Shop Smart [PG-13]
By: Hawk
Summary: Two Smarty Mart shoppers have a little chat about their respective lives before they part ways...
Disclaimer: Kim Possible, Smarty Mart, Bueno Nacho and whatnot are not mine, though I certainly wish they were. The story is mine though, all mine.
Feedback/Flames: Yes, please. Both of them are equally fun to read, although I must admit that I greatly prefer the first variety. :)
I can be found at iamhawk at yahoo dot com, though not very frequently as real life lately interferes with my online existance more then I'd like.
*** Roll credits ***
"Shego?" Ron blurted out after he had accidentally bumped his cart into the person in front of him and she spun around with an irked expression to glare at him. "Aw, man! I'm SO sorry!" he frantically apologised as she kept glaring at him for a few moments, then merely grunted, spun around and pushed her own cart onwards.
"That was Shego, right?" he uncertainly stated and Rufus who was perched upon his slowly nodded and gave off an audible 'Yah' in the midst of more undecipherable chittering.
Ron hadn't been so sure of his initial guess at her identity, because she hadn't insulted him, lit up her hands and wasn't wearing her customary jumpsuit. The colours were there though, as the woman had been wearing a black pair of figure-hugging pants and a green blouse. Her hair was up in a ponytail held together with a green scroungie. His gaze dipped down as she headed off further into the store and he noted a pair of black flats with green highlights on them.
The biggest reason for his uncertainty however was the fact that her complexion was more normal then usual. Sure, she looked very pale, as if she didn't spend a lot of time outdoors, but the usual green tinge wasn't there and her hair was more black then her usual greenish-black.
"Must have been her..." he muttered to himself, then shrugged it off and focused on the reason he was here in the first place. She didn't seem like she was up to any of her usual antics and besides, without Kim around to handle her he wasn't foolish enough to try and bother someone who could throw plasma blasts at him! "Whatever! The Ronster demands sustenance! Buy twenty, pay for twelve Pop Pop Pizza!" he cheered accompanied by an approving cheer from Rufus.
Eighteen minutes later, he was distractedly browsing through the latest issue of Sidekick Monthly while waiting in line, his cart filled with bulk purchases of various junk food items and a much smaller variety of ingredients for real cooking in case inspiration would strike at some point in the coming week. He'd also found some more mission wear on sale, something that tended to get ruined on a regular basis, so he'd picked up some more.
With his parents away at a conference in Atlanta for the week and a romantic getaway for the weekend, he would be pretty much on his own as far as food went for the rest of the week.
Or well, Bueno Nacho, the school cafeteria and freeloading off the Possibles would likely account for most of what he ate during the week, but to maintain his supreme Ronness in the face of adversary of the Barkin and super villain kind, a little snackage wouldn't hurt.
"Princess actually lets you out unsupervised, Butterfingers?" the unmistakeable voice of Shego suddenly interjected itself into the unexpected long wait for the cashier. It seemed like there was some sort of computer trouble, so only one line was open and it seemed the register had been hooked up to the outside world with older technology, as the going was very slow and he heard some old-school modem noises now and then. He closed and put the magazine back into the cart, then turned around and allowed his gaze to move across Shego's cart and take in her unusual appearance again now that he was sure that it was her.
It seemed like she had come here to stock up on microwave meals, protein shakes and power bars, but her cart also held various clothes, two emerald green terrycloth robes, towels, various toiletries, scented candles, a few books and magazines, posters and pictures with frames in various sizes, a pair of fuzzy slippers and an mp3 player.
"The Ronster is fully capable of doing his own shopping." Ron casually boasted accompanied by a fervent nod from Rufus on his shoulder. "But what's with you, standing in line waiting to pay instead of exiting through a hole in the roof with your hands blazing?"
Shego glanced around at the others around them, but it seemed like most people were as bored as Ron had been and were browsing through magazines or chatting with others, so none seemed to pay any real attention to their conversation.
"If I went around stealing every single little thing needed for everyday life, it wouldn't be all that hard to track me down, now would it?" she responded somewhat snootily.
"We've never had much problem with that anyway." Ron shrugged and shook his head. "Reusing the same old lairs does help with that though." he added with a chuckle.
