So, long time no see, guys. I've been mega-busy with English finals and a bunch of other stuff I won't bore you with, so my recreational writing took a bit of a backseat for a while - just long enough for me to develop a lovely case of writer's block. Then, last weekend, I was suddenly struck by this story, and when inspiration strikes you in the midst of writer's block, you go with it.

This isn't really a Drakkim (sorry, Neo), but it does examine their relationship through the years. I thought it might give me am opportunity to practice writing for Kim (cause, face it, I have woefully neglected that girl until now) while not abandoning my favorite character. And, sorry for the lame title, but it was all I could think of.

Enough chit-chat. Enjoy.

I.

"Daddy, you gotta understand!" Kim Possible protested.

Her father's angry-parent scowl only deepened. Evidently reasoning with him was not going to get her out of this mess. Kim was just getting ready to try a full-strength Puppy-Dog Pout when Dad put a big hand on her back and steered her in the direction of the Possible family car. She gulped. His hands were still gentle, but his push was firm. Even the Puppy-Dog Pout might not be enough to save her now.

Still, Kim straightened her shoulders and stood as tall as her petite eleven-year-old body would let her. No one was going to catch her slinking away from the scene like a scolded terrier.

She sneaked a glance over at her best friend, Ron Stoppable, who was also being steered toward his dad's old jalopy. Ron had his head down, studying his skinned-up knees as if he was the one who should be ashamed. It bit at Kim's heart.

Ron glanced up then, as if he had felt her looking at him. He probably had. They'd been best friends ever since the first day of preschool, and Kim had always felt like they had some kind of sixth sense toward each other.

Even as Ron fumbled open the door to the Stoppables' car, his eyes stayed on her. They were awestruck and mournful, like he was watching her march to her execution.

Kim sighed and managed a little wave before she yanked open their car's back door. Her six-year-old brother, Tim, toppled out and would have gone sprawling on the blacktop if his identical twin, Jim, hadn't caught him by the back of his red T-shirt.

"Oooh – Kim got busted!" Tim crowed as he wrenched himself free from his brother's grasp. He bounded back to his booster seat on the other side of the car and wiggled his eyebrows wickedly at Kim.

"Were you guys spying on me?" Kim demanded angrily. It was bad enough being in what Ron would call "deep doo-doo" with her parents without also providing her little brothers with more teasing ammunition.

"Oooh – and she's cranky, too," Jim added. He turned to Tim and held up his chubby hand for a high-five.

Kim shifted her shoulders and put on her best stoic face, determined to ignore them. After all, she knew the little creatures were just glad that she was finally the one in trouble. Their exploding science projects and high-tech pranks on their first-grade teacher had them in constant hot water at home.

With another sigh, Kim crawled over Jim's booster seat to her seat smack in the middle. She noticed one of his hands resting temptingly close to her foot, and for a minute she considered stomping on it in payback. But, no, if she was old enough to ride in the middle seat with only a lap belt, she was old enough not to lower herself to the twins' level. At least that was what her mother always said.

The front doors creaked and the front seats squeaked as her parents loaded in. Dad turned around to face her and held up a finger before Kim could even get her mouth open to explain. "We'll talk about it when we get home, Kim," he said.

His voice was stern, and it made Kim shiver. She wasn't used to her father sounding anything but cheerfully out-to-lunch as he worked on his rockets and his deep-space probes. And if he called her "Kim" instead of "Kimmy-cub", it meant she was in very deep doo-doo.

Still, he didn't call me Kimberly, Kim reassured herself as the car squealed out of the parking lot. At least there was that.

Kim stared, solemnly, straight ahead, so she wouldn't have to see the twins making goony faces at her and snickering into their sleeves. No matter how strong she was trying to be right now, that would have sent her over the edge. She watched through the windshield as neighborhood trees rushed by, dreading the lecture she was sure to get at home.

She hadn't meant for it to happen.

She'd been standing in the park's huge, grassy field, practicing her cheerleading moves. After all, somebody else's life might depend on her being able to use them, just like Mr. Paisley's had last month.

But just as Kim had been coming up from a perfect split, she'd heard a horribly familiar thump. A thump that could only mean someone had fallen off the jungle gym. Or been pushed. With Ron, the two were equally probable.

