A/N (3.16.2020): Many thanks to Bryce (sizzlingpenguincollector on tumblr) for being my patron for this fic! If you like how I write and want me to take a stab at bringing your ideas to fruition, PM me!
This is the first time I've ever written a fight scene, so if you have constructive criticism for that, I'd love to hear it.
"Hey, Mom and Dad," Jim began. "Can we be excused?"
"We're running a timed experiment, and we have to go log the readings," Tim explained.
James chuckled. "Ah, I love a scientist's commitment to evenly timed data logs. Go ahead, boys."
The twins eagerly scrambled out of their seats to the front yard, where Kim recalled seeing a controlled yet open flame on her way into the house earlier.
"Well, if the boys are heading off, I'll take my leave too. I have an early shift at the hospital tomorrow," Anne said as she got up. She dropped a kiss onto Kim's hair and James' cheek before departing the room, leaving father and daughter sitting diagonally from each other at a full dining table of dishes, serving plates, and cups at various levels of fullness.
James dabbed at his mouth with a paper towel and announced, "Kimmie-cub, I'm placing you in charge of clean-up." He gave a jaunty little salute as he got up from the table.
Kim laughed good naturedly, but she trailed off awkwardly at James' raised eyebrow. "Wait, by myself?"
James' eyes darted side to side, unsure if Kim was joking. "Is there another Kimmie-cub to whom I could be referring?" he asked, letting a little bit of humour slide into his voice.
Kim's eyebrows furrowed. "Why just me? The tweebs' gorchy experiment thing won't take long."
Kim turned her body to keep facing her dad as James oh-so-graciously placed his own dishes in the sink. He said, "You know if we let the twins do it, our dishwasher will be converted into a superpowered house cleaning android in time for breakfast."
"But they can help!"
"Come on, Kimmie-cub. Just do the dishes."
"This is ferociously unfair, Dad!" Kim argued as she got out of her seat and more fully faced her father. "I didn't eat all the food by myself, so I shouldn't have to clean it up by myself."
James frowned. This was turning into more than a hassle than it really should have been. "By that logic, you shouldn't have helped eat the food since you didn't help make it," he pointed out. "Please just do as I ask and clean up after dinner?"
"Sure, if you had asked it. You just told me what to do." She punctuated the end of her sentence with firm hands planted on her hips and a challenging lean.
James stopped himself from rolling his eyes, but he couldn't help the heavy sigh. "Can you please clean up after dinner, Kimmie-cub?"
Kim crossed her arms and turned her head away. "Well, now I don't want to since you're just saying that."
Now James was angry. "Kimberly, I don't know where this childish attitude is coming from, but I certainly don't appreciate it one iota. You may be a crime-fighting heroine out in the real world; but under my roof, you're my daughter who does her chores," he stated firmly, taking care not to raise his voice too much. "I'm going to the living room to read a book; and by the time I go to bed, those dishes better be spotless!"
"I don't think so," Kim announced before her dad could walk away. She started gathering her things as quickly as she could. "I think I'll spend some time out in the real world where people treat me with a little more respect."
She dodged out the house before James could even bring himself out of the frustrated stupor she placed him in. On her way to the sidewalk, she passed by Jim and Tim. "Dad needs help cleaning up after dinner," she threw over her shoulder. "Help him clean up his attitude while you're at it."
The twins watched as Kim walked down the street to, presumably, Ron's house. As one, they looked down at their timer, noting they had 36 minutes until the next log. They turned to each other.
"Jim, what if…"
"We turn the dishwasher into an automatic dinner-cleaning robot real quick then get back to our experiment?"
"Hicka bicka boo."
"Hoo shah!"
The sound of Anne's morning routine gently roused James from slumber the next morning. "Honey? What time is it?" he called out with a groggy voice.
"Just a little before 7, dear," came the distant-sounding reply.
James made a noncommittal noise as he stretched in bed, relishing in the latent warmth of his bedsheets and the scent of Anne's honey-lemon shampoo wafting in from the en-suite bathroom.
"How do hashbrowns and scrambled eggs for breakfast sound?" he asked as he tugged on his blue striped house robe.
"Delicious!"
James walked down to the kitchen, taking care to start the coffee maker first before grabbing a whisk for the eggs. As he set about making breakfast, he could hear the early morning sounds of his children waking up and getting ready. He frowned as he remembered last night.
"Smells good, James," Anne sing-songed as she stepped into the kitchen, preparing mugs of coffee just the way she and her husband liked them.
"Do you know if anything's wrong with Kimmie-cub?" he asked, apropos of nothing.
Anne hummed as she set the table. "She and Ron are going strong, her highway cleanup event went swimmingly, and Bonnie missed the last cheerleading practise due to the flu… So as far as I know, she's doing fabulously. Why do you ask?"
James regaled the events from last night. "And I plum don't know what to do about it," he ended as he plated the food.
Anne's frown only deepened as the story progressed. "That certainly doesn't sound like Kimmie. I'm sure she had a good reason for it, though."
"What reasons are there for unnecessary back talk and blatant disrespect for your father, Anne?" James contended.
