Kim sighed to herself as she made her way to her locker. Hump day had come and gone, leaving the student body with two more days of school before the weekend

And a week and change until the upcoming dance.

It wasn't a big deal, really. Nothing like the Big Deal that was the next event. Nothing in high school could top prom, after all. Some would even argue it topped graduation! It was supposed to be the pinnacle of the high school experience. The best night of your teenage life.

Kim didn't have a date for this dance. It was no big; she'd just freeflow by herself for this one. It brought up the niggling little thought that she didn't have a date for prom yet, but she easily brushed it away. It was still a decent length of time away. She'd be able to find someone to go with before it started.

Unsurprisingly, Ron was waiting by her locker. What did surprise her was the look on his face. He looked… Well, down was an understatement. She could almost believe that someone in his family had died! Rufus sat on the blond's shoulder, looking on with worry.

"Ron?" She walked up next to him and nudged his other shoulder. "What's wrong?"

That seemed to snap him out of it. Suddenly his expression changed to merely being chagrined as he sputtered, "Oh, uh, hi KP!" He scratched the back of his head. "I was just lost in thought 'n' stuff."

Kim tilted an eyebrow at that. "About what?"

He gave a nervous laugh. "Nothing big! Just thinking about…" His eyes wandered away from her as he trailed off for a moment. "...about the dance."

"Ah." Relieved it was just about the upcoming event, Kim shrugged and reassured him, opening her locker, "It's nothing to worry about. It's not like it's prom or anything!"

"Says you!" Ron said dramatically.

"What's so big about this dance?" the redhead asked as she considered her books. Did they get any history homework?

"W-.. Well…" she heard him stutter slightly. "I just… Really wanted to go to this one."

"So… Just go?" Kim peeked around her locker at him. He had that look on his face again!

He caught her looking at him and again his expression changed, this time to exasperation. "I can't find anyone to go with!"

Kim thought on that. She was totally fine going to this one alone. Practically looking forward to it! But she got where Ron was coming from. Sifting through her various classmates in her head, she began with, "Tara?"

"She's going with Mankey," Ron grumbled, starting to pout.

The heroine tapped her chin. "Lily?"

"Going with James."

"What about…" She reached around in her brain for single ladies who Ron had a chance of going out with. "...Dany?"

Ron sighed. "Jon."

Kim blinked. Weird. She could've sworn those two were cousins or something… Shaking it off, she continued, now definitely going for the long shots, "Cordelia?"

"She said she was going to be washing her hair with Xander."

"With Xander?" She would've never guessed those two doing anything together.

"I know! Like, why would she need help doing her hair and how could it take longer than 5 hours?" Clearly the rejection went over his head.

Typical Ron.

"You could always go alone," Kim pointed out. "I plan on doing that."

"You mean… You don't have a date?" The hopeful look in his eyes made her heart twinge with guilt. Overpowering that was the snide little Bonnie voice in her head mocking her for giving in and dating the high school loser.

Ron wasn't a loser! He wasn't! Kim just… She didn't like upsetting the food chain like that.

"I'm going alone," she repeated. His expression looked like a kicked puppy. But she stayed the course. They couldn't do that together. Not only for the food chain, but their friendship… It was too important to risk on a long shot.

Ron started, "But KP…"

She shook her head. "Sorry Ron." Deciding to downplay it a little, she shrugged and commented, "It's just one dance, anyway. Not like there haven't been others we've been to."

He made one of his weirder expressions and nervously laughed. "Yeah, that's true."

She ducked her head back into her locker to pull out that history book. "So what's one more in the grand scheme of things?"

"Yeah, just one more…" The doubt and discontent in his voice was palpable, but it was no big. Ron was fine. He always was.

...did they have any biology homework?

Drakken blinked at the screen.

Currently he was watching his teenage foe on a monitor in his current lair inside of a mountain. He'd sent a robo-drone spy that he'd affectionately dubbed 'fly-spy' to watch her and keep him updated on her relationship status. He didn't care that he'd designed it to look like a wasp. Fly-spy just sounded cooler.

