Yet Another Kigo Fic! – Chapter 11
By Ken-Zero
Disclaimer: What? Creative? What's that? If I created KP and friends, why would I be writing fanfiction?
Shego and Kim Possible sat perched on a pair of outcroppings that were attached to one of the iconic skyscrapers that made up the skyline of southern Go City. The outcroppings looked suspiciously similar to ones on a certain building in a certain other major United States city. In fact, they were almost exact duplicates of the eagle constructions on the Chrysler Building in New York City. The building itself was constructed in the same art deco style, though with enough dissimilarities that it wasn't a complete facsimile.
The architecture, though, was lost on the two ladies as they watched their targets, though—or rather, watched the devastation wrought by said targets. Sadly, it was approaching their perch.
"Did I ever mention I hate rats?" one said to the other.
"No…but the fact that you do, is something of a surprise."
"Why's that?"
"You seem like a kind of small-animal person, for some reason."
"Nah, not me. Gemini's dog-thing? Drives me crazy."
"I guess, when you use that example, you have a point." Shego yawned. "Sorry. Anyway, if you don't like small animals, why do you have your obsession with Cuddle Buddies?"
Kim turned slightly red as she responded. "Because they're not alive, and they're insufferably cute."
"But Kimmie, wouldn't you rather cuddle with me than a silly stuffed animal?" Shego wheedled.
Kim's blush only increased, which amused Shego to no end. "Look, even if you're right, this isn't the time for that…we really need to stop those things. Preferably before dinner."
Shego sighed. "I almost can't believe I got roped into this…" she complained, but inside, she was thinking, But the chance to beat up some annoyances was too good to pass up.
Kim elbowed her. "If you're going to help, stop whining. If not, stay here and whine." So saying, she rose from her seat and readied her hairdryer/grappling hook.
Shego heaved a much-put-upon sigh. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she muttered. "Yeesh, you fall for a hero and she expects you to help her move the world with a tiny lever…"
The red returned to Kim's cheeks, but she didn't respond, instead firing off her grappling hook with its trademark compressed-air bang. The hook exploded to long-range in an instant, trailing its nigh-indestructible tether, and when she felt it latch onto a building and slightly tighten she locked it at that length. Taking a deep breath she readied for a leap. "Ready?"
Shego stood behind Kim, wrapping her arms around the slender waist and lacing her fingers together. "Just say the word, Princess."
"Here we go!" With coordinated effort they took two steps back, then dashed forward and leapt off the eagle-gargoyle's head.
Freefall came first as they plummeted; Kim had a big smile plastered on her face that Shego couldn't see, which she was somewhat thankful for; she didn't want to hear any cracks on how she enjoyed falling so much. Shego, for her part, didn't mind the falling so much—really, for her, high places and falling didn't scare her, it was the hitting the ground at the end of those falls that worried her—but she didn't get a big kick out of it.
The rats loomed ever closer in their headlong rush to the ground; both women were not-so-subtly reminded of a certain green radiation-spewing monster (and no, they weren't thinking of Shego) rampaging through downtown Tokyo, though there were four now, and they were white, and they were also rats, not bizarre creations of someone's imagination. Well, okay, theywere bizarre creations of someone's imagination, but at least they were still rats and not…avatars of the world's desire to cleanse itself. Or something.
Eventually, though, the grappling line began to take up their weight, and their trajectory changed, arcing gently from straight downward to imitate the path of a standard pendulum. Kim coaxed the dryer's motor to reel in slightly, shortening their arc and granting them greater rotational velocity. Following the plan they had hammered out on the way, as they passed the vertical and began to come up again, Shego released her grip on Kim's waist and sailed through the air. She peaked slightly above the plane of the rats' heads and as gravity took hold and began to drag her down she extended her feet before her.
With a bone-shaking smash she rammed into the side of a rat's head, feet-first. As she bent her legs to absorb some of the blow—she felt the rat's head snapping around from the rest of the force—she built up a double-fisted blast of plasma and dumped it right into the staring, unblinking, six-foot-tall eye looming just above her. The rat squealed in agony as she cooked its eye, and Shego smirked as she found the one exterior weak point that hadn't been plasma-proofed. The thing tried to wrench its head away from the source of pain.