Anne glanced at the clock hanging above the stove and was shocked into movement. "I'll look into it, dear," she said as she kissed her husband on the corner of his mouth and packed some of her breakfast to-go. "Try not to rehash the same argument over breakfast, okay? I have a peripheral nerve injury at 8:30. Love you!"
Anne's concern for rehashing the argument at breakfast were ultimately unfounded.
"It's so nice for you to join us for breakfast, Kim!" Jean said as she laid down avocados, chicken sausage, and toast in front of the teen. "I don't think I've shared a meal with you at this table since 2001!"
Kim grinned bashfully. "Sorry about that, Mrs. Stoppable. I'll make more of an effort to come around," she promised.
"Don't listen to my wife, Kim," Gene said. "We've saved so much money since we stopped having to feed Ronald and Rufus for breakfast!"
"Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!"
Kim laughed at Ron and Rufus' objections and the sight of Gene rubbing his sore side as Jean looked on disapprovingly. The rest of breakfast was similarly familial, and Kim wondered to herself why she didn't hang out at Ron's more often.
As Kim and Ron walked to school, the conversation eventually swung back to Kim's spat with her dad.
"And this isn't even the first time he's let the tweebs off the hook for chores!" Kim ranted. "You know, I've never worried about favourites before—my parents are usually so good at treating us all equally—but sometimes I feel like Dad just has a soft spot for the twins since they actually took up an interest in rocket science. Still, that's not a good explanation for letting them slack off on chores and making me pick up that slack!"
"I don't know, KP," Ron worried. "There's only so much rebellion a parent can take from a kid. One day, you refuse to do the housework; and the next, they adopt a whole other child so that they can fix all the parenting mistakes they made on you and produce a functioning member of society!" Rufus nodded along worriedly.
Kim cut her eyes at her boyfriend. "I don't think my parents plan on adopting a fourth child just to get someone to wash the dishes. And honestly, I wouldn't have minded doing it myself if Dad had just asked nicely. Or if he offered to help himself, I probably would have said no, too! I shouldn't have to point that stuff out to him."
Ron could tell how much this was really affecting his girlfriend, so he wrapped a comforting arm around her. "If it makes you feel any better, I haven't done the dishes a day in my life."
Kim laughed as she playfully pushed him away. "That's such a lie."
Ron easily slid back into place beside her. "Yeah, but it made you smile."
Shego raised a single interested eyebrow at the slip of paper that was slipped over her Are You a Drakken or a Dementor? quiz in her issue of Villainess Biweekly. The contents of the paper weren't all that interesting—well, she assumed so, as she hadn't bothered reading it yet—but the fact that someone dared entered her personal space at all was enough to pique her interest.
"What's this?" she asked, still not deigning to spare a glance at the paper's contents.
"Just a little list of things I need you to pick up on your next outing," Drakken's voice said from faraway. She looked above the magazine to find Drakken had already begun walking back towards his side of the lair.
A quick scan revealed that in between things like hyperflux reactors from MIST's Hardaway School of Physics and negatron binds from ColTech's Center of Antigravity, there were chicken breasts and tomatoes.
Shego furrowed her eyebrows. "Doc, what's this about?"
He immediately put down his tools, excited that Shego seemed to actively demonstrate interest in one of his schemes. "Remember how rude the citizens of Joplin were that one time I mispronounced 'Missouri?'"
She waved a bored hand as she got up and walked closer to him. "Yeah, yeah. I remember. But the groceries? I'm your sidekick, not your errand boy."
Drakken honest-to-God pouted, and she wondered—not for the first time—why she bothered being a sidekick to that embarrassment in the first place. "You'll be out anyway! Can't you, please? What's a little petty theft in the grand larceny scheme of things?"
Shego angrily picked up the offending grocery list and shook it angrily at Drakken. "Stealing groceries is so far below my paygrade."
"At least you're getting paid!" Drakken tried to ameliorate the situation.
"Again, to be a sidekick," she reminded as she casually flicked the ashes of the burnt-up paper off her gloves.
"Nghhhhhh," Drakken vocalised. "Shego, why do you always do this? I know I like us to be an evil family, but I'm still your boss," he whined.
He went quiet after that, and Shego retreated to her lounger once again. She remembered the evil parts of the list easily enough; she'll get them after sunset.
"If you don't want to follow my instructions, then… then maybe I shouldn't be your boss anymore," he finally murmured.
Shego snorted as she circled an answer in her quiz. "What? Are you quitting?"
"Shego, you're fired."
She snapped her head up to find Drakken looking as serious as she'd ever seen him. "What? Are you kidding?!"
"If you recall the contract you signed, I am an at-will employer," he responded in an even tone, eyes trained on his fingers to avoid her gaze. "You have until the end of the business day to empty your dorm of your items. I'll have one of the synthodrones escort you out when you're done."
Drakken looked up to see disbelief writ all over his former employee's face before quickly turning around, scurrying out of the main room with a fearful yet somber gait.
Shego felt a sinking feeling in her gut but ignored it. Drakken was obviously off his rocker today; no way did he actually mean to fire her.