She'd taken off toward the playground equipment in bigger jumps than she'd thought she was capable of, hoping against hope she wouldn't have to set one of Ron's bones or something equally disgusting. And she'd arrived just in time to see Rip Snorter, the biggest bully in sixth grade, swing neatly off the monkey bars and start to Ron like he was moving in for the kill.

Ron had been laying there, gasping, on the wood chips below the play equipment, both knees and one elbow scraped. His face was scrunched like he was waiting for another blow, and something in Kim had snapped.

The handsprings and kickflips she'd been so carefully practicing had come to her instinctively, the way they had that night at Paisley mansion. She hadn't even realized she was gearing up to punch Rip until she felt her fist slam into his little pug nose and saw the bully stumble backward with blood streaming down his face. Kim had watched with a strange mixture of satisfaction and horror.

Because she really hadn't meant to.

Dad slid the car into the garage and put it in park. It was Mom, however, who finally spoke. "Go on up to your room, Kimmy," she said firmly. "Dad and I will be there in a minute to talk to you."

Kim nearly went limp with relief as she unbuckled her seatbelt and tried to get to a door without kicking one of the twins in the head. Mom was using that no-nonsense voice she always brought out when one of the kids was in trouble, but she had called her "Kimmy". Maybe they'd cooled down during the drive home, too.

()()()()()()

". . . And that's what happened." Kim shifted her eyes up to her mother and stuck out her lower lip just a smidge. "I know I probably shouldn't have punched him, but I was just defending Ron."

Dad cracked his knuckles and examined her grimly. "This is a tough call, Kimmy," he said, shaking his head in that way grown-ups did when they were confused. "A Possible is never afraid to stand up for what's right. But, as a general rule, we try to do it in…less violent ways."

Kim swallowed hard and nodded. She knew her dad was right.

Mom sat down next to her and put an arm around Kim's shoulders. "You know, honey, one of these days you may find yourself in a situation where you have no choice but to fight. Now, I'm not saying that's what happened today - "

Kim nodded again, not wanting to speak. Her mother's voice was suddenly wise and she wanted to hang onto every word she was saying.

"- but if it ever does happen, I just want you to remember one thing." Mom gently cupped Kim's chin in her hand and tilted it up so she could look her in the eye. "No matter who you're fighting or what they've done – there's a person in there, Kimmy."

Kim couldn't even find the strength to nod that time. She just gave her mother's hand a squeeze. Mom squeezed back, and Kim knew she understood.

"I'm proud of you for standing up for Ronald," Dad said. He was starting for her bedroom door, which meant the conversation was just about over. "But you have lost your TV time for tonight." His eyes softened at the corners. "Just so you'll remember to do it differently next time."

"Yes, Dad," Kim replied, trying not to sigh too heavily. She knew there were much worse punishments.

Once her parents had left, Kim fell back onto her bed and pondered what to do with her TV-less afternoon. She could check her website – reread the mystery novel she'd tucked away in the deepest corner of her closet until she'd forgotten who the culprit was – maybe even organize a game of Scattergories with the twins if they could act civilized for fifteen minutes.

Still, as she stared at the smooth white ceiling, her mother's words kept echoing in her mind. "There's a person in there," she had said. No matter how awful Rip Snorter was, the kid still had to be a human being. His blood had looked exactly like Ron's.

II.

Things I will iliminate once I am ruler of the world!

Dr. Drakken frowned to himself and tapped the eraser end of his pencil against his teeth. It was still missing something.

world!

There. Much better. One exclamation point would never do when one was talking about world domination.

*Automatic toilets. They just create far too much tension! Will it flush on time? Will it flush too early? Will it flush at all? Postitively NERVE-WRACKING!

Drakken made a face and moved on to the next item.

*Bullies.

*Daylight Savings Time. Can someone give me ONE good reason why this exists, other than to mess up our internal clocks? Anyone? No? Didn't think so.

*Chocolate Ex-Lax, especially the stuff that is not CLEARLY LABELED as such. That's just too cruel, even for a ruthless dictater like myself. Me. My own person. I, Dr. Drakken. Blah!

*Confusing noun forms.

