Chapter 10

Kim Possible lounged by the table and watched Doctor Drakken pace back and forth with his hands behind his back and a look of concentration on his scarred face. Or possibly of constipation; he gave the occasional pained grimace as he muttered.

"Mutated turnips... mmnh, no, I think I tried that already..."

He had been at this for almost an hour already, and didn't show any sign of producing a coherent sentence, or even a thought, any time soon. At first it had been kind of fascinating to watch, but by now it was getting boring. Kim produced an emery board and started working on Shego's nails. She had a vested interest in their condition, after all.

Shego had told her that this was how things usually went. After one of his plans inevitably failed, Dr. Drakken would then spend a few days too demoralized to do anything except mope around. Eventually he would recover enough to start brainstorming his next scheme.

"An army of battle bunnies! A relentless tide of white fluffy devastation. Hmm, but where would I find enough carrots to keep them in line?"

It was a process that could take a while.

"I could always build a huge death-ray."

"Oh, yeah, 'cause that's soo original." What was it with guys and giant ray-guns?

"Shego, there's no need for sarcasm. It can be very hurtful."

"Do you think Professor Dementor keeps building death-rays?"

"Don't talk to me about Professor Dementor. I'm much more inventive than that has-been hack."

"Sure you are, Doc."

"I'll show you. I'll show you all."

"I can barely contain my excitement." It wasn't like she enjoyed being mean to anyone, even Dr. Drakken. She was just trying to stay in character. Besides, she had already managed to shoot down one death-ray plan.

"Try to sound more fired up when you say that."

"Woo-hoo." Kim lazily pumped one arm. "With extra 'hoo'."

"Nrgh. Hmm? Aha! I have it, Shego!"

"Do you want me to call a doctor?"

"What? Don't distract me. I have just had the most astonishing idea of the decade, possibly the century; nay, the very millennium."

"Sliced bread is already invented, Doc."

"Bah. My idea is much grander than that. It's... it's... it's right on the tip of my tongue..."

"The palate?"

"Gah! It's gone now. I hope you're happy, Shego. You have robbed the world of the greatest crime it was ever going to witness."

"I am a thief, you know."

"Don't forget you work for me. You will steal things when I tell you to, and not otherwise."

"Wasn't going to." She definitely wasn't going to.

"Oh, don't try to pretend like you never sneak out for some extracurricular thieving. I'm wise to your ways, young woman."

"I guess you got me, Dr. D." Likely as not Shego was sneaking out to be with her, these days. It really was hard to maintain a clandestine relationship with an internationally wanted criminal, especially when you still lived with your parents. Switching bodies didn't help.

"Mnh. Don't you forget it. And give me back my brilliant idea."

"No. It's mine now. You'll just have to figure out another one."

"I will, Shego. If you think I can't come up with an idea twice as brilliant as that one, you are sorely mistaken."

"Yeah, yeah. Talk is cheap."

"Hrrng. Mnf. Hmm. A giant rocket loaded with lumpy porridge, maybe?"

"Are you sure you're not just hungry, Dr. D? A lot of these ideas seem to be food-related."

"Ha! I've had a brilliant idea, Shego. I, Doctor Drakken, will have a quick lunch break. I will think much better with a full stomach."

Kim doubted that, but she figured he could hardly do worse. She shrugged her shoulders to an imaginary audience and followed the figure in blue coat already marching towards the kitchen.

After the indifferent meal—the henchman rotation had its downsides—Dr. Drakken returned to the central room, and Kim followed, assuming she was expected to. Apparently brainstorming wasn't for the ears of the henchmen, or Dr. Drakken just didn't talk shop at the table. Not that anyone had talked much; the presence of the blue man appeared to have an inhibiting effect on the henchmen's banter. Well, he was crazy, and he paid their bills. Somehow. Kim had done most of the talking, attempting to improve the henchmen's table manners—in a manner Shego would approve of, of course. It was a process that could take a while.

"Now, where was I?"

"Failing to come up with a new plan."

"I don't need your attitude, Shego."

"You need something."

"What I need is a new idea, something devilish and unexpected that will put me back on the map."

"What about the last one?" Kim might as well try to get something useful out of this session.

"The last one?"

"The one with the brain switch machine."

"That plan is in ruins. Along with the machine. And the lair. Those aren't cheap, you know."

"Lairs or brain switch machines?"

"The lair was expensive. The brain switch machine was irreplaceable. The only one in the world, you know."

Now they were onto something. "So where'd you get it?"

"I built it, of course. I told you."

"How'd you manage that?"

"By being a genius, Shego."

"Well, have you thought about re-building it and giving the plan another go?"

