Chapter 7

Shego had been quite serious about people usually not recognizing her. When she got herself a bed at the hostel she didn't draw any more attention than any other attractive young woman. It helped that since green skin was listed as her most notable identifying feature many people expected it to be much more obvious than it actually was. In reality her slight greenish hue was only noticeable in good lighting, and easy to dismiss as an optical illusion.

She couldn't move about with impunity, of course. She needed to take care with everything she did and pay attention to her surroundings. She would have preferred a room at a hotel, for example, but that was one of the more risky situations, as it was a fair bet her picture had been circulated to the reception staff. It would only take one person to recognize her to ruin her day, but as long as she kept her wits about her and kept out of sight of law enforcement, she could get around more or less freely.

Shego didn't know when Adrena Lynn would strike at Kim. Since she was a revenge-obsessed newbie, it wasn't impossible that she would strike at her home at night. Villains usually avoided that sort of escalation, since it could lead to heroes escalating in turn, and nobody wanted an implacable vigilante on their tail. It was better to keep things impersonal. She briefly considered staking Kim's house for the night, just in case, but it would not do any good for her reputation if she was caught: either she would be considered a loose cannon, and therefore a liability, or an obsessed pervert.

She hadn't been entirely candid when she'd suggested that their dalliance becoming known would ruin Kim's reputation. Kim would probably be alright; people were generally very tolerant of youthful mistakes, even—or especially—of spicy kind. Young starlets had weathered much worse scandals. Some close-minded people might start to shun Kim if her lesbian affair with a known villain were to come to light, but Shego didn't think the public at large would hold it against her. It certainly wouldn't hurt her dating prospects any.

Shego, on the other hand, had more to lose. There was the fact that Kim was underage. She was over the age of consent in most of the world, past puberty, and definitely mature enough to make her own decisions, but technically not an adult quite yet. Criminal subculture was no more tolerant of that than the rest of the populace. Less so, in fact; a part and parcel of the rather macho culture.

Then there was the fact that Kim was a girl. The criminal world was startlingly conservative. Shego's sexuality wasn't exactly a closely-held secret, but as long as she didn't rub it in her client's faces they could pretend to not be aware of it. If she was publicly outed, she'd had much harder time finding contracts. Dr. Drakken wouldn't mind, but she probably wouldn't get work offers from, say, Senor Senior, Senior anymore, and it was good to keep one's options open.

Most damning of all was that Shego was a woman. If she was a man and if Kim was of age, she would receive high-fives and envious stares for managing to bed her. Because she was a woman, she would receive suspicion instead, thanks to the wonderful double-standard of patriarchy that reserved sexual conquest for men. People would wonder if it was indeed just sex or if there was something more between them. If she was sweet on Kim, she would be a liability. Not even Dr. Drakken could overlook the fact that her loyalties might be divided.

Even a hint of an affair between her and Kim would mean the ruin of her career. High-profile clients wouldn't touch her. She'd have to go independent, but a successful thief needed contacts and fences, and everyone she dealt with would wonder if she was on the level or if they were being set up. She couldn't be a criminal and be associated with Kim, and she couldn't go straight. She needed to put this fling behind her as fast as possible. It had been a mistake from the start.


Morning found Shego strolling near Middleton High. She tried her very best to not look like a pervert; being a woman worked in her favor there. She was dressed more presentably than she had the past couple of days, in smart slacks and a blouse. Her hair was up, to alter her looks. She risked dark glasses as they went with the outfit, even though they generally drew more scrutiny than they avoided.

She idly speculated if she should pretend to be a teacher and infiltrate the school to keep an eye on things. She was technically qualified, even. She'd love to see Kim's face when she entered her classroom and introduced herself. She decided that it would be a very bad plan. There was nothing to gain and a lot that could go wrong.

Shego finished her circuit around the high school. She hadn't seen any sign of Adrena Lynn or a planned ambush. She didn't know what she had expected to find, really. She didn't know for a fact that Lynn was after Kim. She had no idea how she intended to attack her if she was. She didn't know if she still had the van or not. For all she knew, she'd been picked up by the police already.

Coming here had been a little boneheaded, Shego decided. The chances of intercepting Lynn were slim and she risked been identified; people loitering around schools in the middle of the day tended to draw the wrong kind of attention. The problem was that she didn't really have a better plan. If she'd managed to stop Lynn at Hench's facility she wouldn't have this problem, but right now Kim was her best bet for finding her again. A traitorous part of her mind accused her of trying to find excuses to stick close to Kim, but she soundly ignored it. She wasn't the one with a schoolgirl crush.

