~Hi again, everybody. Been having some more fun with the transition between Drakken-of-the-show and the well-adjusted good-guy Drakken I love to write for. Honestly, why I didn't I think to write about this phase sooner? It's been a blast.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed. Classes have started, so I might be late replying, but I do plan to reply. . . honest. . . someday.
The occasional non-word is meant to capture Drakken's "voice."~
Dr. Drakken can hardly sit still.
Granted, this sensation is hardly novel to him. Today, however, it isn't anxiety that holds him on the brink of astral projection he doesn't believe in anyway. Nor is it the itch in his chest that raged intermittently (a word that made it sound like a far more polite guest than it was) ever since the day he presented his posse with robotic dates and they -
No, no. Don't think about that. Drakken brings his index fingers together, and they butt heads the way lionesses did in that documentary he once caught on the animal channel. That time is over and gone, and he is a good guy now. His rushes now are lawful ones, clean and soft where they touch him. The itch hasn't found space to fit for a very, very long time.
Drakken draws his arms to his shoulders and also hugs close the memory of the UN employee on the other end of the phone: Dr. Drakken, you are a genius. It was like he had thought to start his soul with a key after a lifetime of hot-wiring it. Never would he go back, not even if you paid him.
Global Justice pays him, too. And today, Dr. Director will be taking her weekly inventory of Lab 591. That will be his opportunity to report that repair of the Immobilizer 2000 is coming along at quite the dandy pace after Drakken destroyed it - albeit in heroic fashion, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Professor Dementor. Drakken is sure that somewhere deep inside its complex circuitry, it was happy to offer itself up as a sacrifice. Or at least forgives him.
Of course, it's easy to value those seasons once you're on the other side of them, once someone else is tending to your wounds, sliding your panels back into place, polishing you until you shine as you are meant to.
Now, thanks to Drakken, its reconstruction is ahead of schedule.
Well, not totally thanks to Drakken - he can admit that. But surely it was he who stayed the latest, worked the hardest, and handled the most lovingly. Dr. Director will offer her praise, the praise he chased after power to find for so long. That is what jostles his knees back and forth underneath the table, where they occasionally hit the underside and knock the nerves just below the surface into feverish awareness.
Dr. Director stands just inside the doorway right now, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. Her smiles have always appeared pale to Drakken, like she has to dial them down in order to slide through the shadows, yet they are never brighter than they are when she sees him, as far as Drakken can tell.
"Our original assessments led us to believe it would be January or February before the Immobilizer 2000 would be ready to put to work," Professor Ricardo reports to her. "But with the tremendous leaps in progress we've had recently, we could be looking at full operating capacity by as early as December."
"Which still sounds like a long time," Drakken interjects - he can't help himself any longer. "But it's a lot sooner than we had anticipated."
"Excellent," Dr. Director says. She draws herself up to her full height. She isn't the tallest person Drakken's ever met, but she is the straightest, as if she's part telephone pole. His own sore vertebrae have never let him imitate her for longer than a minute or two. "Once that machine is up and running, we will begin to usher in a safer and more humane era of bringing criminals to justice."
Her single eye doesn't single Drakken out as the only former criminal in the room, the way Will Du's will do. (That is, Drakken decides, quite a peculiar sentence.) It is pure bliss, a straight shot of oxygen too pure and wholesome for him to even breathe.
At least not without turning - well, a less lovely blue than the shade he currently sports.
Dr. Director clasps her hands in front of her. "And it sounds like we'll get there sooner than we thought. I am extremely proud -"
Of Dr. Drakken. His knee-bounces speed up.
"- of all of you."
That is the part where she is supposed to add, Especially of Dr. Drakken.
She doesn't, though. Instead, she drops an inclusive smile on everyone in the room before sweeping out the door and clicking it shut behind her. Everything in the room relaxes - everything but Drakken's spine, hard as corundum against his chair.
Drakken folds in his chair and grips his temples. His fingertips are so hot that he's surprised he doesn't singe his hair. Then again, he's scorched his hair away so many times in his life that maybe this slight singing doesn't even register anymore. His tiptoes, however, are Popsicles in his boots, and he wonders vaguely why people say fingertips and tiptoes with the syllables switched around like that.