Her classes and gossip were boring yet important drivel that he was cataloguing for his 'teenage wasteland' experiment. His research was nearing completion. He nearly had enough data compiled to know his foe inside and out. What he would do with it he still wasn't entirely sure yet. He needed to distract her somehow...

There was something else, though, that had caught his attention.

The boy… What was his name? Like sand through an hourglass the memory eluded him. But that wasn't so important. He was just the sidekick for the teen heroine. A useless buffoon that no one cared about. That took to life like a fool, with no care in the world.

Except…

Drakken narrowed his eyes and watched the blond intently. It took a few mores words between the two, Kim Possible being absorbed in her locker, before it happened. Again, the stricken, lost look crossed the young man's face. It was a look the bad doctor had seen before.

When Doctor Drakken had been Drew Lipsky. When he had been lonely, labeled a freak by his peers and left to be by himself, always. Most of the time Drew had been able to brush it off, proclaiming his genius which was ahead of the era he was born in. But some days… Some days Drew Lipsky let himself feel. Feel the despair of loneliness. Isolation. Hatred. Simply for being him.

The look on the sidekick's face was familiar. How could it not be? On those bad days, when he felt raw and exposed to the world, it was the expression that looked back at him from the mirror.

It made him feel… Something. He couldn't quite label what it was. Pity? Nostalgia? Worry? Why he would feel worried for the blond he had little clue. In fact, the very idea of the doctor feeling anything but contempt for the young man was almost laughable.

And yet here he was.

Drakken leaned backwards in his chair and thought. What, exactly, did he know about the boy besides him being the sidekick to his arch-foe? He knew they shared a love of Snowman Hank. He also had that bald weasel as a pet. Otherwise…

Sure, there were inferences he could make. He was a poor student. A bit laissez faire. A lackey inside and out. ...but the same things could have been said about himself, back when he was in school. His mind too advanced for the simpleton tests led his early performances in school to be less than stellar. His grasp of the complexity of the English language was still awful. He got angry at anyone that insulted him, yet at the same time he let the comments and sneering roll off of his back. Carefree, naive, unpopular…

Suddenly, Drakken found himself extraordinarily interested in the sidekick. Maybe… There was more there than he thought. Maybe. He did keep up with Kim Possible in her adventures. And Drakken was trying to take anything and everything into account for this newest plot. Cover all his bases, make sure nothing could stand in his way to world conquest. So it would only be natural to learn more about the blond. See what makes him tick too. Maybe even distract him in a similar manner! Oh, nothing as involved as the teenage wasteland project, but if the boy was anything like Drakken had been at that age then anyone would do for-..

Drakken growled at himself and tapped his fingers against the control panel for his computers. He hated thinking about his younger, more vulnerable days. He'd managed to coat that core of naivety, childish joy, and vulnerability with a layer or few of anger and megalomania. Looking back on them was almost like admitting he was wrong in some way.

But that little part of him, the niggling little part of him that was Drew Lipsky, felt a pull in the direction of the sidekick. Thus he decided to follow the boy the next day instead of Kim Possible. His teenage wasteland experiment was nearly over, he reasoned, so it would make sense to start focusing some research on the blond. Really make sure to cover his bases.

What he discovered made him uncomfortable. It was like flashing back to his own childhood, his awful younger days of abuse and neglect.

The boy - Ron, as the other kids had called him - had to pay a 'passage fee' to bullies when going down a specific hallway. Coincidentally that same hallway seemed to be the only way to one of his classes, meaning he had to pay that fee every day just to make it to that particular class.

There was one student… Felix? The boy in the wheelchair. They had a genuine if shallow conversation for a minute between classes. The blond soaked the attention up like a sponge, even exaggerating some of his foolish goofiness to catch more of the other boy's attention. Swiftly, though, the time ended and the brunette rolled away down the hallway. Ron waved him goodbye, leaving his hand up longer than he should've before dropping it down listlessly. His dawdling led him to being late to his next class, to which the teacher, a drill sergeant type, berated him and piled on extra homework for the besmirching.

