This couldn't be happening. Dear goodness, this couldn't be right. He must be hallucinating. He must be. There was no way she was here…!
"Drewbie!" His mother scuttled over to where he was sitting, face crinkled in worry as she repeated, "What happened to you?!"
"I, erm…" What else could he do but lie his butt off? "I was, uhm…" Suddenly, an idea. "Cosplaying!"
"Cosplaying?" his mother asked skeptically, eyebrow tilted in confusion.
"Yes! Cosplaying!" He built up steam as he said, "These are all props! Fake! Yes! I'm just, erm, dressed up like a monstrosity! For my radio show! I'm trying to get in touch with-.."
"Drew, stop it." His mother began tapping her foot, arms crossing in consternation. "I know there's something wrong with you. That you're sick, and that awful man is to blame. The nice boy that I talked with told me as much!"
Drew's eyes narrowed as he remembered what Shego said. The buffoon. Of course he had to ruin it for him!
"Don't worry, baby…" His mother walked up to him and gave him a big hug, being mindful of the various thorns sticking out of his body. "Mama loves you, no matter how you look…"
He paused for a moment, then returned the hug with his arms and a few vines. "...I love you too, Mother." And he meant it. Even with her betrayal in regards to his family, he still loved her.
"I just wish we hadn't had our little tiff," she said, standing back up. Drew frowned. She made it sound like they'd argued about a television show or something!
"Mother, it's more than a 'little tiff'," Drew couldn't help but to growl as he scratched at a small thorn on his neck. "You purposely didn't tell me something very important! That I possibly had a family! Don't you think that's something worth talking about?"
"I didn't think that revisiting it was a good idea…" Mama sighed. "I'm sorry, Drewbie. I didn't mean to upset you, or keep you from your family… I was doing what I thought was right. I didn't think that she was being honest, especially after I found you like you were... But I was wrong."
Drew blinked. How often was it that his mother apologized like that? Surprised, he could do nothing but sputter, "I, uhm, accept your apology?"
His mother beamed and said, "Good!" She brushed at her dress and excitedly mentioned, "You'll be released from this dingy room soon! They told me so." She smiled wide. "We can all go home and have some nice cheesecake or something while we try to talk about what happened."
"Released?" Was that why the door was still open? Drew was more than a little surprised at that. He wasn't sure if it was trust in his ability to bounce back or what, but overall he didn't care. As long as he wasn't there he would be happy.
Then, a thought occurred to him.
"What about Lord Gemini?" he asked, trying not to let his eagerness show through.
He'd been ashamed earlier to say his name in front of Shego, but he'd also been ashamed at how he acted under the mind control. It was easier to say it in front of his mother, like it was some kind of dirty secret that he didn't want Shego to know. He knew Shego would've overreacted if she knew what was going on in his mind. But he was in control again! It didn't matter what he said or thought as long as he was in control...
"Hm?" His mother stood back up and looked at him owlishly. Then, she snapped her finger. "Right! Sheldon! Gemini, that's what Betty and Shego called him…"
His heart leaped into his throat. He sat at attention, his entire focus on his mother now.
"He's such a nasty person, almost as bad as your girlfriend!"
"Wife." He wouldn't let anyone, even his mother, disrespect his marriage. ...save for Lord Gemini. Probably. It didn't matter that he didn't remember the marriage taking place. He'd made the vows, and he sure as hell would keep them!
"I find it hard to believe that you got married without me!" She growled, "She must have tricked you or something."
"Yeah, yeah, tricked me, whatever." He scooted forward a little. "Tell me about Lord Gemini."
"He's all locked up in a bad place like this, across the way…" Mama Lipsky snorted. "Why they put you in here I have no idea! This is for bad men, and you aren't a bad man at all, are you, Drewbie?"
Drew cringed. "No, Mother, I'm not!" Hesitantly, he asked, "How is he doing?"
"He's definitely regretting what he did to you, dearie!" Mama chortled. "I beat him up real good for you!" His mother tutted, brushing at his ragged shirt. "You won't have to worry about that bad man hurting you ever again!"
Alpha felt the world fall away at those words.
Lord Gemini...
The two guards for Gemini's cell laid in a pile next to the door. Shego had easily knocked them out, them being none the wiser about her breaking away from Betty's little pow-wow with Mama Lipsky. She'd already gotten to see Drew, and he was going to be released soon to her care. She wasn't worried about him.
There was still business to take care of, though…
She opened up Gemini's cell and waltzed in like she owned the place.
The man himself was sitting on his bed, cradling his right arm. At Shego's entrance, he tensed up, but relaxed as soon as he saw her.
"Ah… Look at who it is." A confident smile came to his face. "Come to seek retribution, I take it?"
"Naturally," Shego said with a careless shrug. She still wasn't sure quite what she wanted to do to him… All she knew was that it had to hurt, and leave a lasting mark. Something that he wouldn't forget.
