"This is getting ridiculous!" Kim gasped as she punched out another one of Sunny's goons. "Even Drakken doesn't have this many henchmen!"
"Perhaps she has a better medical plan, maybe even dental?" Junior suggested. They were cornered in one of the weight rooms, and he was swinging a barbell in an attempt to hold of three thugs. "Can't we talk about this?" He asked them.
Kim jumped onto the back of another henchman and took out two more thugs with one split-kick. "We'll never get to the control room at this rate! We need…"
Suddenly a sharp blow to the back of the head knocked her out cold.
----------
Shego peeked around the corner. Half a dozen henchmen heading down the hall towards them, checking every room along the way.
"See anything?" Ron whispered over her shoulder, spitting peanut butter bits into her ear.
Shego gritted her teeth. "Why don't you see for yourself?" She asked. She grabbed Ron and tossed him into the hallway, where he was immediately spotted. He yelped and ran back past Shego. The henchmen gave chase; as they rounded the corner, Shego picked them off one by one.
"Hey sidekick, coast is clear!" She yelled after Ron, who by then had almost made it to the end of the hallway. Ron skidded to a halt and, upon seeing that Shego was right, trudged back. "Wow, you really are a good distraction," Shego smirked. "I'm starting to see why Kimmie keeps you around."
"Gee, thanks," Ron scowled. "So how are we going to find Kim?"
"Do-gooder that she is, she's undoubtedly going after Sunny, who is undoubtedly in the control room because there she can see every inch of this resort on the surveillance cameras," Shego said. "But of course, being her best friend you already knew that."
"Of course I did!" Ron snapped. "So…the control room is where again?"
Shego rolled her eyes. "Follow me," she sighed. "He's worse than Drakken," she muttered to himself. "I really miss that blue-skinned freak."
----------
Kim's eyes fluttered open. She found herself lying on an exercise mat. Looking around, she saw the room was empty except for Junior.
"Kimberley! You are awake!" Junior exclaimed, rushing to her side. "Are you all right?"
Kim sat up. "What happened?" She asked. "Where are all the henchmen?"
"Let's just say I convinced them to leave us alone," Junior said proudly.
"So you paid them off," Kim said.
Junior's ears turned pink. "Well…yes. Do you think Shego will be impressed by that? Or would it be better to say I fought them off single-handedly?"
"Junior, I believe honesty is the best policy," Kim replied.
"So you think Shego will like me for who I am?"
"Well…um…I…don't know." Kim admitted.
"Then lying it is!" Junior exclaimed. "Come on, let's find Sunny so you can defeat her and say I did it!" He confidently strode off.
Kim sighed and followed him. "Ron, where are you?" She muttered to herself.
----------
Sunny drummed her fingers on the control panel as she stared at the monitors. Her eyes darted from Kim to Junior to Ron to Shego. She watched as each group took out the last of her henchmen. She exhaled loudly. Those kids. What she had once dismissed as youthful indiscretions was now a full-blown rebellion. Though Kim and Ron were a big disappointment, Sunny blamed herself more than them; after all, letting children run wild all over the world, doing whatever they please without any adult supervision was just asking for trouble. She should have given them the treatment the first time they set foot in her resort.
Junior and Shego, on the other hand, were a different story.
Junior was perplexing. Usually it took one week to fix someone, two at best. Junior had been a guest for over three weeks, yet he was still the same selfish, spoiled young man he'd been when he first checked in. He was the only one in the entire resort who was not responding to her program, the one she had spent all those years perfecting. What was it about him that made him invulnerable to the most sophisticated reprogramming technique in the world? That was a question that kept her up at night.
As frustrating as Junior was, it was Shego that angered her most of all.
Shego was the embodiment of everything wrong with the world, everything she had worked so hard to eradicate. Robbing, lying, and cheating her way through life, flaunting her misdeeds in the face of authority at every turn, all without a hint of remorse. Sunny stared at the image of Shego on the monitor; that defiant stare, that cocky stride…every step was like a slap in the face.
Sunny clenched her fists. It was clear she was incorrigible. There was only one thing left to do.
Sunny reached over to a big blue button covered with a plastic lid. Flipping open the cover, she poised her index finger over the button and waited...
----------
"I don't know!" Shego groaned for the third time.
"Come on, you must have an opinion!" Ron said.
Shego turned to face him. "For the last time, Stoppable, I have no idea who would win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman!"
"Are you kidding? Batman would totally kick Spiderman's butt!" Ron exclaimed.