Kim Possible flitted around the blond throughout the day. But… It was shallow. Just plain old shallow. They talked about practically nothing, most of it in relation to the redhead in some fashion or another. Who she was hanging out with, what projects she was working on, how she felt about this or that boy... Again, he played the fool, his falsely bright smile making Drakken frown. The blue man wanted to slap Ron silly, almost as a self-directed reproach for the behavior.

Eventually Drakken pinpointed at least one of the words for how he was feeling. It felt like… Kinship. The sidekick knew what it all felt like, what that lonely isolated life was like. Somehow. Apparently being the so-called 'best friend' of the girl that could do anything wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

As the boy gathered his books, again laiden with homework no one else had to do, Drakken considered what to do with this new information. His new target.

Drakken needed to do something. Something about the boy's situation. This was… It felt important. Even more important than the teenage wasteland project. Even more than-..

Drakken bodily shook. He put a hand to his head, wondering if he was getting sick. Because…

This felt more important than world conquest.

The scientist blinked a few times, then rubbed his head. This… This couldn't be right. It just couldn't. Conquering the world was his life. His purpose. Yet the boy, Ron, was feeling like he was more important than even that.

...he clearly needed to rest. Go to bed, get a few extra hours of sleep. Drakken had been obsessively working on the teenage wasteland experiment with barely any rest for the last few weeks. It was nearing completion. He could spare a day or two to catch up on his sleep.

Drakken stood and made his way for his bedroom, deciding to simply let his drone do some passive recon. It wouldn't cause any issues if he gave himself a day to reset. In fact, it would probably be beneficial. Get all this nonsense about the sidekick out of his head.

It was a simple skip through memory lane that was making him feel off. That's all. Just needed some rest to get back to normal...

Things didn't go back to normal like Drakken had hoped.

Once again he found himself at his console, watching the sidekick go through his day. He felt almost compelled to. Drakken needed to see that it wasn't as bad as he thought, that his feelings from the day before were just a fluke.

To his annoyance and, strangely, fear, it was all the same.

A mild sense of horror settled on him as he again watched the same scenes as the previous day play out. It was just like him. The blond was just like him. The same rejection, over and over. An ache in Drakken's chest confused him. He didn't think he'd eaten anything spicy…?

"What's Doctor Dorkasaurus doing today?"

The voice cut through his thoughts, surprising him enough to nearly fall out of his chair. He was shocked to find Shego watching the screen over his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Didn't I send you off on one of your vacations?"

"Eh. I got bored." She shrugged after shooting him a quick glance before resuming looking at the screen. "What's going on? You gonna redo that stupid clone plot again?"

Drakken swallowed. He hadn't wanted Shego here for this part. It was all recon, so it had no need for her skills. It also needed concentration and there was no chance of accomplishing that with her snark being shot like a blow dart every few minutes. And he didn't want her to find out until he was practically victorious. Really prove to her how awesome he was.

Hadn't he locked the door?

"Wait." Shego narrowed her eyes. "This is following… The sidekick?" She blinked a few times. "Why?"

"I'm trying to account for anything that could wreck my next plot," he lamely defended. "Including Ron."

"Oh, so you know his name now? 'Ron'?" A vicious laugh sounded from her. "You bonding over the fact that you're both losers?"

Drakken grit his teeth at the insult, but desperately tried to keep from responding. If he said anything she would probably realize she was right. If she realized she was right… He didn't know exactly what would happen, but he knew it would be bad.

She snorted then, apparently taking his reaction at face value. "You do realize you're wasting your time, right?"

He tilted his eyebrow at her, confused.

"He's a loser. Useless. Inconsequential. Nothing would happen if you didn't 'account' for him," she explained. "Why waste the effort when you should be focusing on Kimmie?"

"I'm accounting for anything," Drakken insisted.

