn so hot that she evaporates the ocean itself, allowing her to walk across the ocean floor. It’s an insane plan, but she knows she can pull it off. Largely because it’s either that… or death.
She just needs to…
Needs to…
…take a second…
She falls to her knees in the muddy sand. A wave passes by, soaking her slacks. Her hands fall to her sides, fingertips poised to feel the sea pass her by. These prickles of feeling are at least something to offset the numbness that pervades everything else.
She exhales, or at least, she expects to exhale, but instead she wheezes a strangled, anguished cry.
She takes out her flip phone, dials the number, and hesitates before actually making the call. She clutches the phone to her chest, her teeth pressed tightly together. She looks down at the ocean, muttering again.
This time, she rehearses.
“Hey Doc.” Her voice is thin and hollow. “I know I’m not supposed to call you here, but I…” She watches the tide. In and out, forwards and backwards. “Take me home. Please. I know this job is important to you, but I can’t… I can’t…” Tears streak her cheeks. Stupid, pathetic tears. She wipes at her face, the sand on her sleeve irritating her eyes further.
“This is pointless,” she growls at herself. “Just fucking call him.”
She makes the call and waits with bated breath. Opens her mouth, the words ready on her lips. But no one picks up. Instead, Shego hears a series of beeps followed by a pre-recorded message.
“We're sorry. You have reached a number that is disconnected or that is no longer in service. ”
“Dad?” she croaks. “No, no… d-don’t tell me…”
She tries Drakken’s second number.
“ We’re sorry. You have reached —”
She tries the next number. And the next number. She calls his burner, his personal, his home number at the lair, the timeshare lab, everything.
It’s gone. It’s all gone.
The phone bursts into flames in Shego’s hand. She hurls it into the air, and it soars like a shooting star. Streaks the sky, leaving behind a trail of faint green light.
She breathes in. Breathes out.
And screams.
Still, the old man burns.
Liked this scene? Then consider reading my fanfic, I'm Scared Too on AO3!
(This is an excerpt from my new Kigo story, I'm Scared Too.)
Fifteen minutes after they were supposed to meet, Doctor Drakken struts in with an eyepatch strapped to the left side of his face. Dark fissures in his skin gather around the eyepatch, scarring his face forever.
He walks with an imposing expression, his hands clenched behind his back. She has to admit, he looks quite intimidating like this—
—and he walks straight into some tattooed beast waiting at the bar. The guy whirls on Drakken, and the blue man cowers.
“Nyeh, I apologize, uh, sir—my archfoe just shot my eye out, and I’m still getting used to the eyepatch!”
Tattoo-Man’s mustache droops. He throws his hands on his hips. Sizes Drakken up, then breaks out into a big, toothy smile. He jabs his fist in the air.
“Badass, mate!” the guy cheers.
Drakken blinks stupidly and looks to Shego for help.
“Pound it!” she whisper-shouts from their booth.
Drakken arches his unibrow. Eyes the hanging fist, and with a lot of hesitance, he pounds it.
“HELL YEAH!” the guy cheers, raising his fists into the air. He tries to amp up the bar in Drakken’s honor, but only a few patrons raise a glass before resuming their nightly drinking. The guy’s hands fall to his knees. “Aw man.”
Drakken smirks and looks at the bartender. “Innkeeper! One Coco Moo please!”
Drakken slides into the seat across Shego, only for her to get up.
“I should get something…” she mutters.
“Time is of the essence, Shego,” he says. “We can go splitsies on the Coco Moo. Garçon! Two straws please!”
Shego shakes her head. “You are so embarrassing.” Drakken smirks at her playfully, practicing some self-awareness for the first time in his life. She grins and continues, “So what’s the deal, Doc? Should I hit the unemployment line?”
“Not quite,” Drakken says. “We need to lay low for a while. However, we’ll be working independently of one another.”
“Ah,” Shego says. “You hired all those new meatheads to protect you while I do all the dirty work, eh?
Drakken wags a finger smugly. “They have their own independent assignments. As do you.”
He reaches into his lab coat and pulls a manilla folder out. He lazily tosses it onto the table. Shego eyes it curiously.
“Go on,” Drakken urges.
She sighs and opens it up. She expects blueprints of museums to steal from and profiles on scientists to “outsource” from. Instead, it’s mugshots. She recognizes some of the faces. It’s all politicians and billionaires. She looks up at Drakken, mystified.
“Wait… these aren’t hit jobs are they?” she asks. “That’s kinda dark, even considering the vibe lately.”
He doesn’t skip a beat. “You’re auditioning, Shego.”
She leans back, affronted. “Okay, Drak, I don’t do auditions. You either want me or you don’t.”
Drakken crosses his arms at his chest. “It’s for the Bermuda Triangle. You’ll need to.”
“What?!” Shego blurts out. The bartender slides the frothy Coco Moo onto the table. “Doc. Those Triangle guys want us dead.”
“I doubt it,” Drakken says carelessly, taking small sips from his chocolate milk. “They have more worldly concerns than us.”
She narrows her eyes. “Are we… not taking over the world?”
Drakken shakes his head.
“Is it…” Shego discreetly looks from side-to-side. Leans into her elbows. “...is this a destroy Kim Possible thing?”
Drakken cringes. “Somewhat.”
“Somewhat,” Shego repeats tonelessly. She gives Drakken a cold, hard stare, and when that fails to penetrate, she leans over the table, aggressively grabs onto his straw, and furiously blows bubbles into the Coco Moo.
“Shego!” Drakken whines. “Please, be considerate! The splitsies was a formality!”
“Earth to Drakken!” Shego yells. “Kimmie just tried to kill you. Last time we did one of these stupid schemes, she kicked me into an electrical tower. This time, she shot you. She’s a Global Justice agent now, I think the last person we want to mess with is Kimberly Ann Possible.”
Like this excerpt? Check out Chapter 2 of I'm Scared Too on AO3!
Kim Possible || I'm Gonna Live Till I Die [FANVID]
This video I edited digs more into the spy thriller genre that's lying within Kim Possible. Hopefully, it paints a picture as to why I love this show so goddamned much. I'm a big fan of an adrenaline junkie Kim Possible who lives for adventure.
Green light fills up dreary skies over war torn lands. It's humanity's last stand against the Lowardians. Alien walkers wrestle with Doctor Drakken’s plant army, the mutant plants toppling the walkers with ease. Shego storms the battlefield, her sheer power coloring the sky. Thunder booms and flares with each strike she makes, her wrath shattering the long legs of the walkers. Drakken cackles gleefully, flying overhead in his hovercraft. Lasers fire from his many cannons, dismantling the walkers with as much ease as Shego’s wrath.
Meanwhile, Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable fight back-to-back. Both of them are fresh out of high school and about the same height. She has sweeping auburn hair with hopeful green eyes. He has brown eyes, freckles, noodly arms, and short blonde hair with a noticeable cowlick. They square off with the nefarious Warhok and Warmonga.
It’s harmony. Good and evil unite to vanquish a greater foe.
Warhok, the hulking green mass of muscle, dives at Kim. Ron bows low and spins into a deft sweep kick. Glowing blue light trails after his heel, and he knocks Warhok clean in the chest, knocking him backwards.
Ron looks back and says something. What exactly, he says, Kim doesn’t know. The air around his mouth distorts and vibrates, concealing his lip movements. The sounds are muffled, like they’re in a vacuum, but he is still shrill with emotion. He looks at her with wide, pleading eyes. Kim tries to look at him, tries to understand, but Warmonga keeps clawing at her.
Kim kicks and kicks, warding Warmonga off. Kim spares a risky glance over her shoulder.
“Ron! Keep your head in the game!” she scolds.
A crackle of thunder ruptures the sky, and the green light glows brighter. Ron turns towards her. Blurts out more gibberish.
She puts her hands on his shoulders, eyes drilling into his.
He gets more and more frantic, gesturing animatedly around them. Suddenly, he grabs her shoulders, rocking her back-and-forth in a frenzy. He bows his head against her chest, and looks up at her with tears streaking his cheeks. He reaches up towards her face, hand shaking.
She takes his hand and places it on her cheek.
“Ron,” she says, and traces of Shego’s glow escape onto their faces. Her skin ignites in feeling, the heat sending prickles down the length of her flesh. Her eyes water, and she takes Ron by the jaw. Intending to show him courage, it falters fast. She stammers for a moment while he waits with bated breath.
His dependency on her makes her angry, as does her dependency on him. Why can’t she be strong enough for the two of them, even when in the eye of the Apocalypse? She’s been training her whole life for this and—
She falters. Becomes weak. She can’t help it.
“Ron!” Her voice is strangled and anguished. “You don’t think I’m scared too?”
The green light goes up like an atom bomb, consuming everything. The power rushes through their bodies, erasing it all under an unearthly shade of green. Skin chips off their bones, and Kim’s arms lash out to ensnare Ron in a crushing embrace. But he’s gone. Her arms clap to her chest. She breathes her last before—
She awakens with a start, snapping out of her daydream. She pats down the floor to the aircraft, and feels the rumble beneath her palms. She pats down her arms and feels the long gloves she needs to wear for this mission. Sinks her fingers deep into the fabric, grounding herself for the moment. She looks back up at Ron and Wade; both of them have their game faces on. Ron is in a tuxedo, and she is in a sleeveless, black dress with nylons. Wade, the plump thirteen-year-old black protégé, wears his usual turquoise t-shirt and jeans.
Kim remembers what Ron and Wade just told her.
“Drakken and Shego are evil again?” she blurts out.
Enjoy the story so far? Finish the rest on AO3! Because, uh, I don't want to post 11,000 words on Tumblr!
One year ago, Shego went under a deep cover mission with the Bermuda Triangle. Things turned sour fast and Shego betrayed Global Justice. In a desperate Hail Mary, Kim tries to retrieve her, and learns that things aren't quite what they seem.
“Kim… um, I—I can’t go with you.”
“Ron?”
“I… can’t do this anymore. You a-and me, it’s not working, I know you know that—”
“...Ron. Please don’t do this.”
“KP—I don’t want to do this. They’re—they’re making me.”
“Making you? R-Ron, we need to go stop the Seniors. Can you just—”
“You can handle the Seniors, Kim. All that we do, you got it. I’m—I’m Class A and you’re Class B…”
“But… no, Ron.”
“Betty wants me doing… I don’t know, bigger things, bigger things I can’t tell you about. I’m sorry, I… I have to do this, Kim. My powers need me to do this and… it’s just—the mission stuff. It’s all we have that’s making us work, and I’m… sorry, KP. I don’t want to hurt you, I just…”
“Ron, I love you. Whatever you need me to do to keep you here, I’ll… I’ll…”
“KP, it’s over. And I love you too. I love you more than you can understand.”
“So why are you doing this?!”
“God, I’m sorry, I… I gotta go. You gotta go too. You gotta go save the world now. Alone.”
“No… no! Ron, I can’t—I can’t do it without you, I—”
“No Kim. You can. Remember: you can do anything.”
“Kim, are you with us?”
~~KP~~
10 Years Later
Kim snaps out of her reprieve and takes a moment to collect her surroundings.
Rumbling all over. The steel plated floor vibrates against her palm. Her breaths are shallow and she feels cold. She pulls her winter coat closer to her purple tunic and looks to her right, where the friendly yet concerned voice is coming from.
Wade Load. Now twenty five years old, he’s as plump as ever with some facial scruff. Still weird seeing him in person.
“Finally awake, eh?” he jokes.
Kim frowns. She’s in a Global Justice aircraft, with a parachute loaded backpack strapped tightly to her torso. By this point, they should be soaring over Colorado. Over Middleton. She hasn’t been there in years.
Too bad it’s for a mission.
“And they call me a space cadet with my head in the clouds,” a nasally voice whines from her left. That surprises her. Who else could be here—Drakken. Doctor Drakken. A blue man with a ratty ponytail and scar below his left eye. He wears his traditional lab coat and a thick winter coat like her. She looks ahead.
“Sorry, yeah, I spaced out,” Kim mutters. “Which one of you am I working with again?”
Wade raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know? Kim, c’mon.”
“Oh no! No no no no no no!” Kim gasps in a panic, simultaneously whipping her whole body against her hips to look at Drakken, her apparent partner. “Not you , right? Please tell me I’m not—”
“I’m crushed!” Drakken moans.
Kim rolls her eyes. “Who thought this was a good idea? It’s a joke, right?”
“Aw geez, Kim, dude,” Wade frowns. “He’s right there. And for the record, this is on you for not playing nice with Team Impossible.”
“Those guys suck,” Kim grumbles, looking back over at Drakken again. “I’ve worked with them, you, Hego, Will Du, Felix, Monique, Bonnie, I mean, guys, I’ve worked with Junior of all people! And the one time, the one time I worked with someone who could actually keep up with me—uh, no offense Wade.”
“None taken,” Wade frowns.
Kim continues, throwing her hands into the air, “The one time I worked with someone who could actually keep up with me, she turned out to be evil!”
“Evil?” Wade echoes with confusion. Drakken raises an eyebrow with a similar energy. “You mean Shego? When did you work with Shego?”
“Yes, I don’t recall that, Kimberly Ann,” Drakken frowns.
Kim winces; she wasn’t supposed to bring that up. “Uh, sorry, I must have been thinking about the Lowardian Invasion or something… heh heh.”
Wade observes Kim carefully, then shrugs. “Okaaaaaay.”
Drakken leans forward with a sharp intake of breath, as if he’s about to say something important. But instead his face falls and he leans back into place. “I’ll have you know, Kimberly Ann, that I’m much geniuser than Shego! I think you’ll be quite surprised by my abilities on the field.”
Kim stares blankly at him. “Uh huh… okay, Wade, how about you sitch us already?”
Wade rolls his eyes, and pulls a remote out from his GJ uniform. He clicks a button, and the hatch before Kim and Drakken opens up, revealing the cold night sky. Vicious winds rush through, whistling and howling.
“You both have five seconds to make the jump,” Wade says carelessly.
“Oh okay,” Kim chirps.
“What?!” Drakken blurts out, going pale in the blue face. “Wait—can we, erm, do a flyaround—”
Wade smirks. “No.”
Kim pats Drakken on the shoulder playfully. “See you in a few, Drak.”
She jumps. Her ponytail whips behind her head, and the wind rushes into her face. She grits her teeth through it, forcing her eyes to stay open.
Down below, she sees what looks to be some kind of military compound. There’s gray warehouse after gray warehouse, all arranged in a grid. From up high, the streetlamps appear to her as blips and they are beautiful.
She smiles and spreads her arms like wings. Despite the circumstances, she feels calm.
Behind her, she hears a distant shriek. 100% it’s Wade physically shoving Drakken out of the plane. But soon it fades as the wind overcomes her. Until Wade starts talking in her earpiece.
“ Montgomery Fiske, also known as Monkey Fist, has threatened to level the entire state of Colorado with two nuclear bombs …” Wade monologues. “ ...unless Ron is to sacrifice his powers to him, which is not an option. ”
Kim narrows her eyes; from her understanding, Ron is off-world right now, defending Earth from invading Lowardians. The Lowardian Invasion back in ‘07 was just the beginning.
“ We have managed to pinpoint the location of the bombs to the Villain Timeshare Labs located in Middleton ,” Wade explains. “ Your mission is to defuse both. We don’t know where the bombs are, so Kim you should take the West Side of the compound and Drew, I think you should go East.”
“ Which way is East ?” Drakken moans, only able to be heard through her earpiece.
Kim rolls her eyes. “It’s behind you, Big D.”
“ Don’t call me that. ”
Kim smirks, and focuses on what’s ahead. The timeshare lab complex gets closer, and closer, the ground enlarging and giving way to more and more detail. Tiny black dots patrol the warehouses, they must be Monkey Fist’s army of monkey ninjas.
She aims her body like a rocket, falling and falling. The skylight to her chosen warehouse grows near and at the last second, Kim flips mid flight, and she pulls the string on her parachute.
Fwoomp!
The parachute pulls against her, dragging her out of her dead fall. She lands on the roof beside the skylight, and drops a knee. Waits for some change in formation from down below, but there’s nothing. Apparently none of the Monkey Ninjas saw her. (She assumes the black dots are Monkey Ninjas… though from her vantage point the troops look awfully tall to be Monkey Ninjas.)
The timeshares are arranged in a grid, unfortunately too far apart for her to go roof jumping. Without proper intel, she can’t even ‘skip’ this warehouse so she tiptoes to the dead center of the roof where there’s a skylight. Quietly she goes for her laser lipstick, and starts blasting out the bolts to the skylight. It’s something that she’s done a million times over, so she takes a look around and notices two problems right off the bat.
Firstly, Drakken has already unleashed his parachute… practically one mile into the air.
Kim growls into her earpiece. “Drakken, what are you doing?!”
“ What am I doing? ” he repeats sarcastically. “ I’m not Tom Cruise, Kimberly Ann; I’m playing it safe! ”
“Safe? You’re like a sitting duck up there!” Kim seethes. “If they see you—”
“ Kim ,” Wade interrupts. “ I’m with you, but he can’t exactly fold his parachute back in—we’ll deal with it. Move on. ”
Kim grinds her teeth then shrugs it off. “Tell me about the ninjas—oh shit, hold on—” The final bolt skips out of its socket, and the skylight falls… but Kim catches it. Heavy, the massive piece of glass dips into the warehouse. Awkward to hold, Kim tenses and manages to lift the skylight up through the gap, and set it aside. She throws one foot through the gap, and readies her grapple line. “—I’m back. But the ninjas… those aren’t monkeys, right?”
The ninjas aren’t monkeys at all, she noticed while yelling at Drakken that they were walking, talking humans.
“ No, I think those are people, which as you know isn’t Monkey Fist’s M.O., ” Wade sighs. “ I’m trying to ID them, but I got nothing. ”
“No ID, huh,” Kim sighs to herself. That sounds familiar to her, but she can’t quite place where it’s coming from. But out of her vast rogue’s gallery and network of connections, she knows someone who Wade wouldn’t be able to ID… but who?