"I didn't really plan on becoming a teen hero," the girl on TV admitted. "It just sort of…happened."

Drakken scowled at her uneasily. That was sort of the way he felt about becoming a supervillain. Err, used to feel, before evil had filled every fiber of his being.

The girl gave a nervous smile. Her braces glittered in the sun, and he felt a flash – a very small flash – of sympathy for her. Of course, this girl probably never had headgear. She carried herself too proudly to have ever had anything too embarrassing happen to her.

Drakken growled under his breath. All traces of sympathy fled. This girl looked so confident, she'd probably had life handed to her on a silver platter, despite the fact that she apparently couldn't afford a shirt that covered her navel. Even if their paths never crossed as villain and crime-fighter, he already hated her.

"…But the whole saving-the-world gig is pretty cool, I have to admit," the girl continued. Her smile grew bigger and more confident, demanding that Drakken's own facial muscles perform the inverse operation. "Who knows; maybe I really can do anything!"

Then it happened. With one smooth motion – couldn't she at least have been clumsy? – the girl gave her long red ponytail a flip. It bounced perfectly back into place, and Drakken clenched his teeth in a vain attempt to make his stomach not feel so shaky.

That flip. The universal girl sign for I'm-so-much-better-than-you. He should know; every girl he'd ever known had broken it out within ten minutes of meeting him, short of his own mother. Shego was a master at it. And she had so much hair, she could probably demolish a small building by flipping it.

Drakken put that right at the top of his list of things to eliminate once he was finally in control of the planet.

Or he would have if he hadn't just ripped the list up in frustration.

III.

With what she hoped was a stony expression, Kim Possible stared into the darkness of yet another evil lair's shark pit. She made sure to give an extra-cold glare to the young woman in the jumpsuit – Shego, Wade had called her – who appraised her right back with hard green eyes. She couldn't have been over twenty years old, but she had the most evil smirk Kim had ever seen on a human face. And she had seen some pretty evil smirks.

Shego kept her chin pointed straight at Kim. She had a sharper jawline than some of the guys Kim knew, but there was no denying this girl's exotic beauty. Ron had obviously noticed it, too, given he was staring at her with his eyes round and his mouth hanging open as if its hinges were busted. He was doing everything but holding up a sign that read,

Hey! You're really hot!

Not that it did anything to ease Kim's concerns.

The woman was good at martial arts, and she hadn't just learned them for self-defense the way Kim had, either. Her kicks and leaps and flips had revealed raw talent, while her gleaming eyes showed a sadistic kind of pleasure found in leveling her enemies. Her fingers had been sharp as she'd clung to Kim's wrist and tied double-knots of rope around her and Ron, sharper than fingers should feel, no matter how long their nails were. They'd felt more like knives.

Kim flipped her gaze down to the girl's hands now. Sure enough, the last few inches of her green-and-black gloves curved under like hawk's talons. Either Shego was a freak of nature, or she was hiding some pretty heavy-duty weaponry in her gloves. Either way, she was trouble.

But no matter how fierce she was, Kim knew Shego wasn't calling the shots around here, at least not all of them. She acted way too apathetic about the whole thing to have engineered the nano-tick theft. She was following someone's orders. Kim shivered, picturing the kind of person who would be able to make Shego answer to them.

As if on cue, Shego jerked her head of massive dark waves around and directed her smirk toward the shark pit's door. Kim could hear footsteps thundering toward them from the other side. Whoever this guy was, he walked like he was on his way to a fire.

That, or he just really enjoyed dropping kids to his sharks. Kim gave a nervous swallow and heard Ron gulp his agreement.

Stand tall, Kimmy, she could hear her father instructing her. Anything's possible for a Possible!

Corny? Definitely. But it was encouraging enough to let Kim straighten her shoulders and tilt her chin upward to look her new foe in the eye.

Over the years, she'd seen several strange-looking supervillains. There'd been a guy with a bionic eye and a woman with bright yellow eyes, not to mention quite a few street punks with missing teeth and weird tattoos. So when Kim found herself staring at a jagged scar and the most pronounced chin she'd ever seen outside of the host of The It's-So-Late-You-Should-Be-In-Bed Show, she wasn't terribly surprised.

