Boilerplate Disclaimer: The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. Any and all registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.
This started with a desire to play with a threadbare cliché (not all are). The problem is, it takes a lot of chapters to set up my idea. So, if you're still around in about twenty-five chapters you might get to say, "Hey, I don't think I've seen that done before." Chapters are all relatively short. Shouldn't be any under one thousand words, but many won't go very far over.
Shego: If Anything Can Go Wrong, It Will
Why Drakken picked a lair in Middleton I don't know.
"Are you stupid?" I asked him. It was a pointless question. I already knew the answer. He didn't.
"Of course not," he answered. I told you, he didn't know the right answer.
"Middleton is the cheerleader's back yard, remember?"
"It is also the home of Middleton Research."
"Hello, cheerleader, are you losing your hearing too?"
"No, I'm not... What do you mean, too?"
"A lair here is asking for trouble."
"Nonsense, Shego. We're hiding in plain sight."
"Hiding in plain sight?"
"Certainly. Since Kim Possible and that... that person she pals around with aren't expecting us here they won't see us, we won't register in their tiny teenage minds."
I sighed, wondering if anything ever registered inside his blue skull. "So, what are your plans?"
"Well, I don't have a plan at the moment. But something will come to me."
"Yeah, well while you're waiting for your Muse to hit you with an idea stick I'm heading for the Middleton Mall."
As I exited the lair I heard him muttering something about an idea stick. I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance he'd be trying to invent an idea stick when I got back to the lair. And, if he were, there was a one hundred percent chance I'd be beating him over the head with it.
I wasn't wearing my catsuit. Hego was right about a few things; wear a colorful costume and people remember you by the costume more than your face. I still don't think Superman could put on a pair of glasses and everyone would miss the fact Clark Kent was Superman. Hego insisted it was possible. Like I said, Hego was right about a few things, emphasis on few. But put on some earth tone clothing, change your hair style and makeup and a lot of people are going to ask, "Has anyone told you that you look like Shego?" This was assuming they'd even heard of Shego. I try to keep my pictures out of the media as much as possible. No good way to hide the skin tone. Try to cover it up and it looks so fake people wonder what you're trying to hide. Got a lot of answers I use to the question "Do you know you look like Shego?" Answer I give depends on person asking. Got a 'Crawl under a rock and die' answer at one end of the spectrum and a smile with a, 'That's a great opening line' at the other end for a night of conversation at a bar.
I needed a lot additions to my wardrobe. The cheerleader and her hapless sidekick, the boy blunder, had blown up most of my clothes in the last couple lairs. I figured I'd start with the clearance racks in 'Maxx Savings'. If we were going to be in Middleton for as long as Drakken predicted I figured I'd better stock up.
I steal retail, but if I'm paying out of pocket I hit clearance. First day in town, no need to start a crime wave on day one.
And no, I am not afraid of drawing the attention of the damn cheerleader. She'll be around eventually. She keeps insisting on screwing up the blue guy's plans but I figured I deserved a few days R&R before my next fight, and making the police aware I was in town would cut in my 'me time'.
You never know exactly what you'll find in clearance. Oh, you can be sure that ninety-nine percent of it is crap, and you know exactly why it's there - and you wouldn't want it if they gave it to you free. But then there is the one percent, the couple items that you wonder how they could have ended up in clearance.
It looked like a day when fortune favored the wicked. They must have just restocked clearance, I was finding stuff as nice as their lying television ads show you, I swear, the percentage of items worth wearing must have been ten percent... Okay, that's a lie. Closer to four. But that's still four times better than what you usually expect.
Had more items in the shopping cart than I was allowed to take into the dressing room at one time. But my good luck had left me in a mellow mood, and I wasn't looking for trouble. I didn't argue with the gum-chewing moron in charge of the dressing rooms, punch her, or try to sneak more in. I played by the rules.
Almost half of the items in my cart were worth buying. There was a tweed jacket they were almost giving away. I checked the label. Dry clean only. Nobody in this wash-and-wear world has time for dry cleaning. I don't either. But it looked good even before eighty percent off. Pumpkin would probably be by to ruin Dr. D's plans before it would require cleaning.
I was humming a little tune as I waited in the checkout line. Humming a little tune. Not trying to push ahead of anyone. Not making faces at the four-year old who was staring at my green skin. Not threatening the ding-bat who couldn't find her credit card and had dumped out the entire contents of her purse on the counter and floor while searching for it. Not threatening the sales clerk who should have moved over to the next register and rang up the next customer while ding-bat tried to remember where she left her head. (I could have told her where she had her head stuck, but I was playing nice.)
I hate fate. Bastard always sets you up before the sucker punch.
"Shego!" the familiar voice behind me hissed. "What are you doing here?" the cheerleader demanded.
"Shit" I closed my eyes and sighed. Sucker punched by fate. Definitely sucker punched.
I didn't want to waste my time on a fight. I had a cart full of loot and I didn't want to run off and leave it. I ignored the cheerleader. Not all fights are with your fists. And since Pumpkin's brain sat on his fat ass behind a computer screen I figured I had this one, easy.