After reading the same sentence in her magazine three times, Shego found herself already walking to her dorm. I'm just going to use the bathroom, she rationalised to herself. I'll get there, and it'll be supremely obvious that Doc was just bull—
Right beside the entrance to her room, a synthodrone was stationed patiently. A trolley and several cardboard boxes rested on the wall beside it.
He was serious, she realised. A weird mix of shame, incredulity, and sadness welled up within her, and she responded the only way she knew how.
She blasted the synthodrone's head off without remorse. The chartreuse goo splattered on the wall did nothing to make her feel better.
She angrily dragged the boxes inside to start packing up her things, grumbling curses in as many languages as she knew to quiet the storm inside.
By the time dinner rolled around that night, the Possible family had settled at the dining room sans one.
"Where's Kimmie-cub?" James asked.
Jim piped up, "She'll be late. She and Ron were called on a mission midway through the school day."
"According to Wade, their flight back lands soon at TriCity Airport," Tim said while checking his personal communication device.
Anne's head cocked as she came up with an idea. "Tell Wade I'll go pick them up," she announced lightly. "Don't worry about us; you boys can start eating," she called as she packed her purse and eagerly walked out of the house.
At the airport, Anne found Kim, Ron, and Rufus already waiting at the arrivals gate.
"I forget how much it sucks to have to go through the arrivals gate with the rest of the non-world-savers," Ron complained. Rufus popped out of Ron's pocket and blew a raspberry in agreement with his human's complaint.
"We do look kinda out of place in our mission gear," Kim said in a conciliatory tone before turning to her mom. "Thanks for picking us up, Mom."
"It's not a problem, Kimmie. Consider it my contribution to the team," Anne answered with a smile.
The ride home was occupied mostly with Ron's exaggerated retelling of the mission .("There wasn't that much sand, Ron." "Speak for yourself, Kim. I have sand in places where sand should never be." "TMI!") After dropping off Ron and Rufus, the car was a lot quieter.
Anne pulling to the side of the road and cutting the engine only amplified the silence.
"What's the sitch, Mom?" Kim asked after a beat.
"So… I heard about last night. Why would you talk to your father like that?" Anne asked disapprovingly over Kim's groan.
"The tweebs were just in the yard, Mom, yet I'm the only one dad told to clean up? There's no equality! You guys raised me to stand up against what isn't fair—you let me travel all over the world to do that for other people—but when I do it at home, I get in trouble?"
Anne hmmed after Kim finished. "I see your point, Kimmie, but what you did was also very rude. We certainly didn't raise you to be rude."
Kim mumbled something that almost sounded like, "Yeah, you didn't."
"You should apologise to your father."
Kim pouted. "I'll apologise when he does."
Anne placed a comforting yet firm hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Your pride may be stopping you right now; but sometimes, it's not just about being right. I'm sure after you apologise, he'll also realise what he did wrong."
Kim tapped her foot anxiously on the floor of the car, and Anne started the car again knowing that her daughter would come around by the time they got home.
When they settled back down on the kitchen table, only James and the remnants of the twin's meals were left.
Anne went to reheat her and Kim's portions with a meaningful look directed towards Kim. Kim took a deep breath as if she was about to face off against one of Senor Senior, Sr.'s spinning tops of doom.
"Dad, I'm sorry about last night," she said lowly, keeping her eyes on the table instead of on her dad.
James smiled with satisfaction. "Aw, thanks, Kimmie-cub. I'm sorry, too."
Kim looked up to give her dad a grin just as Anne came back with their dinners. James had already finished eating, but he elected to stay and talk with his favourite girls about their days.
Afterward, Kim asked to be excused so she could change out of her mission gear.
"Of course, Kimmie-cub! Just make sure to come back and clean up."
Kim stiffened just as Anne did. "Dad, are we seriously back on this?" Kim asked, frustrated.
"We never got off it, darling," James responded. "I asked you to clean up after dinner the other night, and you refused. I'm asking you again now."
"But you're not, though!" Kim shot back. "You're not asking. You're telling me what to do, and you're treating me like a little kid while you're at it!"
"Well, when you stop acting like one, I'll stop treating you like one," James retorted.
Kim let herself shriek with frustration, curling her hands into claws as she did so. She turned and shot an apologetic yet defiant look at her mom. "I'm sorry, Mom, but I can't deal with him right now," she announced before storming up to her room.
James snapped a look to his wife. "Anne! Didn't you talk to her?"
Anne frowned back at her husband as she crossed her arms. "She has a point, dear."
"What about my point? As a member of this family, she should pull her weight!" James' voice was dripping with affrontment.
"Of course, but so do our other two children. Why are Jim and Tim's used plates still here while they aren't?" Anne argued as she gestured to the offending cutlery on the other side of the dining table.
"I didn't ask them; I asked her. If I ask her to do something, she should do it!"
Anne sighed. "Like it or not, dear, we raised a fiercely independent young woman with a strong moral code. If she deems something unfair and she's standing up against it, maybe we should take her actions a little more seriously," she said as she gathered up some plates to take to the sink. "Now, please help me with the dishes."
With her back turned to him, Anne never noticed the spiteful look that passed over her husband's face. "If she's so self-reliant," James grumbled to himself as he followed after his wife, "then on herself she should rely."