She drops down into the warehouse, her grapple line unspooling. She lands on a hard cement floor and the lights turn on in her presence, shining through the windows like a beacon. “Oh great.”
Slamming at the door. Kim scans her surroundings: lots of golf clubs and barrels of exploding golf balls. Not much else. Definitely Duff Killigan’s. How classic of him to be so one-note. She snags a golf club from one of the duffel bags and spins it in her hand. Looks like a Driver club, at least, as far as she knows. Her only experience with golf is from Wii Golf, which she played with Ron before the break-up.
The steel door flies off its hinges, and smoke pours into the room in a flurry. Two black-hooded heads that just peek over the top of the smog rush into the room, running in opposite directions.
Kim leans into her heel and lets the two ninjas surround her.
She grins, and the ninjas charge her with a series of kicks and punches. Kim spins the golf club around her like a bow-staff in figure-eights and precise spins. Clack! Clack! Clack! Flesh strikes steel in precise jabs.
Kim blocks every blow coming her way. Trained as the ninjas might be, they telegraph their movements immediately.
“It’s amateur hour, fellas,” Kim snarks.
A kick to the hip, a punch to the chin, a swipe at the neck, it doesn’t matter, she spins her golf club where she needs to, and emerges unscathed.
The ninja on her left goes by a high kick to the chin. Smirking, Kim slashes her club into the air and manages to hook the Driver against the man’s ankle. He whines in pain and she drags his foot higher into the air then spikes the club downard, whipping the ninjas into the cement.
Kim whirls around and faces the second ninja. He scuttles backwards, hands raised for defense, and she charges him. Cartwheels forward and tries to kick him in the chest with both feet. He throws his body backwards and she lands before him, leaving her wide open. She spins the club horizontally at his head, but he ducks the blow—but before he can fully slip away she flips the club in an underhanded spin, and precision jabs the goon in the face. His body shoots backwards and falls flat on the ground.
Kim smiles at her handiwork, but the moment is short-lived. From the skylight, another ninja drops down. With two sais in hand, he swings at her. With the hilts to each sword as pointed as the blade itself, curved like a trident, it’s a deadly weapon. He swings and swings and swings. Kim dodges and dodges and blocks! But the sai cuts clean through the golf club and the top half tumbles to the floor. Frowning, she tosses the broken club aside and goes for a daring move. Her hands snap forward and grab onto the ninja’s wrists. She pushes and he resists, but his arms shake more than her. She’s stronger.
With the ninja’s arms locked in place, it leaves the guy’s front wide open. So Kim takes advantage, she swings her head down and bashes her skull against his. He falls backwards, hands losing their grip on the sais, which clatter to the floor.
Kim kicks high and nails the ninja in the face. He collapses, down for the count.
Kkkkk! A boot scrapes against cement behind her. Kim tries to whirl around to face the incoming ninja, the first one she downed, but she’s not fast enough. She hears the blades cut through the air, so instead Kim focuses on dodging. She playfully dodges to the left, hands folded behind her back. Another shwing! and she bobs to the right. She bobs about, dodging blow after blow. When he swings at her ankles, she hops into the air.
Again and again, the ninja pursues her, but he can’t hit her, and somehow, despite not being able to see him, Kim knows each and every move he’s pulling.
How does she know? she wonders.
The ninja swings both sais at her neck. She knows that move. Ron used it sometimes when his powers were recharging.
Kim ducks the blow and her hands snap upwards, clamping onto the ninja’s wrist. She struggles, holding the ninja’s arms high in the air. Simultaneously, her arms stiffen, locked into place just like the ninja’s. Deadlocked and stuck, neither have the advantage… until Kim grits her teeth and manages to twist her hips enough to kick the ninja in the stomach. He doubles back, and Kim—unable to resist—yanks the ninja’s hood off his face.
Hirotaka. From Yamanouchi.
Yamanouchi gave its sword to Monkey Fist?
Yamanouchi is a secret; of course Wade wouldn’t be able to ID them! It makes sense.
But it doesn’t matter\, at least for now. So Kim kicks Hirotaka in the face, and he collapses like a broken toy. Sais once again clatter to the floor. Kim looks ahead, throws off her winter coat finally, and runs out the door and into the open night air. Looks up and Drakken is still making his way down. She rolls her eyes and looks around in a panic.
“Where do I need to go, Wade?”
“ Cut through the two ahead of you ,” Wade chirps. “ That’ll get to you Monkey Fist’s, that’s my best guess. Passwords are going to be Coco Moo, Niener and Die Ron, Die. ”
“ Die Ron, Die is with spaces?” Kim notes.
“ And a comma, yeah. Monty’s has gotta be grammatically correct. ”
Kim stops at the first terminal to the first timeshare lab before her. Types it in rapidly. C-O-C-O M-O-O.
The door opens and Kim is greeted by a very familiar sight. Syntho-Drones lie dormant in their acid-filled glass containers, lined up along the walls. Kim hesitates, then sprints through. Takes in the sights. A death ray, a pool of electric eels, a few Weather Machines, and a mountain of cardboard boxes with cupcake logos.
She has to ask.
“Drakken, you—uh—still have your Timeshare Lab, huh?”
“ Hrm ?” Drakken hums. “ Do I? ”
Kim laughs under her breath. “It’s been twelve years, Drew, you might want to, uh, get rid of this?”
“ I was wondering what that charge on my credit card was every month …”
Kim opens the door opposite the one she came in through and charges ahead to another Timeshare Lab. Types in the password. N-I-E-N-E-R and… this one is filled with plans. Charts and diagrams are smeared across the wall, alongside blueprints of evil devices and corporate ladders. It rings a bell but…
“ Hank Perkins, ” Wade answers for her.
“Hank Perkins!” she cries out with mirth. “I forgot about that guy. Uh, the villainy consultant, right?”
“ The same. ”
“ Ooh !” Drakken cries out. “ Cupcake Hank? What’s it like in there? I’m in Dementor’s Timeshare right now —” He pauses and repeats the name with disdain. “— ugh, Dementor. But his Transportulator, WOW! Don’t tell him I said that though —”
Kim blinks. “Drew, um, not to burst your bubble, but there’s a bomb going off soon? Maybe you should be, uh, looking for it?”
“ Oh, erm, yes, I suppose…” Drakken mumbles, still in a trance.
“Drak!” Kim shouts as she exits Hank Perkins’s timeshare. “Up and at ‘em!”
“ Alright! ” he bemoans.
The next timeshare is up ahead, as ordinary as ever. She types in the password. D-I-E-R-O-N-,-D-I-E. The door opens revealing a dark space lit by torchlight. She slides to a stop and scans the space. Flickers of light illuminate aged and eroded monkey idols that are embedded into the walls. Kim keeps looking and at the center of the room she finds first of two bombs. The lid is already popped off, the wire exposed. She narrows her eyes and steps forward—
—only for Monkey Fist himself to drop down before her. Formerly raven black hair grayed with specks of white, his mutated skin aged and patchy, the years have not been kind to the monkey man.
Shuffling from outside as monkey ninjas crowd the entrance. Monkey Fist raises his hand, stopping the ninjas in place. He steps forward, the torchlight playing on his angry face.
“Where’s Stoppable?” Monkey Fist grunts, then looks at his minions. “Go. Find Dementor’s Transportulator, use it to escape.” He turns back to Kim. “Well?”
“Not coming,” Kim growls. “This is sick and wrong, Monty. You have to know that.”
Monkey Fist grinds his teeth. “What’s sick and wrong is that Stoppable child taking the Mystical Monkey Power from me ! What’s sick and wrong is Stoppable being unwilling to sacrifice his powers to save millions of lives.”
“ Don’t let him talk, Kim ,” Wade says. “ He’s stalling .”
Still though, Kim finds herself shaken. Because it is true. Doctor Director isn’t willing to give up Ron for anything . It’s unlikely Ron even knows this caper is going down.
Kim sprints at Monkey Fist, and Monkey Fist does the same.
“How long do we have?” she asks before shifting into a high kick at Monkey Fist’s jaw.
“ Three minutes ,” Wade says, anxiety creeping into his voice. Ever confident in Kim’s abilities, it’s unlike him to be so stressed. Three minutes is plenty of time to make magic happen.
Monkey Fist leans back and his hand snaps at Kim’s ankle. He grabs it tight, and with all his might, he turns on his heel, and lifts Kim into the air. He swings her like a ragdoll, and throws her behind where he stood.
Kim spins through the air and soars over the bomb. It all happens fast, but in her mind’s eye things slow to a crawl. She looks down, and sees the matrix of wires looped over and over each other, and the sequence plays in her mind. Red-Purple-Green-Yellow-Brown-Blue-White. Her hands reach down and just as she passes over the bomb, she snatches the Red, Purple, and Green wires from their spots. Lands on her haunches and stares at Monkey Fist.
“Stoppable’s not here, Monty. Because he’s Class A and you’re a Class B Threat. But I’m here,” Kim growls. “And I’m going to stop you.”
She vaults forward and flips over the bomb. It plays in her mind again as time slows. Yellow-Brown-Blue-White. She snags three of them, leaving the lone white wire behind and cartwheels over to Monkey Fist to—
—it doesn’t matter, Monkey Fist strikes first. Sends his leg crashing into her back as she flips forward.
Crack!
Kim hits the floor, dust from the flooring smearing her tunic. She tries to boost herself up, but Monkey Fist presses one bare foot against her stomach. She squirms under his hold. He smirks and, before she can recover, he stomps her face in, heel of his foot nailing her in the nose. Her head bounces back, striking cement and rebounding up, blood squirting out of her nose, her face bruised.
Monkey Fist goes for another stomp.
This time Kim reaches into her utility belt and comes back with a pistol. Aims it right at Monty’s face. He flinches and so does she.
Twelve years of being a Global Justice agent and she’s still never killed someone.
Monkey Fist takes advantage of her lapse in judgment, and snatches the gun from her hands. Points it at her face.
“Well, Miss Possible,” Monkey Fist tuts. “You’re quite the worthy adversary, and I do not enjoy our play, but if you die… well, they’ll just have to send Stoppable, won’t they?”
Kim presses her teeth together, trying to suppress the smile itching at the corner of her lips.
And Monkey Fist fires.
Click! A hollow sound. He frowns and raises the gun to his eye level. Presses the trigger again and nothing.
“What?” he exclaims.
In Monkey Fist’s lapse of focus, Kim strikes. Hits him like a freight train. Snaps her legs around Monkey Fist’s waist and flips him onto the floor. He hits it hard, the gun sliding out of his hand, not that it matters. She never loaded the thing so that she’d never be able to use it. Makes for a good sleight of hand at a moment’s notice however.
Before Monkey Fist can regain his footing, Kim charges him. Grabs him by the waist and flips him completely upside down over her shoulder, then piledrives him headfirst into the floor. She feels him crash into the cement, his body twisting and contorting as she squeezes his body in like an accordion. Finally, when he can take no more abuse, he collapses in a heap, and so does she, at least briefly. She stumbles back up, and runs at the bomb, plucking out the white wire.
The bomb shuts down with little fanfare.
“Alright, that’s one down,” she barks into her earpiece. “We’ve got eyes on the other one?”
Wade answers immediately. “ Yes, it’s in DNAmy’s, but uh—we’ve got a problem. ”
Kim thinks for a second and starts her jog to DNAmy’s—wherever that is—and responds. “He forgot the sequence?”
“ Kind of, I’m trying to talk him through it, but the bomb sprayed him with some gas. Made his eyes like a dog’s or whatever, he can’t see color. Look, I’d talk it through with him, but I don’t know where the wires go. I only know the colors and I was thinking —”
“That won’t work, I don’t trust him to follow directions,” Kim charges into the open night air and turns. Her limbs snap against their joints, pushing her ahead as quickly as possible.
Then Monkey Fist rounds the corner behind her, giving chase on all fours. Kim looks over her shoulder and sighs.
“ But Kim! You have one minute !”
“One minute is plenty.”
“ No it’s not! ”
“I don’t care,” Kim snaps. “Directions, I need directions.”
“Kim, you’re killing me over here,” Wade growls. “You’re going the right way. Pass by three more timeshares and it’ll be on the right.”
Sweat beads on her forehead. She wants to have faith in herself, she always cuts it close like this… but something about this whole caper feels… off. First, the Yamanouchi Ninjas. Then Monkey Fist’s point about Ron being a no-show. But that is what they do at Global Justice; they don’t negotiate with terrorists.
Now there’s this. Can she make it? Can she do it?
“ Remember ,” Ron said long ago when they broke up. “ You can do anything. ”
And she can. She knows she can. She can—she can—she sees the timeshare up ahead. Panics. She doesn’t know the password, she doesn’t know the—
Another line plays in her mind. Cuddle Monkey . DNAmy used to call Monty her Cuddle Monkey .
She types in the code.
C-U-D-D-L-E-M-O-N-K-E-Y.
“Kim, the password is—”
“I know what the password is!” Kim snaps. “I just need to… need to… yes, door’s open, we must have thirty seconds, right?”
“ You have ten, Kim .”
Her heart nearly stops. She sees Drakken crouched helplessly over the bomb, she sees the wires. Around them, animals float in tankards. Experiments-to-be. She rushes to the center of the floor, drops a knee. Starts plucking away.
Red-Purple—Blue? No, Green!
Her hands hover above the wires, her jaw drops.
“ Kim ?” Wade chokes from his end. “ Five. Four. Three …”
She remembers. Red Purple Green… she plucks them out as the colors flash in her mind. Yellow. Brown. Blue.
The final wire: White.
She reaches for it and—
—and—
Boom.
The bomb goes off. Heat pushes against Kim’s body, the light is blinding. She braces herself and—
—a globe of blue light materializes around the explosion, trapping the fire from escaping. Flame pushes against the blue light, and curls backwards like a wave. The explosion surges against itself, and Kim opens her eyes. Slowly, the globe of blue light shrinks inwards, and then becomes so small it crushes the explosion out of sight, out of reality.
“Nooooo!” Monkey Fist howls, snapping Kim from her reprieve. “Where’s the kaboom?! There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboo—”
Boom.
Blue light explodes again, this time into a portal at least twelve feet tall. Light flashes from within, the light within the portal airy like storm clouds. Drakken and Monkey Fist both turn on the portal, jaws agape, not sure what to expect. But Kim? Kim groans and smacks her forehead.
Another distant boom, and a flash of light through the portal. A silhouette appears as a blip that becomes larger fast, and then Ron Stoppable swoops out of the portal, and soars right at Monkey Fist. Grabs him by the throat, and jettisons him across the room, smashing into a tankard holding a baby elephant. Cracks splinter the glass, and a foreign, green liquid spits out the cracks only to retreat back inwards. Blue light burns along the cracks, resealing the glass as nothing was damaged to begin with.
Ron has barely aged since their high school days, Wade’s theorized it has something to do with Ron’s powers. The only hint that he’s in the beginning of his 30s is the occasionally white hair speckled along his blond head, and even then, it’s mostly from stress.
And then there’s his eyes. Formerly brown and amber, they’re hardened now and a cold, steely blue. They glow like headlights when he uses his powers.
With some extra muscle caked onto his lanky frame, he fills out his navy blue Global Justice uniform well.
Kim wonders sometimes if Ron is even human anymore.
Ron stares Monkey Fist in the eyes. A crack of light and Monkey Fist’s body goes limp. Carelessly, Ron lets Monkey Fist’s body slide out from his grasp and hit the floor. He turns over to Kim. “Don’t worry, KP, he’s just knocked out, I didn’t kill him or nothin’.”
Kim stares at Ron, still on her hands and knees. “Who called you?”
Ron frowns, taken aback. Probably because she hasn’t seen him in months, and yet she’s still unhappy to see him. “Oh, um, Wade, called me like a few seconds ago. Heh.”
If it wasn’t for Ron, all of Colorado would be gone… all because Kim Possible wasn’t willing to give Doctor Drakken basic instructions. She can still feel the heat from the explosion singed on her body. It’s the closest she’s ever felt to death.
She quietly gets to her feet. “Wade, can you keep Ron’s appearance off the books?”
A long silence.
“ Sorry Kim ,” Wade sighs. “ I can’t. ”
~~KP~~
“For the last time,” Monkey Fist moans, handcuffed to a wooden chair in an otherwise empty interrogation room. “I didn’t mind control anyone from Yamanouchi, they willingly joined me.”
“Really?” Doctor Director scoffs. “You’re really sticking to this story, huh?”
Doctor Director is a tall woman. She towers at least half a foot over Kim and Ron. Over the years, crows feet have grown into her skin around the eyes, the creases particularly harsher from behind her eyepatch. A streak of white cleaves through her neatly cropped, chestnut brown hair.
Kim’s never seen her outside of her GJ uniform.
Standing besides Kim and still in uniform, Ron frowns. “You said Hirotaka was there, Kim?”
Kim nods. “I know, it doesn’t sound like the Hirotaka we know.”
Ron’s frown only sinks deeper. “Yeah…” he says with the air of someone who knows a little bit more than they’re letting on. “Betty, I think… Monty’s telling the truth on this one.”
Kim raises an eyebrow. What is it that she doesn’t know? She used to know everything but now that she’s stuck in Class B…
Doctor Director raises an eyebrow too. “Stoppable, if there have been issues at Yamanouchi, you need to be communicating that with me.”
“Sorry,” Ron bows his head in shame. “Sensei and I… had an argument, and I kinda interpreted it more as a personal problem than a saving-the-world kinda problem but I guess… yeah, I’ll do better, Betty, I swear it.”
Kim sympathetically reaches over to Ron and strokes his back.
Ron looks up. “Thanks, KP. Uh, so do you want me to round up the Yamanouchi peeps who got away?”
“It’s fine,” Doctor Director snips. “Possible’s got it.”
Oh, yeah, of course Possible’s got it.
