Disclaimer: The Kim Possible characters belong to Disney, but Disney didn't have anything to do with the following tidbit, which is probably just as well.
Notes: This was written in response to a request elsewhere (specifically, over on LiveJournal's kpslash community). I hadn't originally intended to post it over here -- it's more a fragment than a story, really -- but given that its particular character axis is markedly different from the "Sitch in Slash" stories, perhaps it will serve as an interesting contrast/counterpoint to the other stories I've posted so far. And it was fun to write, at that...
The following scene corresponds to one of the "big moments" in So the Drama, but is set in an AU which diverges rather sharply from the canonical Kim-verse during the episode "Bad Boy"; most of the key details should be covered in the material below.
Slowly, groggily, Kim's eyes flickered open, taking in a surreal semi-darkness dimly streaked with green, yellow, and orange. They were, she realized after a moment, the only part of her she could move easily. Her arms were stretched over her head, secured somewhere out of sight above her. A pair of wide black bands held her body against a hard vertical surface, and each ankle was similarly anchored.
Bueno Nacho headquarters. And this, she realized as her vision adapted to the dim light, must be some kind of prop room. The wall she was bound to was actually an artificial cactus some fifteen feet tall. More grandé-sized sculptures were scattered around the room – a couple of artificial sand dunes, a giant aluminum naco, a thousand-gallon sombrero. And halfway across the room, strapped to another metallic sculpture, was Shego – also blinking, groaning, and trying unsuccessfully to flex her limbs.
"Is this . . . Hell?" Shego said fuzzily. Then she shook her head as if to clear it and looked around. "No, wait – just Blue Boy's toy closet. Well, if he thinks—" She broke off, frowning and trying to look up toward her hands. "Oh, don't tell me, he came up with a gadget that neutralizes plasma powers."
Tired as she was, Kim couldn't resist the cue. "He came up with a gadget that neutralizes plasma powers." He had also, she didn't bother to add, shorted out her experimental battle suit.
Shego's head whipped around. "Princess! I thought you were down for the count!" Then she glared. "And I told you not to tell me that."
Kim sighed, sagging against her bonds. "Why couldn't I see that Erik was a fake?"
"It doesn't get much faker than a synthodrone," Shego agreed. "Or it didn't. Wonder Boy probably improved on Drakken's technology. Still, I bet you'd have figured it out if you'd ever actually kissed him. Syntho-spit tastes like motor oil."
"I . . . wanted to kiss him," Kim said defensively, then blinked and stared toward Shego. "Wait, you kissed a synthodrone? Eewwww!"
"I didn't know it was a synthodrone at the time," Shego retorted. "I hadn't finished tearing his clothes off."
Kim couldn't work up the energy to roll her eyes. "Okay, way too much info."
Shego gave a slight nod, the restraints being too tight to permit shrugging. "So, what's the plan?"
The expression Kim turned on Shego was one of utter surprise. Circumstances had thrown them together more than once since the disaster that had transformed Ron Stoppable into the arch-villain Zorpox, but never once had Kim's most frequent adversary willingly let Kim take full control of a situation.
"Plan?" she echoed. Her battle-suit was offline. Zorpox's Diablo robots had been deployed by the tens of thousands nationwide, awaiting a command signal he might broadcast at any moment. And what had she been doing? She'd been going to the prom with Erik – just as her one-time sidekick had planned.
"Plan? I – I got nothing." Kim drooped forward, her hair falling across her face.
Shego's voice cut into her despair as surely as her clawed gloves could slice glass. "That's the buffoon's line – back when he was a buffoon, anyway. Don't tell me the great Kim Possible's suddenly turned quitter."
Quitter. The word stung – but what could she do? "Face it, Zorpox finally won. Maybe if I'd stuck to babysitting in the first place . . . ." Maybe then he wouldn't be Zorpox. Maybe then he'd still be Ron.
"Wahh, wahh, enough with the pity fiesta, Princess," Shego shot back. "Blue Boy has not won. He played you; that makes it payback time."
Shego's tone was so cold it was almost Arctic, and sharp enough that Kim wearily lifted her head enough to look toward her fellow prisoner. But what she saw on Shego's face was something more than raw elemental anger. It was worry, and fear, and – concern?
For a long moment, Shego simply returned Kim's gaze. "You know, Princess," she said at last, "Erik was a lousy match for you."
"You think?"
"Doy," Shego said dryly. "Totally apart from the not-being-real thing, he didn't want a partner – he wanted to control you. Talk about your lost causes . . . ."
The shadow of a giggle escaped Kim's lips. "I suppose," she said. Then, musingly, she tried out Shego's word. "Partner. I – had a partner, once."
Shego's eyebrows rose, but she managed not to snicker – and after another moment, her expression turned thoughtful. "Stoppable? Maybe, maybe not. I'd have said sidekick, back in the day, but he might've made partner by now if—"
"If the Attitudinator hadn't permanently rewired his brain."
"Right," Shego said. "But there's no fixing that now. You want a partner, you have to look forward, not back."
Kim sighed. "You really think there's a partner for me out there somewhere?"
"Out there, who knows?" replied Shego. Then she paused, swallowed, cleared her throat, and finally said, "Now, in here . . . ."
Kim's eyebrows shot up twice as fast as Shego's had. "Partner? You? As in--?"
"Mission partner," Shego said instantly, her face turning faintly pink – no small matter given her greenish complexion. "As in equal partner; I don't do sidekick. And I especially don't do minion anymore, but you knew that."
"Mission partner," Kim said, mentally trying out the idea. "If you're sure you're up for it. For a moment there I thought you were talking about—"
"Rufus!"
A soft clang accompanied Shego's exclamation as an air-duct grill landed on the floor and a small pink naked mole rat jumped from the duct to the top of a nearby naco sculpture.
"Rufus?" Kim echoed.
"Hi!" squeaked the mole rat cheerily, waving the needle he'd obviously been using as a lockpick and screwdriver.
"Rufus! You can save us!" Unlike most of Kim's adversaries, Zorpox was smart enough that he'd relieved her of most of her usual mission gear – grapple gun, laser lipstick, knockout compact, backpack. But she and Wade had anticipated that possibility. The little mole rat had already scampered halfway to Kim's shoulder, but he took one look at the thick rubber-like bands holding her to the metal cactus and gave her a regretful thumbs-down.
"Too tough!"
For the first time since she'd awakened, Kim laughed aloud. "Not that way – the wire! In my cuff."
Rufus frowned, but followed Kim's prompts and quickly extracted a surprisingly long coil of nearly monofilament wire from where it had been concealed around her left wrist, then snipped off short segments of the wire, hung them so that they lay against Kim's bonds, and went from one to the next touching them with a metal stud taken from one of Kim's earrings. One by one, the snippets quickly glowed red-hot, melting through and severing the restraints.
"Clever," Shego observed. "When this is over, remind me to buy your nerdlinger a beer."
"Make that a root beer," Kim amended as her bonds fell away and she dropped lightly to the floor. "Wade won't be legal for a few years yet." Within moments, she and Rufus had used more of the hot-wire to free Shego and disarm the cuffs that had been damping her plasma glow-powers.
They stood silently facing each other for more than a minute, flexing stiff muscles and taking stock of their condition. Then:
"Let's go," Shego said. "Blue Boy doesn't waste time."
Kim nodded. "Let's go – partner."