Time Out

A Kim Possible fanfic

By Ken-Zero

Disclaimer: As usual, KP and the rest belong to Disney; they were created there and will fade into obscurity there at some point in the (hopefully very) distant future.

Chapter 3: Ment-ertainment

Kim Possible, for perhaps the first time in her life, felt scared.

Not nervous—that kind of fluttery feeling was usually reserved in case she had her sights on a cute boy in class. Heck, she didn't even get nervous before going to a cheerleading performance.

She was actually scared—frightened for her very existence. It wasn't a feeling she was at all familiar with, and she hated it a lot. She didn't even have any reason to be scared—not now! Here she was, lying in bed, sheet and comforter pulled up to her chin, faithful Pandaroo clutched tightly in her hands atop her chest, all the familiar sounds of the house and neighborhood at night trying to lull her into actually falling asleep. But she couldn't.

And why should I be able to, her mind contended. After all, last night, she'd been tied to a very sturdy steel load-bearing pillar in a time-share villain's lair with the whole place's self-destruct device smoothly ticking away the mere minute and a half she had left to live, with Ron roped to the same pillar right behind her, both bound by more than enough rope to restrict Rufus from even attempting to leave Ron's pocket and chew through the knot.

Thank God for Corporal Dobbs, she thought fervently, finding her eyes growing hot with gathering tears.

The corporal, back in his own body, had managed to free them while the lair shook with the beginnings of the destruct program. They had just barely managed to race outside, taking shelter behind the smallest of berms in the grassy lot outside the lair, before the place actually blew itself to bits.

Doctor Drakken's casual disregard not only for her own life but for the very piece of stolen military technology he'd intended to use in the first place was another reason she was scared. She'd been somewhat banking on the fact that he really wanted his new toy while she and Ron (still in each other's bodies) had showed up with the corporal; in her mind, that was something of an insurance policy against any extreme action he might take.

Unfortunately, she'd been wrong. He'd declared, with a fairly childlike sulk, that if he couldn't have the Neutronalizer, then no one could…and with the two teens tied to the pillar, he'd had Shego start the self-destruct while they waltzed on out.

It was a defeat for Team Possible, that was for sure…even though the hardware had survived, and so had they, the criminals were still free. Probably planning something else right now, she thought.

She kept thinking back to just how…cheerfully Shego had pressed the big red self destruct button. That was the worrisome part. Kim didn't think of herself as worth executing in that spectacular a fashion…but apparently the bad guys begged to differ. The fear for her own mortality warred with the sense that she was doing the right thing; the terms were fairly stark, though, and that was not something that had ever occurred to her—not even the more extreme mundane jobs her website provided her with carried quite the looming thread of imminent destruction that yesterday had brought.

She pretended to carry through alright, putting on the confident face that seemed needed at the time. Or perhaps it was shock, and she truly had been confident until reality set in later. She wasn't sure.

A part of Kim's mind was actually amused it took until now for this to happen; after all, she'd been through a death trap or two and two major fights with Shego, not to mention dealing with Ron giving that old guy—Señor Senior, Senior, she remembered—pointers on how to be a good bad guy, and a couple other nutcases throwing their hats into the villain ring. It had been a busy few weeks since school began, that was for sure.

Still, though, for this being the third encounter with Drakken and his group, Kim was impressed—Is that a bad thing?—with how…well, almost tailor-made Drakken's schemes were for her. Throwing down with Shego while Ron tried to slip by had been exhilarating both times previous, and this time was no exception.

Even while she'd been stuck in Ron's body.

Some of the fearfulness left her as she smiled a bit at how the last two days had gone. After inadvertently having their heads switched, Kim had spent a day as Ron—as she put it later, "wallowing in the low expectations." Guilty as she felt about it, which was more than a little but less than a lot, it had been…relaxing not having to deal with the massive amount of pressure Kim had built upon herself. It was only when she didn't have to do…well, everything, really…that she realized just how much she actually involved herself in.

Still, though, being that lazy all the time was definitely not the way she wanted to live. Part of the reason she threw herself into everything was that she enjoyed it—a lot. Always keeping busy meant she felt useful and productive, and it also helped burn off some of the hyper energy she always had.

Amusingly, it seemed that energy followed her mind; while she'd occupied Ron's body, she found herself quite capable of continuing her usual athletic feats in spite of his being in only average shape.

She couldn't help but smirk mentally when she recalled duking it out with Shego atop the giant machinery in the temp lair, while Kim had been in Ron's body. Apparently Shego was only satisfied with chasing her around, no matter which "her" it was. Or maybe she could recognize the threat Kim was to Drakken's operations, no matter which "her" it was.

