~So here we are. Some short and (hopefully) sweet to tide you guys over. And by that I mean, the next chapter's going to be really long, so it'll probably take me a while to work on. Plus, we're going on vacation next week and I'll want to spend most of my time with my family.

At any rate, hope you like and I'll see you next chappie. Whenever that is. :) ~

Her

So mother-daughter bonding had been become mother-daughter bondage. Wasn't that the story of her life? Kim Possible thought dryly.

Although Mom's body was cool and smooth and only slightly sweaty against her own, Kim could feel the shaking in it. Mom was about as fearless as anyone Kim knew - and she HAD to be tough to work with all that blood and brain matter for a living - but crime fighting wasn't really her thing.

And she'd only met Drakken a few times before. Right now, Mom was eying him like he was a wounded animal, one she wasn't sure whether to doctor up or put out of its misery. He, of course, was pointedly ignoring her, doing that chief-rooster strut that would have been a lot more effective if his legs weren't so puny. Muttered somethings came out through the perfect dental work.

Kim coughed slightly to redirect his attention back to her. She needed to know exactly what the plan was so she could hurry and foil it and get back to her life, already. She was so going to owe Mom a trip to her favorite Italian restaurant after getting her mixed up in this.

Drakken shot her a surly scowl, a lesser variant of the Tweebs' when they were told not to bring anti-gravity tech to the dinner table. "So," his voice resonated through the cramped train car, "Kim Possible and her -" Drakken glittered a glare at them that stopped short when it landed on Mom. "- sister?" His last syllable took a three-octave hike.

Uh, yeah. This obvious relative I'm hanging out with on Mother's Day is totally my sister. For someone who proclaimed himself an evil genius every ten minutes, Dr. Drakken could be a complete dingbat.

Mom jerked her head around enough that Kim could see one side of her lip lifting. "Is he hitting on me?" she hissed - in disgust.

Drakken shook the ponytail. There was absolutely nothing gorchy in his expression, so Kim couldn't even get that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of freaky-looking, oh-my-gosh-you're-such-a-pain Drakken trying to flirt with her just-downright-good mother. Actually, she couldn't even begin to picture it. Drakken wasn't a creeper. He was too - too -

Innocent. That was super-weird to say about a villain, especially one who was probably plotting her death even now - but in a twisted way, he sort of was.

Kim gave her head as much of a wag as she could without colliding with Mom's. "Nah." She didn't even need to TRY to scoff; it just came so naturally around Drakken. "Sidekicks just really confuse him."

Even more so than she'd thought. At least he could recognize Ron. That could work to their advantage, though. Confused Drakken was way easier to defeat.

Shego let out an appreciative snort. Drakken whirled on her with a whose-side-are-you-on look. Reassured that Drakken wasn't coming on to her, Mom's fear was gone, and she surveyed him clinically, as if he were a particularly interesting patient about to go under the knife.

Kim was sure she heard a door creak open on its hinges. The tremulous chill Drakken had worked into his eyes evaporated instantly, and he gasped sharply, which could have been a good sign. Or not, considering they were on the same train. Shego's breathing shifted to one continuous snicker.

With ropes burrowing their prickly strands into her ankles, Kim stretched her neck like putty to find the source of the commotion. A rounded little woman with a bouffant hairdo bigger than she was had arrived on the scene. Her eyes, like little drops of oil behind glasses that had probably been cool several decades ago, were blinking rapidly.

Aww, no. This train was supposed to be unmanned. Where had she come from? The woman did seem like she didn't know where she was or how she'd gotten there. Drakken had been pretty much guaranteed no witnesses - and now he had one. What was he going to do?

But Drakken didn't look for a moment like he was about to pitch this woman out the window. In fact, he'd gone from holding his breath to hyperventilating.

The woman put her hands on her floral-clad hips. "Drewbie?" she piped up in a voice so shrill it nearly popped Kim's eardrums.

Hold up - what?