In the two seconds that had transpired, Shego felt her footing begin to give. Also according to the plan, she pushed off with what little traction she had left and launched herself away from the thing's face. Gravity took hold once again and dragged her almost straight down, and she grabbed onto the rat's haunch as she fell. Thankfully the hairs were still fine enough to grasp, even if they did slip through her gloves a bit more easily than they should have.
Wait a minute…I'm still sliding, Shego thought as the hair continued to slip through her grip. She'd killed almost all of her downward velocity, and the ground was close enough to land easily, so she wasn't worried…but it was worrying, because of the next part of their plan.
The two fighters had tried to keep things simple; use Shego as a means to gather the rats in one place again, have Kim land on a head, plug in an EMP device and run away as the rats' brains turned into scrambled eggs again. Shego seemed to have accomplished part one; the other three had turned at the source of the new noise, seeing the new rat pawing at its face and trying to rid itself of the burning pain. She released her hold on the rat and slipped to the ground, looking at the thing again. Its fur looked mostly like last time, except…something was a bit off.
Then it registered…just as Kim flew in from the side and tried to latch onto the thing's back. The teen hero tried to grab for hairs to hold onto, but they slipped from her grasp, and she began to slide down its back. Panic crept in as she gathered speed down the slippery surface.
Shego had noticed that the hairs looked a bit…clumped, the way some animal fur does after it's been wetted thoroughly and allowed to dry a bit. The shadows made the rats look slightly dirtier, but the cosmetic effect wasn't nearly as important as the practical.
Shego dashed off as soon as she saw Kim impact and slip, and she dove recklessly over the rat's thrashing tail about half a second before it could sweep her off her feet. She hit the ground in a roll and was back on her feet and running before she even realized it. She saw she was never going to make it in time to keep Kim from sliding off the rat and probably sustaining serious injury upon contact with the ground…and then an idea hit her. She turned back to the rat's side and charged up her hands again, nervousness and a touch of desperation fueling her energy, charging the plasma blast more quickly than normal. She took careful aim, waited for the right opening…
And let loose a powerful blast right at the concrete under the descending foot of the GMKCR.
It's a well-known fact that bipedal creatures are the least inherently stable locomotive beings in the animal kingdom. For all their refined sense of balance, they still only have two points of contact with the ground. Upset one of them, and that sense of balance works overtime to compensate. For humans, that may mean flailing one's arms around, trying to throw one's body weight to a particular direction, or taking a stutter-step to maintain an upright position and avoid a faceplant.
As the GMKCRs were on their back feet, they suffered the same problems, compounded by their sheer size and lack of two-legged experience. While capable of bipedal locomotion, they were more at home with all four limbs on the ground, and so their balance wasn't nearly as tuned.
Shego's blast vaporized a huge chunk of road, roadbed, and dirt from under the rat's foot. The resulting explosion's shockwave shoved the foot back up into the air a few feet…but as the rat had already shifted its center of mass over that leg, the foot dropped back down. Instead of landing on level ground, though, it fell a good eight feet extra.
The rat stumbled as its balance was thrown completely off. It lurched to the side, whipping its tail around as it tried to regain its footing. Shego narrowly avoided being clubbed again; she had a more important job right now.
The rat's body twisted to the side as its flailed around. Shego dashed to that side just in time to intercept a scrambling Kim as she ran out of rat real estate and plummeted from its back. Her falling trajectory had shifted to the side as the rat fell; luckily that left her on the rat itself for a little extra time—just enough, in fact, that Shego was actually able to brace herself for the impact of Kim falling on her.
The teen hero had actually curled up in preparation for hitting the ground, so when she felt pressure only under her knees and shoulders, she actually dared to open her eyes.
"Surprise," Shego said with a cocky smirk.
Kim sighed in relief, relaxing again. "Thanks," she breathed. "Thatwas scary."
"Yeah. What was up with that anyway? I thought you could climb anything."
"I don't know…it was…slippery. Oily. I could get a grip but my hands just slipped off." She glanced down at herself. "And I think I got some on me…ew."