Monkey Fist sneers at the three of them. “Some people in Yamanouchi felt that I had a point—that the Mystical Monkey Power shouldn’t belong to someone who isn’t willing to sacrifice their powers for the greater good.”
Ron sniffs loudly. “Dude, I didn’t even know about this shindig. I would have—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Doctor Director snaps. “God, you two… alright, I’ll take your word for it, Fiske. For now. You tell me where your people are hiding and we’ll be in better standing, got it?”
A twitch in Monkey Fist’s cheek. “Not a chance.”
“We’ll see about that,” Doctor Director growls, bending away from the chair. She shoves the door open with her elbow, and walks out into the hallway at a brisk pace. Kim and Ron follow.
The hallway is a pristine white. Not a speck of dust in sight. Immaculately clean, this is Global Justice DC, the homebase for most operations.
Doctor Director regards Kim harshly. “I don’t even know what to say to you.” She stares at her for a moment, her single eye burrowing deep into Kim’s soul. “You’re suspended for a week.”
She figured her punishment would be something like that.
Doctor Director turns on Ron. “Thank you for your work, Stoppable. While you’re still out here, I’d love a briefing on what’s happening in Lowardia.”
Ron glances over his shoulder at Kim. “Actually I was kind of hoping me and Kim could catch up, it’s been a minute for the two of us and um—”
“ Now , Stoppable,” Doctor Director says coldly.
Ron cringes and offers Kim a meek hand wave before walking away with his commander.
Once they’re out of earshot, Kim slouches and exhales.
“I know,” Drakken says suddenly, and Kim jumps. She looks back and sees the Formerly Bad Doctor staring at her from a few feet away. “Sorry, did I surprise you? Ha, who would’ve figured I’d be able to get the drop on the great Kim Possible…”
Kim winces. “I’m not great, I’m not even Class A.”
An awkward silence unfolds between the two, Drakken doesn’t seem to understand what she’s saying.
“Whatever, I’m just having a bad day,” Kim sighs, joining up with Drakken, nodding for the two of them to go to the cafeteria. “So don’t gloat about surprising me. Can you see colors again?”
He nods. “Could we… not go to the cafeteria? I actually wanted to speak with you. About a private matter.”
Kim stops in place. Blinks and shrugs. “Where to?”
~~KP~~
A few minutes later, they wind up in Drakken’s dormitory. It’s a messy room in need of a maid. Blueprints and schematics are scattered all over the floor. A half-filled mug of cold coffee sits at his desk.
“Apologies for the mess,” Drakken mumbles, using his heel to slide some of his paperwork underneath his bed. “Been working overtime on some… projects.”
Kim raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t think too much of it. She takes his desk chair while Drakken takes a seat on his bed.
So the Drama AU. Eric is a girl. Kim is gay. Drakken & Shego's scheme stings a little harder.
“The person you go to Prom with…it makes — a statement.”
=KP=
Shego is right on top of her — poker chips scatter everywhere at their crash landing, and the green woman over-does her plasma punch. Her hand splinters through the wood and gets stuck in the billiards table. The girls lock eyes and Kim feels a thrill unlike any other.
It's hard to explain what it is about this specific moment that is so formative. Perhaps we should take a step back.
Kim and Ron infiltrate The Bermuda Triangle, an infamous nightclub owned by the formidable Big Daddy Brotherson. It's such a high profile spot that Kim actually has to go undercover for this job. No crop top and cargo pants for this one — no, she dresses to the nines. Ron tries to dress up to the nines too but — erm — he places a little too much faith in his dad's Prom outfit.
But she feels good. Kim never shows off her figure. It's a silky navy blue dress that hugs her curves, reminding her that her body has developed a lot in the past few years. Changes that she never gets to acknowledge in the old familiar places. Her bare arms rest at her sides, taut with muscles. She feels cold inside the bar but it's okay. Because for once she actually looks like a girl and gets to be an adult. The heels help, giving her that little physical boost of imagined maturity.
When the inevitable does pounce on her, she can't help but notice that Shego is dressed to the nines as well. Same Harlequin pattern with the criss-cross of black and emerald, but not even close to the skin-tight ensemble from their ol' runarounds. In fact, Kim would even go so far as to say that Shego's dressed — does loosely work in a sitch like this?
Long sleeves, crop top, and a skirt with an elastic waistband. The fabric flutters with each flip and kick. It's never been like this before — which is weird. Surely Kim and Shego have had more climactic battles before — is it really just the change in wardrobe? Is that something vain to observe?
When Kim's ankles wrap around Shego's exposed stomach to kick her across the room, there's a moment where their bodies are so tightly compressed to each other — Kim can feel Shego's beating chest, her hot breath, her skin — in all the times the girls have fought each other, Kim's pretty sure she's never felt that woman's skin like this and wow, it's something else.
But Kim's not — it's not like she feels anything for Shego...that would mean that she likes girls and Kim doesn't like girls. She likes Ron — or like — she's supposed to. No, she likes Ron! Definitely.
Does she?
Yes.
No?
Things have been weird between them lately. What with the Moodulators and the Mystery Girl from Yamanouchi and the friend date that bails Ron out from sitting at the kid's table…
"Where's Drakken and what's he up to?"
Kim's hands are bunching up the fabric of Shego's top, dragging the woman up to her face.
Shego's thin brow pops up and for a second, Kim thinks the green lady is about to snark about Drakken's wacked out schemes or something, but instead the woman says, "What? Are you trying to pull my top off or something, Princess?"
It's quiet everywhere — it's almost like Shego's cold voice cuts out all other sound. Kim's ears start ringing and her cheeks go red. Is this real? Are Kim's feelings that transparent? And if Shego does notice them, does that mean that she might — Kim might actually be g—
Shego's heel cuts out from under them and nails Kim clean in the chin. Her entire body jerks back, a purple bruise already planted along her jawline.
It doesn't matter. The ceiling blows out, Drakken and Shego get away ("You think you're all that Kim Possible but you're not even close!" Drakken snarls and for once, that insult actually stings.), and Kim still has no idea what the Bad Doctor is planning.
This is so annoying.
=KP=
Her name is Erica. New girl, Ron's showing her the ropes.
"Well isn't that interesting? Actually that's my chair. Not that my name's on it but…"
Erica's tall. Brunette, wavy hair, it curls back up towards her cute little head just as it skims the shoulders. Tanned skin, bright eyes, cute smile, really cute smile actually... and she just steals Ron's chair right out from under him. A little presumptuous because truth be told, Ron clearly has dibs on that chair.
Ron whines in the background and Erica doesn't even acknowledge him. No, she's leering at Kim. Kim wants to snap at this random girl — how dare she treat her best friend like that? But as that smile glistens at her — no, for her — she feels it, this pattering in her chest. Her heart beats faster than she can process and while she wants to kindly ask this girl to give Ron his chair back — she can't.
Kim's voice becomes as thin as tissue paper, crinkling when she makes some joke about Monique-speak. Kim feels small. Here she is: the girl who has saved the world more times than would fit on a resume and she can't even stomach saying something — anything — about herself.
So Erica makes a bold move and asks about Kim. Very forward. This girl wants her.
This is happening way too fast — she can't handle a relationship right now — who is she kidding? This is a girl. Girls don't date other girls — right?
Or — wow, Kim, way to be ignorant, girls can date girls it's just — she doesn't date other girls. She likes boys.
"Ha ha! Ha! Yeah! Kim is such a kidder. Did I mention that we've known each other since Pre-K? Good times! GOOD TIMES!"
Soda spills everywhere — Ron's jellin'. It's painfully obvious and there's just so many threads to connect right now.
Erica is a girl and likes Kim. Probably. Kim already likes Erica. Ron obviously likes Kim otherwise he wouldn't be acting like a total weirdo. Kim likes Ron — a lot — something has been blooming between them all year.
Kim is suddenly having a really hard time breathing. All eyes are on her — Erica, Ron, and Monique — even people from other tables — what is she supposed to say?
Kim remembers how it felt to tussle with a woman — how different a girl's skin feels on hers — how the fingers settle across an arm — how the lips come in at each other — what?
She's never touched a girl. Been touched by a girl. Never wanted any of that. Before Erica.
The new girl is staring.
Gulp.
This is a really important moment. It's in the air. What she says next changes her world.
"It feels like a loop has just been formed and I'm not in it."
Ron says it, not her. But he's right. Stars cross each other and come in at each other fast, their linings tangled and now cosmos are winding about each other in a vortex while the knot intensifies its hold on them. Kim can't look away from this girl.
Finally, she manages to speak past the dry throat. "Me and Ron are getting Bueno Nacho after school today. Do you want to tag along? We can hang out and stuff, you seem really cool."
=KP=
Kim doesn't have an ego. Or rather…
Kim can't have an ego. She's sixteen years old and expected to save the world week in and week out. With all the press coverage, she's in too vulnerable of a position to let it go to her head. That's why Ron always has her back.
Ron loves attention, probably more than Kim does, but they make an agreement the first time a camera strays away from him; let it be. Ron has to stay grounded. For her, or else she'll just fly away.
That's how they can still go to Bueno Nacho just like your basic average girl and her best friend might. But today? Ron is pouting — he sits across Kim in the booth as always, assuming that this new girl, Erica, will sit besides him but she decidedly doesn't; she sits next to Kim.
Kim blushes the second the girl slides besides her, but Erica doesn't even bat an eye at it. They end up sharing food — Kim tries to learn more about Erica but the confident young lass is tight-lipped. Erica moves around the country a lot and lost her mother when she was very young. It's just Erica and her dad now. A dad that she doesn't see much because he's always staying late at the office.
Erica explains this quickly and succinctly and then barrages Kim with questions about herself. Kim hates talking about herself but try as she might, she can't steer the conversation away from that.
How long have you been saving the world? Three years.
How did that all start? A mistake. A billionaire meant to call Team Impossible but made a typo. Fortunately, my cheer moves helped me rescue him from his own laser trap.
What do you like to do for fun? Um. Shopping I guess. I don't know, does saving the world with Ron count as fun? I feel like it does.
Kim keeps looking to Ron for help — something, anything, but the boy sits there moping — and she really needs him right now. After a while, she gives up. Ron can mope if he wants.
What's there to be afraid of? This Erica girl is really nice.
Cute too. But things don't have to go down that way. They can just be friends. Kim really wants to be her friend.
So she asks her out to a movie that same night; she forgets to ask Ron and though Ron notices, he doesn't bother on intruding. He can tell which way the wind is blowing.
=KP=
Kim doesn't notice how much time she has spent with Erica until she gets a 9-1-1 from Wade; Drakken scooped her Dad right out of his own office and now no one knows where he is. It's stressful and of course Erica is there to comfort her and all that, but Ron isn't there.
Ron is — somewhere.
And it's weird because that's not normal. Kim and Ron are always together when Wade calls about a mission because Kim and Ron are always together. Inseparable.
Last time Kim sees Ron, he snatches the loudspeaker from the Tweebs and shouts "COOTIE ALERT!"
It's a little childish — she knows it's a prelude to a longer conversation but at the moment she doesn't really have the patience for it. She and Erica are just friends — yeah, they're sitting across Ron feeding each other slices of pizza — but that doesn't mean they are anything more than that…
Ron's just prone to drama...I guess?
But things go back to normal fast. It's not long before some former associate is flying Kim and Ron to Drakken's new Arctic lair. She spend the majority of the flight listening to Ron chatter away about how Bueno Nacho has really gone down the crapper. No more Naco night, kiddie toys, and Ned's clip-on tie has been clipped off.
Oy vey.
But still, it's nice for Ron to talk to her like she's a normal human. Because there's nothing between her and Erica that would justify such a frosty cold shoulder.
=KP=
When Kim and Ron do locate James Timothy Possible, he's totally zonked out. So a Brain Tap machine is likely involved. But what would Drakken want from her dad? Maybe an apology for their college strifes? Maybe. At this point it feels like Drakken is just messing with her. Because Kim seriously doesn't get it.
"Why do you care so much?" Erica asks her one night. It's late. Definitely past curfew and if the cops caught them on the swingset together at the park — they could technically get arrested for loitering? She's not sure. Either way she texts her parents to let them know she's safe.
Kim looks up at Erica. At some point, they started holding hands. "Well — Drakken hurts people and if I can figure out what he's up to — well — you know."
"No, I don't," Erica says. It's rare for her to be so serious. She's always flirting with her bold and brash can do attitude. She pushes a hair behind her ear and shuffles her swing closer to Kim's. "There's people who do this for a living. Like — paid and stuff. You're just a teenage girl with an iron will and a lotta heart. The best you can do is show up and stop him. Honestly, you should be given more to work with."
The seat of Erica's swing touches Kim's. She can feel the pressure of the girl's body through the rubber. Kim doesn't say anything as Erica's thumb runs across her knuckle. She avoids eye contact for a little bit out of shyness. "It's important to me though. I like doing the best I can and I feel like I'm not at my best right now. Ron and I haven't really been in sync lately."
"Can I ask you something?"
Kim takes in a deep breath. "He's just a little jealous of me and you — I don't blame him, he's kinda ticking me off with his drama but I haven't been the most cordial either — "
"I don't want to talk about Ron; I want to talk about us."
Us. Now that's a scary word.
Kim and Erica are so close, the tanned girl's neck craning past the chains.
Erica smiles just the slightest. "We've been dating for a month now, yeah?"
"D-dating?" Kim freezes. "Have we been — dating? Really?"
"What? Yeah, I thought that's what we've been doing. You don't — you're not — "
"Um." Kim can't think of anything else. They nestle closer. "I don't know. I like you a lot — I — well — I wanted to date I just wasn't sure if you — "
"Kim, I'm already out."
"Out? Oh...oh."
"It's okay, I know you're not. You treat me differently when we're at school and I know you're facing a different pressure but — I've dated a lot of girls who weren't out yet and it's really hard on my end. Lots of emotional labor, and I don't know if I can do it again."
Kim looks up and eyes those beautiful chocolate brown eyes. She can't meet them and looks back down. "It's hard, yeah. I mean — what if my site bombs because I'm gay?"
"Are you gay?"
"I don't know. Probably," Kim touches Erica's shoulder. "But I can't let that stop me from saving the world. People might want me to go away if I came out and — I can't lose that. Can I think about it?"
"Always Kim. I don't want to pressure you."
"You kind of are though."
The chains clink as the swings fall back into their normal spots.
=KP=
"Shego!"
Drakken screams, feet moving with such a swing that they unbutton his lab-coat. He freezes when he finds Shego in his chair, looking over the logistics of his evil, evil scheme. "Shego! Why is my Synthodrone — my carefully constructed weapon to once and for all destroy Kim Possible — " His voice drops low as she rises to face him. " — a girl?"
Shego arches an eyebrow and leans back. "Ha. Well — I was looking at your plans. A toy design, top secret cybertronic technology, Synthodrone personality and performance upgrades, and teen scene junk. I still honestly don't get it but the Synthodrone stuff? Yeah. You should have ditched the Oh Boyz roundtable and gone with this."
"Hm?" Drakken frowns as the image of Teen Scene Junk on the monitor is replaced by Patricia Highwood's The Price of Salt. "Lesbian pulp fiction? What does that have to do with anything?"
Shego flashes her canines. "Kim Possible is not smarter than you."
Drakken blinks. Takes him a second to get it. "Ooooooooh."
"Mhm. If you can't figure it out, she can't figure it out…and that means…"
"We — we actually might win?" Drakken coughs right away. "Nyrhm — I mean — I was already quite confident but — " His fist rubs against the front of his coat. " — Eric was supposed to be a boy. The ultimate hottie — something to make Kimberly Ann go gaga — "
Shego's finger presses to his lips and he stops talking. Dark embers in her eyes. A little unnerving; she's never this invested in one of his schemes. "Right — but that won't work. Trust me."
=KP=
"Camp Wannaweep. The worst summer of my life."
"I know, I know. The ticks, the poison ivy, the toxic lake, your mom stopped accepting your phone calls…"
"Yeah, you know, all that stuff was bad KP. But you know what was worse? Spending a whole summer away from you."
This is supposed to be a big moment; Ron never gets this serious. He holds that smile on for dear life. For her sake mostly. She replicates what Erica did for her the past night and grabs his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. Her movements are as precise as Erica's and it seems to calm Ron down a little. She edges closer to him and he looks up.
"Ron, you know we're always going to be best friends. Nothing will ever change that."
Ron's spine folds inwardly and he says back, "What is it Kim?"
"What do you mean?"
"You want to tell me something, right? I can tell. You get this look in your eye when you're nervous."
"O-oh. Yeah. Um," she bites her lip. "Yeah. This is — kind of — a big deal — um — "
"It's okay, KP. You can tell me."
Ron's voice is always fluctuating but in this moment it's so steady. Her jaw tightens and she makes sure to really look at him when she says it.
At first, the sounds end abruptly and she has to catch her breath.
"I'm gay."
Nothing changes in Ron's eyes and it's infuriating. Of course he already knows, but this has been sparking dangerously within her for weeks now. It's this earth shattering revelation and he's just staring — it's so — anticlimactic. She chokes and falls into his arms, and no matter how kind his words are — no matter how present he is — they're drifting, gliding away on different planes of reality.
She reaches out and grabs his arm, tugging hard on his sleeve. Snot bubbles in her nose and she looks up at him. "I don't want to lose you."
"You're not going to KP — "
"But it doesn't even feel like you're here."
Ron's jaw tightens; he's obviously holding something back too and she's not sure if he's drawing away because he doesn't want to take from her moment, or if it's because he just doesn't want her to know his little secret. She blinks back tears and is pretty sure she sees his freckles sparkle from his own crying.
"I'm trying, Kim," he says quietly.
It's like a nail in the coffin.
=KP=
She knows her parents love her, she's been telling herself that all week. But still, this isn't an easy conversation. It's strange, sitting across the living room from then. For the past three years, the spotlight has followed her relentlessly, yet in this moment, she's sweating under its focus. Maybe because this isn't famed teen hero, Kim Possible, it's just teenage Kim in an identity crisis.
