31. Before you activate technological bombs on Kim Possible, always, always, ALWAYS make sure she is wearing the only copy of said bomb. If you don't, other people can get hurt, people you don't want to get hurt. Like you.

It's 7:30 in the morning, and Drakken is lying in bed, trying to determine what hurts worse - the plasma burn on his arm, or the black eye on his. . . well, that name is self-explanatory.

The plasma burn's hurt is sharper, more immediate, all the damage concentrated in one purplish blob. The black eye's hurt is deeper, burrowing far, far beneath the surface, through all his layers of skin and into his tendons. A third degree bruise, if you will.

Both thanks to Shego.

Okay, no, it's not quite fair to blame her. It wasn't her fault. She was under the influence of an emotion controller and then locked in an irreversible state of rage. That was no one's fault.

Well, okay, if you want to get technical, it might have been mine. . .

How could he have known, though? He heard "Kim Possible" and "emotion controller" in the same sentence, and all other thoughts squirted out of his head like slippery soap bars. Within seconds, Drakken had the Electron Magneto Accelerator hitched to its remote control. What the Moodulator would do when the thing's power reached its zenith, he didn't know and didn't care. Maybe it would blow itself to bits and take his despised nemesis with it. Maybe it would paralyze her. Or maybe it would just shove her down into the pit of her own despair, the way she did to Drakken so many times, only he can shove harder, and she would never, ever emerge again. It all seemed too good to be true.

And it was.

Turned out there was a second Moodulator - and Shego was wearing it. It had only fried up and fallen off when Drakken thought to warn her that no other villain would give her Iceland after they had subjugated the planet.

So her feelings were artificial as she pounded him, and she didn't mean any of the things she said. The real Shego lay in stasis somewhere inside her while this version of Shego went after him with her fists, even though he had taken her to Middleton Days as an evil date just the way she wanted. Maybe, Drakken remembers thinking, she could somehow sense with her mental radar that he didn't want her to kiss him again - that he would rather have poison ivy than kiss her again.

(And that's saying something, because poison ivy is very unpleasant!)

At any rate, she didn't mean it. Now if Drakken were writing the story, he would say that makes his wounds hurt less. But that plasma burn on his arm is screaming as loudly as ever.

The doorbell rings, and Drakken swings himself gratefully out of bed. He never bothered to get out of his lab coat last night, so he will look prepared and presentable in front of Shego, as if he has already gotten dressed for the day. Hee-hee. She doesn't need to know. . .

Drakken opens the door, and he knows his face perks into Automatic Eager Mode before Shego's projection of indifference. Her eyes are at half-mast as usual - droll, not coy, but it still shivers Drakken's gut to see it. He takes a step backward without meaning to.

"Good morning, Shego," he says. Fingertips knocking each other, toes tapping.

"'Morning, Doc." Shego lets her bag thunk to the floor.

Drakken finds himself studying her - not in the manner of a potential beau, but of an archeologist, surprised at the pale youth of his newest discovery. Over the course of its short life, it has grown quite grungy, yet no trained historian would ever mistake it for an antique. Her lips - the ones she paints black, or at least Drakken assumes she paints them. They could be naturally black, for all he knows. Shouldn't they smile every now and then?

Those lips that surprised him with their heaviness against his, like scarves. . .

Another shiver, and another step backward. He saw her smile when she came and sprawled out on his lab table, taking up all the space he needed for his equipment. Drakken has seen her stalking Global Justice agents and scientists like Bortel a thousand times over the years. But this was a brand-new kind of prowl he saw her on as she rested her cheek on her hand and curled the other hand toward him, a hunt where she was somehow both predator and prey, and he was simultaneously afraid for her and afraid of her. He wondered who had taught her to assume that pose, and why, of all the people on this soon-to-be-conquered planet, she was aiming it at him.

"Yo, Drakken. Earth to Drakken."

Shego snaps her fingers at him, and Drakken realizes he has been staring. He delivers a wide grin, the kind that always placates Mother and sometimes even works on Shego.

"What are you looking at?" Shego says. "Is my eyeshadow smudged or something?"

Drakken feels the grin drop away. "What's eyeshadow?" He is the one whose eyes are shadowed, with the blackened wax of the candle he admittedly burns at all ends, and now with the bruise Shego has inflicted on one.