"Hm…" She turned and studied him for a moment. "Well…" Another shrug. "Whatever. It's your time, your plot. And I guess if the blond dork went villain again there really would be something to worry about."

After a moment, Drakken made a shooing motion. "So, now that you know what I'm up to, are you going to leave me alone?"

"Ugh." Shego raised her hands in mock defeat. "Fine, fine. I'll leave you and your weirdo plan alone." She turned, then paused. "You still want that Nakasumi guy kidnapped, yeah?"

"Yes." He steepled his fingers in glorious evilness. "I need him and his brilliant mind here for me to probe. But…" Drakken checked the Snowman Hank calendar he had hanging next to the console to keep track of the timeline until Kimberly Anne's prom. "...he won't be out in public until that parade thing they're throwing. In two weeks. Until then…" he waved her away, "Go do whatever you want to do. Go ski or something. I don't care."

"Whatever you say, boss." With that, she threw her hair behind her and finally thankfully exited the room.

After a moment, Drakken hopped up and locked the door.

He then rested his back against it and sighed as he let himself slide to the floor.

Shego was right. What was he thinking? Ron had absolutely nothing to offer. He wouldn't get in the way of his plan. He was just a distraction! Someone that-..

Drakken paused.

That got in the way.

That was his entire role. To get in the way. Kimberly Anne destroyed the plan, but the sidekick was the one that brought them to a screeching halt.

There was also something that Shego had said. About Ron being…

...a good villain.

Drakken's mind rushed as he thought on these ideas. Tried to fit the obvious conclusions into his current plot. Tried to think of a way to save-..

Nonono, no. This wasn't about saving that, that boy from the same pain. That would just be absurd. No, this had to be about his plot. His plan to conquer the world. He had to account for everything. Including Ron and his ability to get in the way.

There was one interesting little conclusion he drew from it all. Sure, it might be a long shot, but if he didn't get everything squared away his plot would fail anyway! Best to try and get everything lined up. And if Ron really was like how Drakken was as a young man…

Drakken hopped to his feet and struggled with the door. Then he remembered he'd locked it. He then unlocked it and practically tore the door off its hinges.

"SHEGO!" he bellowed as loudly as he could. After a few moments he heard her loudly grumbling her way back down the hall to him.

"What is it? Finally decided to tell me why you're being so weird?" she asked as she once again stood in front of him, hip cocked.

"No, nothing like that. You'll find out my plan in due time," Drakken said smugly. "You see, I actually do need you to do something for me…"

Ron sighed as he puttered his way back home on his scooter.

KP was busy finishing the plans for the next dance. The dance that would be the next Saturday. The dance that Ron… Couldn't go to.

Oh, he'd tried to go to a few dances before. But if he didn't end up locked in a closet for the weekend, he was stuck awkwardly standing in the corner while girls made faces and whispered to each other. He got the bad feeling it was about him. So Ron had decided not to go to another dance unless it was with someone. Because then hey, there would be someone to totally hang out with!

...but that wasn't working out either.

Kim night was cancelled this week because of the planning. Heck, he didn't think he'd see her at all this weekend!

It made Ron very… Uneasy. Worried. This wasn't the first time in the last few weeks KP had cancelled on him. There just seemed to be stuff that came up. Stuff that was more important than their hang-out time.

It… It was okay! They were still best buds! Nothing could break their bond! Best friends since pre-K. They'd be together for forever!

Sure, he didn't tell her everything about his life. He just didn't want to bug her. Those bullies only backed off for a week after they'd switched bodies anyway. What else could Kim do?

That still left him all by his lonesome for the weekend. Him and Rufus could always play on Everlot. Or more Zombie Mayhem. But it would be kind of lame to play those without Zita or Felix. They were already busy, so he couldn't ask them to hang out. Monique was working all weekend too, so she wasn't available either.

So that left vegging out to some awful movies. Nooooot marathoning stuff like he did when his family got cable. That had been a Bad Road. Ron wasn't keen to go slightly insane again. Or, hey! They could marathon Bricks of Fury! That could be fun!

