Kim cradled her broken arm as she walked over to her fiance. "Ron, I'm so glad-.." She quickly found herself in a gentle hug from Ron, who was now shaking a little bit.
"KP, I don't know what's going on, but I know that you guys came pretty close to biting it…" Ron said. "I can't believe I wasn't here-.."
"Calm down, Ron," Kim said, deciding to bite the obvious building problem in the bud. "You can't be around me 24/7, and this was definitely not a normal sitch."
Ron started, expression torn, "But KP-.."
"You were here when it mattered," she assured him, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "And it looks like you didn't get away unscathed…" Kim winced as she looked at the wound on his side. "That looks pretty vicious…"
"Yeah…" Ron took a half-step back and tentatively poked the hole. "Y'know, it hurts less than I'd expect."
"Probably the adrenaline…" Shego noted. "Trust me, you'll be feeling that in no time."
"Hey!" they heard Rufus squeak from their feet. He was holding a roll of gauze and some disinfectant spray. Where he'd gotten that Kim had no idea, but the fact that it was probably just sitting out unsettled her some.
"We should bring GJ in on this…" Kim trailed off as her mother took the supplies from Rufus and began to really examine Ron's injury.
"WHAT?!" Shego gaped at the redhead. "You do realize that it means that Gemini escaped from under Betts' nose, right? That this is her fault, right?!" The green woman was growing more incensed the more she talked. "Look at him!" She waved an arm at her husband, who was still sprawled out on his stomach. "Look at what Gemini did to him! And you want to call them back in why?"
"They should be able to help fix him again. And it isn't like we don't need medical attention," Kim pointed out as she called Wade up.
"They should be tried by law for their incompetence!" Shego growled, building up steam as she tended to Ron's wound.
Kim tried to ignore her mother's ranting now. Being angry right now wouldn't help anything. They should save that for later. Gemini and Drew wouldn't be out for too long, and she wasn't sure she could handle another fight like that. She activated her watch and said, "Wade?"
Wade's face popped up on screen. "What's up, Kim?" He paused as he looked at her. "What happened? You look like you were in a fight!"
"Gemini happened." Kim said with a slight growl. "He escaped from GJ custody and came for us."
"Yikes." Her heavyset friend winced. "I'm guessing you want to call Global Justice up?
"Please and thank you." She paused, a thought hitting her as Wade typed away. "Wade, why didn't you warn us about Gemini escaping?" Kim said, hurt leaking into her voice.
He looked surprised for a moment, then extraordinarily guilty. "I'm sorry, Kim. I-.. I didn't even hear about it! I was so focused on trying to fix their messed-up database, and then Dr Director removed me from their systems-.."
"She fired you?" Kim tilted her head. "Why?"
"That's the thing: I have no idea! She just said that it 'wasn't working out'..."
"Hmph." The redhead made a face. There was no way it was as simple as 'not working out'. It was another thing on the long list of questions that Kim was building that she would have to ask Dr Director when she had the chance.
She looked at her father and sighed, stomach knotting...
"...and I went 'BAM!' with the vines and knocked him out!" Ron said triumphantly.
"Fascinating…" Betty muttered, writing every detail down. At least, that's what Kim was assuming she was doing. Looking up, the brunette asked, "And you call this the 'mystical monkey power'?"
"Nono, it's Mystical Monkey Power," he corrected. "Gotta have the right emphasis!"
"Noted." Betty looked up from her papers. "Kimberly, did you have anything to add to the description of events he witnessed?"
The redhead blinked as she tried to take in all of what Ron had said. "Ron…?"
"Hm?" The blond looked over at his fiancee. "What's up, KP?"
Kim took a quick look at Betty, then said, "Nothing…" She made a mental note to talk with Ron after all of this, when they were away from prying ears and eyes. She was glad that he only covered what had happened at the lair earlier and not everything else that had happened before it. Maybe the same thoughts had occurred to him as they had to her?
"Now then…" Dr Director turned to Kim. "It's time for you to tell us what has been going on." She looked through a few more of her notes. "It seems that you've been spending an extraordinary amount of time at Drew and Shego's home…" The brunette looked up at Kim with a raised eyebrow. "Care to explain?"
"No, I don't."
