KP – One Oh One: Part XXVI – Cooped Up
Ron watched with interest as Doctor Drakken wolfed down the plate of traditional Thanksgiving food he put together for him. He wasn't quite sure what had come over him, making him do that, unless it was just for the good feeling he got when he produced the paper plate loaded with goodies. Drakken might have been one of the most whack villains on the planet, but on that particular day he was sitting in his home alone, fretting about where his friend was.
He thought it was kind of funny that he could see something between the two of them, even before he realized the same was true about Kim and him. Then he shuddered visibly when he carried that line of thought to its logical conclusion. No, they were more like what Drakken called them when they visited with the remnants of Team Go. They were really a sort of evil family.
However, he didn't quite feel the same way about Shego as Kim did. He wasn't around for all that 'girl-talk' the two of them did while they were trying to rescue Neil and him back at the end of summer, and for some odd reason, Kim really didn't talk about it all that much. That could have been because she saw Neil die, but it still left him with a very incomplete picture of why they were supposed to trust the one-time mint-hued woman now.
Well, at least this wasn't totally about trust. It was about being true to what they really stood for. They were once again saving the bad guy. The worst thing he actually wished on Shego was for somebody to snap some cuffs on her writs, and he didn't even know if that was appropriate any more considering how Kim felt on the matter. As far as he was concerned, if Kim said she was okay, then he knew she was, whether he understood why or not.
Ron was also a little surprised at Joss. It was one thing, a couple summers ago, for a twelve year old to hang on his every word. At that age, it was a 'cute' crush. Now the attention he was getting from her was more than a little disconcerting. It didn't help that, at a quick glance, she looked a lot like Kim. In fact, if it weren't for the fact she smelled like mangos and oranges instead of lavender and soap, he would have thought it was Kim kissing him on the cheek several times over the last couple days.
It was pretty clear Kim had noticed all that as well, though for some reason she was handling it better than Ron would have expected. He had been utterly blind to the way she was acting over Yori when they went to rescue Sensei, at least until she mentioned 'jelling', but now he was much better attuned to her reactions. Maybe she thought it was all still cute and innocent.
What he saw in Joss' eyes when she looked at him wasn't quite so innocent. He couldn't help but think the girl's love-life had progressed somewhat further than Kim's had at fifteen. She wasn't worrying if somebody was going to take her to the dance, she was worrying who she was going to let take her to the dance, and what she was going to do afterwards. The Texas born Montanan may look a lot like Kim, but she was much, much more of a wild child.
Why didn't cute (make that hot) fifteen year old girls get crushes on him when he was fifteen?
Well, no, that wasn't completely fair either. Most girls were looking for something that he wasn't, or at least he wasn't then. He was short, even skinnier, built a bit like somebody was holding a sack of something loose. He was a total slacker, with bad grades, goofy looks and the only thing he seemed to have going for him was being best friends with Kim.
He scowled for a moment. People seemed to be assuming he had a more significant relationship with Kim long before he even considered the remote possibility. Could it be that everyone really did assume they were together, and other girls perhaps feared Kim's wrath if they were to come between them? No, that couldn't be it. They ignored him (and actually fled him) because he was just a pathetic loser. There, he said it, at least to himself. He really was a loser then. He wasn't now, but he had to be honest with himself. He was a loser and it was his fault. He was the one who didn't care about his grades, how he looked, how other people felt about him. He was the one who blew off studying in favor of playing video games. He was the one who basically climbed out of bed and shook the 'pillow head' out of his hair every morning. He was the one who thought clothes from Smarty Mart were basically okay.
He chuckled slightly. Ron still wasn't quite sure where Kim had gotten the relatively new pants he was wearing, but his black turtleneck was from the discount retailer, as were his socks, the leather belt holding the pants up, even the black hiking boots had come from there. Okay, so he wasn't the coolest guy on the planet, he'd learned a lot about what was really important in life and he also knew all that fancy stuff didn't really matter all that much to Kim.
