Shego was beyond intrigued. Despite the constant change of the lairs and scientific areas Drakken has been playing with during the five years they were together (meaning working together and nothing else) he was a man of routine and certain level of predictability. So what changed? The vine thing, obviously. Till today, she still didn't know its exact properties and abilities. Will she finally understand what was going on?

Room 139 was on the basement level, where she has not ventured before. She knew that the majority rooms in the basement were for storage. The only noteworthy place in the basement was a safe room area which is to be used during an attack on the facility. The door to room 139 was nothing special, it was also unlocked, thus nothing prevented Shego from stepping in.

The room itself was nothing but concrete walls with a steaming bath in the middle. Shego knew her Jacuzzi and this was a weird one. She neared the large tub to see Drakken lying there with unusually relaxed expression on his face. The tub was not filled with bubbles however, well, there were bubbles slowly bursting on the surface of a brownish water which was not transparent in the slightest. It seemed to have a gooier consistency and the smell… she has not smelled anything like this since leaving their garden that was destroyed by the comet.

"Is this fertilizer?" she blurted out, stroke by the realization.

"Nobody believes me when I say I didn't hire you only for your powers, but your brains too," Drakken replied, opening his eyes and looking right at her with a strange smile on his lips.

"So what is this shit? It's not actually shit, is it?" Shego asked, instinctively stepping away from the tub.

"No, it's not, but it is indeed a special mixture to feed the vines inside me. I need this bath every week (at least at the moment), because if I don't feed the plant, it will feed on me. And that's not what I am comfortable with as you imagine."

"Doy, I get it."

A buzzer ripped through the silence and Drakken moved to stand up. Shego took another couple of steps from the tub, but did not turn around. And if Drakken was planning on scowling her for not minding her business, she will take it, because the view of her boss only in swimming trunks was well worth it. He was not Adonis, but he was quite fit for his age. There was no flubbing of fat anywhere, even if he didn't have any defined abs or sculptured muscles. And he didn't look good enough, he actually looked good.

Drakken got out of the tab, but didn't say anything at her openly eating him with her eyes. He just turned around and started walking towards a tainted glass cabin in the corner.

"I'll take a shower and then we will talk, okay?" Drakken threw, stepping into the cabin without waiting for the reply.

While Drakken was taking a shower (and Shego's mind was filled with absolutely no images), her mind was directed at answering questions like: was it a trust or indifference thing that her boss just stripped naked under a shower with her technically still in the room? Has her sessions in the tub and under the tan lamp created the understanding that walking half naked in front of each other was out of necessity and had no sexual connotations? Well, it didn't. And yet, Drakken knew about her scar and, as was revealed during the quiz, where her moles were. That requires some intense watching. But the important question here: did Shego want to be watched that way by her blue boss? Was this her subconscious intention that she realized by parading in her swimsuit in front of him? Why was she seeking his attention? Attention that was not given anyway? Or was it?

Shego's deep dive into her subconsciousness was interrupted by Drakken emerging from shower cabin, drying his hair with a – shockingly – green towel. Was he trying to prove her wrong here?

"There should be a chair somewhere here… Should've prepared properly," she heard Drakken mutter under his breath, berating himself. It was kinda cute. "Uh-uh, I need to lie under this lamp for another hour… So if you want…"

"I won't break from seating on the floor, you know," Shego interrupted the rant that was going nowhere and flopped down near the lounge like contraption with a huge lamp above it.

"Just don't look at the lamp while it's on. Or you'll burn your eyes out. I'm not exaggerating here!"

"Doy, doy, don't get your trunks in a twist."

Shego was sitting on the floor, but still felt the heat from the lamp. Drakken's body was considerably closer to the rays so he would probably need another shower after. Shego's curious glance travelled to her boss's back, particularly since her position on the floor gave her a perfect observational point.

"So on the scale of 1 to 10, how freaky is it, Shego dear?"

Shego had to admit… it kinda was. There was a web of tiny protrusions on the small of his back that, she assumed, was the root system that thickened into three worm like swells on his back up to the dark holes in between his shoulder blades. Moreover, his spine and the skin around the whole plant was not blue, but somewhat dark green.

"Well…" Shego drew out, having no idea what words to choose. For some reason, she didn't want to resort to her usual belittling, humiliating, criticizing tactics. She always had something to say about his thinking process and hare-brained schemes, but she had no habit of insulting his physical appearance. It was always the last resort when she had nothing else to say, but deemed she had to, because she couldn't just not to.

But what could she say about Drakken's vines? They saved the world, they saved her from becoming a plant just recently. Did they look creepy? Sure they did. But it didn't mean she was ungrateful or had any right to insult them.

"I advise you not to go to public beaches, otherwise you will be nabbed for creating a massive hysteria."

"Your talent with words never fails to astound me, Shego," Drakken grumbled, hearing only the insult in her reaction.

"Well, the view does require getting used to!"

"Even after all your horror movies?"

"Even more so! And what's up with green skin?"

"The plant is mutating my skin cells to allow for photosynthesis."

"Doy… So you'll be green one day?"

"Yeah."

"You seem to take this whole plant situation in stride. It is obviously parasitic and instead of getting rid of it you are fattening it up! What's the deal here?"

"It was impossible even in the early stages. It is ingrained too deep into my body now. Even if by some strike of a genius it would be removed, there is no guarantee that no cells would be left and it will just grow back, much more aggressively too."

"So… does it hurt when they come out? And where do those feet of vine retract to?"

"It did hurt at first, but I am used to it now. And they don't go anywhere. I cut them off every time."

"Now I am seriously confused, D. Isn't plants' circle of life to replicate and then dry out? At least when they are not trees. So if you continuously cut it off – even if it does manage to spread seeds while it's out – what is the point of its life? Or… there will be more than three?!"