"Revisiting a plan? I'm an evil genius; coming up with brilliant new schemes to take over the world is totally my bag. If you think another giant death-ray is bad, how would repeating a plan look? No, you had a point, Shego. I'm not a one-note villain that does the same thing over and over, like that demented golfer, or the deranged monkey person."

"Don't you repeatedly fail at taking over the world, though?"

"I only need to succeed once, Shego."

"I guess."

"You're rarely this interested in my plans. It's almost eerie."

"Well, I just thought you were onto something there, Dr. D."

"You laughed at my plan."

"So we'd have that part out of the way already if we redid it."

"No. I already told you, retries are for chumps and chimps."

"But the plan never even got off the ground because of m... that meddling cheerleader."

"The bane of my existence. If she tells everybody I'm recycling old schemes, I'll lose my cool guy card."

"Dr. D, you have never had a cool guy card."

"Oh yeah?" Dr. Drakken dug out his wallet and extracted a card, which he handed for Kim. "Then what's this, then?"

"It's a membership card for Snowman Hank Fan Club."

"So there you have it."

"That's the exact opposite of a cool guy card."

"How wrong you can be, Shego."

"Whatever. I bet the real reason you won't try again is because you couldn't rebuild the machine, anyway."

"I could if I wanted to."

"I bet."

"I'm the genius who built it in the first place."

"Prove it. How?"

"You wouldn't understand. It involves some very esoteric techniques."

"Big words, Dr. D."

"It's all in the book."

"Book? What book?"

"The book I got the idea from."

"So it wasn't your brainwave? What was the name of the book?"

"I forget. Give it a rest, Shego. The plan is dead and buried."

"What about the book?"

"Also buried. It was in the lair. Now stop bringing me down with all this talk about old failed plans. You're harshing my buzz."

"Buzz away, Dr. D." Kim had already got a lead, anyway.

"Hmm, buzz... bees... no, hummingbirds! No, bees! Robot bees! Yes! I shall call it the Plan Bee, Shego."

"I wish you wouldn't."

Dr. Drakken was no longer listening. He made a bee-line for the desk in the corner, grabbed a pen and a sheaf of paper, and started scribbling like a madman. Which was only natural, since he was one. Kim wondered if she should stay to observe, but she decided to use Dr. Drakken's distraction to go call Wade.

"That's a solid lead, Kim. Nice work. No book's turned up yet, but there's a lot of rubble to shift. It's a good thing a lot of people owe you favors."

"I didn't stop that runaway bulldozer so the construction company would owe me, but I'm not turning them down if they want to pitch in. The book may not have even survived, though."

"Probably not in one piece, but we only need enough to identify which book it was. Getting an idea about the principles Dr. Drakken based his machine on would be a major step towards figuring out how to reverse the effects."

"Let's hope it turns up. How's the mission front look?"

"Plenty available, but it's mostly the kind you take when you're bored, and let's be honest: Shego doesn't seem as enthusiastic about doing missions as you. What do I do if something urgent does come up?"

"I think we can trust Shego with it. She seems to be behaving."

"So she passed your test, then?"

"Well, I don't know how she'd have behaved if she'd found a real thief, but she seemed to take the mission seriously up to that point." The museum thing had definitely been a totally legitimate and successful test.

"It's your call, Kim. I've got to admit I'm surprised with how well she's behaving. Just how did you convince her?"

"She knows she's better off with me: it's not like she can get what she wants from Dr. D. I mean, Dr. Drakken."

"How are things going with the good doctor, by the way?"

"It's been quiet so far, but I think he just got an idea. I hope it's a non-starter."

"And if it isn't?"

"I'll handle it somehow. I need to go now, I still have homework to do. Have I mentioned this is a really unfair arrangement?"

"Didn't you just say Shego seems to be holding up her end of the bargain?"

"Only because it's unfair. Talk to you later, Wade."

After finishing her homework and submitting it for Shego to hand in, Kim went to find Dr. Drakken. It was time to find out just how much trouble his latest brainwave would be.

"Shego! There you are. I present to you my next creation."

Dr. Drakken gestured towards the large screen. On it was a schematic of a blue robotic woman, or a woman-shaped robot. In either case, the generous curves and slender limbs of the figure were unmistakably feminine and, despite the narrow waist, not particularly insectile.

"That's not a robot bee."

"I call her Bebe."

"But of course you do. Why is she blue?"

"What color would an electric robot bee woman be other than shocking blue?"

"I don't know, black and yellow?"

"She's got blonde hair."

"I can see that. So, all this time I though you were working on your next plan you were just drawing robot women. Frustrated much?"

"No. I mean, sure, I might have built the original version back in college because me and my posse couldn't score dates, but—"

"Wait, wait, time out. This isn't even a new idea? It's a rehash of something you came up with in college?" That explained the design, though. At least the thing didn't have giant breasts, and didn't appear to be quite anatomically complete "Didn't we just decide against redoing plans?"

