Spiral

You can be in a room full of people and still feel really, really lonely. In theory, that sounds weird, but at a villains' convention, it makes perfect sense.

Everyone he tried to talk to shooed him away - even Shego, who said she wanted to be able to have some "girl time," whatever that means. Oh, well. True geniuses are never appreciated by their peers, he's heard. And, besides, now he has the whole refreshment table all to himself. Stupid ol' DNAmy's not the only one who knows how to make goodies.

He ducked down behind the table every now and then, hiding his face in the tablecloth, whenever she came by, chasing stupid ol' Monkey Fist around the room. Monkey Fist doesn't even like her, from what he can tell. Serves her right for rejecting him.

Still, no one can possibly be unhappy while eating funnel cakes. Delicious, piping-hot, fresh-off-the-griddle funnel -

They're gone. Every last one has disappeared.

He freezes in place. Oh, no. I DIDN'T. Not AGAIN.

But, deep down, he knows he did. His stomach feels like a bungee cord that's stretched too tight.

Ooohh, boy. He raises a hand and swipes sweat from his forehead. He's never noticed how hot HenchCo's basement can get. It makes the room seem small and stuffy, like there's not enough air for him to breathe. It almost makes him feel kind of. . . sick.

No, no, no. He closes his eyes and takes deep breaths in through his nose and silently hopes that he won't explode. It'll pass. If he just sits down for a few minutes and gets some cool air on his face - maybe a washcloth - he'll feel a lot better.

Funny. That almost looks like his belt lying there on the ground.

It is his belt. His stomach's swollen all out, and it makes him feel gross - sometime between the first funnel cake and the two hundredth, his belt must have. . . uh. . . popped off and landed on the floor. He bends down to get it, but that hurts so much he gasps and sinks back down into a folding chair.

And his mouth is so dry. Really dry, like he's been out in the middle of the desert for six months.

His eyes come to rest on the punch bowl. Maybe some juice will unstick his lips.

He grabs a glass - ow, ow, ow - and dips it into the punch, not bothering with the amazing little ladle-thing he likes. Right now, he's on a mission. Besides, it's kind of hard to move, considering he feels like he weighs about four hundred pounds.

Chugging the glass of punch doesn't actually help that much, though. Neither does sitting down and fanning his face with his hand as hard as he can. Muffled bits of conversation blur in his ears, people talking and laughing and carrying on with the convention like nothing's wrong.

Tiny and lonely and scared, he closes his eyes and pictures his big, comfy bed. His soft, striped pillow. The hot water bottle in the medicine closet.

Okay, Drakken, okay. He licks his lips and moans under his breath. Go get Shego. She'll take you home. Everything will be okay. It'll all be okay.

His stomach is swimming. He shouldn't have drunk the punch.

If only he could just close his eyes and will Shego here - if only she had ESP and suddenly came running up to him - then he wouldn't have to haul his big swollen belly across the basement for everyone to stare at. For once, he wishes he was invisible.

But he can't, and she doesn't, and he's not, so he wobbles to his feet and grabs onto the wall to keep from falling. He can hear his insides sloshing as he inches forward. That's not a good sign.

"Shego!" he calls into the smear ahead of him that's getting blurrier by the second. "Shego, where are you? Shego, I don't feel very good. . ."

Nothing. No answer. He takes another step, as big as he dares, and slams into something very small and very solid.

Correction. Someone. Dementor. The last person in the world he wants to see right now.

"Drakken!" Dementor's annoyingly shrill voice sounds far away somehow. "Why do you not WATCH WHERE YOU ARE GOING, you - "

He doesn't hear the rest over the ringing in his ears. All he can think is that the collision must have jarred something loose, because in one horrible, frightening, dizzying moment, his middle goes into reverse.

All over Dementor.

For a second, they just stare at each other, stunned into silence. But that second doesn't last long. He bursts into tears at the exact moment Dementor starts to squall like a cat being bathed in a sink.

Almost before he can blink, Dementor's henchmen are huddling around him, asking his rival questions, and then shooting glares at him over their shoulders. No one comes to him, and he starts to tremble. This is horrible. The worst thing that could possibly happen to him. So many things seem to conspire to make him look stupid, and now his own belly has turned traitorous.

"Shego!" he wails hysterically. "Shego, Shego, She-go!"

Someone grabs his hand in both of theirs and leads him away, which is good, because he has no idea where he's going. That same someone gently pushes him into a chair and then pats his knee, like that's going to do him any good.

He glances down at the hands, too square to be his sidekick's. Whoever this is is being awfully nice to him, but he only wants one person now, and this isn't it. "Shego!" he squawks again.

"Dr. Drakken," the owner of the hands murmurs, crispy voice firm but soft. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows it's Senior. "I will go get your lady friend."

He closes his eyes and licks his lips and slinks down in the chair. At least he feels a little less like he's going to explode now. No, the ache's been replaced by a shaky, queasy feeling that's almost worse.

The next thing he knows, Shego's there, plastering wet paper towels to his forehead. "Geez, I can't take you anywhere," she mutters.

He hauls in a deep breath and sniffles a bunch of times to at least make the contents of his nose stay where they belong. He doesn't trust his mouth to open.

"All right," Shego begins, like this kind of thing happens every day, "what happened?"

"I - I - I - " He swallows hard and tries to get out a sentence. "I - I think I ate too much."

Shego snorts lightly. "You, eat too much? Never."

All he can do is shake his head and cry. She's using tearing-down words, and he really doesn't need to be torn down right now.