Shego wondered why she was in Middleton in the first place. She'd set out to stop Adrena Lynn from stealing the Glow, and she'd failed already. There was very little she could accomplish here. She wasn't about to kill her, and Kim wouldn't let her maim her, either. About the best she could do was to ensure Lynn got captured as fast as possible. She was confident Kim could manage that on her own; there was no way the upstart could match up to her nemesis.

Middleton was also dangerous. Of all the places in the world this was where she was most likely to be recognized. Not only had she been here on a job several times, but it was a sure bet many of the locals closely followed the exploits of Middleton's most famous daughter, and could pick out her greatest foe. She really should try to keep out of view.

Shego decided that since she was already here, she might as well try to bring Lynn down. Second-guessing herself wouldn't help with that. She focused her mind on the task on hand.

What did Lynn know about Kim? Shego was fairly well-acquainted with Kim's domestic situation and usual routines, but there was no reason to assume Lynn was. Then again, Kim was a celebrity and there was plenty of material on her out there. She tried to recall what Kim had told her about her previous encounter with Lynn. Something about her kidnapping a footballer she thought Kim was dating? Shego smirked. She would have been better served kidnapping one of Kim's fellow cheerleaders.

Lynn could possibly hit Kim in school, but what could she hope to accomplish? She wanted to defeat Kim, probably publicly. Last time she had sought leverage. Where would she find it? Would she still assume Kim dated the footballer? Probably not. Shego knew Kim was a closeted lesbian, but she didn't think Lynn could possibly know that. To anticipate Lynn, she'd need to figure out what Lynn knew. If she again sought to kidnap someone Kim cared about she would need intelligence—on high school gossip. Shego groaned.

A quick and discreet visit to the school grounds netted Shego a copy of the school paper. She wasn't sure if taking something that was basically in the public domain counted as stealing, but she chose to consider it such anyway. She retreated to a nearby cafe to leaf through the paper. She skipped over bad poetry and infantile articles, hoping to find some summary of current gossip. The banal speculation on who liked who and what they did with them was almost physically painful to read, and gave her uncomfortable flashbacks to her high-school days.

The paper was of very little use. According to the gossips Kim was supposedly dating her goofy sidekick, Ron Stoppable, which seemed a little hard to believe. Then again, all that mattered was whether Lynn believed it. The buffoon was probably a good target, anyway, since Kim for some reason cared about him. Getting kidnapped and used as leverage was practically in a sidekick's job description, and he was someone even Lynn should be able to handle. Shego provisionally assigned Stoppable as Lynn's most likely target.

She got some magazines from a rack, ordered a refill of coffee, and sat down to wait for school to be over. It was amazing how slowly time went when you were trying to kill it. She got worried that the staff were beginning to pay too much attention to her with the cafe nearly empty, and left to find another. The time crawled forward.

Shego found a place from where she could observe the departing students without drawing attention. She recognized Kim without any trouble even in the midst of the teeming horde, walking with an African-American girl. She also managed to spot her blond sidekick, talking animatedly with a boy in a wheelchair. It almost seemed like Kim was deliberately steering away from them. Well, that was interesting. She couldn't blame Kim for not wanting to put up with him.

Shego considered whether she should follow Stoppable, based on her theory. She decided against it. She didn't care what happened to the sidekick, and if Lynn did kidnap him, she would surely let Kim know to lure her in. She was better off sticking with Kim.


Kim and her pretty friend headed for the mall. Shego wasn't thrilled about it. On one hand, as one face among many she didn't draw much attention, but on the other hand with dozens or even hundreds of people around, the chances were someone would recognize her. Oh well, she could always run.

The girls made a circuit of the mall, mostly looking at display windows, but they did enter several shops to peruse the wares. Shego decided that watching other people shop was considerably more boring than shopping oneself. Nobody seemed to recognize her; she saw no sign of Adrena Lynn. She began to wonder if she was just wasting her time.

Kim and the other girl, apparently called Monique, headed for a cafeteria on the ground floor, now carrying two bags. Shego picked a table nearby, out of Kim's field of view. She wasn't quite close enough to listen in on their conversation. She could recognize Kim's voice among the general noise, but couldn't make out the words. Judging from the obliging wide-eyed gasps and squeals of the other girl, they were probably gossiping about boys.