"Yeah, tell me about it! Doctor D can be such a cheapskate from time to time." Shego groused and shook her head in disbelief. "Anyhew, I tend to stick to taking what the Doc needs for his schemes and possibly a few other things if there's anything I'm interested in nearby. But since it's usually these remote research facilities I have to go to, there rarely is something for me around them." she admitted with a casual shrug.
"What's with all the stuff? You moving to a new place?" Ron asked.
"Well, yeah. We kinda had to leave one of them and then Doctor D blew up our new one after we just moved there." Shego sighed and slumped her shoulders. "I was kinda looking forward to it as well, never even got to see what kind of shopping Reykjav? has to offer before we had to leave."
"Serves Drakken right, stealing all my hard-earned cash like that." Ron muttered.
"How did you get all that money anyway?" Shego inquired and after looking over Ron's shoulder, indicated for him to move forward as the line had started moving again while they were talking.
"I came up with the Naco, a combination of Taco and Nacho. It has been a big hit worldwide, so Bueno Nacho gave me royalty money for the idea." Ron boasted, polishing the nails of his right hand on his chest.
"Well, they are good, but THAT amount of money for that idea?" Shego responded with a confused expression.
"You eat Naco's?" Ron blurted out. "KP tried one once, but she usually just stick to salads or Chimmeritos."
"Well, powering up and using my powers takes a lot of energy, so I have to eat more then most." Shego responded and then smiled. "Just about every woman on the planet would likely kill for my powers. All I need to do in order to loose weight is to power up for a few minutes. The getting hungry all the time bit is kind of annoying though." she said and gestured at a few empty power bar wrappers in her cart. Apparently she'd opened up one of the fifty-packs and tossed down five power bars at some point during her shopping.
"Huh, never really thought about that." Ron admitted and looked over Shego's cart again. She had two stacks of microwave meals in there and five fifty-packs of power bars, as well as two large boxes with a hundred chocolate-flavoured protein shakes each. "That's all for you?" he asked.
"Yeah." she admitted with a kind of embarrassed expression.
"What's with all the microwave meals?" Ron asked, as there had to be at least fifty or sixty of them, but no raw ingredients.
"I'm not stupid enough to eat anything that Doctor D has prepared and don't even get me started on the henchmen. I wouldn't touch anything any of them has been near with a ten-foot pole." Shego snorted.
"Bad cooks?" Ron asked with a sympathetic expression, giving off a shudder of revulsion at the thought of having to eat food crappy enough that microwave meals were preferable.
"Crooks." Shego countered. "I don't even want to think about what kind of crap Doctor D might try to put into my food and I'd rather not take the chance that one the henchmen might try to slip me a date rape drug." she admitted with a shudder of her own.
"What?" Ron blurted out. "You actually have to worry about stuff like that?"
"Well, duh!" Shego exclaimed with a disbelieving expression. "You don't recruit nice guys when you're in the taking over the world business. I wouldn't trust any of those goons to take a piss on me if I was on fire." she explained and shook her head. "If Doctor D didn't have such strong opinions about it, no doubt both you and Princess would know what its like to be force-fed a slice of Henchco's 'finest' whenever we manage to capture you."
Ron shook and trembled as he frantically tried to bleach his mind of the horrifying imagery that Shego had put in there with her words.
"What in the name of all that is good and cheesy?" he exclaimed and stared at her with a terrified expression. "Wait, you were worried about Drakken putting stuff in your food as well?"
"Not to bump his ugly into my pretty by force though, he detests rapists, so it's not that. With him it's more that I'm worried that he'd try to use one of his inventions to low-jack me, amplify my powers, clone me or something like that. Considering how 'well' his inventions usually work, you can probably imagine how 'thrilled' I am at the thought of him using some untested substance or invention on me. There's no telling what kind of weird shit might happen if he started messing around with my body." she explained and shivered, no doubt imagining some kind of horrible genetic mutation or a device inside her body suddenly exploding.
"Why the hell are you staying with him? Having to worry about everyone you're around being out to get you... It's awful!" Ron demanded to know.
"The pay is good, the hours flexible, I get lots of paid vacation and even when I'm on the clock, the workload isn't all that burdening. I'm not trained for anything that would pay even a tenth as good as this does and I am kind of an adrenalin junkie, so anything else would likely bore me to tears. Besides, like I said, the pay is excellent. In a year or two, I'll have enough to retire and live comfortably off my savings and investments for the rest of my life." Shego responded with an uncaring shrug. "You and princess get shot at, you have your lives threatened on a weekly basis, you have to dart off all over the globe at a minutes notice, likely have problems fulfilling your social obligations due to what you do and I'll bet that you two are loosing money on what you two do."