She read online that it's typical for someone to bring their partner when coming out to their family — if that's the case. But Kim didn't invite Erica. Not ready for it yet or something. So instead it's Ron's clammy hand that's holding hers. She feels bad that she doesn't have the strength to reach back but he doesn't seem to mind. He's so warm and she's so cold.
"Mom, Dad…" Kim says slowly. She bites her lip and tries for a joke. "Tweebs…" It doesn't land. "Um...I wanted to talk to you guys because — it's become apparent to me that…"
She freezes and bows her head, taking in a deep breath. When she comes back up, everything is tense. Her brothers look up at her in wonder, they've never seen her this withdrawn before. A deep wrinkle cuts under Anne's dry eyes and it almost feels like she already knows. Her father is the one who seems the calmest. The way his bold eyes keep falling back to Ron's hand, he probably thinks the two are dating.
She should probably speak up now — else her Dad will probably think that she's pregnant. Not really the case.
"I'm gay."
It's two words that tear at her chest, and there's a deathly calm that follows.
Seconds pass and suddenly Kim is enveloped in warmth, tears are flying and everyone is holding each other. How could she forget she has the kindest most wonderful family in the world?
Ron is the last to fall into the group hug. His shaking hands very tentatively fall onto her shoulders and she turns up to him and lifts the hand off her lips and clutches onto him for dear life. She's never heard him sob before, but it's a very welcome change of pace.
=KP=
You're supposed to act normal when you bring someone to school by hand for the first time. It's casual, a declaration that you're taken, but clearly that has been the sitch for some time so as you saunter down those halls, you talk to your partner like you would on any other day. But queer people don't really get that.
Holding hands with Erica as they pass through the door, it's obvious that they are making a statement. They hold hands because they have to, they have to make it clear that they aren't like all the other kids. They're gay.
It makes her anxious. Kim has done this whole runaround before, like when she dated Josh Mankey. But that wasn't really a statement. She is gay, and will forever be gay, because hundreds of eyes are crawling all over her body and immediately looking away in feigned disinterest. But really, no one can stop talking about how the famous Kim Possible is gay.
Erica squeezes Kim's hand tight because she's there for her. Apparently, the new girl has already done this plenty of times at other schools so she's used to the staring.
The reaction that frightens Kim the most is Bonnie's. What will the rival cheerleader say? Is Bonnie homophobic? Will Kim not be allowed in the locker room with the other girls after this? Where does being gay fare on the food chain? Is it okay?
When Kim locks eyes with Bonnie, there's a spark that flies and sears. Then falls back like receding waves. Bonnie smiles. Not in a condescending way. Just as if to say Oh, I get it. Kim doesn't realize how tightly her jaw is clamped until she passes by her rival, and she has to see if she can get some Advil from the nurse's office because of it.
But the rest of the day is smooth sailing. Whatever Kim dreaded doesn't happen. Because maybe — just maybe — she can have this.
=KP=
"The Diablo toys are evil!"
Ron is stark raving mad. The cute balloon gates leading to the Prom bends under his weight and the music stops. Kim doesn't release Erica's hand as she stares at Ron sadly.
"See...wait — what?! Where are they?"
"You okay dude?"
"Oh I know that tone! That's the Ron's making it all up tone! But it doesn't matter what you think or what anyone else thinks because my best friend will believe me. Right Kim?"
Kim blinks a few times, just trying to catch up. She really doesn't want to believe Ron's story — something about looking smart and calm in front of Erica is important to her — people already think she's losing her marbles switching teams...but she really doesn't like Erica's condescension.
The way Erica's roughly lands her hands on Ron's narrow shoulders, that assumptive language. When Ron looks to her, her nerves ramp up in intensity. She grabs her bare arm and frowns.
"Oh...um...I believe you…? The toys were here."
"And they were evil!"
"Um — right."
"Buckle up Kim because it gets weirder."
She blows the hair from her eyes. Why is Ron making this into a scene? She knows something is going on between them but this is so not appropriate...
"Oh, I'll bet…."
"Drakken is behind the whole thing!"
Her heart stops. Drakken?
Erica laughs into her fist. "The takeover the world mad scientist guy?"
"Yes, look! It's all so obvious! He's using more than 30,000 Bueno Nacho locations worldwide to give out his evil prizes."
Kim looks to Ron and sees utter conviction in his eyes. Neither of them knows anything about Drakken's scheme —have known more since the Nakasumi-san sitch really. Drakken has completely waysided them and this — this stupid thing about evil toys? It is plausible?
Even if it isn't plausible — Ron would never use a mission to steal Kim away. He's not that kind of guy.
Kim reaches out and takes Ron's hand. He blushes for some reason. She raises an eyebrow but decides not to ask. "Ron, I believe you. Let's get out of here and call Wade."
Another hand touches Kim's. She looks back to see Erica's pleading eyes.
"His story is ridiculous, are you kidding me Kim?" Erica snarks.
Kim looks to Ron and hands him the Kimmunicator, nodding to him that she'll catch up. Ron pats her on the back and walks out the way he came in. Once she's certain he can't hear, Kim looks back up at Erica. "I know it's ridiculous but so is Drakken. Ron's my best friend and I trust him — if I'm wrong, I'll — "
" — if you're wrong, you're wrong. You can't make it up to me. This is it Kim."
Kim's heart stops again and she can feel her fingers slipping away from this beautiful girl's — even though they haven't moved an inch. Kim takes in a deep breath. "Don't make me choose that."
"Kim — you're scared. I get it, it's scary being gay — but — "
All heads turn towards them. The music stops again.
" — running away on a wild goose chase with your idiot best friend is not a rational response. Grow up. Do you want to be a closet case of a kid or do you want to be with me?"
Kim mouths something indistinct. There are so many eyes on her. Eventually, she whimpers something that sounds like "I'm sorry" and goes after Ron.
=KP=
"You will surrender! Shego went over to your dance and she found the cutest girl. Well, I don't have to tell you about her…."
"...Kim. What's going on?"
It hurts to much to see Erica held under Shego's arm; as mean and forceful as she is, she doesn't deserve this. Kim isn't ready to be with her and they kind of sort of just broke up but Drakken doesn't know that of course, so he kidnaps the poor girl.
"The choice is yours Kimberly Ann. If you care about your girlfriend's safety, surrender is your only option!"
Drakken has never been so scary.
"Wade," Kim says to the air, her screen paused on Erica's pretty face. "You said you were developing an experimental suit for me. We need to pull out all the stops — is it ready?"
=KP=
Shego's claw crawls across Erica's — or rather, Synthodrone 901's chest — greedily.
Kim should be looking at Erica but for some reason, she can't take her eyes off Shego.
Electricity is still crackling through her chest and she can't stay awake any longer. She wants to look at Erica and hope that maybe if she begs enough, the double agent will feel a shred of guilt and help her. But no. She can't look at Erica.
Kim's already disassociated — Erica isn't real. It is just a ploy. A ploy to get her to come out and look like a big idiot.
There's this high pitched cackle — it's unusual for Shego — she never sounds soft. It's playful — manic almost.
This isn't any ordinary scheme — it's easy to read behind the lines. Shego drapes her arm over Erica like the Synthodrone is property. Drakken may have cooked up the goo that made the Benedict Arnold...but it's Shego that aligned the chromosomes. She saw something desperate and raw hiding within Kim at the nightclub, and took full advantage of it.
A rare moment of intimacy has been molten into something very ugly.
Blackness.
=KP=
"You really think there's someone out there for me?"
Kim doesn't know why she liked Erica that much. Girl hasn't treated Ron with respect nor stopped pressuring her to come out. Like — makes sense that things turned out the way they did. But still — it really hurts.
Ron gets a little shifty eyed. She has a hard time focusing even though she's sure what he is saying is inspirational. Despite it all, he never stops believing in her.
"Out there...in here…"
She looks over to him and sees that frown. She wishes she could break free from these ropes and hold him tight. "Ron, I wish I could love you. I know it doesn't make sense to you because this is really new to you but….I can't. You're like a brother to me. And I don't mean that in a bad way. You're the greatest friend a girl you could have."
He smile a little. "Yeah. Always KP."
There's this long pause and finally she says something he doesn't really have the nerve to say right now. "I should stop throwing a pity party, huh?"
Ron grins. "Oh yes. Please."
"So...how do we get out of this?"
Ron laughed and clicked his tongue. "Rufus."
"Rufus?" she blinks back.
"Yeah, you don't see him down there with the laser lipstick?"
"What?" She looks down and sure enough, sees their naked little buddy with said Wade weapon clenched between his big honkin' teeth. "Oh dang."
As the laser cleaves through the ropes holding the duo down, Ron winks over to her. "Brain Trust has always got your back KP."
=KP=
"You know what I really hate?"
"That your date melted?"
"No. You."
Shego throws her arms up in defense but Kim is already way ahead of her. Her foot slips between the arms and aims for the green lady's chest.
It would be so easy. With the suped up strength of the battle suit, she can easily knock Shego all the way into that stupid signal tower — make the pain as personal as Shego did. After all, there's no way Drakken cooked up this scheme all on his own.
She can feel the flesh push against her heel and momentarily resist before being throttled. She can imagine the twitch in her own foot as it hangs in the air, waiting to feel the gush of wind from the resulting explosion.
But none of that happens. No — Kim's foot halts before Shego and just sort of hangs there. She wants so badly to for once let loose on someone but she can't do it. Something crackles in her eyes as she watches Shego tense as if she were about to die. There's a clap of thunder and then rain continues to pit-pat-patter around them.
There's this high-pitched wheeze that might be Shego's heaving breaths. Kim almost feels sorry for her.
Enough time passes that it feels safe to drop her foot. The two women look each other in the eye. Despite everything, Kim feels so much bigger than her.
"You knew I was gay," Kim says in a bit of an assumptive tone. "At the Bermuda Triangle, yeah?"
Shego looks away, hair matted down by the rain. "Yeah," Kim is pretty sure Shego mutters.
Kim shakes her head slowly. She can't believe what she's looking at right now. "You must be too then."
"Huh?" Shego looks up. "No, I'm bi."
Kim's eyes widen a little before she regains her composure. "Got it. But you still used my sexuality against me. Do you have any idea how messed up that is?"
No sound passes between them for some time.
Kim brushes some hair behind her ear. There's more words but Shego's not worth her time. She wants to kill her — like actually kill her but if she does that, she would get in serious trouble. But it makes sense. Her self-preservation is mangled and she's depressed — and gay. Shego is sort of gay too. This is what happens. It's systemic. It's community.
Shego needs help. What she did i so wrong but — Kim can't bare to sentence the woman. So Kim turns on her heel and walks away.
Shego doesn't move from her spot until the police come and cuff her.
=KP=
She really likes it when Ron holds her hand now. Before, he sweat at her touch, now he's so calm. It's nice.
People cheer when the duo walk onto the dance floor; they're probably misinterpreting what's happening between the two but that's okay. Who cares about this stupid food chain crap?
Rufus makes a move. He scurries to the floor and manages to push Kim's bare leg into Ron's baggy pants. They both blush. Ron stoops down and very gently pokes Rufus' nose.
"Hey little buddy, Kim likes girls," Ron whispers to Rufu. "It's not happening between us."
Kim smiles and leans forward. "But your support is always appreciated."
It's minutes later and they're in the center of everything. It's a slow dance, which is nice. Both of their bodies are heaving with exhaustion; it's a miracle they're both still standing.
The way Ron's hand is wrapped around her waist — it's very secure. She almost feels guilty because it's obvious what Ron is doing. The affection isn't coming from his wanting for her though — he just wants her to be happy, and to feel like the normal girl she was going to be with Erica.
She presses her chest to his and her fingers rub circles on the nape of his neck. Kim definitely got hit with the harsher end of the trauma stick in this sitch, but Ron still needs help too.
"Hey I misspoke earlier, and I don't mean to lead you on but..." she whispers as they spin around. "I love you so much."
He looks away from the flashing lights on the wall and into his friend. They've never really said anything like this before. "I love you too KP. You going to be okay?"
This is a sequel to my fic, Check the Name. But can be read as a standalone. Sans Ron, Kim is building a new Team Possible. She’s already recruited Drakken, now she has her eyes on Shego.
"You want me to WHAT?"
Kim sighs, wrapping her arms tightly around her chest to give her some warmth under the dark of the night, and eyes Shego with heaping amounts of intention. She speaks in a level tone.
"I want you to become a full time member of Team Possible. You won't get paid for any of your efforts, but none of us are and that's okay, because we're doing the right thing and the people's compensation can be better spent elsewhere. I want to you fight with us, operating off of programs and services that are solely engineered through donations and the good will of others. I want you to stand besides me day-in and day-out, sacrifice your free time by always being on-call so that you can respond to every disaster that need our assistance."
Kim gulps. Talking about mission stuff? That's easy. But personal stuff? She looks into Shego's emerald eyes and briefly considers the thing she actually wants to say to this snarky woman, this — person who despite all the murder attempts is actually quite charming. This funny lady who loves to tease Kim and never goes that hard on her. This quote-unquote enemy who's taught her an entire Bachelor's degree in survival skills. This person who is — ugh.
Family.
Kim said it to Drakken, and he told her that he always saw her as a daughter. He's part of Team Possible now, and that was surprisingly easy. So why is this so hard? Kim's mouth opens for the full load of pathos but it catches in her throat. Kim sees Shego's cold demeanor and blinks. Coughs to play off the weird lapse and returns to the herospeak. "In short: I want to save the world with you, Shego."
Shego blinks and rubs her eyes as if she just woke up from a colossal sleep.
"Ugh, Kimmie. Rhetorical. Yawn."
Kim bites her lip. She accounted for this. Obviously, Shego wouldn't take it seriously, and now she's marching over to the wall of Dementor's fortress. "Shego, please. You know we're legit. If you want to make a difference this is it. We're the most effective group there is out there."
Kim bites her lip for a second time. Actually draws a little smear of blood. Ever since Ron took off for his full-time gig with Global Justice, she's been tongue tied. Because her best friend and life partner is too busy to remember a Skype date. She doesn't hold it against him, it just means she talks to people a whole lot less than she used to.
Shego twists her head back and arches an eyebrow so high that Kim's surprised it doesn't shoot off her face and right to the tippity top of the wall Shego's about to scale up. But then again, Shego has always held expert control over her emotions. Just because Kim can't help but give every thought and feeling voice by letting them crawl onto her face doesn't mean everyone does.
Shego twirls her grapple hook in widening circles. "Since when did you start talking like an army recruiter? If I were you, I'd lay off established mercs like me and check out your high school campus."
Shego lobs the hook high, high into the air and it just makes target, crashing into a lip of the stone wall. Shego pulls on the rope and the hook doesn't move an inch. She cackles and returns to Kim. Rests a hand to her hip. "Or is that too soon for you?"
"Making fun of my age?" Kim deadpans. "Isn't that a little dry for you?"
"Yep," Shego shrugs, casually beginning her climb. "Don't really care. See, I have a big, spicy paycheck waiting for me and I don't want to be distracted from the hot vaca I'm scrounging from it."
Kim's a little relieved Shego's not looking; lets her release that anger into that eyebrow flicker. Shego would notice that after all. Since both women are intimately aware of each other's physicalities — no, not like that. They just know what to look for in the other, how to gauge their feelings. And if Shego looked back, she'd see that Kim's pretty hurt and even though Shego doesn't actually like being a big jerk (Kim and Ron's theory) and she'd say something humiliating.
Y'know, to add insult to injury. Kim's been feeling down for a while, so much so that she can't even call it a secret anymore.
So Kim makes the first dig. "I'm sure Big Daddy Brotherson gives you a lot of benefits. But more often than not, you're taking out dirty politicians and businessmen."
Shego freezes, knees wedged sideways into her gut, hair falling past her shoulders and aligning perpendicular to the ground she's now twenty feet above. Shego hesitates, but snorts off the decision and proceeds to scale the stone wall.
"Shego — " Kim groans, voice getting farther and farther away. "You don't need to be a super-villain with plasma strength to pick someone off from miles away. Please."
That one gets her.
Shego stops and runs her feet up the wall like she's going up a half-pipe, swiveling 180° so she can fully see the red head. She grabs her long raven locks and pushes them aside. "Sure, Princess. I miss the good old days. But this stuff pays, and besides — I've already saved the world once. I think I've done my time."
Shego hands there for a moment, body arched in a position that's surely uncomfortable. Kim has seconds to collect herself before this conversation is officially over.
"Shego, don't you dare try to convince me that what you're doing is good. You know what happens when you ice the CEO to a fast food chain? His son whose name probably ends in a Jr. inherits it."
Shego's eyes darken, but her mouth curls high. "Ice, Princess? You afraid to say the word kill? Or are you just upset that your stinkin' BF is doing that all the time?"
Kim's cheeks sting and she looks away.
"See," Shego drawls. "You can't even stomach that. Think about what working with me would be like. That's why I'm saying no."
"I don't think that's why you're saying no."
Shego blinks. Kim steps forward, awfully defiant. There's another weird lapse. This is the part where Kim is supposed to explain why Shego is saying no. It'll be emotional, maybe some tears, and finally these two estranged women will reconcile.
Kim mouths something indistinct then scratches the back of her head. In a low voice, she says, "Ron's not part of the team anymore. It's just me on the field and you know how everyone's been picking up the slack since Lowardia. I'm good but not that good. I might — erm — die out there and — that's not going to stop me but — a little muscle would be good."
Shego momentarily softens. She's never seen Kimmie put herself down like this. Not her best look, and certainly not the girl she used to go toe to toe with on the reg.
Also — Ron's the super-powered Big Kahuna now, huh? Super weird. She's still processing that one. Like, where's Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris when you need them?