"I half-expected it to be that paragon of virtue, Kim Possible. After all…" he chuckled "...I did destroy the mind and spirit of her father… And it would have been deliciously perfect if I had managed to corrupt her as well, simply by doing what comes naturally to me."
"He isn't as 'destroyed' as you seem to think he is," Shego challenged. "Doc's resilient. He bounced back pretty easy." She examined her nails. "Looks like you're little attempt to mess him up failed, completely and utterly."
"Shouldn't that make you worry?" Gemini asked with an amused lilt to his voice.
"Hm?" The green woman eyed him.
"The fact that he seems to have bounced back almost instantly from months of torture and work by yours truly? Doesn't that seem a bit odd to you?"
Shego's expression faltered for a moment. Months?
Apparently it was enough of a clue for the one-eyed villain. He laughed cruelly as he said, "You didn't know, did you? I suppose my dear little sister failed to mention that I took a temporal distorter, hm?"
She didn't know what that was, but she was certain that he wasn't lying. Drew was tormented for months by Gemini? Shego hadn't really thought about the mutations and conditioning that went into it, but now that he mentioned it it didn't seem like something that would've been an overnight sort of thing. Especially with how stubborn her doc could be sometimes…
"Yes, it was quite a while that I worked on him… He lasted for a decent amount of time from the first round of torture, really…" Gemini chuckled. "Three days of flaying fun. I'm sure his hands will never forget the time we had…" He said, a sneering smile on his face, "Nor will he…" A full-on belly laugh erupted from him as he said, tears gathering in his eyes. "You should have seen his face when he realized we were in a time bubble! When he realized he was holding on for nothing! Oh goodness, it's something I'll treasure for forever…!"
Shego felt herself starting to lose her temper at the very idea that he was presenting to her, and the reactions he was displaying to all of it. "You… You…"
A smirk sat on his face as he smugly said, "He was saying anything and everything to try and keep from paying attention to our little… Project." Gemini smiled wide then as he asked, "Tell me, do you suppose he was trying to tell me what I wanted to hear, or if he really was just trying to distract himself? Because he let loose some rather personal information…
"He told me about you wanting to be a psychologist," Gemini sneered suddenly.
"Child psychologist," Shego sneered right back, flames starting to lick at her fingertips.
"Whatever. Either way, it's pathetic." He shook his head. "Trying to go straight is a fool's errand. Evil is just a part of who you are. It's part of who Drakken is, too! You might as well give in to the fact that you're villains, and bad ones at that!"
Shego's teeth ground together, her hands sporadically lighting up and flaming out as she began to earnestly put effort into not trying to kill the man then and there. She stalked up to him and growled, "What is the point you're trying to make? What's with the nonsense you're blathering about?"
"Point?" Gemini tilted his head. "I'm not trying to make a point."
"Then why are you trying to aggravate me? Why are you talking about this stuff at all? Do you have a death wish or something?" she snarled, her hands lighting up all the way.
"Oh no, quite the contrary," he noted, his eye darting behind her for a split second.
"Then why-.."
"Shego. Step away from my brother."
The green woman tensed up, then relaxed, letting the flames on her hands die out. She sighed as she realized his game. Of course he'd been trying to distract her… Shego should've realized that Mama couldn't take up Betty's attention forever.
"Sorry Betts, but I gotta do something," Shego shrugged, not bothering to turn around. She knew that Betty probably had her watch trained on the former villainess.
"No you don't." The sound of a footstep from behind Shego let her know that Betty was closing in. "What you need to do is stand down."
Shego swiftly shifted her stance so she was then facing Betty, poised for combat. "I'm ready to go whenever you are."
A few tense moments of the two women sizing each other up.
Betty struck first, firing her taser watch and dodging down and away from Shego in one movement.
It was easy as pie for the green woman to move out of the way of the prongs. Even easier for her to close the distance that Betty had tried to buy and take a lit-up swipe at the older woman.
The brunette ducked down under the shot and loosed a windmill kick. Shego flipped backwards from it to the middle of the cell and chuckled.
"You really are going to try and stop me, aren't you?" Shego asked, amusement creeping into her voice. "You don't even know what I'm planning on doing! For all you know, I might just want to depants him or something."
"For what he did to Drew? And Kimberly?" Shego's eyes narrowed at that comment; it was pretty obvious to her that Betty was reaching at straws a bit to try and get information on her and Kim's relationship. A little clumsy, in Shego's opinion.
She sighed and carelessly said, "...yeah, even I can't pretend that I'll take it easy on him for what he did to Drew."
"Gemini isn't a threat to anyone anymore," Betty assured the green woman. "You don't need to seek any kind of vengeance against him."
"He's practically begging for it!" she growled in reply. "Egging me on…!"
"She isn't wrong," Gemini noted with an amused chuckle.