Ron then noticed that he wasn't moving. His scooter was making the 'putt putt' noise, but wasn't moving forward.

Oh. He'd run into something. Weird. Must not have been paying enough attention. It didn't even show up in his side vision!

He shut his scooter down as he balanced onto his feet, preparing an apology for the person whose car he'd bumped into. Ron looked up, mouth open at the ready.

Then it dropped.

In front of him was Drakken's hovercar. Shego was standing up in it, hip cocked and mouth quirked. To Ron's surprise, she was alone. No sign of the bad doctor.

"Uhm…" He was at a bit of a loss. "Hi?"

"I can't believe I'm doing this. This is one of the dumbest ideas he's ever had," the green woman grumbled with crossed arms. "This is something so stupidly easy even he could have done it! But noooo, gotta waste my time with this junk."

"I, uh…" His eyes darted around, trying to find a place to duck for cover. The problem was that they were in the middle of the street. Nothin' for him to dive behind. "So…" Ron's face settled into a rictus smile. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just running a quick, really dumb errand for Doctor D," Shego said, shrugging.

"Good luck with that?" He desperately didn't want to try and take down Shego. And it wasn't like she was definitely doing something evil. She might just be picking up milk! Deciding to leave it lie, he twisted the wheels of his scooter so it was no longer running into the hovercar and started it back up. "Well, I gotta get going! KP and Global Justice and Wade are all waiting for me and would totally send out a search party if I'm even five minutes late!"

A sneering smile greeted him when he looked back up at her. "Yeah, I'm so sure. Is that why Kimmie is all camped out at the school decorating crap?"

Ron swallowed. Then, in a high-pitched squeak, he said, "Yes?"

Shego rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Doesn't change my errand."

He tried to not give in to his curiosity. Ron really did! But she was being so vague about it… Closing one eye and squinting at her, he asked, "And that is…?"

Now all her bright perfect teeth shone at him as she gave an open-mouthed smile. Her eyes narrowed, and Ron was absolutely certain that she had been waiting for him to ask that.

Suddenly she hopped down, grabbed both Ron and his scooter, and tossed them into the back of the hovercar.

"Ahh!" Ron landed heavily in the seat, his scooter tilting on top of him in a heap. He shot a quick glance at Rufus' pocket, a spike of fear hitting him as he realized that it was being squished. To his relief, his buddy had fallen out of the pocket. Rufus was clearly disoriented, grabbing at his head and chittering nonsense. As his pink friend shook his head to clear it, a clawed hand grabbed the mole rat tight and lifted him up.

"Why hello there, rat!" Shego said, lighting up one of her fingers with plasma. "Wouldn't do to have you wreck things by telling anyone, so you're coming with too." The ignited finger settled against the now struggling mole rat's forehead. "Nighty-night!"

The plasma surged into Rufus' forehead. His eyes widened for a moment before he went totally limp.

"Rufus!" Ron began pushing his scooter in panic. He needed Rufus to be okay! His buddy couldn't go out like this! He just couldn't!

Shego tossed Rufus carelessly against the back seat. "Would you relax? He's fine. Just knocked out."

"You won't get away with this! I'm all chipped and everything!" Ron shouted, shaking a fist. "They'll totally find me before your evil plan thing starts up."

"You're chipped, eh? Good to know! I guess Kimmie really does keep you on a leash like her own personal loser pet, eh?" Her finger lit up again as she leaned over and settled it against Ron's forehead. To Ron's curiosity, he couldn't feel the sharp ouchiness of the claw. Just a weird warmth. "Plasma shot, take two."

The warmth surged and flooded his head-..

A/N: Don't expect this to update very often. This is a harder topic for me to write on than most. I've been puttering around with this for literally years. Most of what I've got so far has been written in the last week. Even if I only post what I have so far I think I may have accomplished my attempt to write the best Rokken the site has seen. So I figured eh, might as well start posting it.

Hope whoever bothers to read this enjoys it.