Why people do anything.
His chest itches. He is at his fourth-grade science fair again, his rubber-control ray coming in second to Carl Thompson's tornado-in-a-bottle.
A lump the size of a multivitamin lodges in Drakken's throat as he glares around at his colleagues, willing them to disintegrate, for Dr. Director to poke her shiny head back in one more time and see only him to congratulate.
That is how he would have responded back in his villain-life, Drakken knows. He would have overturned the table (or tried to - he was never quite as strong as he liked to think he was), scattered everyone else's equipment across the room, would have grabbed the nearest Doomsday device, gone to vaporize them all and maybe Dr. Director, too.
No, no, no! Drakken digs his fingers in tighter. That's not what he wants. He loves his colleagues. He cares for Dr. Director. This is madness talking.
Madness he thought he left behind in the rubble of the Lorwardian attack force.
Drakken shoots his gaze across his colleagues, each and every one of them, desperate to compose something besides resentment. Can they hear his thoughts whimpering as he glances back and forth?
Shego, he knows, would be shaking her head at him. What are you pouting about, Dr. D? she'd say. Grow up.
Yes, well, Shego can say that. She has certainly never wanted for appreciation. She says his feelings bubble out of him, clear as drinking-fountain water, so she must know of his admiration for her, even when he was too selfish to acknowledge it.
Selfish. He hates that word, poking at him, accusing him.
And the raucous, violent thought cawing in his mind, the one that shouldn't have been able to find him because he sure hadn't left it a change-of-address notice - See? it says. I told you, I told you, I told you. Even as a good guy, you're not enough. You'll never be enough unless you take -
Drakken snaps his ponytail sharply to one side. He will not listen. He will also not reach for the Bunsen burner sitting a mere stretch away that begs to be picked up and hurled against the wall in a spectacular temper tantrum.
No, he holds back for the rest of the workday, even though he feels like microwaved spaghetti inside by quitting time. Another word he hates - quit.
Drakken slinks from the room the way he has slunk from so many rooms in the past, without bidding any of coworkers farewell, grunts a response somewhere between "Ngggh" and "gkkk" at the front desk clerk when he clocks out, and storms his way out to the hovercraft. He has to get out of there. No matter how much he likes his colleagues, he cannot risk staying with them a moment longer, being squeezed with them into a giant, faceless, multi-tentacled entity labeled "LAB 591."
After he has hopped into the passenger seat - a move which should put the spring back in his rigidified limbs - Drakken does a quick survey of the buttons on the dashboard and then slams his face onto it. The windshield-wiper control digs into his cheek, his chest still itches, and something else squirms inside him.
His ego. Running a low-grade fever. The only way Drakken could ever harness it back in the old days was by promising it something. A better day tomorrow. Kim Possible's demise. International acclaim as conqueror of the world.
Right now all he has to offer is some actual microwaved spaghetti at home for dinner. The prospect lies flat and bland in his stomach.
So - as the teens today say, he'll jazz it up. The spaghetti, that is. Use one of his mother's old recipes.
Drakken does a mental run-through of the ingredient list and blushes at how short his cabinets at home will fall. A trip to Smarty Mart may be just what he needs to shake this giant swollen sting of a notion - What's the point in being a good guy if you don't get commended?
That can't possibly be the most revoltingly selfish thing anyone has ever thought, not when people like Carl Thompson still exist somewhere.
Drakken throws one last hopefully-not-too-pitiful look over Global Justice's unassuming aboveground entrance. A tiny spike of metal leaning beneath each side window blossoms into a full-sized trapezoid closely hugging the grass. Drakken isn't sure whether they are there to support the building or for aesthetic purposes (a fancy way of saying "they look really cool"), but he has always enjoyed catching a glimpse of himself in them.
As the days get shorter, though, the sun hangs lower in the sky at clock-out time. Right now, it is at the perfect coordinates to bounce its light off the metal surfaces and blot everything else from view. Drakken can't see his own reflection at all.
And that kind of scares him.
Eraser smudges. That's what I'm feeling, Drakken decides upon his arrival at Smarty Mart. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, after all; it can only change forms, and without the correct abrasive properties of a healthy eraser, your mistakes can still linger there, smudged and blurry and peeling but not quite gone.