At least as long as she didn't have to wear the cheap stuff herself.
Joss being brought along for the mission puzzled him slightly. The rescue up in Montana was a family thing, with Jim and Tim brought along for good measure. It was also pretty much Uncle Slim's show at that point anyway, since he was the one providing the cybernetic horses and all. One of these first days he was going to have to ask if he would have gotten the same turnout if it was just him captured by Drakken and Shego.
That thought brought him back to the moment. Kim was wandering around the house, waving her hand-held Kimmunicator around like an ancient magic wand. Obviously, Wade was doing some kind of technical thingy he still couldn't completely understand. Maybe she would find something they could use. To his eyes there wasn't much to go on. It was the first time he had seen their former arch foes in their personal living space and it was strangely normal. As a 'couple' the two didn't appear to be especially neat or prone to do much cleaning. Perhaps they always had the henchmen to do that in the past, or maybe there was a reason they never actually saw their bedrooms.
It wasn't as if he could say anything bad about Shego since she tended to strew her dirty clothes all over her room. He was the same way, and to some degree, so was Kim, and the villainous duo didn't have Mrs. Dr. P. to pick up after them.
He heard a soft growling, quickly realizing it was Rufus, who was hanging out of his pocket. He turned to look at what had his little friend's attention.
Ron wondered if the cat actually remembered him. She (he? The cat was so fluffy he couldn't rightly tell) bugged her green eyes, then took off running for parts unknown. Maybe the little monster remembered him after all, though apparently its fur came back without any problem.
He had a thought that seemed a little selfish to him. He had not so much as formally proposed to Kim that they were off on another mission. That may have been their lot in life, but he really wished he could have spent the rest of the evening with just Kim, even if it only involved snuggling on the couch since Joss would be in Kim's room. Maybe they could have even gone to his house. They had a hard time getting any rest in his tiny bed, but rest wasn't exactly what he had in mind. Oh well, like Kim always said, there's a time and a place.
But dang it! He wanted some time and he had the place!
Wade's voice drifted to him over the Kimmunicator. "Not picking up too much, just some common household pollutants…wait, I think I've got something."
"What's that?" Kim asked.
"Poly synthetic soporoform. I'm reading traces of it in the air, especially in the living room."
Ron looked over Kim's shoulder, momentarily distracted by the smell of her shampoo. He really needed to get his head in the game. "So, just in case Kim doesn't know what that is?" He asked.
"Think of it as a twenty-first century equivalent of chloroform. I don't think I have to tell you what that means."
"It means Sherry really was kidnapped." Kim agreed with a scowl.
"Whoever did it must have done their research. Either that or they're just lucky. That stuff is a whole lot safer for her condition. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that means they need her unharmed."
"But why would somebody want her now? She's been off the villain community's radar for more than a year now." She turned and looked Drakken straight in the eye. "Tell it to me straight, Drakken. Have you been up to something that would have anyone's attention?"
"Kimberly, your words hurt." He said plaintively.
"Drakken!" She narrowed her eyes at him.
He went over to his desk, picking up a partially completed model of a RAF Super-Tornado. "I swear, this is all I have been working on. If the rest of the villainous community wants one, they can go to any hobby shop!"
Kim huffed slightly. Wade hadn't been able to pick up any indications of anything higher tech than the high-def television in the den. If he was building some new doomsday device, it wasn't here. In reality, they were not terribly far from the sprawling base he once used for the early stages of his Diablo attack, but it had been sitting empty save for a detachment of Global Justice guards since he tried grabbing that high-tech fighter ship. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, she had to trust Drakken at his word.
"So, have either of you managed to tick anybody off lately?" Ron asked, still looking for where the cat had run off to.
He just shrugged his shoulders. "We really haven't seen all that many people since we've been hiding out here."