"I don't care!" Shego snapped. "I don't care if 'P.Diddy' is still 'Diddy' without the 'P,' I don't care how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, and I don't care about comic books and the geeks who love them!"
"They're graphic novels!" Ron snapped. "Geez, you're not nearly as much fun as Kim!"
"You're saying Possible actually enjoys these conversations?" Shego asked.
"No, but she humors me!" Ron huffed. "It would be nice if you would at least make an effort!"
"I'm not Kim! Do not even try to compare me to Kim!" Shego snapped. "The door to Lord Adderley's office is just around the corner! Time to join the rest of us on Planet Reality!"
"Um, Shego, Lord Adderley doesn't exist, remember?" Ron said. "Now who needs a trip to Planet Reality?"
"You know, Stoppable, I'd beat you senseless, but you would have to have some sense to begin with!" Shego said. "Just follow me!"
They turned the corner and came to the door Shego was looking for. She threw it open and the two of them went inside.
"Shego, this is the mud bath room," Ron said.
"I know! Lord Adderley's…sorry, The Room-Where-All-the-Bad-Things-Happen is beyond the door marked "Staff Only." Shego walked over to the door and grabbed the knob, but it was locked.
"Uh…Shego? Is the mud supposed to do that?" Ron asked.
Shego turned around and saw that the mud was overflowing out of the baths and quickly covering the floor, with no signs of slowing down. Shego tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge. The mud rose rapidly, splashing over her feet.
"Uh, Shego, I think this is the part where we get out of here!" Ron cried.
"I don't need a sidekick to tell me what to do!" Shego snapped. Suddenly massive amounts of mud burst out of the baths like a geyser, filling up the room at an alarming rate. "Let's get out of here!" She cried.
They hurried out of the room and into the hall. With every step they took, the mud continued to rise faster than they could flee. It wasn't long before Shego switched from walking to wading to swimming. She struggled to keep her head above the mud, but mud was denser than water, and she quickly spent her energy. She found herself sinking like a rock and slowly losing consciousness…
The first thing Shego was aware of when she woke up was a very soft pair of lips locked onto hers, forcing air into her lungs. She tore away from them and sat bolt upright, gasping in deep breaths of precious oxygen.
"Please forgive me," Junior said, kneeling beside her. "Normally I would buy you an expensive dinner first, but this was an emergency!"
"Junior?" Shego blinked. She looked around; Ron and Kim were there as well. They were all sitting on top of what appeared to be a very tall trophy case, trapped by a river of fast-moving hot mud.
"Guys, we need a plan!" Kim said. "The way this mud is rising we'll be buried alive in a matter of minutes!"
Shego assessed the situation. They were in one of the resort's main hallways, with chandeliers hanging about twenty feet apart. Suddenly she had an idea.
"Possible! Follow me!" She cried. She leaped onto the closest chandelier, swung back and forth to gain enough momentum, and then jumped onto the next one. She went from chandelier to chandelier, Kim following close behind, until it brought them to the same place all the main hallways led: the main lobby.
Shego and Kim jumped on the final chandelier and looked into the lobby; though huge, it was quickly filling up with mud. Shego pointed to the other end of the room, at an enormous pair of heavy wooden double doors that marked the entrance to the resort.
"Okay," Shego said. "All we have to do is blow those doors off their hinges!"
"With what?" Kim asked. "Your energy blasts would take too long, and we don't have any explosives!"
"Yes we do," Shego said. She reached into her belt and pulled out a pair of small metal disks about half an inch thick, with a round red button in the middle. She handed one to Kim. "These babies will do the job, but they have to be activated at the exact same time."
"You just happened to have these on you?" Kim asked.
"What, you think you're the only one who carries around handy little gadgets?" Shego replied.
"Do you happen to have a boat in your belt? Because that's the only way we're getting across!" Kim said. She looked around the room and spotted the portrait of Lord Adderley hanging in its usual spot over the fireplace. "Now it's your turn to follow me!"
Kim swiftly made her way over to the portrait, using her ninja-like agility to bounce off tops of chairs and luggage carriages that hadn't been swallowed up yet, until she landed on the mantel of the fireplace. Shego landed next to her. The two of them lifted the heavy portrait off its hooks, threw it onto the mud face up, and then jumped onto the canvas. Quickly they paddled their way to the doors on their makeshift raft; once there, Kim grabbed onto the middle hinge of one door and stuck on the device. Shego paddled over to the other door and stuck hers on its middle hinge. They looked at each other, and with a mutual nod, hit the red buttons. The devices began to glow and beep furiously.