See, the problem with thinking in metaphors is that even if I can solve it, it's still just a metaphor.
Drakken swings his feet out of the hovercraft and grimaces with satisfaction when they slap against the ground. He clicks the hovercraft's force field into place and heads in the direction of the huge double doors that part for him. It's a semblance of power, and he scurries away from it as quickly as he can. With the mood he's currently in, any amount of power could easily create a reaction that would blow Middleton right off the map.
Yet the twilight isn't completely dark, and neither is the forecast inside Drakken. He has his flowers, pressing comfort into him from whatever strange interior where they reside. They know him only as a kind master, and he can't risk disappointing them.
The sight of Smarty Mart's familiar wide, shiny aisles and its well-labeled layout helps, too, as does the fact that the greeter has a personalized welcome for Drakken as the world's rescuer, rather than the generic one that frustrated him so as a villain. He's able to perk his eyebrow ever so slightly for her before he grabs a cart and rubs the wheels back and forth across the floor to make sure they don't squeak or run crooked, because his tooth enamel can't handle that today.
It isn't really that selfish, Drakken tries to tell himself as he drops a skinny box of fudgy cookies into his cart first thing. It's positive reinforcement - the same principal Global Justice practices every time it rewards a lab rat for completing a maze, pulling a lever, jumping through a hoop. Studies have shown it works well on every species, from dogs to pigs to - well, to humans, too. If you're doing the right thing because it feels good, you're still doing the planet a favor, right?
Right?
Drakken doesn't know, and it confuses him, puts static through the memory of being told he was a genius the day he denounced supervillainy. There were a lot of other factors that had led him to that point. Guilt over the Diablos. Fear for Shego's safety and his own. The nausea that came from watching Warhok and Warmonga dominate with a flick of the wrist. His debt to Kim Possible for saving his life, coupled with the utter lack of triumph he felt when he thought he'd destroyed her for good. And if, out of all of those, he chose to change because he was called a genius - does that mean he's still chasing after whichever side can butter him up best?
(Ooh, that reminds him of butter lettuce! Remind me to get some of that.)
Still, maybe the recognition of his genius was just the needle that broke the camel's haystack, or however the saying goes. All of those other factors had him balancing on a narrow fencepost between good and evil. Maybe the slightest push would have landed him on the other side no matter where it came from.
He wants to believe that. He wants to do the right thing.
Drakken nods at himself as he selects a jar of white sauce, which he likes better than the red stuff, and places it carefully in his cart. It reminds him of the Light Side of the Force, beckoning him to come over. He is not Darth Vadar. He will not wait until death to be redeemed.
Plain red meatballs are next on the list, and then Drakken consults an entire wall of spices before hand-picking the ones that look most like the mini-jars in his mother's kitchen. He swings into the vegetable aisle - not one of his favorite places - and pulls a package of butter lettuce and a head of that misnamed red cabbage into his cart. His mouth begins to dribble at the edges. He's going to eat well tonight!
He snaps off a couple of ripe-enough bananas and tosses them into the child seat at the front of the cart. A true genius can maximize cart space like that.
Drakken's back sags a little at the all-too-recognizable refrain, aching for a pat. His self-confidence has gotten such a boost since his reformation. . . such a boost that it may have overtaken the memories of how it felt to gasp for air even as you strapped on the only oxygen mask you asked for. Naturally, those memories cry out to be pushed away, and he does push them away, with the sides of his hands because they're too disgusting to touch.
But maybe the smudges are meant to stay behind. To remind you that you used to have a different answer in that slot, and it was the wrong one.
(Ahhhhh, now he gets the metaphor! Good job, me.)
Still, something itches away in his chest, like a chigger bite or a tag somebody forgot to cut out of a new shirt, a desperate, clawing thing. Not at all the smooth, wholesome feeling that usually kicks in whenever he's within a mile of Global Justice Headquarters.
And he isn't even really sure why he's itchy. Back in his megalomaniac days, he fully intended to share the honor, the power, the glamor with Shego once he took over the world. She would profit from his accomplishments, and it never darkened his thoughts in the slightest, no matter what a wiseacre she was being.
