~And so it begins. . .~

38. Be tough. Be strong. Be calm.

Well, that, Drakken decides, turned out to be an all-around success. He and Shego escaped victorious, he got to lob his best burn ever at Kim Possible (that's what the teens today call insults, burns), and he was able to prod the barebones information he needed from the decidedly word-stingy Big Daddy Brotherson.

No, not stingy, Drakken corrects himself. Thrifty. The man parcels out words on a strictly controlled ration, so each has time to soak before it's spoken. Big Daddy, much as Drakken hates to admit it, can pack more menace into a few syllables than Drakken can in all the hills and valleys of his villain-rants.

At least, more than the old Drakken could.

And that, mayhaps, is the biggest win of the night. He left graspy, whiny, fidgety Drakken behind in the dim interior of The Bermuda Triangle.

His back is going to ache for weeks on end, but what else is new, right?

"I think that went very well," Drakken says as he tugs at the pink bow tie Big Daddy's henchman had the nerve to force on him. The straps pull away, and it's like he has gills that were being blocked off and now he can finally breathe again. With a swift motion that only tangles the bow tie in his ponytail for three brief seconds, he whisks it off over his head, throws it to the floor, stomps up and down on top of it for good measure.

Shego grabs his arm with her long fingernails. "Doc, have you ever considered switching to decaf? Seriously. It's usually better if your eyeballs stay in their sockets."

Drakken feels them bulging now and inhales to settle them and everything else. Ordinarily, a remark like that would rankle him, throw him into confusion. But he gulped his prescription ADHD medicine an unscheduled five hours ago, and his stomach acid has already broken down the chemicals, chemicals that have made their way to his brain and held it steady. "I must focus on my plan," he tells both of them.

"Yeah. Which is what, exactly?"

Drakken swallows the explanation, and it nearly blisters on its way down. "I would prefer to keep that under wraps for now," he says. He can feel the rumble in his chest, slow and calm, catching their world and sticking it in place. It will resume orbit if and only if he decides it should.

Shego freezes in mid-taunt. She peers up at him (well, not really that up - now that she's wearing high heels, her eyes are level with his, if not higher) as if she is looking at a hologram of someone she knows. Her expression isn't vulnerable exactly, yet it's not quite bulletproof either. "You what?" she says.

"Our mission tonight was successful, Shego," Drakken says, crossing his arms. "You have done well. Please, take the rest of the night off and get some well-deserved rest. Return to me in the morning."

A frown gathers, slight but unmistakable, on Shego's forehead. Her upper lip doesn't make it into a curl. "Okaaaay," she says.

She has not, in all her years as his sidekick, known confusion, at least not the kind Drakken knows - the kind that serves as a paralytic and blurs your surroundings into frightening, unfamiliar areas. This is the closest he has seen her, and he doesn't wish it upon her, truly he doesn't, but how good it is to be on the opposite side!

"Well, g'night, Doc," Shego says. She spins her hair around with an audible swoosh. He can read, more easily than Big Daddy's pinched-together handwriting, the Drakken-you're-so-weird written in her straight-backed posture. Even in heels, her intimidation quotient has been dialed down as she makes for the door.

It claps gently shut behind her. No slam, which would have bewildered the old Drakken. Now, thanks to the psychology class he passed - a glorious A-minus he can still see when he shuts his eyes at night - it makes perfect sense to him. She has to control her temper, because in that moment their roles were reversed, and she can't let them get further reversed, cannot lapse into a violent outburst characteristic of Drakken's former self.

Oooh, he understands these things now!

Drakken grins to himself and starts down the black-as-jet tunnel-hallway that leads to his room. He can make out the maroon-clad bulk of his Synthodrones even without the assistance of their neon-lime glowing eyes. His own eyes haven't seen the sun in over a week, and they've begun to adapt.

And he doesn't want to see the sun. Not up there, throwing light over everything. The dark down here is bigger. Stronger. And it's all under his control.

Drakken nods to the Synthodrones even though they are deactivated and strolls with care past dark smears he knows are doorways until he reaches the one that leads to his room. He turns the knob precisely thirty-nine degrees to the left, hops lightly in, and gives the door a soundless swing shut.

Then he buries his face in his pillow and lets out a squeal of delight.

His last, he's sure.

But, oh, he's got to tell someone! Someone who can't - who won't - tell anyone else.

Eric is Drakken's first choice, but he's charging in the stasis tank downstairs. Apparently pretending to be a high school student really takes it out of you. Drakken supposes he could deactivate him from time to time, but that's a lot harder to do to a Synthodrone who has a face.

Drakken rolls over and stares into the face of another good option. "Want to hear a secret, Sir Fuzzymuffin?" he asks his teddy bear, with its zigzaggy scar and its sullen eyebrow that match his. Once upon a time, as the old Drakken, that filled him with comfort. Now the bear is just an instrument of retaining confidentiality.

That must be true, because for the first time Drakken doesn't imagine the bear responding to him. Of course, Drakken always knew their dialogues were truly monologues, yet now he cannot begin to fathom how naturally those "conversations" came to the man he used to be.

With a shudder, Drakken sheds that remnant of his past and tells the bear, "I'm going to conquer the world."

He begins to recount his plan in gory detail. Nakasumi's design. The cybertronic technology. The usurpation of that one fast-food Mexican place. The distribution. The Syntho-distraction dropped into Kim Possible's life. The stroke of midnight.

"And then, the cybertronic technology shall draw itself from its hiding place deep inside those innocent-looking toys and roar to life! It shall expand! Grow weapons! Get a very snazzy villainous makeover!" His voice peaks as his genius reaches the climax of the most crucial plan he's ever conceived. "And it shall destroy everything in its path! I, Dr. Drakken, will finally have created that which cannot be repressed, cannot be defeated! Whatever I don't want in my world - I will demolish!"

A full-strength cackle rings ever so brilliantly off the walls. "The best part is - I no longer feel any guilt about it," Drakken whispers into Sir Fuzzymuffin's ear. (Yes, he can whisper now, too.) "The meek don't inherit the earth. The mean do."

With another laugh, Drakken swings his legs over the side of his bed. "That's exactly the type of attitude I need now," he continues, "to face the man who holds the key to cybertronic technology. Dr. James. Timothy. Possible."

Drakken lets each name fall to the floor and burst open in little bombs the way Big Daddy did. In his case, they kind of disappear beneath piles of dirty laundry and scattered, mutilated teen magazines, but that's okay. Something was missing from those words when he said them and from his own body's reaction to them, something whose disappearance isn't at all unwelcome - just unexpected. His mind keeps fiddling with the spot where it used to be, just like his tongue used to worry the gap left behind by a lost baby tooth.

Despite his galloping pulse and his clenching fists and the burnt-toast taste in the back of his throat, Drakken realizes he is no longer afraid.

Ever since the incident with the Bebes - the new, improved, deadly Bebes - Drakken has been - well, not exactly afraid of James Possible, but with a very healthy respect for the fact that the man is bigger than he is. Stronger than he is. Capable of picking him up. Protective father to his arch-nemesis. Add to that the inherent awkwardness of running into an ex-friend and the fact that James knows how to shove the past right into Drakken's jugular, and, gee, it was never a good thing, running into him.

Now -

Let James try to resist. Let James refuse to talk. Oooh, how Drakken hopes he does refuse. He's got a brain-tapping machine stationed in his closet. Its mammoth drill-bit, encircled by twinkling lights, is silent and, Drakken bets, agonizing.

Drakken strikes a dastardly pose before his dresser mirror. Yes, his soul is ripped inside-out, the lining exposed and flaking away.

Luckily, it's more flammable that way.