"Are you sure you have to go alone?"

Kim was hanging out with Shego and Drew for the weekend. Or, at least, she was supposed to be. But Shego had apparently changed her mind after a phone call with her brother, Hego.

"Yeah. This is a strictly brother/sister thing." She shrugged. "It'll just be for overnight. Don't worry about it."

"What about Kimberly?" Drew grumbled. "You're leaving her high and dry!"

"Oh, quit whining you baby!" Shego said with a wave of her hand.

"Gotta admit, it does defeat the purpose of us hanging out as a family if you're gone," Kim pointed out, getting up from the couch to join Drew in looking on at Shego disapprovingly.

"Why don't you two have some bonding time?" the green woman suggested as she hefted her overnight bag over her shoulder. "Really get that father/daughter bond going!"

Drew whimpered, "But Shego-.."

"Have fun, kids!" Shego's laughter rang even after she was out the door.

The two of them stood there, staring after her. Then they turned to each other.

Silence reigned for a solid minute.

It was so awkward.

"So…" Drew twiddled his fingers, looking between the door and her like he wanted to run away. "...what do most father/daughter people do?"

"My dad and I… Uh..." Kim sat back down on the couch, thinking. What in the world did she and her dad do? They didn't actually spend much time together beyond the few times he came to watch her at her cheerleading competitions and standard family hang-out time now that she was thinking about it… "We play board games?" She looked over at him. "What did you and your dad do?"

Drew shrugged. "My dad, erm, ditched out when I was little. I didn't really have a male role model…"

Ah. That explained a few things.

"What about, uhm…" He was clearly reaching. "...bowling?"

"Ugh." Kim shivered. "I haven't been able to look at bowling again ever since Ron kept wearing his bowling shirts over and over sophomore year."

Drew blinked. "Who's this 'Ron' guy?"

"My fiance?" The redhead sighed. He was never going to get his name right.

"Oh! Right! The buffoon!" Her dad slapped his forehead, then snarled, "Leave it to him to ruin something as pure as bowling!"

"Hey now, that's my significant other you're talking about!" Kim complained. "It's not like I talk about you or Shego like that to him!"

"I wouldn't expect you to! Neither of us is as annoying as him!" Drew retorted. "What in the world do you see in him, anyway?"

"Ron's loyal, funny, nice…" Kim started counting off. "I can depend on him when I need him, he's weird-.."

"Since when is being weird a good thing?"

"I like weird," she defended. "It's interesting."

"Hmph!" Her dad crossed his arms. "In my day, weird was weird! No one liked weird!"

"You're weird," Kim pointed out.

Drew sputtered for a few moments, then growled. "Fine! So what if I'm weird? It isn't like anyone liked me back then."

"Shego did," she said slyly. "So she found weird interesting too."

"Ugh!" He grumbled, "Both of you, smart alecks!"

"Like mother like daughter?" Kim suggested.

"Bah!" He grumbled, pulling his arms even closer to himself. "Fine, the buffoon isn't entirely a buffoon…" A finger poked out from under his arm and waved at Kim. "But don't expect me to approve of him just because you like him!"

"I don't like him…" Kim started, a cat-like grin on her face.

Drew looked relieved. "Oh thank goodness! I thought that-.."

"...I love him."

He stared, then threw his hands up in the air. "I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"Kinda, yeah." The smirk never left Kim's face.

"Nnnngh…" Drew growled, "I don't want him being part of my family tree!"

"Ron isn't that bad," Kim said, annoyed at how dramatic Drew was being.

"From my perspective, he is!" He began pacing. "He's lazy, unmotivated, a complete idiot…" He stopped mid-step and said, "...that's all I can think of. BUT!" A finger raised into the air. "That's enough for me!"

"I can't deny that he's a bit lazy… And sometimes he's unmotivated… He is not an idiot, though!" Kim gave a heartfelt sigh. "He's smart when he needs to be. Not book smart, but clever. He has warm brown eyes that are like a hot stove in the middle of winter…"

"...or a warm cup of cocoa moo…" Drew said, a vague look in his eyes.