Only Kim wasn't into boys, was she? With a shock it occurred to Shego that if this Monique was Kim's high school BFF, Kim might be relating her experiences of the previous night. Shego felt lightheaded. Wasn't it her ears that should be burning? She had to set her coffee cup down. Why were her fingers trembling?

"Kim Possible!" The words cut across the noise of the crowd. "It's me, Adrena Lynn. Face me, coward!"

There was a sudden hush as everyone looked towards the source of the voice, Shego included. On the floor above Adrena Lynn stood on the railing, with arms raised in a bit of showwomanship. Shego had barely enough time to get annoyed by the showboating when a grappling hook attached to the railing right next to her. Shego's eyes flicked towards Kim's table. Kim was standing on it with a steely determination on her face and her absurd hairdryer grapple gun in her hand. Did she take it everywhere?

Kim shot across the air towards the blonde would-be villain, aiming a kick at her as she vaulted the railing. Lynn scrambled back to avoid it, falling on her behind in the process, but she quickly regained her footing and ran off. Shego dashed for the escalator. She couldn't help but be impressed—and possibly just a little aroused—by Kim's display of skill. Just how had she pulled out her grapple, aimed, and fired while everybody else was still gawking? Her combat instincts were amazing. No wonder she had had so much trouble with her.

It wasn't hard to determine the direction of Lynn's flight. The herd of startled shoppers she left in her wake kept her on the right track. Sprinting through the mall like this was unavoidably conspicuous, but with any luck she would finish her business in Middleton in the next few minutes. There would be plenty of time to make a clean getaway.

The crowd was thinning as Shego followed Lynn and Kim away from the shops. An open door suggested Lynn's flight had taken her to a service corridor. Shego rounded a corner and observed a frozen tableau as Kim faced off against Lynn. Lynn was flanked by a pair of security guards. It took Shego a moment to realize what was wrong with that picture: the guards were facing Kim, not Lynn. Lynn saw Shego from the corner of her eye and turned towards her.

"Oh, and here comes the girlfriend to the rescue."

One of the guards turned towards Shego. His eyes glowed orange.

"You got lucky this time, Kim. Next time, there will be no distractions."

Lynn turned to run away. Shego went to follow, but the security guard intercepted her while his partner charged Kim. The guard was bigger and heavier than Shego, with much more reach, and wielded a stun gun. Shego wasn't worried. She intended to go right through him and go after Lynn.

The guard was faster than she expected. He avoided her glowing fist and swiftly retaliated with a powerful blow, forcing her to scramble back. The guard pressed his advantage, charging Shego. She intercepted the stun gun with her glowing claws and destroyed it, receiving only a minor shock in the process. The guard was unperturbed and followed through with a shoulder check Shego couldn't avoid. She was thrown back and had the wind knocked out of her.

Shego avoided a kick from the guard and tried to sweep his legs from under him. She hit his calf, but the kick didn't have enough leverage to have much effect on the large man. She flipped on her feet as the guard pulled out his extendable baton.

Shego didn't give him time to use it, launching a volley of glowing spheres of force at him. They didn't have as decisive an effect as she expected, but he did stagger back under the onslaught, grunting with pain. Shego dashed forward and connected with the guard's jaw with a glowing uppercut. She struck him with enough force that his feet left the floor. He was out cold before he hit the ground.

Shego rested her hands on her legs, panting. She finally had time to pay attention to Kim. She was having trouble with the other glowing-eyed guard, circling him warily. Shego had seen her drop Dr. Drakken's guards much faster than this. It was possible she didn't feel comfortable using that level of violence on someone who might not be responsible for his actions. Shego straightened up and joined the fray. With the guard occupied by Kim, it was easy enough to reach up and stun him with a pulse of her Glow.

"Thanks," Kim said.

"Don't mention it," Shego said. They stared at each other for a while, catching their breath.

"Was that what it looked like?" Shego said. "They were under Lynn's control."

"Yeah. They moved in to restrain her, and she just fired those orange spheres at them. Next thing I know, they turned on me, with their eyes glowing."

Shego remembered when Lynn's stolen Glow had hit her. For a moment, she had felt an impulse to join Lynn and help her against Kim, before fighting it off. Clearly the guards hadn't had that level of will. She also remembered Kim hadn't been affected at all. It wasn't surprising the indomitable hero was too stubborn to succumb to it. She remembered facing her on the roof of the Bueno Nacho headquarters after Dr. Drakken's attempted mind screw, the steely determination in those green eyes. It had sent a chill down her spine.

"I hate mind control. And I used to think Hego's Glow was unfair."

"It doesn't seem to work on everyone."