Shego raised an eyebrow. Kim looked the same as usual, except for some slightly shiny streaks visible on her purple mission shirt. "Whatis it? It looks like…I dunno, like rosin or something."
Kim raised an eyebrow. "I'm…actually a bit surprised you know what that is…"
Shego rolled her eyes and deposited Kim on the ground. "I was a normal kid, you know."
"And you played a stringed instrument? You're just full of surprises." She looked over at the stuck-in-place rat. "Let's move for now, though."
"Good idea, Princess," Shego said. Together they backpedaled until they were about a block away from the stuck rat, which was still trying to pick its foot from the hole in the ground.
Kim flicked on her wrist-mounted Kimmunicator. "Wade, I need you to scan…whatever this is on my shirt. It came off the rats."
"Got it, Kim." As her tech guru spoke a thin green line expanded from the inner edge of her device. Kim felt suddenly self-conscious as the line came perilously close to her breasts, but it stopped just shy of them; she wasn't quite sure where the feeling had come from…but maybe it had something to do with Shego frowning at Wade over Kim's shoulder. She felt a blush coming on…and as usual there wasn't much she could do about it.
Wade, thankfully, appeared to be paying the two of them little attention, as his gaze was directed to some other monitor off to the side of the viewscreen he used to talk to Kim. "Hmm…strange. You said this was on the rats?"
"No, she just decided to paint herself up with it five minutes ago," Shego snarked.
Wade blinked and looked at Kim. "Was that…?"
"Never mind, Wade," Kim said hurriedly. "Just tell me what you found."
"But it was—"
"Sonot the time, Wade!" Kim pressed. She turned her wrist so he could see the rats—the one had finally managed to successfully remove its foot from the ground, though the extremity looked a bit mangled—then back to her face. "They're coming back for us."
"Right…Well, here's the thing. You've got one of the hairs on your shirt, too…and there's some interesting mixing going on. The hairs have been engineered to resist excess heat, but the coating is actually petroleum-based…which is odd, because from all indications it's being secreted by the rats themselves."
Shego blinked at the explanation. "Self-oiling rats?"
"Um…yeah," Wade agreed. "The kicker is, the coating and the hairs are reacting with each other, stripping the carbon from the oil and bonding it in certain places on the rat's hairs."
"Which means?" Kim pressed. The GMKCRs were tracking their scent now, it seemed, and as much as Kim could see in their big beady eyes, they had dinner on their minds.
"Whichmeans that they're not nearly as fireproof as they once were. In fact, unless my analysis is wrong—"
"Which it never is," Kim and Shego chimed in together, Kim with a smile and Shego with eyes rolled.
"—um, right…anyway, unless my analysis is wrong, they should be more susceptible than usual."
"What's usual for these things, anyway?" Shego muttered as Kim signed off with the boy genius.
"That's a really good question. Let's find out how much of a change this is, okay?" Kim asked, reaching into a pocket and pulling out her familiar cosmetic item.
"Lipstick?" Shego asked. "Aww, are you prettying up for li'l ol' me?"
Kim blushed again. "Can you be serious for two seconds?"
"One. Two." Then Shego grinned. "See?"
Exasperated, Kim shook her head. "Laser lipstick," she explained shortly. "Between it and your plasma we should be able to heat things up a bit."
"Nowthat's what I like to hear." Shego flamed her fists again and looked at the rats, then back at Kim. A lazy grin graced her features. "Race you," she taunted, and off she went.
Kim blinked, then took off, running after Shego as quickly as she could.
It took them a handful of seconds to cross the city block and run into the GMKCRs. Once there Shego instantly sent a blast from each hand at the rat's chest. The two balls of plasma reached up and exploded against the furry abomination, and the sheer force of impact knocked the rat back slightly. As it lurched forward again Shego leapt at it and landed a pair of shots on its already-injured foot.