Kim wasn't entirely sure what cocoa moo was - it was teasing at an old memory, of what she wasn't sure - but she decided that it must be a good thing. "Yeah." Even just thinking about Ron was making her feel butterflies in her stomach.

"Hm…" He looked thoughtful. "Okay…"

"So you're going to stop bugging me about Ron?" Kim asked, hoping his grunts and comment were meant to be acceptance.

"What? No!" Drew shook his head. "I just… I understand now. If just a little."

She gave him a wide smile. Understanding was a big step in the right direction. Now if only the two could spend more time together, to really bond as father and son-in-law...

"Anyway…" He resumed looking awkward. "...what do we do now?"

Kim paused. "I don't know. We could just shoot the breeze a bit like we were just now?"

"All day? Bah!" Drew scrunched his nose up. "I don't think I could handle that much inane babbling."

"You do realize you're partly talking about yourself, right?" she asked, pointing a finger at him.

"I, uhm… I just-.. Nnnngh…" He grunted, "The fact stands! That much talking without doing anything would reek of boring…"

"I can't think of anything else," Kim said with a shrug.

"...let's do our own thing!"

"What?" She looked up at him, confused.

"Let's make it up as we go along!" Drew said excitedly, spinning on the spot. "Make our own traditions!"

"Really?" Kim tilted an eyebrow at him. "Make our own traditions?"

"Yes!" He was clearly getting into the idea. Turning to her, he exclaimed, "Let's build a robot!"

"Huh?" She stared at him.

"Let's build a robot together!" Drew repeated. "Or, oh! I can tell you about my various inventions! The ones that you haven't managed to blow up or destroy!" He waggled his eyebrow as he offered, "I can even show you how to operate some of them!"

Kim's lip twitched. He really seemed to be into it, offering to let her mess around with his stuff?

"Sure," Kim said with a small chuckle, getting up from the couch.

He practically squeed in reply.

"..-and this is a bamboozler!" he proudly stated, waving a hand at what looked like a glorified firecracker.

"What does it do?" Kim asked, looking it over.

"It explodes!" An all-tooth smile met her gaze.

"...yeah, I'm going to put this down now," she said, setting it back where it had been sitting.

"Oh! Ohohoh!" Drew danced over to a shelf that was obviously too high for him. He jumped a few times, eyes focused on a toolbox of some sort. Growling, he made a flower pop out of his collar. "Grab that for me!"

The flower, a very worn-looking pink daisy, rose up and began wrapping around the box in question.

"What's wrong with it?" Kim asked, surprised at it struggling to bring down what looked like a basic old toolbox.

"Hm?" Drew looked at the single partially wilted flower as it noisily and shakily dropped the box in front of him. "Oh, yes. Uhm, some of the medications interfere with the hypollinator mutagen." He chuckled. "I'm actually very fortunate; normally, mutations from different sources don't mesh well. Trying to treat one could've resulted in the other getting worse, or, well, worse!"

"So, is it completely gone?" Kim asked, looking at the swaying vine.

"It's not completely gone," he said, waving at the obvious evidence.

"You know what I meant."

"Hmph." Drew crossed his arms. "Well, they aren't nearly as strong as they were before I got help." He offered the vine to Kim. She hesitantly took it in her palm and watched as it coiled around her arm. It was clear Drew was concentrating, but the most force she felt was like a hard hand from a rather strong henchman. Wiping his forehead, he said, "As you can see, they're about as strong as a grown man."

"So you can only really use it anymore as an extra appendage," Kim stated as the vine retracted.

"Pretty much," he agreed, the vine coiling back into his body.

"Interesting stuff," she murmured, secretly glad that one of his main offensive weapons were reduced so much.

"Ohhh, if you thought that was interesting then you clearly haven't seen my connector gun!" he chuckled, opening the toolbox and rummaging around in it. "Now then, where is i-.. GAH!" A yellow glow surrounded him, then faded.

Kim blinked. "What was that?"