Shego dismisses Kim with a wave. "Nah sorry. Not convinced. Anyways, I gotta go and take care of these mutant petunias or whatever Dementor is using to take over the world this — "
"Which incidentally is my evil take over the word scheme!" a gruff voice barks through Kim's earpiece. Kim claps a hand to her face and cringes from the blown out speakers.
"Drew — " Kim swears under her breath but it's no use, Drakken's in full swing now.
"How dare he use my strategy and my smartest most refined geniusest brilliance to — "
Shego blinks. Leans as far down as she can without dropping off the wall. "...Drakken?!"
"Oh," Drakken mutters from the end of his line. "H-hello Shego."
"Yup," Shego shakes her head and finally throws her body back into proper posture for climbing. "Forget it, Princess."
Kim hoped that by the end of this conversation, she could stop clenching but now — the clenching persists. She watches Shego throw herself over the fortress wall and vanish, taking the grapple line with her. Not that Kim doesn't have one on her, but ya know — message received.
She turns on her heel and looks out at the rolling waves way down below. Even as high up as she is, little drips of seawater pelt at her face.
"Now what?" Drakken stutters.
"Plan B. I'm busting in. Not using Shego's route obviously because that'd be lame," Kim paces around the stone wall and looks for a different — better — opening.. "Hey Drew?"
"Yes, Kimberly Ann?"
"Remind me to not let you ever throw anyone a surprise birthday party."
=KP=
Despite the doom and gloom gray of Dementor's fortress, all Kim can see once she hits the arena is bright, vibrant turquoise. Turns out Dementor's mutant army of petunias are actually quite deadly, moving so fast that the green vines, no matter how thin, blur Kim's entire scope of vision. Paired with Shego's plasma bolts, it's a wonder Kim can make out anything. She doesn't want to admit it, but she's a little unnerved by it all.
Every big leagues villain retired shortly after the Lowardian Invasion. It wasn't a secret that folks, ally and enemy alike, had been scared stiff by the newly polished form of their archfoe's sidekick. No one, not even Kim, expected that from him. She still feels kind of bad about that. About doubting him. But then she reminds herself, for her own confidence, that Ron didn't earn the Mystical Monkey Power; he stumbled into it.
Kim worked herself down to the bone to get to where she is, but people are telling her she's not good enough. It's not Ron's fault. It's just — nauseating.
Meanwhile, while Kim and Ron warred through the bric-a-brac, they polished their blades and prepared for the real deal. But soon Ron moved into the Top Security Clearance world of Global Justice and it became apparent to all the mooks and rapscallions like Dementor and Monkey Fist (yes, Monty's back from the dead, it's a whole thing) that Agent Stoppable's not actually gunning for them, leaving Kim to deal with their vastly improved ilk.
Heck, not even Kim knows where Ron is today. Half the time, if not more, he's not allowed to tell her. The past few weeks, the former Dynamic Duo has been testing out the long distance gambit, but just as they found their groove in regards to frequency of texts and Skypes, Ron got bumped up another promotion and threw the whole thing off. Now it's radio silence. Either she's too overwhelmed by the escalating difficulty of her missions to consider texting Ron or he's too busy to remember they had a Skype date.
Beep-beep-de-beep!
Speak of the Devil….
"Don't you ever silence that thing?" Drakken rasps through Kim's radio.
"Uh, well the whole point of call me, beep me is the beeping part," Kim snarks, pulling her phone from the satchel tied tight around her waist. "Unlike you Drak, the texts I get are actually important."
Drakken curses under his breath; asking Kimberly Ann to organize his inbox the other day had been a mistake. After hours of sorting and deleting, all she did was sigh extraneously and say, "Drew, you should really consider unsubscribing from some of these newsletters. Like NaNoWriMo was almost a year ago, you obviously have no intentions on reading these Writers' Tips."
But that's not fair! Sure, he only got six thousand words in last NaNoWriMo, but that doesn't mean he'll never finish It Was a Tuesday! Why just the other day he wrote an experimental chapter about the time he used flashcards to remember his evil plots! And Kimberly knew that! Because she proofread it!
Heck, she even likes his writing! She's — ahem — the only one who does…. aaaaanyways, oh how she gets under his skin! Sometimes she's even worse than Shego! Words hurt you know.
But back to that incessant beep beep-de-beep. Kim crooks her elbow under her chest so that she can look at her phone in the tight air duct.
Ron [6:54PM]
Awwwww, seriously? he's back from the dead. that's bananas!
Ron [6:55PM]
that's a joke, feel free to use that on him
Ron [6:55PM]
ya know for a guy who mutated himself into a monkey you'd think he'd be chiller about monkey jokes
Kim rolls her eyes and stuffs the phone away. Kim would happily use a Ron joke on Monkey Fist, but the two of them never quite had the rapport for linguistic ballet.
Yet despite everything, Ron could probably march in and tick Monkey Fist off like any internet troll worth their salt. Kim wonders what kind of gags Ron would go for. There's the obvious monkey jokes, but also now the zombie gags. Seeing how the old coot's risen from the dead and everything. It was Amy's doing, but Monty ditched her fast and partnered up with Dementor. Their plan has some kind of synergy between evil plants and ancient Monkey Tomes or whatever. Kim never really knows. She just sees it and punches it.
With the crazy media coverage lately, it makes sense that Monkey Fist's resurrection flew under the table, but it really is too bad that Ron can't waltz over and check it out. Maybe Kim should do some verbal sparring with the Brit for Ron's sake.
Ugh. Kim's not even here for Monkey Fist. Shego's got him on lock after all. Kim has to remember that and keep her eyes on the prize. She thinks it over. Using Ron's little joke might actually work for a strategy on how to win Shego over. Shoot. She should text Ron back before she forgets — no, she'll text after she gets Monty's reaction. That way Ron will text her back a few hours later with an emoji. Or a stinkin' el-oh-el if she's lucky.
Kim sighs in a way that would even make Eeyore concerned, and kicks open the vent. She rolls out of the steel and almost immediately regrets diving in.
It's like entering a warzone. Exhausting to track from above, on ground level her heart threatens to thump its way out of her chest. Because it's not turquoise — it's green and blue. Separate. She can't quite see Monkey Fist from here but he's surely putting up a fight, throwing out blasts that rival Shego's. The beams shimmer like flames, dancing erratically. Neither light lets up, blasting into the next beam, etching a matrix of death all around the room.
Just as Kim's about to stick her landing, a beam of blue comes out from under her. She holds back a scream and twists up, firing a grapple line back into her hidey-hole air duct, line going taut fast. She swings up, narrowly avoiding the blue but instead finds her back running against a column of green fire from Shego. She screams, but manages to hold on tight, and releases another grapple line, and swings through a safety gap in the blaze.
Kim throttles between the blasts, spiraling in the air, peeking through every gap to find something — anything — she can grapple onto, but just as she finds a straight fall to the floor there's a terrible screech that gnaws at her eardrums. One of Dementors petunias snaps up at her, bulb bigger than Kim's entire body.
Right Evil mutant plants. She totally forgot.
White teeth as long as Kim's arm, tightly knit into ugly rows along the maw, snap at her, splattering acid into the air. Kim's not fast enough and one particularly jagged tooth snags her foot and whips her through the air.
Gravity wants to throttle Kim down into the monster's gullet, but she preserves all the strength she's got and keeps herself held tall and poised no matter where the monsters whips her. At the peak of its swing, she pops one foot up and back down, crashing a boot into a tooth, knocking it free. Acid sprays from the gap in the mouth and Kim falls, slipping into the mouth. She grabs two teeth and kicks both feet into teeth opposite her, limbs searing from the momentous effort. But her weight makes short work of the creature, and it tumbles on down to the floor.
Just before it hits stone, she rolls out of the bloom and narrowly avoids a stream of green fire that the monster falls into, promptly burning down to ash. Kim finds her bearings fast, wiping sweat from her forehead. Her head hurts more than it should and she decides she's probably poisoned. She quickly radios to Drakken, asking him to scan her vitals while she works. Another petunia lashes at her, but Kim's ahead of this one and grabs the roof and floor of its mouth, cracking her arms far apart to keep the mouth splayed open. She pushes hard, already short sleeves rolling into her shoulders. She raises her feet and dropkicks the horrid beastie in the mouth and it bends under her.
Kim hits the floor at a roll and finally catches sight of Shego and playfully waves to her. Shego's eyes widen because seriously? Kim what the heck. Or fuck. What the fuck is more Shego's speed.
Ever since the Lowardians, big guns got drawn and people, including Shego apparently, like to think that means Kim isn't up to par anymore.
Well, not quite. Check the name.
Kim snaps back into action, somersaulting back, just as another rogue petunia dives at her. But she's got the leverage to launch herself above him, and she grabs its wiry stem like she's at the gym, twirling a full 360° before coming back down with a stomp that's the equivalent of crushing someone's windpipe. It whimpers before falling fully slack.
Two more come. She leaps and throws her legs into a full split, cracking one of the creature's maws wide enough to keep her safe. Meanwhile, her arms grab onto one of the other creature's teeth, yanking down on it like Quasimodo does every morning in Paris.
The tooth snaps free and the creatures roars, tumbling to the ground. Kim slips the jagged thing under her arm and twists her body like a pretzel, grabbing the petunia holding her by its tooth and — CRACK!
The first petunia thumps off the floor, and Kim lands between the slain beasties, stabbing both through the heads, grinning at Shego like a mischievous kid might.
"Princess, hey, you need to — "
"Hold that thought!"
Kim leaps into the air again, twirling like a helicopter, the twin teeth whirling around her and catching yet another petunia in both sides of its gaping mouth. But Kim doesn't stop there. She keeps spinning and the teeth cleave right through the jaw, decapitating the monster. Kim hits the ground, coated in plant mucus, but she's not quite through yet.
"Five o'clock!" Kim shouts and Shego ducks, one of the teeth launching over her head like a javelin and nailing the final petunia in the face. It bursts into acid and splatters across the floor.
Kim brushes the hair from her eyes and shoots another winning grin at Shego. But that grin quickly becomes a grimace as Kim is suddenly thankful for all the fencing classes she took. Bolts of blue fly at her. Kim swings the tooth up and down, deflecting the bolts as they just graze her. But the blue is too fast for any human, even her, and after ten volleys one bops the tooth from her hands, knocking it into the air and yards behind her.
A fist as big as her head materializes in the air and goes for broke, angled just right to pop her skull open. But Kim's got something else in mind.
"Wow, it's really bananas that you're back from the dead, Monty."
The flaming fist stops right before her face. Quickly, the blue light coagulates into a tangible form before her. Monkey Fist sweeps a scoop-shaped thumb across his long nose and sneers at her. He's evolved a bit since she last saw him. Hair is a bit more wild, muscles a bit more trained, and his eyes empty blue fire from his sockets. He's flanked by a blue aura, but it's nowhere near as crisp and clean as Ron's.
"What — did — you — say?" Monkey Fist hisses.
Kim bites her lip and tries not to giggle out of anxiety. "I — said — it's — bananas — that — "
"OOOOOOOOOOOH!" Monkey Fist whistles like a train, big honkin' feet stamping against the ground like a child's. The fire fades and Kim can see the long sloped lines of his distorted face. "That makes me so mad!"
But before the gentleman can throw a rather uncordial tantrum, one of Shego's plasma bolts knocks him upside the head and blasts him across the width of the entire room and into a wall, where stone bricks avalanche onto him in heaps.
When the dust fades, Kim sees Shego staring at her with the coldest expression the mercenary's ever flashed, fists rolled so tight that they shake, wedged into her hips.
"Bananas?! That's the best you had? You just risked your life to say Wow Monkey Fist, it's really bananas that you're back from the dead?!"
Kim frowns and scoops her phone out, quickly showing the screen to the green woman. "Ron told me to say it. Speaking of…." She dives back into the text thread to fire off a —
Kim [6:58PM]
Good one. That really got him going.
— before emerald fire surrounds Kim from all over, crafting a tunnel leading out to the exit, archways burning all the way out. Before Kim can jump to Shego's side, a wall blisters the floor between them and separates the two.
"Out! Now!" Shego screams, flames so dense Kim can't even see her.
"Huh? No way!" Kim pouts. "This is my turf as much as it is yours!"
"No it's not! This is my gig, like I get a bounty for stopping them! You don't so stay out of it!"
Kim shuts her eyes and forces it from throat even though she really does not want to air this.
"Shego, stop yelling at me, please. Why can't we just be friends?"
That hangs in the air for a little longer than either is comfortable with. Kim's cheeks burn red and she continues, "Shego, I'm serious — I like you. Like really, really like you. You're funny and tough and smart and I always had fun sparring with you and I think it'd be good for the two of us if we started working together."
An imprint of Shego's body sinks into the wall, just enough for the grimace to set itself nice and strong. Though the neon light does make Kim's eyes water, so she tries not to look for too long.
"We were not sparring," Shego grunts. "Maybe you were — you've never been that responsible. You're lucky Doc's so dense or maybe we would have taken over the world."
The outline of the mouth moves but it's hard to say in which direction; but it's okay. You don't need nonverbal cues from Shego to get where she's at.
The flames flare towards the tunnel and Kim has to firmly plant her boots down to not be swayed. But she's bleeding from the toes because of the planets and that poison is doing god knows what to her body. She can't hold on much longer.
"I wouldn't resist if I were you," Shego taunts. "Could easily break a bone trying for the immovable object gambit."
"You wouldn't," Kim sneers. "They were spars. You've never tried to hurt me. But other people do. Every day. And if you don't want to be my friend, fine. But still join up. Some back-up would be great, or else Monty might whip me into a Kimmie Frappé."
Kim slips. One heel flies up and the other follows. She flails her arms but it's no good. She gets one last look at Shego before being throttled.
"Puh-lease, Princess. You don't need little ol' me, do you? I thought you could do anything!"
She's airborne and not even sure if Shego can hear her, and it's hard to talk with the wind blasting down her throat, choking her. But she says something because it's important. It comes out as a croak and Shego does hear it, two flares arch up just slightly at the words:
"You know that's not true anymore."
A bellow of air jams its way down her throat and another swing nails her in the nut. She flies back and somehow miraculously lands on her feet, just outside the fortress. Not from any effort of her own. She cracks her head up and watches the flames give way to ash and frowns. Shego is — powerful. It's a little unnerving.
Why is everyone just now deciding that they can outclass her?
Kim blinks back something that might be tears and grinds her knuckle against the dirt. "Dammit."
"Sorry to eavesdrop, but you know I can't resist the hot goss," Drakken says stoically through the earpiece. "You need a different approach, pathos won't work on Shego. Or at least — erm — words. Good at using them, not so much listening."
Kim finds the embarrassing tears and crushes them with the back of her glove, forearm rising to wipe off the sweat and goop. "I can do this right?"
"What? Recruit Shego or defeat the evil plant army that's MY idea and so poorly implemented by Demenz and —"
"Drew. Focus."
"Mm."
"I'm talking about Shego. Is it worth trying? I think I got poisoned earlier and I don't know if it's a good idea for me to…."
"You are poisoned. I didn't want to tell you because you were working, but…."
Kim's posture droops. "Great."
"Kimberly Ann, I hate to be a Negative Nancy but this is poor strategy. You're not going to impress Shego by beating people up. Nor will you words. Maybe, if you can get back in there before she — erm — after whatever it is that she does to her 'targets' — perhaps I can Dr. Phil for you two."
Kim raises an eyebrow. "Dr. Phil?"
"Don't tell me you don't know Dr. Phil!"
"Uh — tell me you don't still watch cable television."
"What? People don't watch — what do they watch then?"
"It's streaming platforms all the way, Doctor D."
=KP=
The next scene is just as much of a warzone as the left, but this time Kim's poisoned.
No blue lights this time at least, just plants. But more plants than ever. Vines and stems everywhere, wriggling and writhing with the occasional flash of plasma bleeding through. Kim can hear Dementor yucking up a storm about — something. She's not sure what could possibly be funny given that Shego is schooling his army of plants. Like yes, she's outnumbered but — oooooooh.
It's because resistance is futile. They're not just plants, they're infinite. Like a hydra. Whatever Dementor's doomsday machine is probably has the ability to respawn them lickity split. But Shego's more crash crash boom than nuance. She probably doesn't connect Dementor's laughter to anything other than a personality defect of his. That being he is very annoying, which is true.
Kim narrows her eyes and sees a massive, whirring machine in the back of the throne room. The stones have been stripped from the floor, giving the gadget ample amount of dirt and soil to work with, and if Kim squints, she can see small hints of green tailing under the metal panels. So that's her target.
No matter how depressed the idea makes her, she has to suck it up. Because she is Kim Possible and she actually can do anything. Long as she doesn't overthink things. So she strains her cheeks and forces that grin. It sort of helps. Just a tad.
Ron would want her to smile. She would too.
There's a creak from below and Kim peers down to see the furry head of Monkey Fist passively entering the room. He stands before the whirring mass of green and takes in a deep breath. Big fists start to glow blue and from where Shego's standing, there's no way she can see him. Too much overlap of color.
Meaning like it or not, it's showtime. Kim has to save Shego.
Kim drops down from above, ramming her hands into the back of Monkey Fist's neck, cracking his chin deep into his chest. While he hunches over, she rolls off his back and lands in a sprawled out Look at me! kind of position.
It's a move that yadda yadda won the cheerleaders oy old jokes, yeah?
"KIM POSSIBLE!" Monkey Fist shrieks with such volume that his jowls are set a-quiverin'. He pounds his chest and launches at her. His fists cut through the air, leaving behind burning trails of blue that linger for a few extra seconds before dissipating. Kim backsteps fast, just managing to avoid each swing. She's not stressed because she's smiling, and that jubiliance makes it all look easy.
"Quit monkeying around, Monty," Kim snarks. "I don't have all day."