Then again, he cares for Shego - in a way he is only now beginning to care for the rest of humanity. Kim Possible would never think to resent sharing the spotlight with her sidefriend boykick - no, wait, reverse that. Or perhaps it was that he assumed that after being crowned ruler of the world, all his insecurities would scatter.
Scatter they did on the night he saved the world. That should have been enough to set him up for a lifetime.
But now they're back, loitering around like a gang of punks defying a restraining order.
You aren't supposed to be here anymore! Drakken hollers at them in his mind. Go away! Can't you see you'll ruin everything?
They don't listen, so Drakken grabs his cart and executes a sophisticated one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and heads for the cereal aisle, hoping they won't follow him. He picks up the box that promises a free color-changing spoon with his purchase. Sometimes the cereal companies can get mixed up or try to gyp you, but this one really is in there - Drakken gives the box a few good shakes, and he can hear the spoon rattling around with the cereal pieces, much the same as all these different emotions are rattling around in his soul.
Drakken knows he has one. A soul, that is. It is the thing that is even now glowing generously at the prospect of keeping the world safe.
He likes his colleagues - they don't bring out the snappy, snarly Drakken the way his former henchmen always did. Competition or not, he prefers to hang on closely to those kinds of people. And Dr. Director -
Drakken closes his eyes and nearly crushes the cereal box in a hug. He remembers Dr. Director's gentle hand on his back as she helped him to his feet after his battle with Dementor over the Immobilizer 2000. He remembers how she stood rod-straight in front of Lab 591 earlier this afternoon, how she swept a look from Dr. Green to Professor Ricardo to him and then right on to Dr. Fountaine, as if her life had never intersected with Drakken's before the night he received his medal at the UN and she offered him a job. He remembers that night, her fingers cool in every sense of the word as they closed his around the card printed with her contact information, told him he would be an asset to Global Justice. "GJ" as some of the younger, less formal employees refer to it (not Will Du, though - he's much too snooty).
GJ. Drakken drops his arms and lets the cereal box fall thoughtfully into the cart. It can also stand for "good job" - a phrase Kim Possible said to him early on in The Night That Changed Everything. It was as if those words unlocked his secret inner noble side, almost the way he once saw people on TV be thrown back into a state of hypnosis at a trigger word. He did some research for his Hypnotic Sunglasses plot, which wound up failing because he had sped up the lenses' spiraling in order to hypnotize people faster, when it turned out people needed the slow spiraling to become hypnotized in the first place. At least that what he's gathered.
Maybe Noble Drakken is only triggered by words like "good job."
The idea is depressing.
Should it be? So he needs to hear "good job" every now and then. That's not a significant character flaw, is it?
Drakken takes stock of the food miscellany and spaghetti ingredients, deciding he needs some peanut butter - not for the spaghetti. Ew. Although, Drakken thinks as he turns and scurries for the bread aisle, that would be quite the culinary experience! Probably not a good one - but one never knows. French fries in a chocolate malt proved to be quite delicious, he found when he was trailing Kim Possible on her date - not the sidekick, a sharper-faced boy.
What ever happened to him, anyway? It's just another fold of confusion. Drakken selects his favorite creamy peanut butter and lowers it into the cart, even as the itches and the pains and the twists come knock-knock-knocking at his heart, demanding room and board.
But his heart is a different place than it used to be. And he didn't go over to the Light Side for the prestige.
Or did he?
"No," Drakken says out loud. "No, I didn't."
His ego nearly chokes on the statement, and judging by the puzzled stare the woman down the aisle gives him, he could have stood to say it a little quieter. Drakken gets a firm hold on the cart and pictures the spaghetti falling with a plop into the colander and the little pin-holes trickling water, leaving the noodles moist but not soppy, the straining principle that has worked since long before its discovery and will likely continue working until the end of time. Dependable. Secure.
Out of habit, Drakken bypasses the self-checkout counters that weren't there while he was growing up and takes his place in the shortest checkout line. By the time he figures out his mistake, there is only one other person in front of him, nearly done, so Drakken reasons that it would make more sense to wait for her than to try to back out now. He plunks the little bar that divides one customer's purchases from another onto the conveyor and begins to transfer items there from the cart, giving the cashier what he knows is a semi-strained smile.