"True." Ron admitted after a while. He had been dipping into his college fund for years to pay for clothes, medical supplies, taxi rides to and from various transportation hubs and even the occasional commercial international flight to get back from missions overseas. International phone calls to explain to his parents and school where he was and what he was doing had also contributed to a severe lack of fundage for his college education. Thank god that he had been able to sell most of the stuff he'd bought from the Naco royalty, otherwise he likely would have run out of money at some point in the not too distant future. He had kept some of the bling, but had gotten rid of the gold-plated limo, the jet and all but one of the expensive watches he'd bought.
He had gotten less then he had paid for them of course, but what he had gotten had more then compensated for the money he had been leeching off his college fund.
"True." he repeated again after some consideration. "But at least I don't have to worry about my friends trying to drug me or turn me into a supernova."
"There is that." Shego admitted and then the two of them fell into silent contemplation, occasionally moving forward when the line moved, but otherwise remaining locked into their own thoughts for a while.
After a few minutes, the silence was broken again however and once again it was Shego who apparently found conversation with him to be a more appealing course of action then being bored standing in line.
"So, where's princess? I always kinda figured that you two were more or less joined at the hips, so I'm surprised to see you out on your own." Shego inquired and Ron glanced at his watch for a few seconds.
"Well, she was going to have lunch with Monique two hours ago, so knowing KP, she and Monique are either checking Club Banana for clothes to gush over or scouting the mall for hotties to drool over." Ron replied after having given it a few moments of consideration.
"And you don't mind that your girlfriend is out looking at other guys?" Shego asked with a raised eyebrow at Ron's casual attitude.
"Me and KP? Major akweirdness!" Ron blurted out with a surprised laugh. "Nah, we're just friends. Best friends."
"Really? I always kinda though you'd be hitting that." Shego replied with a shake of her head. "Or trying to at least. I could totally see her not being into you, but not you not being into her." she continued and Ron raised an eyebrow at her statement. "Well, come on! I don't like her very much, but I respect her as an opponent and I do have eyes. I figured any teenaged guy and some girls would beat down walls with their bare fists to try and get some of that action." she stated with an uncaring shrug. "You on the other hand, I figure rank much lower on the Middleton High Hotness Rankings."
"Tru that. The Ronster is a slowly acquired taste." Ron sighed with a bit of a shoulder slump, while Rufus patted him comfortingly on the cheek in an attempt to cheer him up. "But me and KP? Nah, that would be completely weird. She rolled her eyes when I told her about my first crush, I got my mother to drive her and her first boyfriend to get help after they locked bracers. She knows exactly when I stopped wetting my bed and I carried her on my back to her mother, thinking she was hurt, then had to sit through her mother explaining about menses and the female body because KP wouldn't let go of my hand after I put her down and her mother figured out why she was bleeding. I actually got the female version of the talk from my best friendﾒs mother, then KP stuck around while Mrs Dr P gave me the talk as well!" Ron explained while Shego nearly collapsed in hysterics at what he was telling her, but just barely managed to prevent herself from breaking out in outright guffaws or tumbling to the ground.
"You're telling me that you've never thought of doing princess?" Shego asked after she had composed herself a bit and stopped chuckling.
"Of course." Ron casually admitted. "I have eyes and I see her almost every day. She wasn't the first girl I fantasized about, but she has been the most frequent one over the years. But it's one thing to daydream about my nekkid bestest friend, it's another thing entirely to try and imagine her as my girlfriend. It just doesn't quite compute in the Ron's mind."
"Or what passes for one." Shego chuckled, then raised her hands in apology as Ron favoured her with an offended expression. "Sorry, low blow. Surprisingly we've managed to keep this sorta polite so far, so that was out of line."
"Fine." Ron sighed, then shook his head in quiet bafflement. If someone had told him this morning that before the day was over, he was going to have a more or less polite conversation with Shego of all people, he would have laughed and asked them to get their head examined.
"So, got another girlfriend then?" Shego asked after a while.
"Nah, the Ronster is free and fancy-free." he admitted with a semi-pained expression, failing to maintain an upbeat facade.