"It was my malfunctioning truth ray," he answered his head jumping up and out of the box and looking at her with horror.

"...why do you keep a malfunctioning truth ray in a random toolbox in your lair?"

"Because I have a minor hoarding problem!" Drew said, exasperated, before trying to cover his mouth.

She smirked. "Is that the same one you hit me with when I was rescuing Doctor Wong?"

"I have no idea who you're talking about, but the answer is probably 'yes'," he replied, removing a hand from his mouth.

"Hm…" Kim thought about it for a second. "...so for the next few hours or so, you can't lie?"

"No, I can't!" he said, then covered his mouth again. Slowly, he opened his fingers and said, "I meant I can't. Erm, I meant no. Nnnngh…" He seemed to be struggling. "I meant yyyyyy-.. No!"

Huh. Well, this was an unprecedented opportunity. Her biological dad, unable to lie to her about anything for the next day… He was lucky that Shego wasn't here!

"So then…" She circled around him like a shark. Speaking of Shego… It was time for some blackmail material. "...what do you think of Shego? The bad things about her, I mean."

He tried to stick a fist in his mouth, but was still able to talk around it. "I find her frustrating! She always feels the need to pick at me, no matter what or how I'm feeling! It feels like she doesn't care sometimes. And she doesn't seem to care at all about my great intelligence, either. She treats me like some everyday schmuck instead of the genius I am!" Drew spit his fist out, apparently deciding to give in to the ray on this point. "I'm partly sure that she sticks with me because she pities me. Because she had poor judgment when she was younger and ended up saddled with a permanent connection to me via you. I'm ugly bordering on repulsive, and that I would be alone for the rest of my life without her!" He crossed his arms and began pouting. "I'm waiting for the day that she just admits that and leaves me alone to myself."

Kim blinked. Wow. She hadn't been expecting that. Maybe a complaint about her leaving her towels on the floor. She'd forgotten how blunt the ray made people…

"She doesn't think that," she told him. "She doesn't think that at all!"

"And how would you know?" he sneered grumpily.

"We talked about it," Kim said with a shrug.

Drew blinked, then exclaimed, "I thought you said that you don't talk about me or Shego behind our backs!?"

"I said me and Ron don't," she corrected. "Shego and I, on the other hand…"

"Perfect!" He threw his hands up in the air. "Everyone's conspiring against me!"

"I thought those meds were supposed to help curb your paranoia," Kim said pointedly.

"I lied a little because I didn't want to end up a drugged-up zombie," he admitted.

"Really?" She tilted an eyebrow at him.

He cringed away. "Don't look at me like that!"

That would be something for another time, she decided. For now…

"Shego doesn't think that about you," Kim repeated.

Drew snorted. "Yes, because I'm going to believe that after-.." Kim stomped over to the toolbox and began rummaging around. "...what are you doing?"

"This." She found the truth ray and poked it. As expected, it misfired and hit her too.

"What?" He blinked at her. "Why would you do that?!"

"Because I want to get the point across that Shego loves you," Kim said, giving him the stink eye.

Drew stared. "...okay, you've lost me."

Kim sighed and said, "She loves your personality. And she thinks you're kind of cute."

Drew snorted, this time an amused one. "If you hadn't shot yourself with the truth ray, I would be betting that she paid you to say that! Parental bribery and all."

"She wouldn't be able to bribe me with enough of anything in the world to outright lie about something like this," she assured him.

"Good to know!" Drew said. "I'd thought you'd learned your lesson from the Halloween fiasco. It's part of why I listened to you and Shego when you said I was sick."

"Really?"

"Well, yes!" He looked at her. "I was secretly expecting it to be some kind of GJ plot or something to take away my intelligence and get me mocked at even more than I already am!"

"Huh."

"Yeah…" Drew coughed. "So then…"

"I have a few ideas of what to do next, but you're too old for most of them to really make sense," Kim said, then covered her mouth.

...she hadn't thought this through.