She returns it briefly between wishing the man in front of him a nice day and scanning Drakken's groceries, which he's surprised she can do so easily with her - her - rats, what is it called when women grow their fingernails as long as Shego's glove-blades, sand away the rough edges, and paint them all shiny? A pedicure? Manicure? Ambidextricure?
Anyway, the cashier rings up each item with an efficient elbow-twist and then taps her whatever-cure across the register. Drakken reaches into his pocket and retrieves his sole-survivor card - because, as his financial planner explained to him, credit firms aren't half as forgiving as people like Dr. Director. He swipes the card through the scanner with the speed of a Jedi and punches in his PIN.
"Paper or plastic?" the cashier asks.
The answer is already crouched on Drakken's tongue, ready to be delivered: "Plastic." He hasn't kept many tabs on the whole never-ending environmental debate, but the flowers in his neck twitch sometimes when he chooses paper, and it's not like he's going to be flinging those into the ocean anyway. He doesn't crave trouble like that anymore.
Minutes later, Drakken accepts his plastic sacks and slides the cart forward a few inches. Then a few more. Then a few more.
And then the happy clatter of the store is pierced with one of Dr. Drakken's absolute least favorite sounds.
A security alarm.
Drakken immediately covers his ears, though it isn't just the migraine-inducing tones that turn the world upside-down. It isn't for you, Drakken pants to himself as he scans the contents of his cart. It isn't for you, it isn't for you, it isn't for you. . .
That is when he sees it. Huddled in the underhanging shelf beneath the regular cart space. The head of red cabbage. Forgotten. Unpaid-for.
It is for him.
For a second, he's sure he's been skewered - a little Drakken-kabob. Flower petals fly from his neck. He broke the law. Accidentally, yes, but try telling that to the police!
The alarm continues to shriek. The air around Drakken grows stifling, the oxygen content crowded out by the sound of a paddy wagon door thumping to lock him in, the terrible coldness of having your clothes confiscated while no one looks away, and the smell of the prison pillows that they must have dipped in vinegar to clean.
Every fugitive instinct Drakken still holds commands him to run! Yet he can't. His muscles have turned to iron sulfate. He can't move.
This is it. He is going back to a life on the lam. Shego will break him out, and he will live out the rest of his days bouncing from one lair to the next, constantly looking over his shoulder for police officers and too-plucky teenage heroines -
"Sir? Excuse me, sir?" the cashier says behind him.
Two years ago, he would have shot a vine at her and thrown her across the store to make his getaway - well, no, he wouldn't have, because he didn't have his powers back then. And, to be perfectly honest, freezing just might have been his default reaction even then.
Drakken creaks his rusty body around to face the cashier. A few renegade molecules inside his tear ducts tingle and dampen. He wipes them with the backs of his wrists - the wrists he can already feel clamped into a pair of cuffs.
A vine tingles at the top of his neck, awakened and ready to obey orders. But Drakken's brain is so crowded with what he learned in psychology class was called "sensory imagery" that he can't find the wherewithal for the simplest of commands. They can also respond to his feelings, which would be a good thing if his feelings weren't scrambled about inside of him.
He hears Dr. Director's praise flowing around the room to include him. Feeble as it sounded without his name as the header and footer, it rings clear as brass reveille in his mind now, along with the roar of the applause and the beep of retinal scanners approving his eyeball. He sees the grin Kim Possible flashed him when she spoke the magic phrase, "Good job." He feels the medal click against his chest, almost a shield, warding off the evil that still considers him an acceptable host.
It was good while it lasted. Best four months of his life, actually. And now he, in his haste and his carelessness, has gone and spoiled it all!
Only the cashier's expression as she says, "Sir? Could you come on back, please?" prevents Drakken from leapfrogging over the nearest counter and tearing for the door. She has a kind face, and there is a certain look kind young women get in their eyes when they are getting someone arrested - equal parts idealistic disgust and youthful pity. She isn't wearing it.
Drakken turns the cart in a slow circle, taking sharp pants for breath, and nudges its wheels back into the checkout aisle. The alarm stops, staying Drakken's hyperactive heart in mid-pound.
"Okay, there's obviously something in your cart you haven't paid for," the cashier says, much too slowly.