"I don't know, Shego. I've archived a balance for now. And thankfully there have been no seeds so far."

"Why is that?"

"Because this is a mutated version of the original plant. It can't live without a human host."

"So your Pollinator plus seeds plus human equals human plant?! Ignoring the world domination plan right there- Are we all in danger becoming like you?!" Shego was rarely - scratch that, she was never – hysterical, but this seemed to be the right moment to panic.

"No worries, Shego, the current version of the Pollinator is very diluted. We do need for the grains to be eatable. The mutation like mine is possible only if the original circumstances are met. One needs to nearly drown in the original Pollinator to get anything growing inside him."

"But there is no drop of the original left, right? And what happened to the lair with a giant tree in it?"

"Burned it to the ground."

"You did what?! No wonder I couldn't find half of my things to pack!"

"The boss lady wanted to harvest it and so forth, but finally relented after being shown the radiation levels. So much Pollinator in one place…The environment of the whole region would've gone down the drain for centuries. They took half of the mountain too and work on cleaning the water… but you know how hopeless that is. If the UN people knew what the cost of saving the world was… There would be no medals for anyone."

"Politics and environmental science rarely mech."

"Indeed."

"So… Can I touch it?"

The question startled Drakken enough for him to turn toward her from his outstretched position on the lounge. "Wha?"

"I am not going to poke. Hard," Shego said with her usual smirk, trying to lighten up the mood of world destruction without any supervillian plan.

"It's very sensitive. It's painful to even lie on my back."

"Doy, doy. I get it." Shego stretched out her hand toward the blue-green back, but then seized herself. She was a fighter, being gentle in any capacity was almost a forgotten experience. Yes, she acted differently during her vacations, but never intentionally towards Doctor Drakken. For him she generally only had one attitude. So will she manage not to hurt him now?

She lightly traced one of the vines with her fingertips and then the other one. It didn't feel anything different than human skin. Well, slightly rough male skin. And then-

"It just moved!" And yeah, it was kinda alien-creepy, but those vines were alive. Babies move in the womb too, but since nobody sees their legs kicking nobody is freaked out. And why was she thinking about babies again?

One vine extended out and circled around her wrist and then crept up her arm, spurting blue and green flowers.

"Eeeer… What am I supposed to do here?" Shego asked, completely lost which happened extremely rarely.

"Drakkenia is simply greeting you. And she wants you to keep it."

"Why am I not surprised you named it after yourself?"

"It's a part of me, what else should I name it?"

"You are hopeless. So how am I supposed to keep it?"

"There are clippers in my lab coat pocket."

"Your lab coat is all the way by the door. How am I supposed to cut it?" As if hearing her plight, the vine released Shego's arm and formed a circle on Drakken's back. Shego rummaged through the coat, since there was a lot of who knows what tools in its pockets, but she found the clippers eventually. She returned and positioned the clippers at the base of the vine, but froze again. "Does it hurt?"

"Me or the vine?"

"Both. Either."

"We are used to it."

Shego made a swift and clean cut, feeling out of her element yet again. Suddenly Drakken seemed to have too many unknown facets Shego had no idea how to communicate with. Not that they could communicate well before… But now things have gotten way more complicated.

"So what am I supposed to do with it? Put it in water? It is not planning to plant itself on me, right?"

"Water is enough. It will live for about a week."

There was another buzzer and the lamp turned itself off. Shego took the vine so Drakken could stand up. The plant clearly had some form of consciousness, so why would it willingly sacrifice a piece of itself for her? More complicated indeed.

"Strangely that quiz the other day did not have the most basic question. What is your full name, Shego?"

"Why in the world do you want to know? I am never going to use it anyway."

"You know mine."

"I don't actually, Drew Theodore P. Lipsky. What does P stand for? Something so embarrassing that your own mother doesn't say it out loud?"

"That's a funny story actually-"

"Funny ha-ha, or not?"

"Depends how you look at it. So my grandparents were not… happy with my mother's… situation, but they insisted she keep the baby and they will support her financially, but they will come up with the second name for the baby. Lacking any originality, grandmother wanted to name me after her father and grandfather after his, but they couldn't decide which one to choose. Obviously. Mother had no choice, but to use both names, but she hates grandfather's father's guts to the point that she can't even say his name. I was never told the history there."

When the pause become too prolonged, Shego urged, "Cut out the suspense already!"

"Alright, alright," he accented, but Drakken's smirk showed he definitely liked the attention. "It's Payden. Drew Theodore Payden Lipsky."

"Not… bad. Overall."

"It's getting cold here, so if you'll finally say what is done at basic introductions…"

Only now Shego remembered, they were bantering while Drakken was wearing only trunks. And it wasn't awkwierd which was even more awkwierd.

"Sandra Estella Radford, satisfied?"

"Not Go then?"

"It was our alias after the comet, but legally we are still Radfords. I won't be surprised if Hego changed his before tying the knot. His superhero identity was always more important to him than his real one."

"Hm…"

"What is that supposed to mean?!"

"Nothing, Shego dear. See you at Friday karaoke."

"And then?"

"Not sure. This reporting business is killing me, but it must be done. Corporate responsibility sucks."

"I'll leave you to it."

Shego left the basement with mixed feelings. First and foremost, she was shocked to find herself looking forward to have one of their meetings. Secondly… hydrangeas were her favorite, but the vine in her hands was truly something else. She recalled Stoppable's words about impossibility of the weapon of world destruction to be so pretty. The flowers were beautiful indeed and truly livened up her minimalistic standard quarters. The blue was the same as Drakken's skin and the green was the exact color of her eyes. For one crazy moment, Shego thought that they looked rather good together.