Shego grunts. "Forgot who I was talking to."

That's better, familiar. Drakken nods vacantly, glad she isn't trying to - what do the teens today say? "Hit on"? Not trying to "hit on" him again.

He isn't attracted to Shego. She is attractive, of course - Drakken isn't blind, and he's not stupid either, despite what Shego might assert to the contrary. Drakken can see beauty in vintage stamps, too. But he is not a stamp collector, nor is he a. . . a. . . whatever he would be if he were drawn to Shego in that way.

(Drat! If he could just think of a term, that would be the best metaphor ever!)

Drakken's mind flashes with the image of Shego, bundled up in her parka-the-color-of-his-bruise, hair corralled into a ponytail, two mugs steaming in her hands. She looked every bit as jaded and worldly-wise as ever as she set those mugs down and tried to put her fingers all over him. She just also looked jaded, worldly-wise. . . and very, very young. Why, wasn't it just last year that she received her diploma from the online university she'd been attending?

Shego steps around him and now continues into the living room at her usual light tread. Drakken follows, thoughts still bloated. He regrets many things about the past few days - he regrets Amplifying the remote control before hearing all the facts, he regrets letting Shego take him into that photo booth, but most of all he regrets not noticing that she had an emotion controller latched on her the whole time.

Of course, Drakken thinks to himself, it wasn't immediately obvious. Even on her best days, Shego runs hot and cold, same as the stubborn tapwater at his abandoned-warehouse lair. She is fiery when she fights Kim Possible, as if the heat of her plasma has ignited everything on and in her, and she lashes with grace and precision. It's like watching a ballerina attempt to kill a slightly smaller ballerina, which doesn't happen in too many ballets, Drakken figures.

And then she can be cold, frozen to the core, at the times when a villain absolutely needs to be nothing but pure, impenetrable steel. Shego is good at that, better than he is. Dr. Drakken is undoubtedly ruthless, but he does have trouble turning off his enthusiasm, especially the closer he gets to world domination. It is something he admires about her, though he has never told her that. To compliment Shego is to implicitly insult himself, and Shego would waste no time agreeing with him.

So all of that makes sense to Drakken - but then, how does one explain her abrupt refusal to fight Kim Possible in Bortel's lab that day? Suddenly, she was cold when she was supposed to be hot, frustrated with Drakken and for what, exactly? It was like putting a glass of water on a hot stove and watching it freeze instead of boil. It defied reason, defied scientific law.

And Dr. Drakken is very, very unsteady when it comes to things science can't explain.

"Drakken!" Shego snaps from the living room. It zings Drakken straight back to the present.

"Yes?" he calls. He turns the corner into the living room, and his foot comes down in ice water that immediately numbs his ankle. "Yeeouch!"

Shego nods, smirking. She's standing in the ice water, too, unfeeling even as it laps up to the green pouch she wears on one leg. "Exactly. Care to explain this?"

Well, he will never turn down a chance to explain. Drakken tucks a hand behind his back and fastens his smile back into place. "Um. . . well. . . while you were, um, preoccupied with. . . other things, I Amplified the air conditioning and turned the lair into a frozen wasteland! The ice must have - eh-heh - melted."

"Lovely." Shego squints at him like she doesn't remember the parka, the lattes, the offer to - gulp - cuddle. Like none of it ever happened. "Why didn't you clean it up?"

How badly he wants none of it to have ever happened.

On the strength of that wish, Drakken comes back with, "Why didn't you?"

"I was on an emotion controller. What's your excuse?"

"That you were on an emotion controller." As soon as the words are out, Drakken adds them to his Regrets List. They were true, but they evinced vulnerability, and he's been vulnerable far too many times already this past week.

Shego makes a noise of disgust and flips her hair away from him. Drakken stares down at his reflection in the standing water, which seems to be sticking his clothes right to the bone, and he checks the condition of his black eye. Has the swelling gone down any?

Though it's hard to tell at a glance, with the always-blackened skin looping his eyes, it still feels like pastry dough. Shego stands in constricted silhouette when he closes his good eye.

This is better, the bickering, and Drakken never thought he would be glad for Shego's sass. With every sarcastic syllable, however, she tucks the lining of his soul back into place.

Pretty soon it is right-side-out again.

Mostly.