Drakken can't take it any longer. He reaches to the underbelly of the cart and hefts the cabbage above his head by the tiptop edges of his fingers - he can hardly bear to touch the incriminating vegetable. Funny, he never thought of cabbage as heavy, but lifting this one, he feels like the guy cursed to hold up the Earth in those stories people made up before they learned about science. It feels dirty, too, or maybe that's just him, no longer enjoying the clean hands of the innocent.
"Yes! I admit it!" he exclaims. He gives the dirty cabbage a shake. "I accidentally stole this! You have to understand, I would never - I mean - I have no intentions of leading a life of crime! Gggkkk, I was doing so well and then I forgot, and now they're going to snatch me up and lead me back to Cell Block D - a place that couldn't be more like a torture chamber if they were allowed to store iron maidens in there! Well, actually, iron maidens weren't even instruments of torture. They were invented by carnival barkers in the 1800s to get attention. Most people don't know that. . ."
"Sir?"
The cashier interrupts him. Drakken wishes she wouldn't. His discourse on the history of fake torture devises is the only thing left in his word bank that won't come out wrapped in sobs. It never pays to be crying when the police and the news cameras arrive.
"I'm so sorry!" Drakken says, and it isn't even close to a lie. A squeak, yes. A lie, no.
A crease appears between the cashier's eyebrows. "Are you going to pay for the cabbage?" she asks.
Drakken blinks, swallows, sniffles, and tries to reason his next best course of action. (Works better when Shego is here to help.) "If I do, will you tell the police to go easy on me?" he croaks.
The cashier's lips part, hanging silently for a moment. "The police?" she finally says in disbelief.
Oh, no. It's worse than that. Drakken cringes inside the ring of flower petals and waits to hear the words that spell his doom - No, we're calling Kim Possible herself. (She'll be so disappointed.) No, we're just sending in a SWAT team. No, I grew my nails this long so I could cut shoplifters to ribbons. Or, worst of all worsts, Global Justice is on its way, and Agent Will Du will take you into custody personally.
Drakken nods, his ponytail flopping back and forth protectively, trying to insulate as much skin as it possibly can. Though Smarty Mart's known for its high-octane air conditioning, it's never felt so darn cold in here before.
Of course, it'll be even colder in prison. . .
"Did you honestly think we were going to arrest you?" the cashier asks.
Yup. This is it. Game over. Will Du has publicly wondered why Global Justice has chosen to let Dr. Drakken live this long, especially after the - ugggh - Diablo attack. He will not be bringing something as lenient as the Immobilizer 2000 with him. (Not that it's even ready yet, but still.)
"I - I -" Drakken clears his throat, paws around for one last good speech. "I know I've done wrong -"
The cashier squints at him as if she thinks he might be a febrile delusion or something. "Sir, you stuck an item on the cart's bottom rack and forgot to have it rung up. This happens all the time."
Drakken's left calf gives way, and he stumbles forward. A vine grabs the candy shelf and pulls his body upright before he can cartwheel into a box of peanut butter cups. "Real - really?" he squawks. "I'm not going back to the hoosegow?"
"Absolutely not." The cashier is smiling now, warm as a thermal blanket, and at him - truly, genuinely at him! (Still not used to that yet.)
"B-b-but, I've seen the signs," Drakken stammers. "How they say 'Shoplifters Will Be' - ngggh -" He's never been one-hundred-percent sure whether the last word is "prosecuted" or "persecuted." In the mind of a dyslexic and the tight-strung nerves of a former supervillain, the difference is microscopic.
"People who refuse to pay will be prosecuted," the cashier corrects him. She taps a shiny, curved talon of a nail on the conveyor belt, and Drakken keeps a wary account of its positioning. "I'm presuming you're not going to be one of those people?"
Ohhhh.
The vine holds Drakken steady as both legs turn to gelatin beneath him. "No! Oh, no, no, no, no, no!" he says as many times as will fit in one gasp. "Absolutely not!" He passes the cabbage to the cashier's waiting talons. He couldn't be any more sheepish if he were swaddled in wool. Why does the rain shrink it on clothing but not on the sheep? Drakken ponders that for a few moments before adding, "I really am sorry."
Her hand waves to one side. His concern is dismissed.
That's never felt good before.