Monkey Fist's forehead throbs with rage and it's a wonder he was ever even capable of tolerating Ron's loudmouth, considering how bad Kim's jokes are. Get a real punny buy in the room and Monkey Fist would probably have a heart attack. But it's 'kay, Kim'll settle for the undying rage. His fists pick up the pace and while the blue trails don't linger in the air as long now, the swaths of power glow darker.
Kim somersaults back to avoid one particular devastating swing, legs almost snapping out from under her upon landing. She opens her mouth for some other joke, she's actually not quite sure what she'll say yet and it ultimately doesn't matter because Monkey Fist's knuckle cleaves into her jaw. Her whole body shoots up like the bell in a strongman game, another fist coming from above, fist splintering into her eye.
She falls back, now brandishing an impressive shiner. "Nice trick," she spits a gob of blood to the floor. "But I don't think any of the audience members at the circus would laugh at it."
"Eh, that one's a stretch, methinks," Monkey Fist chortles, grabbing her by the scruff of the tunic and lifting her into the air. Things slow down, mostly from Shego's now divided attention; yes, she noticed. She stands as still as a statue, glowing hands only occasionally flying out to smack a rogue plant away.
"You won't harm another hair on her head, Monty," Shego growls.
"Ha, as the youth say: As if," Monkey Fist laughs and though one of his hands is still free, it's an invisible one that throttles by at the throat, knocking her whole body into the air. Her body weighs against the neck, stretching the tendons farther than they should ever go, bone preparing itself to crack. "You'll do nothing to me you welp."
Kim feels the blood rush to her head, but another crack! and the invisible hand whips her to the ground. She hits the ground. Hard. Rolls several feet, shoulder smashing against her collarbone.
Monkey Fist's big square teeth grind against each other. "Nobody makes a fool out of me."
Kim doesn't need to look to know that she's standing between Monty and the doomsday machine. All she needs is to let the show go on. She cranes her neck up even though doing so causes blistering pain. "Don't you mean make a monkey out of me?"
Kim doesn't even get to appreciate the villain's resulting beet red face because an all-consuming blast of blue masks everything. But she does feel a burning in each and every one of her joints, body shooting high into the air and arching into a spiral. She flies far and just as the white floor rushes up to crash into her nose — she feels something tight squeeze into her, body accordioning into itself from whiplash.
Shego slides a hand to the small of Kim's back and leans her up from the teeter totter angle and their noses briefly brush against each other before Kim gently falls onto the floor. A dome of green fire materializes around them, the burning embers overtaking what sounds like an argument rumbling between the two partnered villains —
"Monty, you almost scorched mein evil plant army! Careful!"
"But — but — she called me a monkey!"
— but no more after that, too much going on, like she's in a different room. "These powers are kinda new," Kim drawls.
Shego rolls her eyes. "It's not, I just didn't need to tap into this kind of power back in the old days. Now everyone's going nuts and — "
"You mean going ape," Kim sits back up. "I — "
"No, you're benched, Possible," Shego growls, eyes lingering on Kim's bruised eye longer than usual. "I cannot fight delusional powerhouses like these fools when I have to keep one eye on you to make sure you don't get clobbered. You're out of your league. Go back to babysitting, I don't know what else to tell you."
Kim tries to protest, but the words sputter out and don't mean anything. Not even worth transcribing.
"You are dying, Kim," Shego says without glancing over her shoulder. "We're never going to be friends. So give up. Move on. You're a great kid but — show's over. I'm not burying you."
Kim is too stunned for words, and squints away more tears when Shego dashes off right quick, passing through the flames like it's nothing. Kim's outstretched hand gently closes in on itself the arm retracts back to her torso. A dramatic gesture maybe intended to make her sudden loneliness feel a bit more valid, but instead she just feels feeble. But Kim is not feeble. She's anything but feeble, and she needs to get back in the ring ASAP.
Even if it kills her. But it won't.
With no time to waste, Kim crosses her fingers that Shego isn't actually trying that much harder, and rolls forward. The flames lick her from all over and — oh, so that's what a ten on the pain scale looks like. This is worse than Monty's magic, but is torture, literal torture. She can't think straight, can't process anything else. Her ears ring and when the cold air of the castle room crosses through her, she vaguely sees a yellow blob. It's — keening? Scared — eyes dilated to the extreme, uvula flying like a pendulum.
The green flames pass in front of her and the white hot numbness returns — she kicks Dementor upside the head and conks him out, throwing her body to the ground and rolling against the floor. It takes longer than she'd like but it does the work and kills the fire.
She checks on Shego, cringing and screaming from the pain bubbling all over, and finds Shego going toe-to-toe with Monkey Fist, while also dealing with — no — fending off — the plant monstrosities. Against either party, she'd fare fine, but these are two titans to reckon with. Kim checks the machine puppet mastering the whole plant army and it's definitely too big and too complicated to take out — unless….unless she turns back to Monkey Fist and cups her hands to her mouth and shouts —
"Hey Monty!"
Monkey Fist blinks and he lazily sucker punches Shego to the ground, briefly smiling at the blue light crackling between each of his hairy digits. When he looks up though, he is immediately flabbergasted. "KIM POSSIBLE?!"
"Geez Monty, are you new to this?" Shego rubs the golf-ball sized bump on her head. "Coming back from the dead is kind of her whole bag."
There's a bit of a sneer in that and Kim shrinks a little bit at Shego's glowering, but the green woman is quickly overcome by a renewed army of plants that tear out from the floor beneath her, shoving away the brick and mortar, to drag her deep into the soil. Monkey Fist laughs through his nose and stomps across the hall to Kim.
Kim could easily tick him off all the way from over here, but she's already kind of learned her lesson that maybe getting him to chipshot this isn't such a grand idea. Close-range all the way if we're talking Mystical Monkey Mayhem.
So Kim motions for him to come closer and throws on the appearance of a shout, but really it's a wide-mouthed whisper.
"Do you have any nieces?"
Monkey Fist blinks. "What? Erm. I — " he draws closer. "I didn't quite get that."
"Do you have any nieces?"
He blinks again and lifts a paw to his freakishly large ear, letting it guide him across the floor. "Kim Possible, please speak up. We are in the middle of battle, after all."
She repeats it. But quieter. "Do you have any nieces?"
He shakes his head. "Is this some sort of bit?" He growls and jumps onto all fours, prancing right on up to her, lifting himself back to his full height with fists wedged against his hips. "I am not in the mood for a bit."
"Not a bit," she shrugs, stepping backwards. He doesn't consciously think to follow her, but he does it anyways. "I was asking if you have any nieces."
"Hrm," Monkey Fist scratches his square chin. "Not by blood — though I suppose Bates had a kid a few years back, I suppose I could count their kin as my nephew."
Kim nods, and while she doesn't think her joke is actually that funny, she smiles so wide it hurts. Especially considering the pain. But this is what Kim Possible does. This is how she saves the world. She chuckles between words like a lovable stand-up. "Is your kin by chance — a monkey?"
"What?" Monkey Fist drapes a hand over his head to better itch his forehead. "I don't — understand — monkey?"
"Why you'd be a monkey's uncle then!"
If only there were a little monkey sidekick there to smash some cymbals together, that'd be great. But the joke lands anyways and Monkey Fist goes so red this time his aura actually twists into a sickly violet.
"OOOOOOOOOH!" he screams and lunges at her, waves of power emanating from his fists; this is strength he doesn't even know. Otherwise he wouldn't be getting so up close and personal about this. But his fists lash out like an excited kid playing whack-a-mole and it sets Kim at a fast enough pace that's she actually a little worried about running backwards so quickly.
One particularly devastating kick flies up like Charlie Brown screwing up and eating dirt instead of football, and Kim has to somersault back to avoid it. She lands on top of the doomsday machine with all four limbs splayed out, taking on the sort of stance that's more Ron's scene. Monkey Fist's kick lodges itself directly into the metal and sparks fly.
Kim laughs and quickly kicks off her boots, letting her bare feet hook toes around loose nuts and bolts to better hold her balance. She then looks straight down at Monkey Fist and giggles, "Well look at that! Monkey see, monkey do, huh?"
Monkey Fist screams and flips upwards, somersaulting up the metal after her. She flips back, landing on top of the machine just as Monkey Fist shoots over her, momentarily gripping the bricks in the wall so that he can better direct a dropkick onto her person. But no magical aura this time, just pure monkey.
Kim blanks.
She wants to make a cheerleading joke because those are honestly some stellar flips — and she's been thinking of replacing some people on Harvard's cheer team (yes, two months in and she's already captain). But she knows she should stick to monkey gags and then Monkey Fist's two bare feet slam her in the chest, big and wide enough to dig into her whole form and she falls clean off the machine and hits the ground.
Before she can even get up, Monkey Fist is before her. He lifts her by the front of her tunic and smashes her body up against the machine and flashes a smirk so gnarled that it fully exposes one of his deadly canines. "You thought you could fool me, Kim Possible?! Ha! You act as if I am a rank amateur! Perhaps if you were my hated arch-foe, Ron Stoppable, you'd be more clever with your jokes but I, I am an educated man who comes with wealth, prestige, and a Master's in Primatology from Oxford! You will never be smarter than me, nor will you ever be stronger."
Monkey Fist gives her the once over. Bleeding foot, black eyes, scratched up all over, crazy burns….but not quite enough for his tastes so he punches her in the face, almost hard enough to knock her loose, but his grip is too tight for that.
"Looks like I win!" he chortles.
Kim tries as hard as she can to resist the burn in her neck and looks up, though it appears like her head's balancing on a slinky. "What's your damage with Ron, Monty? It's like he's a chimp on your shoulder."
Monkey Fist blinks and grinds Kim deeper into the metal. "The boy is not a chip on my shoulder — for I am the all-powerful…."
"Ah," Kim crawls, sliding her hands up against her face. "Monkey see no pun, monkey hear no pun…."
"Wh-what?" Monkey Fist sputters. "Pun — what?"
Kim's face falls. "Hello? Chimp on your shoulder?"
Monkey Fist blinks. Ties together a few stray thoughts and screams at the top of his lungs, darting in for the kill but Kim's legs roll up into his stomach and swing up and over, smashing him against the machine. She hits the ground first and he stumbles after her, sparks beginning to spiral around him.
"You think you'll get me to destroy my own machine, Possible? Don't be ridiculous."
Monkey Fist draws closer. Kim checks for Shego to make sure she's hanging in there — and she's not. There's just too many monsters for her take on at once. Maybe she's still thrashing, but it's a dogpile to overcome.
Kim crouches down, mostly from her draining energy, and glares ahead. "Monty, do you know where Ron Stoppable is?"
Monkey Fist snorts, so Kim fills in the blanks. "He's taking down terrorists of whom you don't even know, of whom I don't even know, because my security clearance isn't that high. See, Ron only takes on the A-Level."
"Tsch," he flashes his canines again. "I am a solid A. They'll all see that soon."
Kim steadily backs away, bare heel sliding against the rim of stone. She stays there and Monkey Fist's big feet steadily sink into the soil, the sparks still alive. His whole frame quavers with raw power and she grins.
"No, they won't. Because you're B-Level. These guys Ron takes out? They're serious. They're organized. They don't throw temper tantrums at bad jokes."
Something in Monkey Fist stifles and she's knows it's getting to him. If even just a little. But this isn't enough so she keeps pushing.
"Well," he leans in as if balancing on a cane. "I have superpowers. Surely, that bumps me up. I'm just — insecure — is all."
"Mm," she bites her lip and widens her tance. Any second he might blast her. But he's not mature enough for that. "Yeah, it's the only thing keeping you from the D-List. You have powers. I do too. It's why I'm a B-Lister."
"You," he snorts. "You have powers?"
"Yes, it's called never giving up."
"I don't think that constitutes for much," the sparks redirect around him, slowly angling themselves to rip from his muscles where they have a better vantage point to obliterate the teenager. "I hit you one more time and you're out for good, Kim Possible. So choose your next words wisely."
"Okay — a promise then. I'm not gonna lay a finger on you and still take you out. You'll go to jail but don't worry Monty: I'm B-Squad, I don't stand a chance against you. So we won't fight, but you will lose, and when they haul you off, you're going to look me in the eye and despite all the power you've smacked me with, I'm going to smile."
"Oh," he mock shudders. "I'll make sure you don't smile."
"Tsch." Kim tries not to ler her eyes linger on the sparks licking the soil. She tries to brace herself for something incredibly painful. "You know I heard that monkeys can get time shaved off their sentences if they volunteer to be shot into space."
Monkey Fist roars (predictable) and the sparks flare up, slicing into the soil and with that — every single root protruding from the machine, all burned off in one fell swoop. Kim hears the terrible, inhuman death calls disturb and splinter her ears, each bulb crashing to the ground like a fallen tree. But the sparks swirl together and rush at Kim in a haze and even in her most peak physical condition — no mortal can withstand that.
But she can yadda yadda do anything whatever. You get it.
The blue light cascades at her and Monkey Fist cackles with laughter — that is until his sparks not only kill the plants, but travel up the stems like dynamite fuses, all the way back to the machine they spawned from and — well — ka-boom. An earth shattering ka-boom.
The machine blasts apart and the resulting explosion nails Monkey Fist in the back.
So it's the two of them that go soaring, one after the other. Kim, scorched to a crisp, hits the floor first. Monkey Fist lands besides her and despite all the Mystical Monkey Power resting in him, Kim is the one that's still conscious.
She can't hear a damned thing, but there's a white shadow with triangular dimensions hovering above her face, chastising her over….something obvious probably. Their voice is harsh but it's the touch that betrays them, the way her finger so gently scoops Kim's face upwards. Twin green lights plume in the air and Kim realizes that it's Shego.
"Hi," Kim rasps.
"Kimmie…" Shego stutters. She must have just said a lot and Kim almost feels sorry she missed it, but that intense Kimmie kinda collectivizes it all together pretty well.
"I know," Kim coughs. "But now you know you don't have to worry about me on the field."
Kim's limp wrist doesn't support that claim, nor her watering eyes. "But you don't really care about that right? You trust me enough. You're just scared of being my friend, right?"
It catches in Kim's throat when Shego lifts Kim up and slings her chin over her shoulder, face burying deep into Kim's shoulder.
"I'm not scared," Shego mutters, her voice like crystals. "I don't know how I feel."
Kim looks at her very seriously. "Shego — I'm sorry I was mean about you being a hit-man now. But you don't have to do that work. I don't know what damage you carry and you don't have to tell me but I want you to take this seriously. Please. Please please please. Work with me, Drakken, and Wade. We're not just going to save the world, we're going to have fun."
Shego's jaw lowers because she's obviously not used to someone asking her that. It dangles long before she finds something typical of her personality to use as a retort, but it's just not there, so she wipes her eyes. "I can't believe you committed that hard to the monkey bit. Honestly though, you peaked really early in. Like seriously Princess, it's called a tight-five for a second."
Kim laughs way harder than she should and it's embarrassing, but it's okay because it's been one of those missions.
A man in a blue coat click-clacks into the battlefield, notebook in hand. Green fire erupts in Shego's eyes and she shoves Kimie off. "What do you want, Doc?!"
"Oh, I," Drakken bites his lip and checks the room. "Good — good job here. Erm. I'm going to Dr. Phil for you two so you can get through this conundrum."
"Ew, Doc. Dr. Phil?" Shego raises an eyebrow.
Kim whispers in Shego's ear. "Drakken doesn't know about streaming platforms."
Shego's eyebrow goes even higher. "Not even Netflix?"
Drakken's dry lips find themselves suddenly incapable. He just stands there.
"Also read the room, Drew," Kim coughed. "Me and Shego made up. She's part of the team, and tonight we're gonna introduce you to online serialized television!"
"But I — "
"Do you have an account?" Shego asks Kim seriously, who shakes her head in response. "Well, since we're doing you a solid, Doctor D, you'll be paying the subscription fees."
"Sub-subscription?"
Kim grins. "Monthly."
He looks between the two of them. "Is it too late for me to change my vote to No, let's not invite Shego?"
Kim and Shego say it together. "Objection sustained."
“I mean it, Ron,” Kim straightens her posture and rests her elbows on her knees. “You could be a comedian, you’re like, seriously so funny, my jaw hurts right now from laughing so much.”
Ron laughs, because he’s still got one more giggle in him, and wipes some happy tears from his face. “Thanks, Kim. That means a lot. Uh, I mean—me? As a comedian? Nah, I’d rather just be your sidekick, you know and—”
“Partner,” Kim corrects. “You’re my partner, okay? I’m gonna start correcting people too.”
It’s the dumbest shit—seriously.
But it’s also kinda one of the happiest moments out of Kim’s fifteen years alive.
Drakken has been really into videos lately, which is always fun because he’s like, so bad at it. He’s done evil plan announcement videos out of focus, out of frame, out of sync, you name it, he’s botched it. This week he didn’t even send the full video, it cuts off as he’s about to name the day Shego will rob this stupid lab in Chicago.
All Team Possible has to go off of is that they know it’s going down this week.
Which means Kim and Ron have to do a stakeout. Really, the two of them should do shifts so the other can get rest without losing eyes on Shego. But neither of them want to do that, so they have Wade run the daytime surveillance.
Kim gigglesnorts and crumples in to the lip of the roof, spilling canned soda onto the brittle stone ground.
Ron laughs along with her, arms waving around as he tries to imitate this scene from Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. “Yeah, so like, you got this guy hanging off the plane and he’s shouting,” Ron bends his neck down and whisper-shouts. “ Benji! Open the door! ”
Kim smiles and draws her knees up to her chest.
“And Benji’s hitting all these buttons, and uh,” Ron taps away at the air, working up a furious sweat. “And he can’t read the thing because it’s in Russian or whatever, and everyone’s yelling at him, Benji open the door aaaah !” And finally he finds a button and he clicks it and the thing opens and…” He slows down, looking at Kim eagerly. “Go on, guess.”