A deafening squeal filled the air as the rat thrashed in pain. Kim seized the opportunity to dash up and launch herself at the rat, using her grappling hairdryer on a convenient outcropping nearby to fling herself up atop the head of the same rat Shego had hurt. She noted, somewhat disappointedly, that there was a distinct lack of visible circuitry; apparently, along with the slick-fur upgrade, her foes had gotten smarter about leaving cybernetics lying out where she could get to them. She smirked at the thought of herself as a destructive little kid…but when there were giant mutant killer cyborg rats out to squish her, she felt a bit justified in imitating the Tweebs and their inherent ability to annihilate.
Just…without the rockets.
As she landed on the rat's head, she noticed that the other two towering terrors had apparently decided to ignore their pint-sized pugilists. She had to push that thought, and its alliterative action, to the back of her mind, though; she had more important things to worry about right now.
She dialed her lipstick laser up to a higher emission wattage than she normally used. She had one chance; she could feel herself starting to slip just a tad as the rat's head rocked and she moved along the slight cranial ridge. Shifting her body weight forward she slipped and slid up to just behind the brow of the rat and, with a quick swipe, brought her laser across the top of the thing's head.
Smoke drifted up into her face as the slicked-down hair vaporized under the ultra-focused beam of laser light. The stink was beyond anything she'd ever smelled before, and she had to fight down the urge to retch up everything she'd eaten for what felt like the past week. Her effort had succeeded, though, and she saw an angry red line across the bare skin atop the rat's head. She turned the laser up to its highest setting and, using the bare patch for traction, traced a far more methodical path along the same line, burning into, then through, skin and bone and brain and, hopefully, the complex controlling circuitry.
Again she had to fight the urge to throw up all over as the smell changed from god-awful stench to the reek of roasted meat. Her ears received a battering similar to her nose as the rat screeched to high heaven, and as its head tilted back she nearly fell off. Desperate she stuck a hand in the one place she had for a real grip:
Into the thin line she'd burned into its skull.
Suddenly Kim felt her weight shifting again as the rat pitched forward. When she felt herself settling onto her belly, facedown atop the rat's head, she pulled her hand out, staring with a sort of detached, morbid interest at the light staining on her glove. I kind of…expected more blood, she thought idly, in mild shock after her latest stunt.
The rat thundered mightily as it collapsed to all fours. Kim was shaken from her perch on impact, but thankfully she only had about ten feet to fall. As she hit the ground, her legs nearly collapsed under her, and she briefly wondered why she felt so weak before it hit her.
The situation—mortal danger, life in peril, yet still managing to save the world with minimal injury to herself and others—was familiar. The method to achieve her result? Brand-new. She'd never done anything like that before; Kim was all about hands and feet and, occasionally, using her gadgets in a fight to gain an edge. This, though, was one of the few times she'd actually inflicted significant harm to a target. The last fight with these rats was another…and as that memory returned, she did fall to her knees. Those rats had died, and while they were only rats, the point was that Kim had taken their lives. It had been necessary…but that didn't mean it was something to feel good about.
Then she looked up, and saw the rat she'd just fought eyeing her with something like disdain. And then it started to…shrink? Fold up? Something was happening, and it was losing size quickly. In fact, as she stared, it rapidly lost mass until it was merely a normal-sized lab rat, albeit one with a thin, perfect line burned across the top of its head.
Kim winced as she watched, but the rat did not keel over. In fact, it just kind of wandered away, paying her absolutely no mind. She blinked…before she realized where she'd been located on the rat's head. Her mother would be so proud of her.
The rat, while still giant, mutant, and a killer cyborg, had undergone a perfectly normal, perfectly successful frontal lobotomy. Kim's laser had essentially vaporized part of its behavioral center, as well as disrupting or destroying part of the cybernetics controlling it…and its size, apparently. Somehow.
More thundering footsteps snapped her out of her stupor just in time to see Shego fly back before she impacted the ground. Kim's breath caught in her throat before she saw that Shego was still on her feet, even if she were sliding backwards rapidly. Eventually, though, Shego got her momentum under control. With a yell she leapt back at the GMKCR she was battling. The rat itself sported several burn marks on its fur and skin, and smoke wafted gently up from other places where the fur apparently still smoldered.
Kim thought fast. Shego was inflicting damage, yes…but at this rate the other two rats would be long past them and into the rest of the city by the time that they felled this one. She knew she could repeat her tactic, but that took precious time, too…time they didn't have, if the path of destruction ahead of them was any indication.