Kim came down for breakfast to find that she was the last one at the table and that only three plates were laid out. She knew her mom had already left, but there should have been a place for her still.
She had a sneaking suspicion as to why that wasn't the case. "Tweebs, what did you do with my breakfast?" she accused with a glare in her brothers' direction.
"Actually, I didn't make any for you, Kimberly," he said mildly while skimming the morning paper.
The tweebs each stuck his tongue out at her in response to the baseless accusation. Kim ignored them, the look on her face demanding further explanation from her dad.
"You want to stop being treated like a little kid, so that's what I'm doing. Adults make their own breakfasts," he explained as though, ironically, she were a little kid.
Kim's eye twitched. She clenched and unclenched her fists, counted backwards from ten, and breathed deeply before relaxing her posture. "Noted," was all she said before she stomped back up to her room to get ready for the day.
Looked like she'll be eating many more breakfasts at the Stoppable abode for the foreseeable future.
Shego did not miss going on job interviews.
"So tell me again why you are no longer with your previous employer," Dementor prompted above steepled fingers.
"There was a misunderstanding regarding my role within the organisation. Should you choose to hire me, I would look forward to a more defined structure surrounding my position."
That didn't mean she wasn't still scarily good at them.
Dementor, however, just nodded impatiently, "Yes, yes, but tell me more about the employer. Were his plans for world domination poorly thought out and pathetic? What is his success rate against certain redhead teenaged nuisances?"
Shego stared deadpan across the table. "You just want to keep hearing me talk trash about Dr. D to stroke your own ego, don't you?"
Dementor grinned rakishly. "That, I cannot deny," his accent making that come out like zat.
"Thanks for your time," Shego said with an eye roll, as though her tone of voice weren't sarcastic enough, "but I'm outta here."
As she did every Sunday morning, Kim walked down to the laundry room to hand off her dirty laundry hamper to whichever parent was doing the laundry.
She bit back a groan when she saw it was her dad.
"What do you think you're doing, young lady?" he asked sanctimoniously.
"It's laundry day," she said dryly. "This is my laundry."
"I hope you weren't expecting me to do that for you," he asked with mock-pedagogy. "It was my understanding that you wished to be treated like an adult. Adults do their own laundry."
Kim gritted her teeth. "Fine," she said as she dropped the hamper unceremoniously. "I'll leave it here and come back and do it when you're done with everyone else's laundry."
"Sounds good, Kimmie-cub," James said as he returned to separating whites from darks.
For the first time that she could ever recall, the nickname sounded more patronising than loving.
Shego walked up to the secretary in her best business jumpsuit. "Excuse me," she began, "I'm Mr. Hench's 11:30."
The secretary's eyes widened comically behind her tortoise-shell glasses as she frantically pressed the security button underneath the desk. "I-I-I don't know what game you're playing here, Ms., um, Ms. Shego; but I recom-m-mend you exit that door as clammy—I mean, as calmly as you entered, or I'll b-be forced to call security."
Shego preened at the distress her mere presence inflicted onto the secretary. "I appreciate the compliment, lady, but I really do have an appointment at 11:30. Can you just let Jack know I'm here?"
"Halt!"
The secretary shrunk under the withering glare Shego managed to send her way before being bum-rushed by 20 HenchMen™ armed with plasma bo staffs.
Shego barely broke a sweat as she escaped from the HenchCo lobby, but the same couldn't be said for her business jumpsuit.
"Guess that one's a dud," she muttered to herself as she drove away on a hovercar she stole from Drakken as part of her self-appointed severance package.
In between Honors Calc and AP GoPo (for Kim) and Health and BritLit (for Ron), the Kimmunicator beeped. "Go Wade," Kim greeted as Ron looked over her shoulder.
"Kim! There are several confirmed sightings of Shego in the TriCity area, all within 10 miles of HenchCo HQ! There haven't been any reported B&Es or aggravated assaults, but I'm keeping an eye out."
"Maybe she's just running some errands," Ron suggested. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," Rufus chattered.
"Was Drakken with her?" Kim asked into the camera. She watched as Wade typed frantically to sort through the police reports. "10-10 on that, Kim, but eyewitnesses say she was traveling by hovercar."
"Probably for a speedy getaway from the scene of the crime," Kim theorised out loud. The determined set to her face indicated that she wasn't as willing to write-off Shego's sudden appearance as her partner was.
"Want me to get a lock on her coordinates and send them to the Sloth?" Wade guessed.
"Please and thank you!" she sing-songed as she hung up.
Suited up and in the Sloth, Kim peeled out of her parking space in the direction that Wade's GPS directed.
"Um, Kim?" Ron asked hesitantly. "Not that I've ever distrusted your badical bad-guy busting instincts, but why aren't we airborne? Shego could be getting away!"
Kim huffed impatiently. "Dad didn't bring me any rocket fuel, so we can't launch," she grumbled.
Ron shook his head in surprise. "Wait, is this still about the dishes thing? KP!" Ron admonished. "Don't you think has gone on too long?"