Kim looks around as if he’d be asking someone else. “Oh, um, um, I don’t know, I don’t watch many movies. The door opens?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll learn,” Ron pats her on the head like a child and it makes her laugh so hard. “It’s the wrong door!” He gestures his arms wide and it makes Kim laugh again. She thinks she might be crying. “And Tom Cruise is like actually holding onto this actual airplane that’s up in the sky, like it’s not a special effect, and he’s screaming THAT’S THE WRONG DOOR and—”
Ron bursts into giggles himself and falls backwards with a loud thud! “It’s a great movie, Kim, I’d be down to rewatch it with you.”
That does sound really nice. Kim giggles again and stares at him, and he’s looking at her with so much affection . “I’d love to, Ron.”
And boy, does her saying that make him smile. From ear to ear. “Oh, God, Kim, and there’s this other scene—”
“Wait,” Kim holds a hand out. “Don’t tell me.”
Ron raises an eyebrow in confusion.
“You, uh, have a tendency to overhype some stuff,” Kim says and Ron blanches. Immediately, all of the warmth in Kim’s chest goes cold and she feels frigid and awful. “Shoot, I’m sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, I meant like…”
Ron eyes her carefully, still frowning.
Kim snaps her fingers, hoping it’ll accelerate her brain, which it doesn’t. “Um, so I haven’t told you this before, I don’t think, but I’m not very good at imagining things. But the way you explain things, it’s so… elaborate. And vibrant. I can see everything and um,” she bites her lip. “Sometimes I think you’re funnier than the things you’re explaining to me, Ron.”
It takes a second for that to process with Ron and wow he blushes so hard. “Oh, well, uh, heh heh…”
“I mean it, Ron,” Kim straightens her posture and rests her elbows on her knees. “You could be a comedian, you’re like, seriously so funny, my jaw hurts right now from laughing so much.”
Ron laughs, because he’s still got one more giggle in him, and wipes some happy tears from his face. “Thanks, Kim. That means a lot. Uh, I mean—me? As a comedian? Nah, I’d rather just be your sidekick, you know and—”
“ Partner, ” Kim corrects. “You’re my partner, okay? I’m gonna start correcting people too.”
Ron doesn’t understand what Kim sees in him. Sometimes he thinks it’s all just some big joke, and that one day Ashton Kutcher is going to come out with the Punk’d crew and Kim will laugh and laugh and laugh and he’ll cry.
He’s dead worthless. He can’t fight, he can’t be trusted to do anything complicated, and he’s just generally really stupid.
Kim is perfect. He can’t even believe that they’re friends. To this day. He just… doesn’t understand.
He just wants her to be happy. To be safe. She’s so cruel to herself, he knows she’s really hurting and half the time she’s smiling it’s just so she can put on a show, so that no one will worry about her.
God, she thinks he could be a comedian? That’s such a Kim thing to say.
He’s sure she only said it so he wouldn’t feel so bad for making so many bad jokes.
He loves her though. Always has, always will.
Kim gets her great, horrible idea as the hotel clerk slinks up to the front desk, and Kim blushes so hard because it’s so embarrassing. She knows she should ask Ron if it’s okay, but she’s… scared.
The clerk looks down at the two of them “Hello, how can we help you?”
Kim blushes even harder, and Ron raises an eyebrow.
“Can we…” Kim says softly and stares at the desk instead of the clerk. She swallows, summons up some courage, and looks up. “...have a room for two? One bed, please and thank you.”
If Ron were a cartoon character, his jaw would drop off its hinges.
“Um,” Kim recovers fast. “But can you charge us for two rooms?”
And she holds out her parents’ credit card. Her parents would be ferociously peeved with her if they found out what she was up to.
The clerk rolls their eyes knowingly; they probably aren’t supposed to do what Kim just asked, but they seem to understand. It takes a few minutes after that, Kim thought they would just pay and go, but apparently they have to set up a tab instead. Because there might be extra fees for room service and stuff.
(Usually Wade takes care of any travel/itinerary strugs.)
Ron completely loses focus and stares off into the distance. Into the deepest, darkest existential dread, his heart pounding.
They walk to the hotel room in silence. Until they get to the door.
Kim holds her hand towards the door knob, only to reel her hand back right away. “Hey, um, wanna get food? I’m hungry.”
Ron scratches his neck, kinda eager to just get to the point and figure out what Kim is doing. “You don’t want to do room service? I’m kinda down, never done that before.”
“It’s too expensive,” Kim shakes her head. “I know it’s my parents’ money, but I’d feel guilty.” She waits a second. “Plus there’s a Bueno Nacho near here!”
Ron smiles. “You always know how to make me say Yes to things, KP.”
Kim doesn’t understand what it is Ron sees in her that makes him want to do these crazy fucking missions.
Sometimes she gets scared, and she thinks maybe Ron is a plant. Like he’s some dude hired to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed so that no one ever gets in any legal trouble.
If that’s the case, he’s really good at it.
Ron has saved the world more times than he seems to consciously understand. He’s tricked villains, made perfect distractions… Hell, sometimes she gets so tied up with Shego that it’s Ron who thwarts Drakken.
She loves him.
She wouldn’t want to do Team Possible if he weren’t around. He makes it fun, he makes the neverending nightmare seem like some silly adventure. He keeps her calm. He makes sure she isn’t lonely.
And what does she do for him?
Nothing. She’s obsessed with the missions. She has a really hard time talking about non-mission things when she’s just hanging out at him. She used to have hobbies and interests, but now it’s just Team Possible. She’s a machine.
When she gets home from school on a rare day where she hasn’t heard anything from Wade, she just sort of lays in bed and stares at the ceiling, waiting for her Kimmunicator to go off.
She’s a loser. People just don’t see it because she’s pretty.
But Ron will figure it out soon enough, but even then, she doubts she’ll ever stop loving him.
Kim shuts the lights off and blue moonlight trails into the room, running across her face. Ron stands at the opposite end of the bed, in front of one of the curtains. She can’t see his face really, the light behind him frames his body like a rimlight, the rest of his body cloaked in silhouette.
He’s nervous, she is too. She thinks he knows what he wants.
She doesn’t want to talk about it, she really hopes he doesn’t ask anything. But she needs consent. Because maybe she’s misreading him. Maybe he doesn’t want this. Maybe she suffers more than him because she’s so weak.
Ron steps forward and the light shifts to his face, and he looks… grim.
“Ron,” Kim says carefully, her voice and cadence soft. “I, um… feel like an adult most days, and, um…”
“Oh geez,” Ron whispers out loud by accident. He immediately covers his mouth. “Oops, um, sorry! I didn’t—uh—heheh…” He pinches his turtleneck and pulls it away from his flesh. “Awkwaaaaard.”
Kim gigglesnorts, and then promptly covers her mouth too because gigglesnorting is embarrassing as fuck. “No, I don’t mean it like that… heh. I, um, I just… I feel like… we’re supposed to pretend. To be older. For like, other people.”
Ron drops the goofy guy act as he realizes that Kim is getting awful serious.
(Kim is always serious about the missions, and about Ron’s personal growth & development. Never about herself, she makes more sacrifices than anyone he knows.)
“A-and I don’t know, I’m sorry if this is like, weird,” Kim pulls at her hair anxiously, and subconsciously steps backwards, sinking away into the dark. “I just, I really liked the time we spent together and I’m sorry, I should have asked if you’d be okay with it, I just don’t—want to be alone right now.” She closes her mouth, and looks back up at Ron. “I want to keep this going. D-do you understand?”
Ron thinks about that, and he… sorta feels the same way, too. Hell, he loves Kim. It’s the only reason he does this. Because he cares so deeply for her and he doesn’t want to fuck off to sleep in some other room alone when it doesn’t have to be that way.
Kim and him do everything together. Why not this?
The glimmer in Kim’s eyes shifts and she seems really focused.
And somehow he picks up exactly what it is that she’s been too afraid to say out loud, so he turns away from Kim and pulls off his black sweater.
“Oh geez,” Kim grunts and turns away in a panic, grabbing the hem to her crop top.
Ron snorts. “Too true, KP. Too true.”
She snorts right back; he always knows how to make her laugh.
It doesn’t take her long to strip, it just feels… weird. And cold. The room is a lot colder than she figured it would be. She wants to just dive under the blankets and stay there, but simultaneously, it feels wrong to just leave her clothes on the floor. Should she fold them? She isn’t sure what adults usually do in this sort of situation.
Her skin from head to toe erupts in goosebumps from the chill and Kim promptly makes up her mind. Without turning to look at Ron, she backpedals and drops her hip onto the bed. Carefully, she lifts the corner of the comforter and drags it over her thigh. Shivering, she lifts her knee and slides her other leg in, and presses her palms into the mattress. She kicks her legs out and lowers herself under the blankets. It’s warm here.
A quiet ploomph from the other side assures her that Ron is doing something of the same.
She turns over to her side to look at him and there is still a little bit of distance between them. Ron looks at her, eyes wide and shining, and then he laughs. She laughs back. It is kind of silly to be so vulnerable so suddenly.
“Stay there,” she whispers. “But um, turn the oth-other way.”
“Okay.”
Kim furrows her brow and shimmies her body across the mattress, careful to keep herself covered. She’s never slept naked before, nor has she ever shared a bed with someone.
It’s a lot of sensations at once. Her skin gliding over bunched up sheets. Soft blankets falling on naked limbs. Warm touching her whole body. And the occasionally bounce in the mattress as Ron flips onto his side, away from Kim.
She slides in behind him. They’re the same height, and their bodies fit in well together. Her knee presses against the back of his leg, and her arms wrap around his body. Her chin presses against his narrow shoulder.
“Is… is this okay?” she squeaks.
“Mm,” he hums.
They lay there for some time.
Ron’s skin is much softer than hers. Plusher. She can sink her fingers in deeper than she can with her own body, which is taut with muscle, aside from the occasional baby fat that’s still waiting to get pubertied away.
She wonders if she should feel more nervous.
Ron’s skin on hers is so much, and she blushes as she wonders how he must feel, since he can probably feel more of her than the other way around, since she’s, um, the big spoon. The blankets trap so much heat in with them, and Ron’s body radiates warm. The stark change in temperature makes Kim sweat at first, but soon after it comes to her she calms down.
“Sorry I’m so cold,” she says gently, voice tinkling like a drizzle of raindrops battering a tin roof.
“Huh? Kim you’re like super warm,” Ron whispers. “It must be me, sorry. I’m always kinda—”
“No you’re warm too,” she whispers back and relaxes, trying her best to nix the tension in her shoulders so she can just be there with him.
“I love you,” her voice fades away as she drifts off to sleep.
it’s horrific. awful way to die. either you’re trapped with no chance of being found, air running out, everyone around you suffocating, or the hull is broken and you get turned to jelly by the crushing ocean depths. ik they’re billionaires so it’s very contentious for me. generally i prefer no one dies horrifically. like just as a fellow human being on earth. but i dont think the ultra rich ever extend that mindset to others. climate refugees. and just everything. it feels like something a greek god would do to punish them. it has a certain swagful je ne sais quoi if removed from the human suffering which billionaires have to do philosophically to maintain their positions. very haunting. the hubris of it all. old jalopy metal tube steered by a mad catz controller. to go look at the titanic. which is nothing but a rusted out metal wreck full of fish and silt. btw. the grandiosity of it is completely unrecognizable. one has to wonder what compels ppl to even look at it in the first place. like the prestige of seeing some filthy grown over shell? crazy thing to die for. very textually rich… bad way to die as a human being. great way to die as a narrative about human greed and folly i guess. good job. mission accomplished?
In All the Gin Joints in All the World, He Asks For Coco Moo
"Ah, I'm fuming, Sheila," Drew explains as if that is a very normal hobby. "You remember my arch-foe, James Possible?"
She snorts. Arch-foe. Dumb. "Yes," she chuckles.
"This is his daughter," he growls and then says in an annoyingly shrill voice, "She can do anything!"
"Uh huh," she laughs. "Bitter much?"
i. try the coco moo. it's soothing.
You meet the most interesting characters working late nights in Go City. Weekdays especially. That's what draws out the real sad sacks.
She almost laughs at this Poindexter the second he saunters into her bar. Body so thin and springy, he wobbles like a penguin with each kick of the squeaky shoe. His glasses are unflattering at best, crooked and likely snatched from an old man just trying to read his paper in the park. And God — that suit! Navy blue sport coat with a clip-on bowtie from a party supply store.
Poindexter looks so oblivious looking over the seedy tavern with beady eyes, so it surprises her when his voice scratches like a dog bark and he slouches into the bar and spits, "Appletini. More on the apple, less on the tini and in separate glasses please."
She groans and leans towards him. "Uh huh. Well you know what they pay me for, right?"
He shakes his oblong head. "I'm unfamiliar. A genius like me spends most of their time at coffee shops and libraries, not riff-raff like this, but my dear, it has been a day."
Ah, his braggadocio brings out the nasally underpinnings to his deep voice.
"Uh huh," she drawls. "Cool backstory. Anyways, I'm paid to put a lot of apple and a little bit o' tini into a metal shaker and shakey-shake 'em. Then I give it to you. If you're gonna be a fussy cuss, you can just buy the full bottles and I'll give you your own glass and shaker."
The man scratches his chin — wow, his fingers are like a baby's. So tiny she's surprised they can even bend. "Mm, I would — but then Mother would call me and ask why I spent so much on a bottle of tini."
"Your mother?!"
"Mm yes — well — it's my account — she just — erm — has access to it…" he grumbles and his cheeks glow like mulberries.
"It's not actually called tini by the way but alright," she smirks and slides three glasses over to him. Apple, tini, and whatever Poindexter whatever proportions Poindexter wants it to become. "Closed or open tab?"
"Depends — do you have Coco Moo?"
"What?"
"Nyrgh. Closed tab."
He hands her his debit card and while she doesn't do this for everyone — she sneaks a peekaboo at the name because he's just so much. She needs a name to her pain. "Andrew Lipsky?"
"Yes," his eyes nervously scroll elsewhere. "But if you want to see my work, you can internet my pseudonym: Doctor Drakken!"
Internet my name — what the flip is this guy talking about? She almost asks but spots some regulars somehow managing to jam their entire party of four through the same door frame at once. Ugh. She hands the card back to Poindexter and winds up getting slammed with a rush.
Poindexter gets aggravated early into the rush (it's very noisy) and slaps his notebook shut, leaving behind a very specific clump of cash as a tip. When she has time for it, she counts it off and finds that it's a perfect 15%.
Huh.
ii. to prove that i'm brillianter than the lot of them
If you asked her why exactly he likes her joint so much, she could not even fake a response. But Poindexter struts in every night, at least every night she works. She's a part-timer after all. Monday through Thursday, eight to two thirty AM with one half hour break at eleven. All her other weekday time is devoted to studying — she's a sophomore at Go City U — paying through the nose to get herself a teaching degree so she doesn't need a side hustle anymore.
Well — her weekend life isn't really a side hustle. Her dumb lummox of a brother calls it that — she calls it a charity case. She's actually not that into it — crime fighting that is — but she does have superpowers and regrettably loves violence — so it'd be weird if she wasn't out there saving the world.
It's just part time anywho.
Her big brother though? He wants her to quit the bartending gig and drop out of college because duh um Shego! the city needs you blagh gurmp I'm really stupid. So not happening. Unlike her brothers who never questioned their reality, she has direction. She studies hard and works for those tips because one day — she's blowing this joint. No more superhero antics for her.
God, she's a freakin' superhero. That'll never roll right off the tongue. But yep, she's got the key to the city and everything. You already know who she is. The moody green one from Team Go. And she's the only one with her head on straight. Mego, Wego, Hego — God, she can't believe she let them call her Shego.
To be fair, her pitches — Fuckgo, Shitgo, Pissgo — though brilliant names, were a little juvenile and she should have known better.
iii. the traditional captive - captor relationship
Poindexter ends up being such a character. Beyond that pocket protectin' exterior — he is committed to being a regular at this bar, though he still hasn't decided on his drink yet. But he always ventures to see if the bar has introduced Coco Moo yet, the answer always being no.
So every night is a new concoction. Even an apple with only a bit o' tini is too much for the guy to stomach. She doesn't get what the appeal is for him but he always shows up, and he always sits in the same seat and takes up three other stools with his backpack and binders.
When she has time, she hears him out. He loves the sound of his own voice and over time, his rants become an anthology of all the times that people laughed him out of something. Like the time the kids laughed him off the four square court. Or the time he got laughed off stage in a high school performance of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Or the time James Possible laughed him out of college.
Yes, yes. James Possible. She has no idea who that schlub is but he comes up a lot. James Possible this and James Possible that, ugh. She starts to hate James Possible too, if only for making a neat bookends to Poindexter's pathetic life of rejection.
It's about a month into him coming to her bar that he officially becomes a regular. He struts in as always and her coworker elbows her in the ribs. "God, I hate that guy," the coworker growls. "He never fucking tips."
Huh. Weird.
She doesn't know what to say because whenever she serves him, Drew tips a solid 25%.
iv. fo'sheezy it's off the heezy
It's not every night you come out from the kitchen and find that your favorite customer has turned blue, and yet here we are.
He doesn't even seem stressed out about it. No, he's just leafing through the drink menu as always, trying to find something (that regrettably isn't Coco Moo) that could possibly give him some semblance of happiness.
She almost wonders if he's even noticed his new look but she knows she should give him more credit, so she hangs in the back kitchen for a little bit until she can think of a joke. Because something about him being blue is making her anxious, she is so not coming out until she can properly defuse the whole thing.
After ten minutes, she decides to go with the first joke she came up with, even though that now feels stale and disingenuine. But she sells it as an off-the-cuff gag when she leans in and snarks, "Wow. Violet Beauregarde over here, huh?"
Drew looks over his glasses and slides them back up. "Ha ha. And that's not a funny ha ha...but, — mhrm, it is a funny story. You see — it was a Tuesday…"
She rolls her eyes. "Eh, I'm good on storytime." Drew's smile falters and for a moment he actually seems disappointed. But no — he loves it when she kicks his teeth in like that. It's probably because his mom was too nice to him.