The woman shook a finger at Drakken, who was drooping as though Kim had already thoroughly trounced him. Kim didn't know if she'd ever seen shame in the slump of his shoulders before. "Why are these people tied up?" the woman asked.

Drakken didn't appear to be able to respond. With each gentle-yet-firm word out of this woman's mouth, he appeared to shrink farther and farther into himself until he resembled an animal caught in a trap. Not even the arrival of the National Guard had put that kind of nervous tremble around his mouth before.

Who was this lady, and why was Drakken so afraid of her? Granted, Kim knew Drakken was kind of a wimp, but sheesh. Even forced into a sit, Mom was taller than the newcomer and totally more formidable. But Drakken was picking at an imaginary hangnail on his gloves and swallowing as if the Possible women weren't even there. What the heck -

Kim didn't expect the woman to answer her, but she did. She tilted the nearly-pink mass of hair. Exactly the way Drakken always cocked his own spikes-and-ponytail hairdo when something had bewildered him for the fourteenth straight time.

Okay, so Kim was a dingbat too.

There was this woman, her hands and feet too small even for a tiny little thing like her. Her face, younger than the age she had to be, was long and oval with a capsule of a chin. Doorknob ears jutted from either side of her head, and her eyes sparkled with Drakken-curiosity over a delicately swirled little nose. And there was Shego, leaning against the wall, flaunting the biggest grin Kim had ever seen on her.

And then there was Drakken himself, who appeared to have recently realized a very urgent need for a restroom. His eyes flicked from face to face, stopping only to swim over Mrs. Cotton Candy Hair and grow soft in a way she hadn't known her arch-foe's eyes could. It wasn't scared-of-Shego soft or bawling-my-eyes-out-over-a-failed scheme soft. There was. . . love in it.

That, more so than the woman's nose and ears and hands, told Kim who she had to be. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. And with the sudden sweetness melting Drakken's gaze, they looked so alike it was almost hilarious.

Uh, we're tied up because he wants to steal whatever government weapon is on this train, and we're here to stop him! Kim clamped her mouth shut around the words. If this woman was who Kim knew she was, she couldn't break Mrs. Lipsky's heart. Like she'd believe Kim anyway.

Kim twinkled her eyes over to her mother. Mom had a deep-blue sparkle going on, too, and the faintest trace of a smile. There's a person in there, Kimmie, Kim could hear her saying - with a giggle.

Yeah, she totally rocked as a mom. Between the two of them, they probably had half a dozen potential escape plans just dying to be used. How many other mothers could do THAT?

The day was as good as saved already.

Drakken's very skin seemed to pucker. It was the longest Kim had ever known him to go without speaking, and when he finally did, the words shook like leaves. "It's - it's part of their therapy, Mother."

A-ha.

Him

Well, this was a. . . err. . . . precarious situation Dr. Drakken found himself in.

Not that he was about to panic, of course.

On second thought, maybe he was. He had Kim Possible captive, didn't really know what to do with whoever her new sidekick was - where was the boy who always lost his pants? And Mother was wrinkling her brow, usually all smooth for a sixty-year-old, from them to him and back again, inquiring exactly why these people were tied up.

To his immense relief, Kim Possible wasn't saying anything, just smirking him the message, I wanna see you try to talk your way out of this one. The woman who obviously wasn't her sister simply seemed relieved that Drakken hadn't been flirting with her - that was what "hitting on" meant, right? Flirting? And why would calling her someone's sister be considered flirting, anyway? Drakken wouldn't have flirted with someone's sister. People got super-protective of their sisters. He would have hated if anybody flirted with his sister. Which he didn't have. Unless you counted Shego. "Sister" was just one of the many, many things she was filed under in Drakken's mind.

Oh, speaking of Shego. She probably wasn't going to be a whole lot of help. Her ordinarily marble-cool face was twitching in mischief. He really should have fired her right there - except without her job security to worry about, she'd tell, she'd tell Mother, she'd tell in a heartbeat.