Kim waved off her boyfriend's concern, more focused on the yellow blip on her heads-up display that was steadily getting farther away from her location. "Dad is just trying to psych me out. It's really more like a consequences-based game of chicken at this point. No big."
Ron gulped and said nothing in response. As her best friend/boyfriend of 12 years, he was very well-acquainted with his girlfriend's proficiency at chicken. That is to say, he'd never seen her flinch once.
If she was approaching a family spat competitively like this, Ron did not have high hopes for an amiable resolution.
Shego warily looked between the address she got from the online Evil Directory and the unassuming townhouse before her. The location checked out, and she can only hope this employment opportunity did, too.
Philadelphia was a little too similar to Go City for her liking; but it didn't have her brothers, so it was already four times better.
She rang the doorbell, and the door was answered by a stout older woman whose messy brown curls were cut into a bob.
"Hi, I'm looking for a," Shego glanced down at the post-it note in her hand for a second, "Francis Luhrmann?"
The woman's face lit up. "Ohhh, you must be the special friend Francis mentioned! I'm so excited to meet you! I'm Mrs. Luhrmann, but you can call me Annabelle."
She warily eyed the woman's arms, outstretched anticipating a hug, and opted for a cool, professional handshake instead while her mind raced. Frugal Lucre was married?! That wasn't an ideal working situation, but… "I do look forward to seeing if your husband and I will work well together."
Mrs. Lurhmann giggled. "Oh, Francis isn't my husband; he's my son!"
Shego didn't even bother with parting pleasantries before turning on her heel and stomping away from Annabelle Luhrmann's invitations to dinner. As she angrily booted up the hovercar, she figured to herself that Kimmie wasn't that great of a world-saver anyway. If these were the guys she was up against, their incompetence did half the job for her.
When James came home from work, he entered the kitchen to find Ron and Rufus at the stove and Kim watching from the sink, joking with each other and reminding James of the first month he and Anne shared an apartment together.
He wouldn't realise until later that this was the first time he had seen his Kimmie-cub's smile in a week.
"What's going on here?" he asked genially as he stepped into the kitchen.
Kim's smile strained when she realised who asked. "I'm making dinner with Ron," she said with a defiant hair flip.
"Uh-oh," Rufus commented from Ron's shoulder.
A brief flicker of fear passed over James' face, which Ron noticed. "Worry not - I'm making the food. KP's in charge of clean up," he assuaged as he tipped the cover on top of the pan to peer inside. The smell of seasoned chicken filled the kitchen.
Kim huffed fondly, but James merely quirked an eyebrow. "Oh, so you'll clean up if Ronald tells you to?"
Kim turned to her dad with hard eyes. "No; we agreed on it together. Because we communicate. I'm cleaning up the dishes since it's only fair."
James couldn't help raising his voice. "And it's not fair every time I asked you to do the dishes?!"
"You know it's more than that!" Kim exploded. "It wasn't fair the first time because you didn't make the tweebs help, and you didn't ask - you ordered. It wasn't fair every other time because then you just kept telling me what to do out of some twisted power trip!"
James' chest burned from anger and offense, and it bled into his response. "Well, if you won't listen to me, I know someone who will."
At this point, Ron had been watching the argument with silent discomfort. When James snapped his head to him, Ron's discomfort quickly turned into fear. "Ronald, until Kimberly gets over this backtalk nonsense, she can no longer entertain you as a guest in my home."
Kim's firm stance broke in objection. "Dad!"
For his part, Ron could not help but be reminded of black holes when looking at James' hard eyes , so he quickly turned off the stove while Rufus scribbled the instructions for the meal on a nearby notepad. "Your house, your rules, Mr. Dr. P," Ron called as he hastily gathered his things. Ron shot a final, apologetic glance at Kim before scurrying out the side door, Rufus hot on his heels.
For a brief moment, James with satisfied with his disciplinary skills.
"If Ron's not allowed at home, then neither am I!" his stubborn teenage daughter announced before following her boyfriend out of the house. "Ron, wait up!"
"Oh, no, you don't!" James called after Kim, reaching the door just in time to see Ron nervously close the passenger side door of the Sloth. "Get back here and clean up this mess, young lady!" he yelled as loudly as he dared, mindful of the neighbours.
Directly above him, Jim and Tim watched as James eventually re-entered the house just as Anne's car pulled into the recently vacated spot.
"We better get down there soon," Tim commented.
"Front row seats," Jim agreed.
"Hicka bicka boo." "Hoo shah."
They scrambled down to the bottom of the stairs as Anne joined James in the kitchen, finding her husband leaning heavily against the side door.
"I just saw Kimmie and Ron drive away; are they not joining us for dinner?" Then she looked around the space. "Why is there a half-cooked chicken at the stove without anyone clearly cooking it?" she asked while fingering the scribbles Rufus left behind.
James got up from his lean and wrapped his wife in a hug. "Kimberly only listens to one man, and that man has just been forbidden from entering this household," he muttered nonsensically into her hair.
Anne unsurely returned the hug just as her eyes caught sight of her twin sons at the entrance of the kitchen. "Boys, could you translate your father for me?"