Kim was scowling. "This isn't making too much sense. Somebody grabbed her who possibly knew she was pregnant. The only thing I can think of was that somehow they figured she might be an easier target, especially if she were unwilling to fight back as hard as she is capable of normally. Have you noticed anything, maybe, like about her health in general?"
"A doctor has been coming here regularly to check on her and she seemed okay, I guess."
Ron leaned over to Kim's ear. "What if somebody got to this doctor. That way they'd know what her condition was like."
"Good call." She whispered back. "Drakken, who is this doctor?"
"I honestly don't know." He sat down in a shabby looking easy chair. "She ran me out of the house every time he was supposed to come over. I didn't even get a look at him. You don't think…"
"…that her doc is involved? Don't know. It's the only thing we have to go on. How was she getting in touch with her doctor?"
"I don't know. Maybe this." He reached into his pocket and produced a cell phone, handing it to Kim.
"Maybe I can download the call memory." Wade said. "Hook it up to the Kimmunicator."
Kim opened the face of the phone and stopped cold. "Wade, when you traced this phone, what was the number?"
"Hold on…oh man! You're not going to believe this."
"I bet I am." She moaned, looking at the sticker just above the tiny screen that read "Property of Middleton Medical Center."
Sherry sat in the center of the bed, studying every nook and cranny of the room with keen interest. So far she had not seen her captors even once, yet, the two times she had fallen asleep, trays of fresh food appeared. Somebody was going to great lengths to keep from being seen.
One thing that told her was that she was somehow being watched. If they only appeared when they were certain she was asleep, then there had to be some kind of cameras involved. Perhaps they had something even more sophisticated than that. She tried shamming, curling up in the bed and keeping her eyes closed, but nobody appeared, at least while she knew she was awake. There was no way to tell how long she was like that, especially since she really did fall asleep after a while.
By that point she was certain she had now been awake more than twenty four hours. If this went on much longer, she was going to make an attempt to batter the door down after all. This was just plain, pure nuts! What purpose did it serve to keep her cooped up in a room without anyone to talk to?
Oddly enough, she found herself missing Drakken. When she left him before, she always ended up around other people, either with that hunky guy she met at the billionaire's club or when she ended up living with Neil for a while.
That thought had her almost ready to cry. It seemed she always realized some things too late. Only minutes after it finally came to her that she still loved him, he was gone. Not merely gone, not simply dead, but not even mere atoms. When the matter/anti-matter device had malfunctioned, even the most basic components of his being were ripped apart. Only mementos of him were put in his coffin for his funeral, and even of those, all she could remember was the solid black Team Go uniform her brothers provided.
It seemed Drakken was really all she had left. He came to her, professing friendship, and if she really thought about it, he probably was exactly that. He was still somewhat of a buffoon in his own right, but his buffoonery was a source of comfort for her. He had even given up his ambitions of taking over the world in order to take care of her in her time of need. Granted, he was a terrible cook, a terrible conversationalist and extraordinarily bad at household chores, but he did try. She almost wished he were there to force feed her some of his 'cocoa moo.'
Her stomach was rumbling. It had indeed been quite a while since she had any food. This was just getting to be too much. Was this some kind of strange prison, where they would keep her until the baby came? That was still three months off at that point, and there was no way she was going to be cooped up all that time, whether she was in the hands of the authorities, or some other unknown villain. At least if this had been the FBI or Global Justice she would have been visited by an interrogator by now, and would have been offered the chance to call her lawyer. There were rules those people had to live by.
Or were there? How did they know she had foresworn that old life? After all, she was supposed to be one of the most dangerous people on earth. Even without her glow power, she was an expert in several forms of Kung-fu and had even trained in one of the lesser ninja schools for a time. What if somebody in a position of authority had finally decided she was too dangerous to be allowed the normal rights even criminals were supposed to have?