Betty frowned. "Kimberly-.."
"That isn't relevant for what you need to know," the redhead said, letting her own eyebrow rise minutely to get the point across. "You just need to know about Gemini and all that, right?"
The brunette's face changed almost imperceptibly, but Kim could see how much her obstinance was annoying the director.
"Kimberly, if we have the full picture-.."
"How would that help you treat Drew? Or ensure that Gemini doesn't escape again? In fact, what Ron has told you is considerably generous of us..."
Kim suddenly understood exactly how Shego must have felt before, at the lair. The emotion Kim had loosened earlier with the punch was nothing compared to the burning resentment that was in her gut now. It was one thing for Gemini to have escaped from them before, when his operation was still in order. It was an entirely different beast that he'd escaped from GJ custody with absolutely no resources whatsoever and with a grudge against someone other than Betty.
Kim was no stranger to the revolving door that was supervillain prison. It was frustrating, but it was life. But when it came to someone like Gemini, a truly dangerous individual, she had hoped that things would've been taken a little more seriously.
Apparently not.
"Kimberly," Dr Director started, "we need to know Gemini's motives for going after Drew so harshly!"
Kim said calmly, "I think that you underestimate your brother's capacity to hate. Or creatively torture people…" She looked Dr Director. "After all, he went after Drew like this before, didn't he? Remember Project Phoenix?"
Dr Director narrowed her eye, just a little. "That was different. Drew was collateral damage in the fight between GJ and WEE. This was a focused attack meant to hurt as much as possible…"
"So the torture that Drew endured during the first go around he had with Gemini counts for nothing?" Kim leaned forward in her seat. "Tell me, Betty, how much 'collateral damage' has there been between GJ and WEE?"
The brunette fumed but said nothing.
"I think that we both know how things will end up…" Kim gave a careless shrug. "We give you the information you need, and you'll do what you can to reverse the damage that's all your fault."
"We don't have to help at all," Dr Director pointed out hotly. "It would be a favor done by us, for you. The only favor we want in return is information. After all..." Betty relaxed, just a little. "...as Gemini's underling, Drew Lipsky will need to be held for public safety concerns..."
Kim narrowed her eyes. So, that's how this was going to play out? She wanted to stomp out right then… But if Dr Director wanted to do it like that…
"As far as most people know, Gemini hasn't even escaped," Kim said with the same careless tone she'd had before. "How do you think it would sound if not only did Gemini escape with nothing to help him, but he got his hands on a world-saving hero and did what he did? It's not like you can even charge Drew with something..."
"We don't need to charge him with anything. We're an independent organization-.."
"..-who can pick-and-choose to lock up whoever they want. Gotcha," Ron threw in. Kim gave him a quick smile.
"Drew is a safety risk," Betty insisted as the door behind her opened and admitted two people. "He's been programmed by my brother to do goodness-knows-what to who-knows-what. We can't trust that he's safe. Thus, he needs to be locked up."
"Wouldn't treating him be a priority then? As a public safety concern," Kim said.
"You're wasting your breath, Princess."
"Ah! Shego…" Betty turned around in her chair to greet Kim's mother. "I see that you found your way to the debriefing room finally…"
"Yeah, it's pretty twisty where your bathroom is," Shego said, looking at her nails. Kim noticed some strange scratches on her neck, but decided not to ask about it at the moment. "You should really get a map or something for it."
"Indeed." Dr Director's eye narrowed, but she chose to say nothing.
"Anyway, as I was saying, GJ can't help." Shego tossed a pamphlet at Kim. "Looky at what they gave Drew."
"Hm?" Kim only needed to take a quick glance at it to know exactly what it was. Looking up at Betty, she asked, "So, when were you going to mention this to us?"
"After the debriefing," the director admitted. "Once we were all on the same page."
"You said that you could-.."
"I stated that with proper information we may be able to help more than we have been able to," Betty corrected. She again turned to Shego and said, "The bathroom, hm?"
"Hey, it's not my fault that the bathroom I found happened to have my doc in it," Shego replied with a shrug.
"And why wasn't I informed that there was an intruder in Drew Lipsky's cell?" the brunette asked the agent that had walked in with Shego.