"Be quiet, Sheldon," his sister hissed, sparing him a glare. She took a sliding step towards Shego and said, "You're just playing into his game by giving in to his taunting. If you just calm down…!"
"Yea-.. No." Shego's hands lit back up. "I wanna make sure he knows to never screw around with my family aga-.."
"Ma'am!" An agent rushed into the room, interrupting the apparent stalemate.
"What is it now!?" Betty asked, exasperated, though she didn't drop her stance.
"It's Drew Lipsky! He's gone berserk!"
"Ha!" Gemini let out a short laughing spree. "I'm betting you were idiots and let him out of whatever cage you had him in, didn't you?" He smiled. "I wonder, how long will it take for him to find me?"
Betty glared at Shego as the two women raced together out of Gemini's cell. "I told you he was a public danger!" She stopped for a moment and motioned for the guards to reseal and take position around Gemini's containment cell.
"You don't even know what set him off!" Shego snarled in reply as they raced across the complex. "For all we know, your men baited him."
"Baited-.." Dr Director growled, "My men are too well-trained to do anything that foolish."
"About as well-trained as rabid monkeys," Shego retorted loudly as the noise of fighting got closer and closer. "One name: Will Du!"
"I thi-.." Betty was cut off by screaming, a body of a GJ agent flying and skidding to a stop in front of the two women. The woman jerked once, twice, then went quiet. Shego shuddered at the sudden stillness of the agent.
Dr Director dropped down to tend to her and to check for a pulse. Betty waited for a few moments before cursing, "Dammit…!" She then began applying CPR.
"Where is Lord Gemini?!" they heard Drew growl loudly from just down the hall. "I need to know…!"
"Doc!" Shego called out and ran towards where she heard his voice.
In a narrow hallway, a four-way intersection, Drew stood with vines flailing unsettlingly as he looked around with wild eyes. He was surrounded by agents whose wrist tasers were practically bouncing off of his skin. Several others were shooting him with energy weapons. Surprisingly, he flinched a little with each blast. Drew then looked at her, eyes slightly unfocused.
"Drew…" She began to walk towards him, slowly, carefully. She wasn't eager to have another round with him, and she was sure that he was okay enough to get himself back under control… Earlier showed her that Drew was still there. "Why do you need to know where Gemini is?"
"My mother said she'd attacked him…!" Drew cried, tearing at his hair. "I need to make sure-.."
"Make sure what? That he's okay?" Shego gave him a look.
"Yes!" He paused, eyes refocusing as he looked at her, then shook his head, "No!" His face twisted as he said, "I don't know!" He dropped from his fighting stance and fell to his knees, sobbing with vines curling up and around him. "I don't know…"
"Where is your mother?" she asked, breath held in worry. If he was reacting like this to simple guards, what did he do to Gemini's attacker…? "What did you do to her?"
"I… I…" He sniffled and wailed, "I DON'T KNOW!"
"She's injured and unconscious, but still alive," an agent behind Drew supplied. "She's broken at least a few bones. If I'm being honest, she's in danger of dying from internal injuries… But, again, she's still alive. For now."
Drew began to hyperventilate, clenching up tight enough that Shego almost believed that she could've rolled him over easily.
Dr Director approached Shego, tense. "We managed to save that agent," she noted grimly. "There's a smattering of broken bones and bruises… But, other than that poor agent and Mama Lipsky, no one was seriously injured."
"It's okay, Doc..." she soothed. Shego's eyes didn't leave her husband as she said that. What had Mama Lipsky said that set him off? Was it just because of the whole 'attacking him' thing? Mama Lipsky didn't even really hurt the one-eyed villain!
Shego sighed, shoulder slouching as she realized... "I guess he'll have to go back to his cell, huh?"
"I will still release him to your care," Betty said, having carefully walked up to her. Around them, agents closed in, locking Shego out of the loop as they trained their energy weapons on her husband, likely in case he had another outburst.
The green woman turned her gaze to the brunette, surprise evident on her face.
"I was serious about wanting that cell free for continued testing," Betty said, her eye narrowed. "I hope that you understand my warnings now… That you'll actually listen to me instead of writing me off. And that you'll go through with your promise to rehabilitate him in a distant lair, far away from any innocent bystander he could hurt."
Shego's eyes softened as she looked at her doc, who was still sitting on the ground and crying. "Yeah, I think I get it now…" She shouldered her way past several wary agents straight to her husband. Ducking down to about Mama's height, she said, "Don't worry, Doc, everything's fine…"
He looked up at her, doe-eyed like earlier. Mournfully, looking between Betty and Shego, he murmured, "I didn't mean to…"
Shego got to her knees and hugged him. "Yeah, I know you didn't."
A/N: Sorry about the long hiatus thing. I got sick and was in the hospital for a while. Then I got a new job and moved. Been a busy busy time.