"This one doesn't count, Shego. I wasn't even a villain yet, it was not an evil plan."

"No, just a lame one. So why the update? You suddenly remembered you still can't get a date?"

"I could so get a date if I wanted to. Mrghn. No, my brilliant idea of bees gave me an even more brilliant idea of how to fix the unfortunate problems with the original Bebes."

"I'm afraid to ask."

"Hive mind, Shego."

"Oh. That wasn't what I was expecting to hear."

"The electronic brain that you can cram into such a weak vessel is necessarily too puny to achieve all the things it needs for the Bebes to be—or bee, eh Shego?—the perfect women they were designed to be."

"Again, I'm afraid to ask."

"But by networking the individual units, they can share the workload amongst themselves, letting each one be more capable than it would on its own."

"How would that even work? I mean, you'd still have the same computing power to run the same number of units, right? Or would there be a mainframe somewhere?"

"Since when do you know anything about robots, Shego? No, of course there wouldn't be a central computer, that would defeat the entire point of having a hive mind. Don't feel bad, Shego, you can hardly be expected to understand my sheer genius."

Dr. Drakken puffed out his chest, then started to pace in front of the screen with his hands holding imaginary lapels.

"Your mistake, Shego, is to think of individual Bebes as monolithic units. The mind of each one is composed of numerous subroutines, many of them dealing with very mundane, rote tasks. By sharing these subroutines across the hive mind, each Bebe will have more power to devote to higher level tasks. And the more units are added to the hive mind, the more capable each individual Bebe becomes. And that's not even mentioning the perfect teamwork they'll have. It is brilliant, Shego. None other than I, Doctor Drakken, could have come up with such an ingenious idea. Really, sometimes I even astonish myself."

"That... that does sound pretty clever, Dr. D." At first blush it did sound plausible. Had Dr. Drakken actually hit upon a workable idea for once? Kim supposed stranger things had happened. But of course, the hive mind was just one part of the design. "So what will these Bebes be for?"

"For? They will be perfect women, and as such they will make perfect lackeys."

"Indeed?" One of Kim's, or rather, Shego's, hands seemed to curl into a fist of its own accord.

"Obedient, orderly, meek in the presence of their master, but vicious to my enemies. They will be equally adept at housework as they will be at executing my evil plans."

"Is that so." Kim didn't so much activate Shego's glow as she allowed it to manifest.

"Oh, yes. I can assure you they will listen to my brilliant plans with proper respect and admiration and certainly won't threaten their employer, their very generous employer, with potentially deadly violence. Calm down now, Shego. Is it... is it one of those days? That, also, won't be an issue with robotic..."

Dr. Drakken broke off and dove for cover as Kim let loose with blasts of green force. It's what Shego would have done, she was sure. This was definitely a case where Dr. Drakken was out of line.

"I don't even understand what I've done to upset you, Shego!"

"I don't know, maybe it's the implication you plan on replacing me with some robotic bimbos. Or maybe I just don't appreciate your views on women."

"We can talk about this, Shego."

"So let's talk. Where do we stand on Plan B?"

"It is my most brillia—augh!"

"Come again, Dr. D?"

"We're... we're not doing it?"

"See? A good talk."

"At least when you're around," Drakken grumbled sotto voce. "Can I come out now?"

"Sure. I mean, you have to start working on plan C, right? Or was there a plan A you skipped?"

"No, I... ah, yes; yes, Shego. There was one thing, but I put it on hold since... it requires materials I... uh, can't quite afford right now. I'm well in my funds, don't misunderstand, I'm just a teensy weensy short. Could you maybe—"

"I'm not spotting you."

"—steal them for me?"

"Oh. Right." Now how was she going to get out of this one? Stealing things was very much why Dr. Drakken employed Shego. She could hardly claim this request was unreasonable.

"Judging from their latest offerings, Jack Hench's labs should have what I need."

"You want me to steal from Jack Hench? Are you out of your mind?" This one she could spin, fortunately.

"What's the problem, Shego? You've done it before, and it's not like we ever buy from him at his criminally inflated prices."

"Drakken, we're in one of his time-share lairs right now."

"Ah, yes, I see what you mean. The timing could be a little awkward."

"I'm glad we're on the same page."

"Perhaps you could wear some sort of a disguise?"

Kim had a sudden vision of Shego in sheer, skintight black costume with a generous cleavage; the other costume she'd found at Shego's place she had fond memories of. Hench was a criminal, anyway, profiting from the work of villains. And it's not like she was actually going to manage to steal anything, as long as she made sure Shego showed up to stop her. Preferably suitably attired.

"Yes. Yes, I think a disguise would work."