Kim ran over to where Shego fought the other rat and chose a moment to yell at the other woman. "Shego!" she screamed. "Hurry it up!"
Shego looked over her shoulder, her hair bouncing in time with her shifting body weight as she went from foot to foot. "Going as fast as I can, Kimmie," she yelled back. "It's like trying to blast through a mountain!"
Kim's frustration with the sitch bubbled up. She almost wished she had Ron nearby; he would have been able to distract the rats from their job…but then, she wouldn't have anyone to help with dealing with four of them. It was an even trade, she supposed, though she wished there were two of each of them to match the four rats. Heck, even having the Tweebs around would have made an—
Wait!
"Shego!" she called. "Try and trip one again!"
The green woman shot Kim a look, her expression clearly screaming "What the fuck?" even though she didn't open her mouth, but when she saw Kim's face she shut up and did as she was told.
Kim wasn't even aware of it, but she'd slipped into a facial look not unlike Shego's default: her mouth was twisted down into a scowl, and her eyebrows were drawn together in thought.
In fact, she looked about as civil as one Bonnie Rockwaller. Shego vaguely knew of Kim's high school cheerleading rival, and how there wasn't a lot of good relation between them. She filed the comparison away for later.
Instead of snarking back, then, she shot a two-handed blast under the rat and knocked it over, all sixty feet of it. The road was in much worse shape than the rat itself, victim of Shego's superheated plasma energy, but at least she'd accomplished her goal. "Now what?" she called over to her Fearless Leader.
"Aim for its forehead," Kim answered. "Not to blow it up…Just blast it. A few times, if you have to. If I'm right…we'll be able to mop these guys up quickly."
Shego shrugged and bounded up and across the rat, a grand leap from its gut to its shoulder getting her into position. She charged up another blast and let fly, and the rat howled as her green fire impacted.
Nothing else happened.
Shego shrugged and shot again. More nothing. She fired a final time…andthis time she leapt away in shock.
The rat began to shrink.
It featured a nice, round black spot on its forehead from repeated blasts with several high-temperature plasma blasts, but otherwise looked mostly unharmed.
"What the hell just happened?" Shego asked, dumbfounded, as Kim strode up beside her.
"Are you okay?" Kim asked. Hey, she had her own priorities.
"Huh? Oh, fine, Princess," Shego answered. "I'm just a little beaten, bruised, battered, and confused as all fuck as why me shooting it in the forehead made it shrivel up."
"Your plasma," Kim answered matter-of-factly as she grabbed Shego's arm and dragged her off toward the remaining two rats.
In spite of her bruising battle, Shego kept pace with Kim as they tracked the rogue GMKCRs down. "And what does my plasma have to do with shrinking rats?"
"EMI," Kim replied.
Shego sighed. Apparently Kim was operating on "difficult" mode. "Aaaaand…" she drawled.
"Between the force of impact and the electro-magnetic interference your plasma generates, it disrupts the cybernetics inside the rat's heads. Apparently they control how the rats stay that size, or something."
Shego just stared. "You…are such a nerd," she stated simply. "How did you figure all that out?"
"I'ma nerd?" Kim echoed. "How 'bout you, Miss 'I'll shoot just the right spot to knock them over'?"
Shego opened her mouth to reply, then shut it again. "Not important," she argued instead. Damn girl's too smart for her own good."Anyway, why don't you apply all your nerdiness to taking those two down?" She jerked a thumb at the rats in question. "And why do you even have the Nerdlinger along, when you can take over his job?"
"Shego!" Kim protested. She'd begun blushing when Shego first called her a nerd. Besides, she wasn't the nerd—or so she thought. She just lived around a bunch of them, like her father. And the Tweebs. And, yes, Wade was a nerd, though he was too much of a friend to ever say that to his face… "If you have to know, my brothers tried to duplicate your powers once. It wasn't so successful; we had a ten-foot hole in our backyard for weeks. Ten feet in all dimensions. Even the fourth. They said the plasma's EMI messed up the electric container. I figured, since you cancontrol yours, we could try and use it to mess up the rats."