"Okay, how long do we have?" Kim asked.
"Ten seconds," Shego replied.
"WHAT?" Kim cried.
"Possible, I suggest you save your breath," Shego said as she dived into the mud. She curled into a ball so she would sink as fast as possible. Seconds later she could feel heavy vibrations rippling through the mud, and she was washed outside onto the front lawn; now that it was no longer confined indoors, the ocean of mud quickly became a very large puddle. Shego stood up and looked around; the other three had ended up outside as well.
"Is everybody all right?" Kim asked.
"I think so," Ron said. He was covered in mud up to his neck. "But you cut it pretty close. Junior and I were almost cooked!"
"I did not doubt you for a minute," Junior smiled, looking directly at Shego.
"So, Shego, ready to finish this?" Kim asked.
"Just try and stop me," Shego said.
----------
"All right, Sunny, end of the line!" Shego cried as she jumped through the doorway to the control room, both hands blazing. Ron, Kim and Junior followed close behind.
Sunny was standing in front of the main computer, wearing what appeared to be an oversized football helmet. "It's going to take more than some stupid-looking hat to save you now!" Shego snapped.
"I know!" Sunny hissed. The helmet began to glow and hum; suddenly a six foot tall robot emerged from the shadows and barreled into the group, knocking them over like bowling pins. The robot zeroed in on Shego, delivering blow after blow so swiftly that Shego couldn't fight back.
"Miserable, disrespectful brat!" Sunny cried. "They should give me the Nobel prize for ridding the world of a parasite like you! If only someone had beaten some sense into you years ago, maybe it wouldn't have had to come to this." The robot knocked Shego to the ground and firmly planted its foot on her chest.
Shego shot daggers at Sunny. "So are you going to have your robot finish the job, or do you plan on talking me to death?" Sunny's helmet glowed again, and the robot began to push its foot down harder, slowly squeezing the air out of Shego's lungs like a leaky balloon.
Suddenly the ceiling directly above them began to shake and crack. Sunny looked up in surprise, and the robot lifted its foot. Shego barely managed to roll out of the way as a much bigger robot suddenly burst through and landed directly on Sunny's robot, squashing it like a tin can. Sunny screamed as her helmet crackled loudly and threw off electric sparks, and then abruptly burned out; she fell back against the computer and sank to the floor.
The robot looked very familiar to Shego. "Dr. Drakken?" She yelled.
The robot's windshield slid back and Drakken's head popped out. "There you are, Shego! I've come to help you stop Lord Adderley and destroy this wretched place!"
"Already taken care of," Shego said. She looked over at Sunny, who was being examined by Kim and Ron, with Junior looking on. "So, how did you overcome the mind control?"
"Please, Shego, a superior mind like mine can't be manipulated for long!" Drakken huffed.
"You accidentally destroyed your stress buddy, didn't you?" Shego said.
Drakken's cheeks turned pink. "Let's just say Pego's not machine washable," he mumbled. "But never mind that! Get in! We have fellow villains to un-brainwash!" He looked over Shego's mud-covered body. "And wipe your feet first!"
"In a sec," Shego said. She walked over to the others. Sunny was staring into space, groaning and drooling. Smoke was pouring out of the helmet.
"I've seen this kind of technology in my dad's lab," Kim said. "Sunny controlled the robot mentally, with electrical impulses from her brain. When the robot got smooshed the feedback must have been like a system overload."
"So I guess it's back to the funny farm for her, huh?" Shego said.
"Guess so," Ron shrugged.
"Well, have fun explaining all of this to the cops. See ya next time." Shego said. She turned to Junior, who was looking at his feet. "Junior, it's been a blast. Thanks for pulling me out of the mud back there. I'll see you around."
Junior put both hands on her shoulder and looked her squarely in the eye. "Shego, we are fantastic together, but we must face the hard truth that it was not meant to be."
"Excuse me?" Shego blinked.
"We both know you belong with Drakken. If that giant robot leaves the ground and you're not on it, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life!"
"Uh…" was all Shego could say before Junior put his finger to her lips.
"Please, go now!" He pleaded. "Just remember…we'll always have Paradise Valley!" With a heavy sigh, he turned his back to her, head bowed, with one arm across his eyes.
"Ooookay," Shego blinked. "See ya."
Shego hurried back to the robot and climbed inside. Moments later the boosters were activated, and the robot rose up through the holes it had created and into the sky, climbing higher and higher until it was gone.
TBC…