"It probably only works on the weak-willed. Rent-a-cops don't have the finest minds," Shego said. "Did they seem too strong and fast to you?"

"Not super-humanly so. Maybe just hopped up on adrenaline."

"Hmm. Maybe." Another thought popped into Shego's head. "What was that about girlfriend? Did you tell her something?"

"As if. It sounded like normal taunting to me. You were rushing to my aid like a guardian angel."

"I'm no angel, and I wasn't coming to help you. I was just going to kick her ass." Clearly Lynn didn't appreciate the difference between working together and coincidentally being after the same target.

"It's her you need to tell that to, Angel," Kim said with a smirk.

Shego was about to start venting her frustration on Kim when it occurred to her that she was a wanted criminal and that there were almost certainly more guards at the mall, quite probably headed for the scene of the disturbance. The police were likely also one the way.

"Uh, I'd better make myself scarce. Catch you later, Kimmie. Try not to need rescuing next time."

"I'm not a helpless victim, Shego," Kim called after her, like she needed that explained.

Shego moved carefully through the employers only area, searching for a back door out. It took her a couple of minutes, but she didn't see anyone in the meanwhile. The door was locked, but that hardly bothered her. She didn't see any police outside; if they were present, they had to be on the other side of the building. Shego quietly slipped away.


Shego wandered the outskirts of Middleton more or less aimlessly. Part of her mind was alert for signs of trouble, but she didn't really pay attention to where she was headed. She was lost in thought.

Mind control. Adrena goddamn Lynn had mind control. At least it didn't work on her. The debilitating pain had been a bigger problem. She belatedly realized she should have asked Kim if that had happened to the guards, but from her description of events it didn't seem likely. Possibly it had been a unique interaction between Lynn's stolen Glow and her own.

She recalled the two henchmen who had let Lynn go to fight Kim. Had they been under control, too? Probably, although Shego didn't recall noticing glowing eyes on them. They had been wearing visors, though. Two then and two now. Was that a coincidence?

Shego remembered how Lynn had launched her Glow at her. It had completely left her hand. Her hands weren't glowing at all in the encounter at the mall. Perhaps she was limited to only two minions at a time. That was something. Shego also suspected the power only worked on people who were minion material to begin with, though admittedly the sample size wasn't too large and included Kim who was the exception to most things.

Taking a pause from her thoughts Shego looked around and noticed she was in an upper middle-class suburbia. It looked familiar, but then the cookie-cutter residential areas tended to look alike. After a minute she realized why it looked so familiar: she was not far from Kim's house. Clearly her subconscious had remembered she needed to stick close to Kim to find Lynn. She took a roundabout route towards her house, intending to approach it by the little wooded hill behind it.


Shego paused at the edge of the forest and looked at the house. Lights were on, suggesting somebody was home. She wasn't sure how long days Kim's parents worked. She'd spent enough time in her meandering that Kim herself might have beaten her here.

Kim was a high-school girl who still lived with her parents, and she'd slept with her. Now she was looking to find a view to her bedroom window. Shego wondered if she actually was a pervert.

That wasn't a productive avenue of though. Shego focused on finding a good view of the house that also offered cover. She wasn't dressed for skulking around in the woods; she had anticipated urban surveillance when she chose the outfit. She could find a decent, concealed vantage by climbing a tree, but that would wreak havoc with her clothes. She also wasn't going to lay prone in the underbrush.

She was still looking for a comfortable perch when she was startled by a sound of explosion from the house. She bolted to a tree at the edge of the wood and peered out from behind it. The house seemed mostly calm for the moment. The quiet didn't last long; two more explosions echoed around the neighborhood.

Was somebody in the house under attack? She wasn't quite sure. She had gathered that Kim's younger brothers were enthusiastic rocket hobbyists and all-around menaces. She wouldn't put occasional explosions past her flaky father, either. Still, it could be Adrena Lynn making her move. Shego erred on the side of getting involved and dashed towards the house.

Shego pressed against the wall of the Possible residence. There weren't many windows looking towards the back of the house, and Shego didn't think her approach was spotted. She hadn't noticed any security, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. She spent a moment listening. She heard indistinct muffled noises from the house that could have been pretty much anything.

She made her way onto the roof of the split level house. She moved quietly, alert for any sound. She didn't hear anything. The house was quiet, maybe a little too quiet considering the series of explosions just a little while earlier.

Shego decided she needed to get inside to investigate. She was considering the best point of entry when she heard a slight sound that came from the roof. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. There was somebody behind her.