There's a quick flush of lime across her own cheeks but she tosses it off. "By the way, I have a surprise for you."
"A surprise?" he licks his lips.
She holds up two fingers and retreats back to the kitchen, already biting her lip. She really doesn't want to go through with this but it's too late now. There's a simmering pot of homemade hot chocolate waiting for her — or rather, him.
She's embarrassed to say but she actually came in early to prepare this: two cups of whole milk, a quarter cup of sugar, two tablespoons of cocoa powder, a cup of chocolate chips, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and a cinnamon stick. Simmering for hours with the occasional stir. She used the extra time to power through her homework much to the chagrin of the kitchen staff but no one dared give her any lip — she was scary as Hell after all.
She pops out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs in hand and slides one in front of Drew. His gasp of joy ("COCO MOO?!") is so endearingly shrill she can't help but stare as he slurps the drink all over his face. His eyes shine as his lips purse inward, a chocolate mustache spread across his apelike maw. He leans in and raises an eyebrow to her and very cooly says three words that shake her to the core. "You do care."
She fails to fight off an authentic smile and sits across him. They clink mugs and bottoms up.
v. i'm going to open up a can of freak on all of you
Aviarius is always up to some nonsense. Bird Boy says he's taking over the world but she can never quite make the connection as to how his actions will tangibly lead to absolute, infallible power. Hego says that's because she has no imagination, but really it's because their arch-foe is dumber than a sack of bricks. But Hego won't hear it. Dude's positively convinced that Aviarius is Public Enemy #1.
But will her brother kill the dastardly foe? No, of course not. Moral high ground and all that. Hego has all the power in the world and uses it for — what exactly? Sure, big man likes to pin the baddie to the ground and lecture him on the differences between right and wrong — but...big picture?
That's nothing.
Aviarius is deluded to think that he'll actually conquer the world. There's a few months where she's pretty sure he's in on the joke — but no he's dead serious. He's as career about this as Hego.
So every Sunday morning Aviarius pops up and robs a bank acting like this is it — his big break. And Hego takes it so seriously, and of course Team Go downs the bird once again and locks him up in the pokey. Yet somehow the cops are dumber than the villains and Aviarius flies again.
And Hego is scandalized! Aviarius boasts and brags as if a prison escape actually means something nowadays — though it's the equivalent of climbing out of the baby crib.
God, is there anyone in this city with two brain cells to rub together?
So she does something a little — ah — morally iffy? She — erm — she sabotages a classic Aviarius caper. Yes, she lets him get away. Because fuck it, why not. Possible change in the routine, and an opportunity for Hego to understand how fruitless this rivalry is.
"My Gods," Hego is shaken to the core as he watches Aviarius' silhouette dissolve in the sunlight. "We — we failed the planet. Team Go. We must not rest until we stop Aviarius. It could be this very moment that the mad man takes over the world."
She rolls her eyes and grabs her brother's burly shoulder. "Hey."
"Oh don't give me that look Shego!" Hego growls. "You'll see! You'll be talking about him in your political science class tomorrow! The ramifications of what it's like to live under a totalitarian mastermind!"
"Hego!" her voice catches in her throat. Are they really doing this right now? "Aviarius is an idiot who ran off with a big bag of money but guess what? Everyone knows his ugly mug! You think he can go around spending any of that? No! Chill. Out."
Hego makes to say something but instead sniffles. His bulking frame folds in on itself and he storms off.
Guess not. Today's not the day it implodes. She feels the metaphorical blood dripping from her mouth and wishes there was more of a smackdown in her town….
She feels bad — watching the Big Kahuna drag a thick arm across his nosey-wosey to wipe away the tears and snot. This is actually her fault after all. She sabotaged the mission and now she's starting to wonder what possibly motivated her to allow that.
It's just — petty. She's petty and has some work to do.
vi. ah, my teenage foe
It's been a month since Aviarius' hollow victory and surprise surprise — nothing of any significance happens. Except Coco Moo is officially added to the menu at the bar. While the drink is obviously cheaper than anything else on the menu, Poindexter tips tremendous percentages that mirror the money she used to get off him when he was weaning into over-priced self-destruction.
But this night — the game changes a little. Poindexter doesn't have much to talk about and in fact, he hasn't even brought his notebooks; his backpack is still strapped tight to his blazer.
This is the first night he asks for the Wi-Fi password and it take her a few minutes to actually find it somewhere in the employee handbook. He spends hours pouring over his laptop, tossing headphones on when the late night riff raff storms in to make a ruckus. She tries to make small talk with him but he merely grumbles indecipherable words like "Uhrm...nyrgh…" so she gives it a rest until her lunch break.
Ever since she started working here, she used her lunch breaks to go out for a smoke break and fit in some reading for school — and even though finals are coming up — she uses the half hour to slide onto the stool besides Drew. But he's too focused to even notice her, so she peers over his shoulder.
Kim Possible: She Can Do Anything!
She raises an eyebrow and looks over the site. It's some twelve year old cheerleader who is apparently saving the world with this dumb looking kid and his naked mole rat. Also available for babysitting gigs?
Weird.
The name too. Kim Possible. Why does that sound familiar?
"Yo, Doctor D!" she finally says.
Drew yelps and turns to face her, his blush is purple now because of the perma-blue skin. Super weird but she's also used to it. "Um...hello Sheila."
"You're not using our Wi-Fi to look at porn are you?"
"Huh? No! Wh—what is porn actually? Perhaps I am using it for that…"
She stares at him for so long and he doesn't even flinch, so she is forced to put a pin on that and steam ahead. "Don't worry about it. But um...seriously, what are you doing?"
"Ah, I'm fuming, Sheila," Drew explains as if that is a very normal hobby. "You remember my arch-foe, James Possible?"
She snorts. Arch-foe. Dumb. "Yes," she chuckles.
"This is his daughter," he growls and then says in an annoyingly shrill voice, "She can do anything!"
"Uh huh," she laughs. "Bitter much?"
Drew's face drops and he blushes. "Well my hubbub with James was a formative experience for me and to see his daughter do so well — out of sheer luck at that — "
He grumbles some other things but she stays hung up on the sheer luck part because that's a weird thing to say. So she asks him about it.
"Mm," Drew pauses and purses his lips. "I have a theory — see — this site is called kimpossible.com yes? Well — there's also impossible.com — for Team Impossible — you've heard of them I trust?"
Is it weird for a bartender to have heard of Team Impossible? Maybe? But of course she knows them and fuck it, she actually likes Drew so she tells the truth and nods. Strange she has to mull that over for so long, usually she's more knee-jerk in conversations, but something about Drew makes her want to be careful. Because this friendship might actually mean something one day.
Drew goes on to explain his theory that Kim Possible's first contact was actually trying to reach out to Team Impossible but made a typo...fascinating stuff really. Makes sense too, it's just one letter off.
But she can't stop thinking about Team Impossible…see, it was a week ago that she met them; it was for an interview. She likes their style, this whole capitalist heroism angle. Charging people for their services. Makes sense. The lack of a paycheck is why she can't stomach taking time for Team Go anymore. Freakin' bartending at minimum wage pays the bills. Not superhero antics. Those don't do her any favors. Hego refuses to accept any payment. Because of morals.
What freakin' ever.
Team Impossible turn her down though. They give her some corporate schlock about how their team isn't a good fit for her but she sees right through them; the boys' club just doesn't want to split the cut with her. Well. Okay. They will rue the day they — ugh. She's starting to internally rant like Doctor D.
By the end of the conversation, she's actually proud of Little Kimmie for knocking Team Impossible down a peg. But on the flippity, she hates this brat because once again, a hero who doesn't accept payment is storming the scene and that makes it harder for gals like her….
Gals who just want to put a roof over their head.
vii. has society gone completely to seed
She hates ceremonies — like, she already accomplished the thing, why does she have to show off? It's done. She's not a student anymore, she's alumni. Summa cum laude baby.
And see — now she's annoyed. She wouldn't have been annoyed if she didn't have to doll up for this dumb thing but guess what? She paid for extra tickets and guess who decided not to come anyways? Ah-yup-yup. There's an empty metal chair with a reserved sign over it. She's not stupid; she can tell that the Wegos duplicated themselves to fill out their row.
God fucking damn you Hego.
Among the black storm of everyone throwing tasseled caps in the air she peaces out. Enough is enough. "Where is he?" she growls at Mego.
Mego throws his hands up. "Listen, I don't want a fight right now — how about we just take you out and celebrate?"
"No. Where. Is. He?"
Mego looks aside and grumbles something. Sounds like Aviarius. Unfuckingbelievable. She snarls and spits. "Fuck him," she says coldly. "Seriously. Fuck him."
"I know, he's being a bit of a bonehead — " Mego starts to say.
" — a bit?"
"Okay, a lot of bonehead, I dunno," Mego shrugs. "Fuck, don't take it out on me. Listen if you want to fight let's just do it and get it over with, okay? You can yell and scream all you want right now, but when we're done we're going out — and we're not gonna talk about this — and we're gonna get fucked up. It'll be fun."
There's a long pause. "Should we go home?" the Wegos ask together.
"Yes," she and Mego say together.
After the twins depart, Mego looks her right in the eye. "Hego wants you to exchange your college hours for Team Go hours — "
" — no. I've already committed that time to the bar."
"To the bar?" Mego doesn't mean to sound judgmental but oho — he's really going through the motions of it. "I thought you wanted to be a teacher."
"Yes — what?! It's my job you ass — just because you decided to freeload in Go Tower and not worry about actually trying — you know what? Fuck it. I don't care."
It's not the first time a conversation between them has gone like this, and it's not the last, so Mego doesn't bother. They part ways and she feels kind of gross. He does too, because she's right. She's always been right, but it's easier to call her a crazy bitch and be done with it. But when the chips are down? No duh — Team Go is squandering on borrowed time.
She's shaking for some reason. It's weird. She's quit Team Go like seventeen times — oddly enough she's never thrown in the towel when Hego's around. Only with Mego, whom she actually kind of likes. And she always comes back. Be it a day or a few weeks, she comes back, ready to brawl.
This time though, it takes three months for her to return.
viii. do you think that I'm evil
"Nyrgh…"
"What are you grumbling about tonight? You're kinda pissing me off."
Drew looks up, looking worse than ever. He used to have such good posture — now he's a hunched over lunatic with darting eyes. "Demenz," he says simply.
"Oh God, what is it this time?" she shakes her head. "Did he call you Violet Beauregarde? Because you can tell him I came up with that joke three years ago."
"No, he hasn't quite found his nickname for me yet fortunately — " Drew ponders but shrugs it off. "Demenz invented the weather disruptor machine I've been working on."
"So? He invented it." Drew doesn't even bat an eye so she has to continue her lecture. "He obviously came up with it before you did, if that's what you're implying."
"Ah!" Drew waves a finger in the air. "I did not steal from him! No! I — I invented it too! You see, I came up with the concept independently!"
"Mhm," she smiles wryly.
"He can just build faster because he has an army of henchmen. It's not fair!" he pouts.
Yep. There it is. Another red flag. Drew's been throwing up a lot of them lately; she already knows he's a mad scientist aspiring to be a wacked out supervillain, but he's way too much of a softy for that field. She almost wants to sit Drew down and tell him the honest-to-god truth: that she is a superhero. Then she can give him some real talk pointers on how to get his act together.
Because this Kim Possible kid now? She's huge. She like saved the world six times or something last week. Like she's already graduated from fighting off goons like Aviarius. If Drew — Drakken — wants to compete — then he needs to let go of this stupid James Possible grudge and actually do the work.
"You know Doctor D," she says while wiping off a dusty glass. "You should just steal the weather gizmo from him if you want it that bad."
"Hm?"
"Steal it! You know — spooky evil stuff."
"Aaaaaah…evil..." Drew mulls it over and pulls back his stupid pompadour into a ragged ponytail. "Stealing, huh? Well — I prefer to call that outsourcing and either way, I don't have the manpower to do that, I'm a one-man band."
And that's the end of that for some time.
ix. you think you're all that
Drew gets banned from the bar one night. She's not even there to see it. Apparently Drew comes in with Demenz for drinks on a night she wasn't working and they got into a bit of a spat. Something about Dementor calling him the Genie from Aladdin, and Drew calling Dementor Winnie the Pooh.
Yeah. Dumb. Drew could have cooked up something better. He really needs to spend more time journaling so he can be faster on the uptake.
But there's a spat and that spat becomes a brawl. Everyone starts smashing things and at the center of it is her snivelling Poindexter. It's nights like these that she wishes she helped him out with the whole evil thing because Jesus Christ — someone beats the tar out of him. Yeah. A glass shatters across Drew's face and those splintered shards dig deep. He's got this gnarly scar running down his cheek, leading from the corner of his eye.
Honestly, he got off easy. With the mouth on him it's a wonder he didn't get into more trouble...but yeah, someone got the drop on him and now — that villainy career? It's probably over now. Poindexter doesn't have the moxie. How can he not see that by now?
She feels sad for him. Not enough to go visit him at the hospital but — there was — potential? He had this spark and it could have been fun but now...
...now she's catching herself brewing Drew's Coco Moo. She stops when she realizes he's not coming. She considers drinking it alone but pours it out into the sink.
x. but you're not
By day, she's a superhero. By night, she's a bartender. And every moment in between she's hungry.
She's addicted to job applications. At first she is very selective on what she applies for but there aren't any biters. When she does get lucky enough to score an interview, she hits the employers with everything she's got and somehow never gets a call back. Not even an email. So after some desperate months of that, she just applies everywhere.
She remodels her resume and draws up cover letters as if she's a full time writer. She can sell a book out of her stupid please hire me diatribes. But nothing seems to land and after six months of ten applications a day with no interviews — she gives up.
Because fuck it. It's not her that's the problem, it's the world that doesn't get when they're seeing gold and she's not going to wait up anymore.
So she becomes full time at the bar for some reason. She doesn't know why. Everyone she started with four years ago has moved on to bigger and better things — probably — she just kind of assumes those people are happier than her. The only thing that's consistent are the regulars — aside from Doctor D.
She thinks about him more often than she'd like to admit. She gazes at the door when she punches in, wondering if they'll push open to reveal that ungodly strut he always marched in with. Months pass by as if they're nothing and he never returns.
xi. i do think of us as kind of an evil family
The only reason they're at the chemical labs that night is because Aviarius and Mathter are teaming up to do — something. Who cares anymore. She just shows up because it's an opportunity for her to beat the crap out of someone.
But while she's sneaking around, she sees a man crouched over a safe. He's grumbling very loudly and is apparently deaf because he doesn't hear her footsteps pattering across the metal girder.
Gross, dry black hair, rattail, awful posture, tiny digits, and Violet Beauregarde skin peeping past the high-collar of his coat — oh God.
She squats down and watches him fuck up the safe combination again. He pulls out a notebook and reads off the numbers out loud. "Thirty six...twenty one...four. What — what am I doing wrong?"
She can't hold it anymore; it's like watching your teenager try to march out the door in that outfit. Like — honey no.
"Seriously?" she laughs.
You can hear a pin drop. For a second. And then you can't. Because Doctor Drakken shrieks and scrabbles away, but she grabs him by the boot and he trips into the safe. He looks at her and scrunches into a fetal position almost. Then he blinks and remembers her. "You're — you're — whatsername — the girl from the bar!"
She rolls her eyes but forgives him. Doctor D's not good with names. At least for people he actually likes.
"You're — " he stutters. "A superhero!"
She just grins and lets him process it all on his own.
"You're — you're Shego! Oh that makes sense — your name is Sheila Go, isn't it? I don't know how I didn't get that."
"Eh, most people don't somehow. Everyone in this city's an idiot so…."
"Mm, well I'm no idiot, I'm a genius!" Drakken declares. "I just seem to have copied the safe combination down wrong.
She rolls her eyes. "Are you kidding me with that? Dude, Doctor D, you never use the combination. Those change all the time — you want to bring the equipment — here. Move over."
Her fist lights up into a brilliant emerald and Drakken needs no reminding that he better back up. Her hand closes in on the safe and the metal immediately lights up at the intensity. It's hard to hold a flare this long — but for him? For him it's kinda worth it. So she drags her hand through the safe until she burns a little hole out and pow — the metal gap ker-thunks to the floor.
"So — you're helping me then?" he asks.
Her eyes widen a little. "I guess I am, huh?"
There's such an uncomfortably long silence that it almost makes more sense to kiss him than do what she is about to do.
"I don't want to do Team Go anymore, it's dumb," she shrugs, trying to play it cool. It's not like these thoughts have been tormenting her for years or anything.
"Ah, and I do need an assistant," Drakken grins something surprisingly charming. It's not like he's been a loser with no friends except the bartender ever since James Possible got him kicked out of college.
"I'm def not your assistant, but I'll do with partners."
"Sidekick?"
"Partners."
"Henchwoman?"
"No. Partners."
Drakken eyes her as if any second the cameras are about to swarm him from all over and broadcast his naivete and gullibility all across America. But no one comes.
"We'll stop you Aviarius!" Hego proclaims from waaaay across the lab, saying it with the relish of an actor who can deliver a line one hundred times and somehow always keep it fresh. "Even if it's the last thing I do."
She snaps and grabs his tiny hands, making the decision for him, rocking his arm up and down. "We'll talk logistics and titles later — let's steal the cash before my brother trounces that idiot. Drakken's your monicker right?" She wants it to sound like she didn't already know that — but she's no phony. Not like Hego. And Drakken sees right through the I-don't-give-a-fuck-facade.
He nods along anywho. Because he likes the banter.
She grins. "Good. Doctor Drakken and Shego. I like it. Kinda like Frankenstein and Igor — "
Drakken raises a finger to make the exact same point that just came to her mind.
"So not a lab assistant," she shuts that down fast and laughs as he droops like a rapidly wilting flower. "But we're going to make a big time villain out of you, Doctor."
