CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

And Bonnie stepped out.

She pepper-sprayed Kim in the face before the surpried teenager had a chance to react. The burning sensation in her eyes made her scream loud enough to drown out the sound of Drakken stepping out of the elevator. He punched her once in the face, knocking her out cold.

Bonnie and Drakken faced off against Monique and Shego.

As Bonnie slipped the pepper spray canister to Drakken he said, 'Leave Shego to me.'

Shego snarled, 'I see you've become Marx's sidekick.'

Drakken remarked contemptuously, 'I really should've killed you when I had the chance.'

'You never did think ahead, Dr D.'

'Oh, contraire, Miss Sharon Go, I did think ahead,' Drakken remarked icily. 'While you were tanning your arse in Monte Carlo Marx talked me into going green in my evil endeavours.' His eyes narrowed as his toothy grin grew bigger.

Shego lit up her hands with her green plasma flames but, before she managed to unleash them, a loud crash behind her distracted her long enough to allow Drakken to whack her between the eyes with the canister, causing her plasma flames to die out.

Though this was an annoyance she didn't see it as a major problem as most of her training with Team Possible had not involved using her powers but on enhancing her kung fu and street fighting skills in the event Marx managed to disable her powers as he had done previously.

'I may have lost my powers, Drew Lipski, but I haven't lost my ability to fight.'

'Somehow I doubt that.'

Angrily Shego rushed forward but slipped over in the olive oil that now coated the garage floor. Behind her an accident between a delivery truck bringing in olive oil for the Mediterranean-based diets virtually every all the henchmen ate and an SUV had ruptured the olive oil container, spilling its contents across the garage floor. Neither she nor Drakken had paid enough attention to the accident to notice the oil.

Shego yelped, 'What the hell…?'

Drakken beamed as he saw her land hard on her butt, his toothy sneer dominating his face.

He yelled, 'Flowers! Strangle Shego!'

Vines decorated with flowers shot out from his neck. Shego attempted to avoid them but she couldn't get a hold on the slippery floor to do more than slide hopelessly in the olive oil. The vines wrapped themselves around her neck in a vice-like grip. The former sidekick tried to loosen the vines but it didn't work. They wouldn't let go, even when she slashed them with her razor sharp fingernails.

'Please, Dr D, for old times' sake, let me go,' she pleaded to her former boss but all he did was look straight through her with the same indifferent callousness that he looked upon the many innocent people who'd suffered at his hands over the years. As she felt the vines squeezing tighter she could only gasp one final plea, 'Please don't kill me.' But Drakken had long passed the point when he was in a forgiving mood as far as she was concerned.

'Give my regards to your mo-.'

Drakken was cut off abruptly by a knee to his testicles from Kim, who'd recovered from the pepper spray in the eyes and the nose breaking blow delivered by Drakken only moments before. His vines suddenly relaxed, allowing Shego to remove the vines from around her neck.

'Kim Possible, you think you're all that but you most certainly are not,' Drakken remarked in a high pitched squeak, the pain shooting through his body agonising beyond comprehension.

'That's what you think,' Kim said as she delivered a blow that would've knocked out a heavyweight boxer to the man's jaw. It made him stagger back towards the elevator but didn't knock him out that a punch like that used to.

She snarled, 'Man, since when did you get so strong?'

'Since I discovered working out,' he hissed as he aimed a kick at Kim's shin. It hurt her enough to make her cry out but it didn't stop her from punching Drakken twice more before he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Bonnie and Monique were doing their darnedest to tear each others hair out and pummel each other's heads into the concrete floor. Blood, skin and clumps of hair flew in all directions as they rolled around on the ground, each trying to pin the other down but neither able to do so because they were coated in olive oil from the accident which made them slither all over the place, which only added to their mutual frustration.

'You always were a bitch, Bonnie!' Monique yelled as she head butted Bonnie in the mouth, cutting one of her lips. The blood splattered Monique's face. Using her hips she managed to throw off Bonnie and pin her down on the ground.

'Who are you calling bitch?' Bonnie snarled as Monique bashed her head hard against the concrete until she began seeing double.

In the course of their fight Monique's shirt had been ripped, which had given Bonnie the idea of using an interrogation technique on her adversary's breasts taught to her by Commandant Lyons at Fort Laval. It brought forth a howling scream from Monique. 'At Fort Laval they call that the torsion du mamelon.'

Bonnie's skirt had been ripped up one side revealing black panties that were definitely not Club Banana. Monique crowed, 'I see you've gone down in the world. You're shopping at Smarty Mart for your lingerie.'

That earned Monique a punch in the mouth.

Monique managed a smile.

Bonnie was now realising her enemy was not as useless as she had expected her. Between her legs she could feel the muscles of the girl squirming so it was obvious she had been working out but who the hell had trained her? Virtually every girl she had fought, even at Fort Laval, would've given up by now but something was driving the girl to keep fighting.

From the accident site someone screamed, 'Fuck! The fuel tank's gonna go!'

Everyone, except the unconscious Drakken, scrambled to their feet and made a run for it. Bonnie was still in a lot of pain from the head butting but the idea of being blasted to hell or burned alive in that oil proved to be a greater incentive to move. She rushed across the garage to a dry part of the garage and took cover behind a concrete pillar while Bonnie and Shego ran for the nearest doorway.

The car exploded. The explosion ignited the olive oil. The burning olive oil set fire to some of the other vehicles in the garage. Bonnie caught sight of a truck with a red flag on it, which indicated it carried live ammunition.

'Fucking hell! That truck's got live -.'

The truck exploded in a spectacular fireball. Part of the roof of the garage caved in, crushing the most of the cars that hadn't been destroyed by the fireball. Choking dust blinded everyone. Once the dust had cleared away enough to see Monique breathed a sigh of relief. 'That was a close one,' she said.

Shego didn't answer.

Neither did Kim.

She turned to see Kim had turned a sickly white colour. Her battle suit and face was splattered with blood.

'Oh my God,' the Afro-American girl screamed. 'You've been hit!'

Kim shook her head and pointed.

Following the direction of her finger she saw Shego, her body riddled with bullets. When the truck she had copped the full force of the blast. She was still breathing but only just.

Shego gestured to Monique to lean over.

With tears streaming down her eyes she did so.

In a rasping voice Shego said, 'I love you Monique Jacqueline Stanley. Meeting you was the most wonderful thing ever to happen to me.'

'Oh, no, girlfriend,' Monique sobbed. 'You are not going to die on me. Uh-uh. No way. You're going to get through this.'

But Shego said, 'No, I won't.'

Shego reached out to touch her lover's face one last time.

Monique pleaded, 'Please don't die.'

But Shego wasn't listening anymore. Her arm fell to her side. The green eyes faded as the life in the body went out like a dying flame, leaving Monique sobbing for her best friend, confidante and lover.

Kim tried to find something to say but her best friend cut her off and said, 'Get that lousy [censored].'

The long string of expletives that Monique blurted out shocked even Bonnie. Then she collapsed into Kim's arms as she wept. While Kim was distracted Bonnie slipped away. She had no desire to be on the receiving end of Kim's temper.

She got as far as a collapsed concrete beam when she heard the sound of chattering monkeys.

'What the -?'

'Hey, Bon-Bon,' an all too familiar voice rang out.

'Ron?'