And then there was his mother giving him love he didn't deserve. For all her hugging and squealing, she was a great mother, and Drakken salivated for her approval. Underneath her softness lay a backbone tough enough to bring up a son all on her own, which couldn't have been easy. Especially not once he hit puberty, and she was having to explain bodily changes she'd never experienced herself.

Surrounded by such strong women, Drakken felt more all-arms than ever. He propped his elbow casually against a random lever, which rocketed up to the top and then snapped off and tinkled to the floor.

Oops. He. . uh. . . heh. . . hoped that wasn't important.

Okay, think, Drakken, think! He shoved his fingers through his hair. What reason could you have to tie someone up besides holding them hostage?

"I don't know; I just found them this way"?

"We're reenacting the James brothers' Last Great Stagecoach Robbery"?

"I was driven to unsound acts when I heard about Brittina and Nicky-Nick breaking up"? That last one, at least, was true - he'd doom-rayed a hole in the wall of his suburban lair's living quarters - but Mother probably wouldn't know who those people were. She wasn't off the heezy the way Drakken was.

The walls of logic were crumbling around Drakken, but one fact bled through: A radio talk show host. You're supposed to be a radio talk show host!

"It's, uh, it's part of their therapy, Mother," Drakken said. Weakly.

An entire paleontological age passed before anything in the universe responded. Had one of his rival mad scientists slowed down time? Had to be Dementor, eager to see Drakken stew in his misery. . .

Then - "Oh," Mother said. Her eyelids batted a few times, yet she didn't ask further questions.

Yesssss! Still, Drakken had to get her out of here before he inevitably did something else incriminating. A man that evil could only cover it for so long.

The lost art of conversation died a second death on Drakken's tongue, the tongue that villainous monologues rose so easily to. Although suaveness (was that a word?) failed him (the way it always did when it was absolutely required), Drakken began, "Hey, Mother, why don't you see if you can find a -" a flash of genius - "a dining car?" He sparkled what he knew was his dazzling array of teeth at her. "I'm still hungry."

The smile Mother gave him back was knowing but not too knowing. It read, See, I told you, you need to eat more, and nothing more.

They'd go round and round in argument about that, too, though it was one of the few things Drakken didn't disagree with her on. He wasn't exactly eating regularly. He always meant to - because, gosh, he loved food - but evil plans had a way of sweeping you along until everything else was forgotten. Shego had dropped the how-can-you-scarf-like-that-and-still-be-a-beanpole routine after the third week in a row when she had to remind him to have lunch. Even now, Drakken's stomach was rumbling, though he wasn't sure if that was hunger or nerves.

Mother turned her back - yes, finally! - and toddled out the door, in search of something that could never begin to compare to her potato salad. As soon as her tender padding faded down the hall, suaveness came through for once, and Drakken effortlessly shut the door with one foot. Didn't lose his balance or anything.

Kim Possible was still sniggering from across the car. Sure, she could laugh. She'd probably woken up this morning knowing it was Mother's Day. No doubt she was the perfect daughter, because she was the perfect everything! Somebody had to show that girl she wasn't all that, even if she had already spent most of the day with her mother -

Her mother. Drakken's head jerked back toward the older version of Kim Possible. She was continuing to watch him, radiating concern.

It was a look only a mother could give.

But that wasn't what sucked Drakken's breath from his body. It was the familiar. . . ness. Likely there were plenty of tall orangey-redheads in Middleton, but surely none of them had kindness that saturated their very being and leaked out on everyone around them. Drakken's memory banks may have been corrupted, but he never forgot the rare face that had looked at him nicely.

Ann.

He'd heard James refer to his wife as "Ann" before, but that was quite a common name! Drakken had never put it together that it was the Ann, his study buddy in the public library during college. The only one who didn't seem to find his scrawny body coupled with his thunderous voice and his nerdy glasses a source of great amusement. He'd never had feelings for her, but he'd asked her to that big dance as friends. And she'd only said no because she had a test that weekend that would make up half her grade. And so he'd had to build robots, and then -

And now he'd have to -

IGNORE her, Drakken.