Shego hisses through her teeth and plants her hands on her hips, leaving him to hold the paper towels to his face. "Okay, look. I was talking to someone - because I have a life - and I'm going to go tell him good-bye. Then we'll go home." She pinches her eyebrows at him in that Drakken-you-loser expression. "Understand, Doc?"

He's too weak to argue. He nods and blows his nose on one of the paper towels.

Dementor's voice shrieks from behind him and makes him feel even sicker. "Where are you going?" he wails in Shego's general direction.

Shego rolls her eyes as if he's wasting her time. "And who are you, the Gestapo? We're going home."

If he wasn't so wobbly, this would kind of be funny - Shego telling off Dementor, who has lovely yellow-brown-green stuff running all down the front of his clothes. (What did he ever eat that was green?) "What about me?" Dementor complains. "Is no one going to clean me off?"

Shego grunts and steps around Dementor. "I missed the part where I was on your payroll. Look, you've got five dozen henchmen. Have one of them take care of you."

"It is your boss-person's fault that I am dirty in the firstest place!" Dementor yells. "He probably did this on porpoise just to humiliate me!"

Humiliate him? Who was the one who just tossed their funnel cakes? "I didn't. . . didn't mean to," he manages to choke out.

"Right." Shego barely gives Dementor a bored-looking glance. "Like he went and stuffed himself at the refreshment table just so he could come over and hurl on you. Get over yourself."

Dementor goes into a long string of German he's glad he doesn't understand. Shego's footsteps fade into the distance. He dares to breathe.

His eyes feel heavy, so he closes them. They don't open again until he hears Shego say, "All right, Puke-Face, let's get ya home."

Home. Where there are blankets and pillows and tummy medicine.

He struggles to his feet and his stomach promptly convulses. "Oooooooo-oooh," he whimpers.

"You don't have to be so dramatic," Shego mutters.

He can't help it. He feels awful.

Somehow, they make their way through the crowd, which is parting for him, but not in the way he's always wanted it to. Everyone's definitely looking at him now - staring is more like it. Their eyes are disgusted, and he's ashamed.

"Is he all right?" a voice even squeakier than Dementor's asks.

Shego chuckles for the first time all night - at least that he can remember. "It's just an upset stomach, Junior. Nothin' he hasn't had before. He'll be fine."

Easy for her to say. She's not the one willing her digestive tract to work right with every step she takes. He closes his eyes and silently hopes DNAmy's not watching.

"So," he asks, craning his neck forward so the fresh air can blow on his face, "who were you talking to?"

Shego sighs heavily and taps her fingers on the hovercraft's controls. "Not like it's any of your business - but I was talking to Junior. You know, Senior's son?"

Ah, that's right. The squeaky-voiced kid. The one she doesn't rip into like she does with everyone else, especially him.

A horrible thought occurs to him. "He's about your age, right?"

"Ye-ah." Shego looks at him sideways and quirks her mouth. "Your point?"

He's not sure how to say his point without blushing. "You guys aren't - I mean you don't - I mean -"

Shego's eyes harden. "We're just friends, Dr. D. For now."

"For now?" His eyes go so wide, he almost loses his contacts.

Her lips twitch. "Don't worry so much. Junior's a sweet kid. It's not like he's gonna mug me in a dark alley."

Oh, no. He's never heard Shego describe anyone as "sweet" before. "Besides," she continues, "I can take care of myself."

Right. Of course she can. She only has those incredible glowy hands and can fight better than anyone else he knows and bring people to their knees with one well-chosen sarcastic remark - why are his neck prickles going up so far?

"So maybe," Shego digs into him with her eyes, "I'll date whoever I want to date, and you should just accept that."

Uh-huh. And maybe he should also take the remote control to his most valuable Doomsday device and give it to a gorilla. The very thought makes his insides churn.

A few minutes later, he realizes that's not what's making his insides churn. He squeezes himself up as tight as he can in his seat and tries not to think about funnel cakes.

How is he supposed to not think about funnel cakes when he's constantly telling himself not to think about funnel cakes? He can almost smell them - and his seat belt's digging into his still-swollen gut -

"Shego, pull over!"

"Uh, Doc." Shego sounds annoyed. "We're kind of a few hundred feet off the ground right now. I can't exactly do that."

"But She-go!" The desperateness rises in his throat, and it's not alone. "I'm gonna -"

She jumps away from him like she thinks he's contagious. "Over the side, over the side!"

He does. And, oh, man, it's not fun.

Once he's done, he raises his head and wipes his mouth on his sleeve and manages a wobbly smile as he realizes something. "I feel better now," he informs Shego.

"Fantastic," she replies - sarcastically, of course. She doesn't even care.

Only about thirty seconds go by, though, before she suddenly starts laughing. Shaking her head and chuckling like he's something off America's Funniest Home Videos.

He glares at her. "This isn't funny!"

"Sorry, sorry." If she's so sorry, why doesn't the laughter stop? "I was just picturing that landing on some poor unsuspecting passerby."

In spite of everything, he grins. "I hope it lands on Kim Possible!" he chimes in.

"Hey, yeah." Shego actually smiles at him. "Then you'd have taken out your two least favorite people in one night."

He snuggles himself into his seat, rests his head against the - well, the headrest - and yawns. "It was all part of my master plan, Shego," he explains, eager to protect his reputation.

Shego grunts. "Of course. I mean, if you have to blow cookies, it might as well be on someone you hate, right?"

He doesn't answer because he barely hears her. A few minutes later, he's sound asleep.