"...so, what should we do now?" Drew asked, clearly trying to ignore what she said. "I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to show you around at my various inventions any more because the focus of most of them was to destroy you in an epic fashion and I would prefer if you didn't know how much focus I put into rendering you moot to my plots."

"...we could play board games?" she suggested again. "I don't want to go out and embarrass myself with the automatic mouth and I'd prefer it if you weren't there to add on to the embarrassment."

"Right…" He looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I'm not entirely sure what we have beyond 'Apologies!'..."

"'Apologies!' sounds fine," Kim rushed. "Anything is better than standing here trying to not ask or say something that would hurt either of our feelings."

"Right!" he repeated. Drew waved at her to follow him. "I shoved it in the hall closet along with the memorabilia of my mother because I'm still upset at her for not telling me the truth about things. It's also why I've been avoiding her by mostly sticking to the Caribbean lair instead of going all around like I normally do."

"Makes sense." Even Mama Lipsky, with her preternatural ability to know where her son was, couldn't walk on water.

"So then…" He was clearly reaching for a topic to discuss. "Uhm, what did you want to do for supper?" He brightened as he said, "Ohhh, Shego's not here. I could make the Lipsky family meatloaf! We both love it."

"I actually hate the Lipsky family meatloaf," she said bluntly. He stopped and stared, mouth open.

"You told me before that you loved it!" he said, gobsmacked.

"I lied because I knew that it was important to you," Kim admitted, cringing at her honesty.

Drew narrowed his eyes. "So does that mean that you lied about liking the holidays too?!"

Oh boy.

"And that's when Ron's pants fell down," Kim said with a shrug as her piece knocked Drew's off the board yet again.

"Gah!" He brushed frustrated hands in his hair. "I had completely forgotten about how terrible I am at this game!"

"We could start playing a different one?" she suggested, placing her last piece in the finish goal, again winning the game.

"Nnnnngh…" He ground his teeth. "No! I want to play until I crush you under my boot!"

"And I think you're getting too upset over a game," Kim said, unimpressed.

"Fine." Drew pouted. "I'm not calm, but I'm trying not to get so frustrated that you'll quit on me."

Kim shrugged. "If you want to keep going, I'm game."

"Good! Because I am t-.."

An alarm went off.

"Sounds like the lasagna's done," Drew said, getting up from where he was sitting on the couch.

"Thanks for being willing to bake something we'd both like," Kim said.

He waved a hand in the air. "I want to impress you with my baking abilities because I want there to be something that I do better as a father than James."

Both of them froze at the words.

"Erm…" Drew stared at her, deer-in-headlights. He then rushed out of his mouth as he ran for it, "WellgottacheckthelasagnaandIhopeyouforgetwhatIjustsaid."

"I won't, and I want to talk about it when you get back!" she called after him.

Fifteen minutes later, Drew still hadn't returned. Kim decided to go looking, expecting him to be grumbling to himself in the kitchen.

She found the lasagna cooling on the stovetop, but no Drew.

Kim hadn't really explored the Caribbean lair much, even now that she, Shego, and Drew regularly hung out. But, considering the circumstances, she felt it was necessary to go exploring a bit to see where her biological father had gone.

After checking various rooms - a weightlifting room; another, smaller lounge area with card tables set up; and a communal kitchen area - she came across a smaller laboratory that seemed to be nestled in the belly of the lair. In it, Drew was pacing back and forth, muttering to himself.

"Are you okay?" Kim asked, walking in on him.

"GAH!" He jumped and spun around, again like a deer caught in headlights.

"What are you doing down here?"

"I was hoping I could avoid you the rest of the night by leaving you up there while I stayed down here until the truth ray wore off," he answered, then slapped a hand over his mouth.

"We need to talk about the whole 'father' sitch," Kim said, crossing her arms and lifting an eyebrow at him.

"I would prefer we not," Drew noted desperately.

"Why not?"

"Because I already realize that James is a better father than me," he said, again trying to stick a fist in his mouth. "I don't want to hear it from my own daughter."

Kim's eyebrow lifted even more. "What makes you think that Dad is a better dad than you?"