The cashier rotates the cabbage so that the bar-code sticker on its plastic wrap faces her laser scanner. A beep rings out, and a couple more dollars flash up on the screen. Drakken swipes his card and punches in his PIN again, as quickly as feasible with trembling fingers. He can still detect every pounding, panicky part of himself, but their connection is stronger now, as if they're welded together - rather than held in place by a few drops of Elmer's glue, the way they were when he was a supervillain.
(Not literally, of course.)
"Thank you for shopping at Smarty Mart, where smart shoppers shop smart," the cashier recites. Her eyes journey someplace far away even as they remain fixed on Drakken's belt buckle. It isn't as if his zipper is down - which it just might be, but it's blocked by the lab coat, so he's safe there. It's closer to her thinking of a movie she saw once as a child, its name just out of her mental reach.
"You're that guy who saved the world," she says, looking the petals and the vine up and down, up and down. "The one who used to be a supervillain? Works for Global Justice now?"
The recognition bypasses Drakken's ego and travels straight to someplace else, someplace with a secure grasp that will never lose track of it. His body doesn't relax, but the tension strains from it like the water from the colander. He knows his face is flashlight-beam-bright as he looks at her and nods, the knot in his stomach unraveling. "That's I, Dr. Drakken!" he declares.
"What a story," the cashier says. She extends a plastic sack to him, the troublesome red cabbage resting snug in one corner. "I wish you the best of luck."
"Thank you. I wish me the best of luck, too." Drakken drops the sack in the cart and grins at her. "Errr, and also you, of course!"
The cashier brings her nails to her mouth - she might be hiding a laugh behind that scary something-cure. Drakken decides he doesn't care as he steps out of the store into the rapidly advancing sunset. The itch in his chest is still there, but the rest of his circulatory system keeps right on pumping around it.
Drakken loads the grocery sacks beneath the hovercraft's dashboard and staggers into the driver's seat himself, still reeling from his close call. It's strange. The last time he ever made an attempt at what he in his supervillain past had to call "outsourcing" was the day Kim Possible got amnesia saving his life. She recovered her old self remarkably quickly - the girl has to be some kind of medical mutant.
He, on the other hand, would be happiest if his old self were lost forever.
Maybe it is. He doesn't outsource - steal - anymore. Not even when he sees a wonderful invention on the news and every cell in his body aches with the knowledge that he didn't think of it first. Dr. Director always says it's better to fail on your own merits than succeed on someone else's.
Drakken doesn't know if he'd go that far yet, but the thought of outsourced praise, rightfully some other inventor's, makes him feel like he needs to wash his hands. Seven or eight times.
With a sigh, he turns around in the passenger seat to examine the sunset. The sight of it sends him crawling across the hovercraft's rear bumper in the vain hope of getting closer to something ninety-three million miles away. A powder-blue sky has melded with watery shades of lavender, mauve, pink, and magenta, with orange spiking through like a neon streak of hair dye. The sun balances on the edge of the horizon - poetically speaking, as it's really the Earth that's moving - and the clouds, bathed in gold and rose, are flat with no threat of rain. The whole thing reflected on the hovercraft's surface blots Drakken's own image from view.
This time, that's okay. He can still see himself in the sky's blue, important, noticeable, there - yet not alone. Alone it would be pretty. Here it is part of something much bigger and bolder than itself.
And it is breathtaking.
(Now, that, Drakken concludes, is an A-plus metaphor. My psychology professor would be so proud!)
The sunset follows him home - or rather, the Earth hasn't spun its way into night yet by the time he lands in his driveway. Dr. Drakken, former supervillain, former egotistical madman, sprawls on his front lawn - he has his very own front lawn, not stolen or borrowed or outsourced! He watches the colors and marvels at the masterpieces produced by the visible spectrum of light.
Stars appear, his stomach growls, and Drakken heads inside to consult his mother's meatball recipes and to ruminate on the fact that he will never again be forced to gag down some pathetic excuse for food in a prison cafeteria. His chest might itch from time to time, but never under the rough cloth of an orange jumpsuit.
Drakken hums to himself as he ties on the white apron from his first outing as Good Drakken. Now he can choose to keep it. That alone is surely worth celebrating.