"Kim and Dad got into another fight, and he banned Ron from the house," Jim explained.
"Kim said as long as Ron is banned, so is she; then they drove away," Tim finished.
Anne pushed James out of the embrace but fiercely held him tight by the shoulders. "Did you kick our daughter out of the house?!"
James crossed his arms and frowned. "She kicked herself out. As far as I'm concerned, it's just another indication that she doesn't consider herself a part of this family."
Anne couldn't stand to look at her husband in that moment and backtracked out the door. "Our family is about to be short one patriach soon enough, too," she said vehemently.
James followed after his upset wife, paying no heed to his sons rapturously eating popcorn and watching the exchange. "Why are you mad at me?"
Anne paused in the open doorway and looked over her shoulder to stare down her husband. "You're taking this too far. I am going out and finding our daughter; and when we return, you better be ready to have a civilised conversation!"
She didn't slam the door; but the silence after her dismissal rang just as loudly.
Ron had no choice but to follow his girlfriend out of the car and into the Middleton Mall. It was only Rufus' grumbling stomach that encouraged him to speak up to his incredibly irate best friend/girlfriend.
"KP," he began hesitantly. "I understand we're in a delicate situation here, but what's the strat for grabbing grub?"
"Uh-huh, uh-huh, grub!" Rufus chittered while pointing at his vibrating stomach.
Kim waved them off, her feet already taking her down the well-known route to the first floor east wing. "You go on to the food court. I'm in a mood that only a new pair of jeans can fix."
Just as she entered the hallowed halls of Club Banana, someone ran into Kim.
"I'm so sor—Shego?!" Kim was surprised to see the villainess she had failed to track down earlier in the week right in front of her, laden with CB shopping bags. She chanced a glance into the store to see the workers peering out from their various hiding spots and deduced that Shego's shopping trip hadn't actually involved an exchange of money for her goods.
With her attention briefly distracted, Shego pushed Kim to the side and booked it into the mall, trying to get to the roof where she had parked her hovercar.
Kim immediately got up and chased after her, using her intimate knowledge of the mall's layout to quickly catch up.
"Aren't you a little too high profile to shoplift from a mall Club Banana, Shego?" she taunted as she cornered Shego on the second floor.
In response, Shego dropped her bags and lit up her powers. "What can I say, Cupcake? Clothes are cheaper with a five-finger discount." She wiggled her fingers at the end before throwing plasma blasts at Kim, who backflipped and cartwheeled out of the way.
"Makes sense that you'd be reduced to petty theft. Crime doesn't pay, after all," Kim said as she bounced off a kiosk umbrella and used the momentum to leap back into Shego's personal space. Shego easily deflected Kim's roundhouse kick but left herself open to the ankle grab Kim fluidly transitioned into.
"Neither does being unemployed," Shego muttered to herself from her position on the ground, using a plasma blast to deter Kim from hand-to-hand combat and buy some time to get up.
She turned to grab her bags and keep moving closer to the roof, but Kim's slide kick from behind knocked her back off balance. "You quit working for Drakken?" Kim asked with surprise.
The reminder of the real reason she went on this retail therapy excursion boiled Shego's blood, and she volleyed a plasma blast at Kim with every word. "No! He, freaking, fired, me!"
Kim's surprise meant she only narrowly dodged the shots, but Shego's distractedness did allow Kim to bring the fight back down to the first floor, correctly presuming that upwards was closer to Shego's escape.
"What did you do that was so evil that Dr. Drakken had to fire you?" Kim asked as she twirled around a banner pole to gain momentum for a flying kick.
Shego took the attack in her shoulder, which let her pivot to slam Kim onto the ground. "Drakken wanted me to do his grocery shopping," Shego hissed as she tried to stomp on Kim's ankle, but Kim rolled away. "I'm his sidekick, not some random henchwoman, and he's asking me to do his grocery shopping?!" Kim leaped into a spinning kick, and Shego braced herself with plasma-infused forearms. "Of course, I said 'no,' so he fired me!" Shego aimed for a punch, and Kim leveraged Shego's outstretched arms to throw Shego over her shoulder into a decorative garden in the middle of the mall.
Shego easily scaled one of the fake trees to make it back to the second floor, and Kim quickly followed after. "Isn't that just part of having a job?" Kim called as she weaved between people and kiosks to chase Shego down. "Sometimes you're asked to do things you don't want to do, but you do them anyway cause you're an adult and you get paid." Kim cut Shego off through a corner store and tried to clothesline the running villain.
"Says Lil Miss Goody Two Shoes," Shego said as she barely slid under Kim's outstretched arm. Kim lunged after Shego, resulting in a tumble into the metal banister. "You're the type to do things that you don't wanna do just for fun!" she grunted as she kicked Kim off of her high enough that Kim was able to use the momentum to safely backflip and land on the floor above them.
Now morally and physically above Shego, Kim's sneer downwards felt very satisfying. "For your information, I actually refuse to do the dishes at home," she said with her hands on her hips.
Shego snorted. Of course that's Kimmie's idea of rebellion.