"Golly gee whiz, I don't know..." Drew said, the sarcasm so strong that Kim was pretty sure that even Ron would've caught it "...is it the fact that he was there for you when you were growing up? That he's normal, like you?" He assumed a thinking pose. "Or maybe it's because you always refer to him as 'dad' whereas I'm always 'Drakken' or 'Drew'? You can't even get the words out unless it's to make a point!"

Kim stared, then said, "I'm still getting used to this sitch. Just because I don't call you 'dad' doesn't mean that I think that much less than you! And you didn't choose to abandon me-.."

"But I did!" he cut her off. "I left when you needed me most. Real fathers don't do that."

"Because of Gemini!" Kim growled. "You were forced to give me up."

"Like that makes it much better!" Drew crossed his arms. "I should've been better or, or something!"

"Will you stop being so stubborn about this?! Why are you being so stubborn?"

"Because I promised that I wouldn't do the same thing my father did and I did it anyway!" he snarled, whether it was at himself or her she wasn't sure.

Kim stared at him. Then, slowly, she walked over to him and gave him a hug. "It's okay… We're still working on it. We'll figure it out. Besides…" She smiled. "There is something you're better than James at with being a father that isn't cooking."

"Hm?" Drew tilted his head. "What in the world are you talking about? What could I be better at-.."

"I can talk about boys and my romantic life with you and have an actual conversation," she noted.

He slapped a hand over his face. "He's still a prude about that?!"

"Yeah." Kim took a step back and scratched the back of her head. "Every time I ask, if it isn't about shooting them into a black hole or about how I shouldn't be allowed to date, it's deflected to my mom."

Drew rolled his eyes and dryly said, "That sounds like James all right…"

"So yeah, James has his own faults as a dad…" Kim nodded and added, "Also, we've spent how much time over the years together? I'd say that's a pretty big win in the 'spending time with the daughter' pool. So…" She looked up at him. "Do you feel better now?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I do feel better." Drew made a fist and proclaimed, "And I'll do even better than that! Oh!" Spinning on one foot, he said, "I could show up for your competitions as moral support!" He paused mid-pose, then bent around and asked, "You still do those, don't you?"

"Yeah; I'm part of the college cheerleading team," Kim answered.

"Right! I can show up and cheer you on!" The wide genuine smile he wore made Kim feel like a million bucks.

Kim smirked. "I'd rather you not because it's embarrassing, but if it would make you happy then go for it."

He got an evil look in his eye. "I will be the most embarrassing parent there!" he proclaimed, giving Kim a side hug.

"Gee, thanks Dad," Kim said blandly.

Drew gave her an extra tight hug. "What're dads for?" He frowned, then said, "Though I do wish that I had gotten to see your cheering competitions from when you were in high school…"

An idea popped into her head...

"Alright!" Shego called out, walking in the front door. She was early, having decided to brave night driving to get out of the Go tower as soon as she could. Her brothers had already started grating on her nerves in the short amount of time she'd been there. But she could understand her brother calling her like he did. The first therapy session was always the scariest.

And now she'd probably have to do some damage control with the doc and Kimmie. Goodness knows they have precisely nothing in common. Shego imagined that they sat there awkwardly, neither being willing to do anything because it might look weird to the other. Or the opposite, they argued over who would get to do what… Doc probably would've wanted to bowl, while Kimmie would've wanted to watch movies or something inane like that.

"Got the situation with my brother settled. So you guys can stop the awkward-.." She cut herself off as she observed the scene in front of her.

Kim was strapped to the memory machine, it sitting on a small card table that they'd apparently set up instead of the back of the room. It was projecting a much smaller image, the last scene that it had was what looked like her on top of a cheerleading pyramid. She and Drew had apparently fallen asleep together, both of them propped against each other to stay up. Empty plates sat on the small card table, of what Shego wasn't sure. It looked cheesy.

All in all, it looked like a classic family scene of watching old family videos.

She smiled. Maybe it really was a good thing she'd left them alone...