"I'll say," Shego agreed. "Some serious messing-up occurred over there." She cracked her knuckles and grinned, the expression downright evil. "And I think some more's going to be coming quickly. Now that I know, Princess, we can finish this easy."
Kim nodded, relieved that Shego'd apparently dropped the nerd statements. She was wrong—oh so wrong—but she wouldn't find that out until much later.
Shego was absolutely correct in her assessment, though; using the buildings around her, she ascended to eye level with the GMKCRs and stood her ground on another building ledge, similar to how she and Kim had begun the encounter. She spread her feet apart. Flaring her hands, she placed her left hand on her right elbow joint before raising her right arm straight out. Hand curled into a fist, she steadied her aim as she concentrated the plasma in her hand, charging it to nearly lethal levels of heat and energy. With a grunt she loosed the super-charged blast, and her timing proved accurate, almost lethally so; the shot smashed into the rat's head, snapping its head back. The kinetic force toppled the rat over backwards, but it was already shrinking as it fell; by the time it hit the ground it was merely six and a half feet tall and shrinking quickly, which meant that Shego avoided the collateral damage she was half-afraid would happen.
Kim clapped her hands as the rat fell and shrank, cheering Shego on. She was quite pleased to see things working for the better; for a short time she was actually afraid that the Bad Guys were going to get away with "it."
Whatever "it" was. She wasn't even sure anymore; wanton destruction didn't fit the modus operandi of any of her former foes. Most wanted to rule the world; DNAmy was the only exception. She was just nuts.
She tossed her ruminations aside as the last surviving GMKCR turned toward Shego and charged. The former villainess leapt backwards, away from the lumbering super-rodent, aiming for the shortest distance she could find.
A hefty breeze in front of her signaled the passage of the gigantic rat's paw, and she turned her head to see the rat still coming after her.
Shego smirked. Either she was too much of a threat to the rat's survival for it to let her be, or whoever was controlling them thought so. Being considered more dangerous than Kimmie made her feel…smug.
Kim watched nervously as Shego danced and dodged around the rat's swipes. She knew that, were that her in that position, she'd have long since started to tire. She just hoped that Shego had more energy than that.
Shego tossed off a plasma blast at the leg of the rat following her. It impacted, splashing its heat and energy across the animal's haunch. The rat hesitated, but only for a second, before slamming its foot down again.
That second was all Shego needed to get clear. She shot again, and again, each hitting the same spot as the first. She actually landed enough energy in the same place to start a small fire. The blaze—as vibrantly green in color as Shego's energy—quickly spread, enveloping the entire leg before starting to spread up the abdomen.
The rat began to panic; as this was Shego's plasma, it was a good deal hotter than any normal fire would be. In fact, that was the only reason it had caught in the first place. The heat was evaporating the surface layers of gunk from the rat, leaving the molecularly-bonded, now-vulnerable hairs to go up in smoke. As the GMKCR flailed about in boiling agony, another well-timed shot to its forehead blasted it back, and it shrank quickly as the delicate cybernetics inside failed from the electromagnetic interference. In fact, it seemed to fall quicker than its brethren…and since the fire was deprived of its fuel almost instantly, it snuffed out, leaving a small cooked lab rat in place of the giant engine of destruction.
Kim ran over to Shego, who was panting heavily. She pulled up just short of running the other girl over, instead staring at her. "Are you okay?" Kim asked, genuinely concerned.
"I'll be fine," Shego said dismissively. "I didn't overdo it this time. See? Still conscious, still talking?"
"Yeah, but—"
"Look, Kimmie," Shego interrupted, "really, I'll be okay. Just gimme a few to get back onto my feet and all this'll be behind us."
"If you say so," Kim said, sounding like she didn't quite believe her. And really, she didn't, but Shego was also Shego, and would probably still fight Kim to a standstill even in her current exhausted state if Kim pressed any further. So she busied herself instead with trying to find the rats in question while her partner recovered.
She'd managed to collect three of them, including the one she'd brain-fried, when a sickening squishing sound and a high-pitched squeal alerted her that three would probably be all she would find.
"Hey, Princess," came Shego's voice from somewhere a ways away. "Was that what I thought it was?"