"Well, as fun as this little therapy session has been, I'm bored now," Shego announced when she realised she didn't actually care about being able to keep any of the pilfered merch; she was just stressed and wanted to take the edge off.
Before Kim could comment or resume the fight, Shego threw the Club Banana shopping bags clear to the other side of the mall, knowing that Kim would chase after that instead like the capitalist cog she was.
"Now that Kim's kicked out, can we use her room as our laboratory?"
James let out a long-suffering sigh as he tried (with mild success) to follow Rufus' instructions for finishing Ron's dinner. "She doesn't have to be kicked out as long as she does her chores when I tell her to," he responded pedantically to Jim without turning around. "And you know what we said about in-home laboratories."
"If you can't have one, neither can we," Tim recited with disappointment.
"Maybe you can ask mom to tell Kim to wash the dishes. If you can listen to her, Kim could, too," Jim wondered aloud.
James angrily zested a lemon. "Why shouldn't Kim listen to me?!" he complained.
Jim and Tim shared a look, communicating intent and agreeing with the course of action in a single glance. "Well, why won't she do the dishes?" Tim opened.
"Exactly!" James was so relieved to hear someone finally saw things his way.
"No. Like, what was her reasoning?" Jim clarified.
"She didn't have one!" James seethed, his tone of voice contrasting with the very careful way he chopped some carrots. "She's just acting like a child."
The twins looked at each other again. One's eyes said that this next move was risky. The other's said it was the only way.
"It wasn't fair the first time because you didn't make the tweebs help, and you didn't ask - you ordered. It wasn't fair every other time because then you just kept telling me what to do out of some twisted power trip!" Kim's rant from earlier played clearly from a disguised PA system.
"Um, what was that?" James spun around in confusion, wondering where Kim's voice was coming from without his daughter there to say the words.
"Don't worry about that," Jim hastened to assuage. "Just listen to what she's saying."
Tim played the recording again. Without the heat of the moment to cloud his judgement, James was able to hear past her attitude and tone to actually listen to her points in context.
James' eyebrows furrowed. "I'm your father. When I tell you not to conduct biochemical experiments in the kitchen, you listen. When I tell Kim to do the dishes, she should listen, too!"
"Yeah, but like, we get it," Tim shrugged. "Losing counter space is a fair trade off for preventing an epidemic of a new pathogenic virus."
"If it were my daughter, I wouldn't make her clean the dishes by herself," Jim said with a leading tone. "I'd have a cleaning bot to help her."
James' eyebrows drew closer together in thought. He needed some time to think about this problem. Assess the givens, double-check his assumptions, and recalculate… Things he could only do in solitude. "If you boys want to build a cleaning robot so badly, go make one in the garage with whatever spare parts you find," he said as he turned back to the stove as if to resume cooking.
The twins shared dual victorious smirks. "Hicka bicka boo!" "Hoo shah!" they cheered as they ran for the garage door.
Luckily, James had the foresight to amend his dismissal before they got too out of earshot. "The parts you 'find' in my car don't count as 'spare!'"
He heard a satisfying "Aw, man…" come from further in the house and went back to thinking about how he can compromise with his daughter without compromising his authority.
Shego usually didn't have a hard time shaking off a failed job, even if that mission was just some retail therapy as a distraction. However, after lifting off from the Middleton Mall, she couldn't help but recount her battle with Kim.
Specifically, she thought about what Kim said about just bucking up (in so many words) and doing the job you're paid to do.
Shego prided herself on being the kind of person who did what she had to do for the paycheck. That's what she had done for years in her life after Team Go, and that's how she gained her notoriety as a hero-turned-villain. That was how she got the gig with Dr. D in the first place; and in the privacy of her airway commute, she could admit to herself it was the best gig she could possibly have. (Though it certainly wasn't for lack of trying, as her numerous failed job interviews have illustrated.)
Subconsciously, she found herself banking east instead of west in the skies above Downtown Middleton, AKA the opposite direction of the motel in which she'd (forcibly) taken up (free) residence.
AKA the direction of Drakken's preferred grocery store.
She growled under her breath. At least one petty robbery has to go off without a hitch today, she rationalised to herself. For my own pride, if nothing else.
(Deep down, she knew this would end up being a peace offering, though. Shego didn't do prolonged self-delusion, thank you very much.)
Ron and Rufus walked into Club Banana just as Kim finished returning the stolen goods. "Why am I not surprised you saved the CB merch and managed to keep it in purchasable condition?"
Kim turned and smirked at him while walking backwards into her favourite part of the store. "It's not like that top was Shego's colour anyway."
She spun around on the ball of her foot and perused the offerings and sales, intent on salvaging her shopping trip.
Ron and Rufus followed after her silently, holding hangers when directed and offering opinions with a simple shake of the head when prompted. It was only when Kim was cordoned away in a changing stall that Ron finally spoke up.
"I think you should go home and talk to your dad," he ventured.
Kim frowned petulantly, not that Ron could see it. "While he's still being such a despot? No thank you."
"Ahh. School word, KP," he said with a scratch of his cheek.
Kim cracked a smile at the iteration of her boyfriend's common remark. "I won't talk to him until he stops being so unreasonable and until he stops treating me like a child," she explained.