Whichever direction it took, it had been quite the fight until they were overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. Drakken's henchmen were disturbingly well-equipped, and they seemed to take a great, dark delight in blasting their energy rods at Kim and Ron. It didn't matter if they never hit, they just had evil fun trying to do so.

She rolled that over in her head a few times—"evil fun." Somehow it described what was going on perfectly. Death traps aside.

Actually…now that she thought about it, that did mark at least two instances of certain doom that she'd successfully managed not to suffer. And for this last one, Drakken hadn't even been inside the area, much less setting it off himself. So maybe…just maybe, he didn't expect them to do her in, all his over-the-top rhetoric aside. Maybe he just meant to slow her down enough so he could get away.

Then again, slowing anyone down—even a butt-kicking, world-saving cheerleader—was easy enough to do without tying that person down and setting a building to blow up around them.

Finally allowing her tiredness to win, Kim made a mental note to ask Drakken—maybe "taunt" is a better word—about his lousy deathtraps the next time she saw him.

If looks could kill, Shego's stare would have vaporized six layers of standard Hench-Co Reinforced Lair Dividers by now, and that material was rated against tank shells.

That idiot little cheerleader had gone and completely disregarded the warnings that Shego had left her, and had come to foul up her and Drakken's latest attempt at world domination via the Neutronalizer. She still had no idea what the thing did, but it was a moot point anyway.

Drakken probably wanted it because it looked like a death ray, but it probably spawned puppies and kittens and rainbows, she thought darkly. It would, after all, be just their luck.

She couldn't deny that it had been great fun tangling with the Princess, even switched as she was into her buffoonish sidekick's body—a condition Shego planned on never letting her live down. She had, though, been more than a little disappointed when the two had shown up that first time to try and keep her and Drakken from making off with the Neutronalizer.

Shego had no illusions that she had anything left of a conscience; abandoning that nagging little voice had been something of a prerequisite when she'd taken up her villainous career. Still and all, actually killing someone didn't really sit well with her; she knew society tended to frown on people who killed other people and didn't have whatever flimsy justification, like the police or the military, and so it was a lot easier for her to get away with metaphorical murder in her thefts when there was no associated trail of bodies. Plus, killing someone meant you got caught in what you were doing, and the professional pride she was still building in her skills meant she was more willing to abandon what she'd come for than try to extract whatever item from a gang of meat shields.

Which meant that it irked her somewhat that Drakken had ordered her to engage the self-destruct system. So she had carefully ignored the rodent in Kim's sidekick's pocket that was trying its damnedest to burrow into the fabric to hide from her, figuring that, if Kim was going to continue trying to play hero, then she'd better learn fast how to be resourceful.

That Shego hadn't seen or heard anything in the twenty-four hours or so since that failed plan regarding the authorities finding some charred bodies in the place's wreckage meant that the teen had managed to get out; seeing the dopey face of the guy whose body Drakken had "stolen" for a few days appear on the news cast gave her an idea of just how Kim had escaped.

Shego felt a little guilty in the relief she felt over that fact, though it was somewhat understandable; the girl was fun to fight, and just as much fun to tease. She thought back to the day Kim had caught her in the girl's closet. That had been just priceless, and she felt herself crack a little grin. Dropping the innuendo-laden statements had been fun, even if she didn't get the reaction she was looking for…right away, that is. She was sure the teen wasn't sheltered enough to get it eventually.

Which meant that, barring actually doing something to prevent Kim from being called on to foil their next plan—

Say…there's an idea.

While their first meeting had proven that Kim was willing and somehow able to drop everything to go save the world, or whatever it was she claimed she did, Shego figured there had to be some things that even the All-American Princess wouldn't dare interrupt, no matter the nature of said interruption.

Which meant she had some more research to do…which in turn meant more teasing Kim about seeing how the "other half lived." The only bad thing, she figured, was that she had no idea how much time it would take for Dr. Drakken to come up with another one of his mad schemes. She had to give it to him—in private, though, not to his face—his genius was certainly "mad" enough that absolutely no one would be able to predict what kind of crazy science he'd come up with next.

Shego felt some of her earlier anger evaporate as she started indulging her imagination, planning on how she was going to freak out the cheerleader this time.

Note: As I am going in production order, not on-air order, the chapters will not necessarily jive with watching the series start-to-end. This is based on "Mind Games," in case the title didn't give it away.