Kim immediately quashed any thoughts that Shego would have stepped on the last rat. She actually felt a bit guilty for suspecting something like that. "I've only got three rats in my hand, so if you don't have one…"
"Ah." If Kim didn't know any better, she thought Shego's reply sounded…squeamish. But Shego didn't gross out, Kim knew. Oh, sure, some things might disgust her, like Drakken's clones melting into goo, but she'd never once seen Shego go queasy.
Kim went back to where Shego was sitting on the edge of an overturned piece of concrete, ostensibly from a building the rats had crushed. Already she looked tons better than she had, Kim saw as she held the rats by the tail for Shego to see. "I want to have Wade scan these guys, see if he can figure out how they tick. Don't you think it's weird that they shrank again?"
Shego shrugged. "If we're right about who's behind this—and between us, how often are we wrong?—it's probably Drakken, screwing something up again. The guy can't take over the world to save his life."
Kim grinned. "No, but he can save it to save his life. Funny how that works."
"Don't remind me," Shego grimaced. Then: "Alright, Pumpkin. My place or yours?"
"Um…well, if we go back to my dorm, we still have to stop for groceries or whatnot," she warned.
Shego shrugged. "Fair enough. So the question stands. Where are we going?"
"You okay to drive in your condition?"
"Kimmie, I told you I'm fine. Right now I'm just really hungry. That's why I'm asking."
"Fine!" Kim gave up, exasperated. Trying to show concern for Shego was like…like…like trying to show concern for your worst enemy!
The irony of that thought was lost on Kim.
"Your place it is," Shego decided. She heaved herself up off her perch. "I'm ready when you are."
Kim nodded and followed her, activating her wrist Kimmunicator as they walked. "Wade, I need a place to drop off some of these rats for you to check out."
Her tech guru blinked in some shock. "Um…okay," he said, fingers beginning to fly as his brain checked back in. "You captured the rats?"
"Yeah," she affirmed, holding the handful up for him to see. "We found something about this batch—"
"We? Oh, right, your help. Who did help you, anyway?"
"What, you weren't watching?" Kim teased.
Wade actually looked offended, but he disrupted the look with a grin. "Place to drop off…got it. I've got a quick-transport sled hidden in a post-office box not far from your position. I'll mark it on your GPS."
"You rock, Wade. Let me know what you find." She signed off and looked up at Shego, who was waiting expectantly for her. With something of a sheepish grin Kim trotted the rest of the way over.
Shego straddled a fancy-looking sport motorcycle; at first glance, Kim had thought it wouldn't hold two people, no matter how little either weighed. However, the bike had proved, just like its owner, much tougher than it looked. They'd made record time on the way down, and while Kim screamed her head off as Shego zipped and dodged through traffic like it was a game of sorts, by the time they'd arrived and found their perch, she'd wanted to go again. And it looked like she was going to get her chance, even if they weren't nearly in as much of a rush.
She took the proffered helmet and stuck it over her head, then climbed on the small passenger seat behind Shego, putting her arms around the other woman's waist. Shego was warmer than usual, probably with the exertion of all the acrobatics and blasting she'd done to take down the rats—which reminded Kim.
"Hey," she said, flipping the visor on her helmet up. "I thought you didn't want to do the hero thing."
She felt, more than heard, Shego grunt a laugh. "I don't know that I'll have much of a choice, Pumpkin, if I hang out with you. You just get into too much trouble…and I like trouble."
"You are trouble," Kim said playfully, but she tightened her hold around Shego for just a second before the other woman kicked the bike into gear. They shot off…sadly, not into the sunset, as they were headed due north.
A/N: Eh. Didn't like this chapter very much…but I'll see what you guys all say. Oh, and please, please, leave critical reviews. I know I'm not a perfect author, but the only way I can improve what I write is when people tell me. Otherwise I see what I see and it looks okay to me. I need to know what looks okay to you.
Um. Next chapter might be a little late, what with the holiday and all coming up…but if I'm inspired enough (and have enough time…) it might be up as early as next Friday. We'll see, I suppose. I need to stay off City of Heroes and stay in Word, I think.