"Are those all your terms? I can handle that," a maternal voice said from yonder.
Kim stuck her head out of the dressing room in shock. "Mom?!" After confirming for herself that her mother was actually right there, Kim ducked back inside.
"You're a hard girl to find, Kimberly," Anne remarked as she walked closer to lean on the wall outside Kim's stall. "If I didn't see Shego's hovercar flying away, I wouldn't have known where to look. I take it you beat the bad guy?"
"As we always do, Mrs. Dr. P," Ron commented with a proud smile. From his shoulder, Rufus puffed up his chest and held his arms akimbo, as if either of them actually had a hand in the latest success.
Kim walked out of the changing stall, bedecked in her typical blue cargoes and lime green crop top. "Did you say that you would talk to dad for me?" she asked, eager and pleased.
"No."
Kim pouted. "Thank you for your time, then, Mom, but I'm not interested."
Anne sighed at her daughter's predictable resolution. "I will help you two actually have a productive conversation, however."
Ron's ears perked up, and he shot an excited double thumbs up in Kim's direction. This was what he wanted all along, and he was glad to let the Possible matriarch take up the mantle of convincing the stubborn girl.
"It would be the adult thing to do," Anne reminded gently.
That was the coup de grace for Kim. Her biggest gripe with the whole affair was how infantalising her father was acting. If this was the way for him to see her as an adult, then so be it.
Kim sighed, trying hard not to feel like she had just forfeited a battle. "Yeah, okay. Let's go."
She felt very, very silly ringing the doorbell to the lair she had called home just a few weeks ago; so when a synthodrone was the one to open the door, she relished in being able to blast its head off.
She shut the entrance behind her and meandered through the lair to Dr. D's lab. She found him hunched over a piece of machinery for his scheme du jour.
"Who was at the door, Synthodrone #1125?" he asked without looking up from his soldering work.
"Your errand boy," Shego remarked sardonically.
Dr. Drakken turned around in shock, flipping his welding mask above his face just in case its limited vision somehow impaired his ability to hear. A few yards away was Shego, laden with grocery bags and trying her best to look disinterested in his reaction.
Seeing as how she wasn't thrown out yet, she nodded once decisively and started walking in the direction of the kitchen. Drakken was thinking of something to say when Shego demanded as she walked away, "I want my job back and back pay."
He smiled, eager to stop missing her now that she had returmed. He made a note to himself to include Shego's favourite snack on his next grocery list.
After dropping Ron and Rufus at home, Anne shuffled Kim into the living room where James was already seated at one end of the couch. Anne positioned herself in between the feuding family members. Tim and Jim were eavesdropping via their specialised satphone… for all the good that did since no one has spoken since they all sat down.
"Alright, well, this staring contest has been lovely," Anne commented mildly.
James then opened his mouth to begin, but Anne sensed whatever came out of his mouth would escalate the conflict further, so she held her hand up to quiet him. "Actually, maybe I'll start."
She gave her husband a very hard look. "James, no more throwing our children out from the house unilaterally. We're a team; kicking our kids out should be a team decision." While the words were humourous, Anne's tone indicated she was quite serious.
She then turned to her daughter, her face more compassionate yet disappointed as well. "Kim, I love and respect that you're your own person, and we should treat you as such, but we are also your parents. We've never given you a reason to question our rules and instruction… at least, not before," she cut herself off with a glance at James, whose mouth twisted in a moue. She looked back at Kim imploringly. "So, please. Trust us, okay?"
Both Kim and James murmured in agreement, stances relaxing and gazes no longer averted from each other.
"James, do you have something you want to say?"
James nodded and smiled wanly at Kim. "I'm sorry for not listening to you, Kimmie-cub. As angry as I was, I should have at least listened. I may always see you as my baby girl, but I promise to treat you with more respect like the adult you are."
Kim's face shone with gratitude, and she didn't need any prompting from her mom to pick up where her dad left off. "I'm sorry, too, Dad. I let my emotions get the better of me like a child. The next time I disagree with you, I'll stay and talk to you like an adult."
Anne beamed and reached her arms out so that the three of them could hug in celebration of a conflict resolved. She didn't think she'd seen her daughter and husband fight like that for that long since Kimmie was in grade school, and she wasn't eager to repeat the experience.
The twins took that opportunity to walk into the living room, accompanied by a robot that clearly used to be a vacuum cleaner… or a printer?
"Since this all started with the dishes, we thought we'd do our part to help, and thus…" Tim lead.
"The Mighty Android for Industrial Decluttering, our new MAID!" Jim picked up.
"It'll help clean up in the house," Tim went on. "Then Kim and Dad don't have to fight anymore!" Jim finished.
They proudly flanked the misshapen machine, awaiting acknowledgement from their family.
Instead, Kim and James looked at each other. "Why don't we do the dishes together?" he ventured. "Many hands make light work."
Kim's grin was tinged with a determination usually seen during her missions. "Sounds like a plan."
They went into the kitchen, leaving Anne with the twins and their new… MAID. She sighed to herself as she got up. "Alright, boys. We're starting with the bathroom. Show me what this thing can do."