Scar-and-Chin-Man stepped closer to her, throwing the shadow of his hulking shoulders across the water. Classic attempt at intimidation.

Kim recognized the look on his face – the cocky sneer, the arms folded smartly over his chest, his honkin' chin thrust at her in a way meant to convey the total control he thought he had over her now. She'd seen it on the faces of countless villains in her two-and-a-half years of crime-fighting. She'd wiped it off the faces of countless villains in the same amount of time.

Kim fought back a smirk of her own. She was going to enjoy knocking this guy down a few pegs.

"Ah, yes," Scar-and-Chin-Man began. His voice was deep and booming, and Kim felt Ron shrinking down behind her. "Kim Possible." The sound of her name coming out of his mouth made her want to hurl.

"And her little chum," added Shego. Her eyes were beginning to gleam with a calm pleasure that gave Kim the willies.

Evidently it upset one of the sharks, too, because it chose that moment to swim to the surface and snap its jaws menacingly in their general direction. Kim took a deep breath and tried to maintain her steady gaze, which was hard with fins circling her feet and Ron's sweat dripping onto her neck. "Did she have to say chum?" her best friend whimpered.

Kim gave him an elbow to the ribs, as best as she could through the ropes. At times like this, it was best for him just to keep his mouth shut.

Scar-and-Chin-Man stepped still closer. The aquarium's lights washed over his face, and Kim felt her own jaw nearly come unhinged.

What she'd assumed was dead-pale skin turned out to be the powder-blue shade of the twins' old nursery. And this was no paint splatter. It smoothly covered his face, his chin, and what she could see of his neck above a darker blue lab coat.

He definitely wasn't having any trouble breathing, though. He proved that by taking yet another step toward Kim and huffing straight into her face. In some strange, detached corner of her mind, she noticed he had peanut-butter breath.

"I've heard of your work, Kim Possible," the man began. "I presume you've heard of me, too!"

Kim glanced at him, surprised by the almost gleeful way his voice went up at the end of the sentence. Come on, Kimmy-cub, she could hear Dad encouraging her. You can defeat this guy; no sweat!

But it was Mom's voice that came through the loudest. There's a person in there, Kimmy.

Kim shrugged at the man. She hadn't heard of him, but with every word that came out of his mouth, she was less and less worried about being shark bait any time soon.

"You know…mad scientist….wants to take over the world…" Scar-and-Chin-Man continued. He twirled one finger around in the air in a way that so preteen-y, Kim almost laughed out loud.

I hate to break it to you, pal, she thought, but I've fought a lot of people who meet that description. But she merely shook her head and continued to observe her newest nemesis. He had a strange smirk, one that twitched at the corners like it wanted to turn into a smile. Under the glitter of evil in his eyes, there was a more childish sparkle that he was obviously fighting under his own skin to keep from letting it out.

But it wasn't quite working. There was a person inside him, all right, and it looked like a kindergartener to boot.

"Dr. . . ." The man's voice wound even higher, far out of its villainous boom. His almost-black eyes smoldered under his one thick eyebrow.

Kim shook her head again, fighting to keep the smile off her own lips.

The mad scientist's face fell, every feature flopping toward his chin. "Dr. . . Dr. . . Dr. . .Dra. . . Drakk. . ."

Kim frowned to herself. Drakk? It wasn't ringing any bells for her, villainous or otherwise.

"Drakken!" the man finally burst out. "Dr. Drakken?"

"Dr. Drakken?" Kim repeated in disbelief. It sounded like something her cousin Larry might come up with when he was role-playing with his geeky friends.

"A-ha!" Dr. Drakken poked a finger in the air. "I see my reputation precedes me!"

He had to be kidding. Kim lifted her eyebrows at Shego, who shook her head ever so slightly.

He wasn't kidding.

Kim snapped her eyes back to Dr. Drakken and kept it just steady and cold enough so he could see she wasn't a person to be messed with. And she didn't let up.

The mad scientist's smirk stayed firmly in place. His eyes, though, darted from her to the door to Shego to Ron and then finally back to her. One surprisingly small foot began to jitter.

Yep. The kindergarten was emerging.

And Kim was no longer afraid.