That still didn't make total sense to her. It would be far easier to have a sniper take her out from a distance than to drop her in a hole like this and forget about her, pregnancy or not. All it would take was somebody who could do the math. The good of the many outweighing the good of a single unborn child. After all, she lived in a country that allowed abortion. She never really thought that much about it before, until the day her pregnancy test turned positive. Suddenly she found that whole prospect reprehensible.
That did it, she was not going to debate the abortion issue with herself. It was time to act.
"Okay, I'm willing to be you can hear me. Just wanted to give you fair warning. I'm going to start with the dresser. Not much going on there anyway since I'm still wearing the same clothes I had on when you grabbed me, which, by the way, are starting to get a little funky since I'd already been wearing them for more than a day. I'm either going to see how good that door is, or I'm going to be sitting in little pieces of particle board in here unless somebody can tell me what the hell is going on!" She built up steam as she went, ripping one of the drawers out of the aforementioned piece of furniture.
"Heck, maybe I can smash that mirror and start doing some more damage that way!" She threw the drawer at the door with all her might. It smashed against it, not even making a dent, which was pretty much what she was expecting.
"You listening to me?" She pulled another drawer out. Maybe she could do something with the metal rails after all. "Somebody better start talking or pretty soon I'm going to start running out of drawers." She smashed the second one against the door, still not doing any more damage than the first one did.
"Now, now, Miss Godfrey. There is no reason to resort to violence." Said a calm, collected voice over a hidden speaker.
That got her attention. If she could find where the voice was coming from, maybe she could find some of the cameras/sensors as well. All she had to do was keep this guy talking."
"I'll show you violence if I don't get some answers!" She screamed, ripping a third drawer out.
"Perhaps a question is in order. Who do you trust?"
"What? I don't trust anybody! I can't trust anybody!"
"Good answer. Now, please, put the drawer down. The door is fully reinforced. Without your powers, there is nothing in your room that will affect it in the least."
She stood her ground, not quite ready to surrender the only thing she could hold that even resembled a weapon, though she didn't hurl it at the exit this time.
"Who the hell are you?" She demanded.
"All in good time. Another question for you. Who have you been forced to trust?"
"What?"
The voice went on. It seemed to be coming from above her, but she found she just couldn't isolate exactly where. "You are Sherry Lynette Godfrey, also known as Shego, also known as Sheila Ogehs, most recently known, rather amusingly, as Sheila Drake. Born April fifteenth, nineteen eighty two. Former member of Team Go, currently, or should I say apparently currently in the employ of one Drew Lipsky, perhaps better known as Doctor Drakken."
"So what are you, Global Justice? Sounds a lot like you're just reading the files they've got on me. I know most of my old aliases were blown."
"No, this is not Global Justice." Was there an edge to that voice now. "Would Global Justice know that you are currently six months pregnant, carrying a female child?"
That stopped her cold. As far as she knew, the only people who knew her condition were Team Possible and…
"How the hell did you know that?"
"I will ask you again, Miss Godfrey, or would you prefer Shego?"
"Godfrey." She said through clenched teeth.
"Who exactly do you trust? You can say all day long you trust no one, but there are times when we are forced to at least appear to trust someone."
She hefted the drawer again. "Look, you either tell me what the hell is going on, or there's not going to be anything left in this room. I've been in here for what seems like days."
"I do apologize for not speaking to you sooner. I have been indisposed dealing with other matters."
"I don't care if you've been on the crapper for three days constipated, you either tell me who you are or I start smashing."
"Really, Miss Godfrey. Is that any way to treat somebody who may be your greatest ally?"
"Who…are…you?" She growled.
The lock on the door clicked, and a heavyset, middle aged man with upswept reddish brown hair and a neat Vandyke stepped inside. She quickly noted he had a patch over one eye and one of his hands was either covered in a metal glove, or was some sort of bionics.
"I am Gemini."
"Yeah, and I am Aries. What the hell is going on here, patch?"
"What is going on here, my dear, is that you have the honor of being invited to become my new Agent Alpha."
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