"And princess?" Shego inquired.
"Nah, she's crushing over a few hotties and I think two of them might be crushing over her as well, but nothing at the moment." he replied.
"Well, at least people think she's dateable, unlike me." Shego sighed and reached for another power bar from the opened package.
"What? You're like one of the five hottest women on the planet! Granted, there's the super villainess situation, but still!" Ron blurted out and then instantly paled as his mind caught up with what his mouth had been saying. His gaze instantly dipped down to Shego's hands and he was surprised to note that they hadn't already burst into green fire. He kept staring at them, but when the fire failed to materialize even after quite a while and she hadn't said anything either, his gaze slowly rose to the extremely shocked and completely baffled expression on her face, a power bar stuck half-way to her open mouth as she appeared to have frozen in mid-motion.
"Wha..." she croaked out after a few moments, then blinked and stared at him in utter bewilderment. "Me? Hot?" she blurted out in an extremely hesitant tone of voice.
"Well, duh!" he instantly responded and then slammed his mouth shut, figuring that perhaps this was one of those times when it would be better to think before opening it again, as this had the potential to get really painful if he happened to say the wrong thing to the powerful super villain in front of him. She seemed to be taking it a lot better then he'd originally thought however, so after a few moments he decided to speak again since it didn't seem like she was about to. "The first time I saw your picture I was all like 'Grrrrr, oh yeah'." he cautiously admitted. "KP didn't really agree with me, too stuck on the whole villain bit I think. Then again, we rarely agree on which women are hot and which aren't."
Shego blinked a few times, then seemed to shake her confusion off.
"You talk about hot girls with princess?" she asked.
"Yeah, we talk about everything. We only agree on Brittina, Shatalia and KP herself being female hotness personified, but she will listen to me blab about it and occasionally offer an opinion of her own. And I'll listen to her blab on about hot guys and occasionally give my thoughts as well." he admitted. Having a best friend of the opposite gender occasionally led to some pretty strange conversations, especially on the way back from missions when both of them were tired and with their mental filters preventing certain statements from emerging being lowered. Granted, he rarely had his filters up in the first place, but KP usually only lowered or entirely removed hers when she was really tired or really emotional about something.
"Princess is really lucky to have you." Shego reluctantly admitted with an envious tone of voice and a disgruntled expression. She had never had anyone like Ron, after the meteor, she didn't even really have a best female friend to turn to when she felt like talking. What friends she'd had before getting her powers and turning green, had been more distant after that and eventually, she'd lost contact with just about all of them. These days, she really only had Doctor D that she spoke to and he was too annoying to share personal stuff with.
Perhaps that was why she hadn't hesitated much about revealing some pretty personal stuff to the goofy sidekick. There was just something about him that made her open up and while she was a bit leery about some of the stuff she had told him, it still felt pretty good to have gotten it off her chest.
"So I keep telling her!" Ron instantly agreed and puffed himself up, almost swelling with pride.
"Can I ask you something?" Shego asked after a brief chuckle at his antics.
"You already did, but the Ronster is a generous man, so you can ask another question." he responded with a wide grin, which she merely rolled her eyes at.
"Monty Fiske said something once that got me thinking about you. Did you really take him on without princess to help and won?" Shego asked, recalling the eccentric Lord having mentioned that once when he came to Drakken to purchase a hover car for some expedition he had planned.
"Monkey Fist." Ron hissed with a venomous expression on his face, but rapidly collected himself and slowly nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. Once."
"Ugh, that ridiculous nickname of his." Shego snorted. "Well, if you can go one-on-one against him and win, then I have another question. Why do you scream in panic and run around like a headless chicken when a couple of henchmen are chasing you? I've sparred against Fiske a few times and he's good, very good. He's even more unconventional and unpredictable then princess is, a real bitch to fight against. So if you can beat him, you could probably lay half a dozen henchmen down flat in seconds and take on a full dozen with only minor issues."
"KP is the fighter, I'm the distraction." Ron replied and then shuffled his feet. "Besides, I don't really like to fight. ... Or Skydive... Or scuba... Or climb tall walls and mountains... Or fly... Or go on boats... Or drive fast..." he hesitantly admitted.
"And yet you go with Kimmie on all these oddball missions?" Shego asked and blinked. "Why?"