It might have been easier to ignore a woman with a zucchini growing out of her nose. Maybe. Drakken worked to bury it all beneath genetics. Scientifically speaking, he should have seen it earlier. The red hair, the big eyes, the illusion of sharpness on a round face. The perkiness. Except Ann would never have run around with her midriff showing. Teens today. . .

Which meant she had grown up to marry James. Drakken wrinkled his nose. She could have done better. Just because he was a rocket scientist and she was a brain surgeon didn't mean -

So Ann did become a brain surgeon after all. She'd wanted that so badly, almost as badly as he'd wanted to become a famous chemist. She'd been such a serious student, too. . .

Drakken's gaze mutinied and flew back to Ann. She was a brain surgeon, all right; you could tell just by looking at her. Her eyes were like scalpels themselves, peeling back Drakken's hair, his scalp, his skull, straight to the most vulnerable part of the brain. Where she could plainly read the thought, Why couldn't you have made up the test later? It would have saved both of us!

Tingles marched their way up Drakken's backbone, heralding the onslaught of guilt. If only Ann's face would rip open and spew threats and insults the way James's always did! Then Drakken could have sent her off to her death without a peep from his conscience. But it stayed soft and sad on his. There was mother-fierceness there, a don't-you-dare-hurt-my-daughter, but no hate.

Drakken swallowed hard.

Marching his way up to Kim Possible, he knelt down so he could give her his death stare straight on, deliberately keeping his head turned away from Ann. Time to finish this. "So, Kim Possible," he said, low and slow and menacing.

Kim Possible's eyes began to twinkle mockingly. Drakken had walked smack into a tree branch two hours ago. This hurt more. "Drewbie?" she asked in much too friendly a fashion. That teenage-girl tactic of making you feel like a worm.

"Stop it!" To Drakken's horror, he heard his voice warble into his eighth-grade range. Much as he hated that baby name, it turned into something dirty and wrong in the mouth of his arch-foe.

He jerked back, arms locked around his tightly coiled chest, and regained his villain coldness. If Ann wasn't going to keep her daughter from smarting off to him, then he'd -

Ann had a little pinch between her eyebrows. Just like she always did when she didn't know exactly what to do. Which wasn't often.

Drakken's badly conflicted insides might have burst apart right then if Shego hadn't leaned forward and dropped matter-of-factly in his ear, "Peter Pufferpuff's approaching a giant gorge." With a smile like a sugar packet. Drakken loved sugar, but even his molars could sting after consuming one of those.

He shot his sidekick a laser look. "You're loving this, aren't you?"

Shego nodded shamelessly. The realization that she was being more honest than he was today didn't sit well with Drakken.

Okay - gorge. Unexpected. Not good. Drakken needed to find the container of Syntho-plasma and get his family out of there. Then he could -

Drakken breathed for the first time in minutes. Gorge. He could just let the train go into the gorge and crash. The high-tech shock absorbers he'd spent hours studying should prevent the blow from reaching a car this far back. And if they didn't make it, Drakken didn't have to watch. Once they'd crawled from the wreckage, he'd be long gone with his new doom weapon anyway. But Ann had a chance.

It was the best he could do.

Drakken shook his head, the thoughts roiling like indigestion. He could feel his pupils zipping toward each other, the desperation climbing. There was still Syntho-plasma to be located, and Kim Possible and Mrs. Possible - he should probably call her that if he were going to convince himself they were enemies now - were not going to stop him! Especially not now that he had a time limit.

Let's see, distance divided by speed - max velocity - tornadoes had winds that blew at hundreds of miles per hour - he had a weather machine once - this was getting him nowhere except closer to the gorge. . .

Mrs. Possible's eyes were still sympathetic. Bristled right up the back of his neck and gave him an odd nausea halfway down his esophagus. Drakken turned and flew from the room as if his feet had wings, away from the soft face that he needed to destroy.

Some days it stunk being evil. It really, really did.

~Note: The name "Drew Lipsky" seemed to be familiar to Mrs. Possible at the end of Attack of the Killer Bebes, so I had that they had been acquaintances before he went evil.~