He looked at the rest of the agents who all had their eyebrows raised. The agent coughed and said, "Well, she had an escort there… Clearly if she had an escort, she was allowed to go there without needing special clearance… Right?"
The rest of the agents nodded while Dr Director rubbed her head in frustration.
"Clearly," Betty ground out. She dismissed the man, who saluted and walked out the door.
"So, Betts," Shego said, waltzing over and taking the chair next to Kim, "I'm guessing that Kimmie's not making things easy on you?"
"I simply don't understand why you're so resistant to us knowing what has been going on," Dr Director stated.
"Because it's none of your business!" Shego and Kim both said at the same time.
Betty looked between the two women. Then she looked at Ron.
"You're not getting anything out of me!" Ron said, crossing his arms. "If KP doesn't want you to know, you don't need to know!"
"Yeah!" Rufus said, making as if zipping his mouth shut.
"...fine then." She stood up from the table. "I do believe this debriefing is over."
"And Drew…?" Shego raised her eyebrow.
"He is still a public danger."
"Don't give me that!" the green woman snarled. "I just spent some time hanging out with the doc. He's well enough to not need locked up!"
Dr Director's eye narrowed. "And if he were to go on a public rampage, who would be to blame?"
"You could release him to our care?" Kim suggested. "We can take him to one of their remote lairs to start a rehab process. I'm willing to bet DNAmy would be happy to help us out with this!"
"Yeah, I wouldn't bank on it…" Shego muttered.
The redhead decided to ignore what her mother said. Because if DNAmy, arguably one of the best geneticists in the world, wasn't willing to help, then who could they ask? Kim knew some scientists who owed her favors, but she would bet that this kind of situation would be a bit over their heads.
Dr Director looked between Kim, Ron, and Shego, before sighing and motioning at an agent in the corner. "Please prepare Drew Lipsky's release."
"Yes ma'am!" The woman saluted, then ran out of the room, slamming the door shut harder than necessary.
"I'm not doing this for you," Betty noted with a tinge of bitterness in her tone. "That new cell is a prototype for a possible new containment system for villains of the highest order. Gemini's occupying another one of them. The fact that Drew Lipsky couldn't break out by force is heartening. We're hoping to make a new generation of imprisonment technology, so our cardboard prison problem is one of the past."
"Yeah, uh, question…" Ron scratched his head. "Who would make a prison out of cardboard?"
"It's… A turn of phrase..." Dr Director said with mild confusion. "It means that our prisons are easy to escape."
"Ohhhh. Okay. That makes sense," the blond said with a nod.
"Anyway…" Betty coughed. "We need the cell to see if we can contain a variety of villains. Brute force seems to be out, so that's one measure. We plan on cycling villains in and out of these prototype cells, to see how many manage to escape. We're hoping to drop the number of escapes down to almost nothing…"
"So you'll want the room for seeing if some slippery guy can escape?" Ron asked. "What, you mean like Falsetto Jones?"
"Or someone like him, yes," the director confirmed. "We want to-.."
"Ma'am!" The male agent from earlier ran back into the room. "We seem to have a problem in your brother's cell!"
"What?!" the brunette dropped her papers on the table and cried, "Bring up footage from cell 37927!"
"Roger that!" the agent replied, running over to the wall and pressing a few buttons on a nearby console.
On the screen appeared Gemini and a short redheaded woman with a beehive hairdo and a flower-patterned dress. They were in a cell that looked to be completely locked off from the world, missing even bars, instead having a solid metal door and no windows. The woman was beating on Gemini with a handbag, while Gemini, strangely, was cowering away from her.
"Who is that?" Dr Director asked, peering closely at the screen.
"Can we zoom and enhance the video to get a better look?" Ron suggested.
Dr Director stared at him. "You do realize that doesn't actually work, right? That it's a television show gimmick?"
"But Wade does it all the time!"
"There's no need," Kim said, flushing red. Shego was trying hard not to bust out laughing.
"Oh?" The brunette looked between the two of them. She repeated, "Who is that, then?"
"Drew's mother," Shego said, losing the fight with herself and busting out an evil laugh.
Betty paused, her brow creasing. "...ah."
A/N: I feel a lot better about this chapter. I dunno, something about Ron made it 100 times more fun to write.