"I promised her mother to keep her safe." Ron replied. "Besides, what kind of best friend would I be if I let her do all that dangerous stuff on her own?" he asked.
"Wow. You're a really good friend." Shego stated with a hint of awe and envy in her voice.
"The Ronster is all good." he boasted proudly, while his naked little pink rat nodded his agreement to that.
"So, you think me dateable huh?" Shego asked, getting back to a previous topic now that she'd had a little bit of time to think about it.
"Well, there is that whole flaming fists of doom villain shtick, but by the great cheese, you're definitively way up there on the hottie rankings." Ron easily admitted, then fell silent as he realized what he had said, observing the volatile woman in front of him. She had taken his earlier statements pretty well and she didn't seem to mind this one either, so he let out a relieved sigh at not suddenly being under green fire.
"Well, you're pretty alone in thinking that." Shego reluctantly admitted, dropped the now empty wrapper to another power bar and held up her right hand in front of her, looking down at it. She had zapped herself with a dampening ray she'd had Henchco develop for her, since she didn't trust an invention of Doctor D to work right, but even if the ray gave her a more normal appearance, the effects of it didn't last very long. She was slowly gaining a more greenish hue to her skin and while she couldn't see her own hair at the moment, she suspected that the same was true there as well. Half an hour or so more and she wouldn't be incognito any longer. "Being green isn't easy." she mumbled.
"Come on, there's no way you haven't been dating!" Ron insisted.
"I have." she admitted. "Not very often, but being green, you take what you can get. In high school, very few wanted to associate with the weird green girl and college wasn't much better. After that, well, spending most of your time on the run doesn't exactly lead to an active social life and most of the people you do meet aren't the kind you'd want to go out with." she explained and slowly turned her hand back and forth, observing faint hints of greenish hue to it already. "Some people have problems with far more common skin colours then mine, so you can imagine how hard it is to find someone not turned off by green skin."
"Why should that matter?" Ron asked with a completely baffled tone of voice, causing Shego to let out a brief chuckle. While Drakken had only read the reports on Kimmie, Shego had carefully studied the reports on Ron as well. He was Jewish, two of his best friends were African American, his best male friend couldn't walk and he had a naked mole rat for a pet. As far as she could tell from what Drakkens spies had uncovered, he was only prejudiced against monkeys, small bugs and for some oddball reason, a kid summer camp she'd never heard of before.
"To most people, it does matter. Greatly." Shego sighed, then glanced over his shoulder and perked up, they were almost at the cashier and the line had just moved again. She looked back at Ron and got a mischievous look on her face. "But tell you what, Butterfingers. I'll leave Kimmie for Doctor D the next time we meet and go after you instead. If you can put up a decent fight, I'll let you prove to me that you find me dateable." she offered with a sultry purr and moved her right hand up to her face, gently raking two of her fingers down across her lips, jaw, neck and down between her breasts to her stomach, an action which seemed to completely entrance the buffoonish sidekick. "If you play your cards right, who knows what else I'll let you prove to me..." she purred and blew him a kiss, which seemed to completely fry his circuits. He froze in an upright position and didn't move a muscle as she pushed her cart around him and took his place in the queue, stepping up to the cash register.
By the time Ron had recovered, Shego had already paid and was on her way out of the store, so Ron hastily pushed his haul to the register.
"Was she kidding about that?" he muttered and Rufus shrugged and chittered out a 'Dunno' in the midst of more undecipherable noises. "Well, perhaps it would be worth it to stand up to her and find out if she was serious or not..." he added and Rufus held up a little paw to his chest in horror. 'Fire! Crazy!' he protested. "Kidding, Rufus. I was kidding." Ron insisted, though he looked somewhat unsure about that. Rufus looked over at him, shook his little head and facepawed.
"Well, sure she's somewhat of a hothead and she could probably boil me alive if she wanted, but she's a hotter older woman!" Ron suddenly exclaimed from out of nowhere as he was taking his purchases out of the store, heading for the car he'd borrowed from his father for this shopping trip. At that, Rufus groaned and hid his face in a double facepaw while he slowly shook his head.
"Eat you alive!" Rufus squeaked out.
"Perhaps. But what a way to go." Ron mused as he started packing away his Smarty Mart haul into the car.
"Oh no..." Rufus groaned.
There was no way that this would wind up going well for his owner.
The End!