There's Still Fireworks: Part VI
Time To Go Upside!
"Will you please hold still!" Drakken growled, holding the large pair of bent-tip tweezers over Shego's neck.
"I am holding still. Just get that damned thing off my neck before it starts working again." She snarled right back at him, holding her copious hair to one side so he could reach the button-like device. "Just grab a hold of it and yank it off. I'm a big girl, I can take a little pain."
"It's not that simple, Shego. According to my crypto-scanner, the nano-filaments are embedded deep in your skin. If I simply yank it off, there may be repercussions. Perhaps I should scan it again…"
Shego grabbed his hand, growling. "No, you won't. The last time you scanned me with it you set it off again. I'm not in the mood to spend the next three hours crying my eyes out just because I have split ends."
"Are you sure that is why you were crying?" He asked, adjusting his magnifying goggles as he considered the Moodulator embedded in her neck.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She turned back around, pulling her raven locks aside once more so he could have a clearer view.
"What I mean is that you were so upset that I was not returning the feelings this device was causing in you."
She groaned. "Get a grip, Dr. D. I wasn't upset by that, I was just sore because we'd managed to run all the way to Upperton by the time it shorted out and we had a really long walk back to your saucer from there since nobody would give us a lift. Then we had to spend the night at the Middleton lair since it was too late to fly back to the island, and the only thing I had to wear besides a sweaty jumpsuit was a pair of coveralls. I'd have been ticked off even if you didn't make that thing start up again."
"Oh." he slumped slightly, out of her field of vision, turning his concentration back to his task. Taking a deep breath, he hooked the point of his tweezers under it and gently pulled.
"OW! Hey, watch it, Doc. That's my skin."
"I thought you said you were a big girl. Now be still."
"Just yank it off fast, like a bandage. Get it over with."
He snarled back at her. "I'm trying to, I don't…" He took a sharp breath as the face of the Moodulator lit up, displaying a harsh, green scowling face.
"Mommy." Was all he could squeak out as he backed away from her, shedding his goggles and dropping the tweezers.
"What now?" She groaned, her hand going back to her neck.
Slowly, he emerged from behind the counter. "You…you're not angry?"
"I'm ticked as hell, Doc, but I'm not about to blast you…unless you don't get this thing off-a me!"
"Hmmm, must not be working correctly then." Slowly he approached her again, dabbing at the edge of it where a tiny blot of blood had appeared.
"You mean it's on?" She twisted partly around, glaring at him.
"It lit up."
"Just get it off me before it really starts working and I do something stupid."
"Like crawling across the table making pussycat noises at me?"
"Among others. Just get this over with!" She pointed at the device with a claw tipped finger. "Oh, give me that." She yanked the tweezers out of his hand and clumsily gripped it, pulling furiously. Tiny, fine wires slowly emerged from her skin before retracting into the metallic claws that were holding it there.
Grinding her teeth against the pain, she finally succeeded in removing it, throwing both it and the tweezers aside while she covered the raw spot with her gloved hand.
"Hold on, let me make sure you didn't leave anything behind." He picked up the hand-held scanning device and gave her the once over.
"I'm fine, Doc…just, let me be for a while, Okay?"
"Whatever." He picked up his tools and stalked off across the main cavern of the lair.
Once he was out of sight, Shego knelt down and picked up the green and black button, turning it over a couple times in her palm using her fingertip. Almost automatically, she made her way back to her bedroom, sitting on the end of her divan bed, staring at it, as if it would come to life and bury its little claws in her flesh once more.
Without realizing it, she picked up a strip of black and white pictures from her nightstand. The last one was of her pouncing on Drakken, apparently kissing him though their faces were out of frame. Her memory of that day were not as crystal clear as she would have liked, but she still remembered that particular moment.
The feelings had seemed real to her, and somewhere deep inside, that was scarier than she was used to dealing with. Was the crush all Moodulator, or was she harboring feelings for her employer?
No. That was just stupid. Drakken was her boss. On top of that, he was significantly older than her and not all that good looking to boot. How could she like him, yet alone be in love with him? Yeah, maybe he was right when he said they were some kind of evil family, but that didn't mean there could or even should be any romantic inclinations between them.
Staring at the picture, she wondered if that was right. One thing she remembered clearly was that she felt somehow complete when she was kissing him. That wasn't something she was prone to doing at all. Sure, she had been with random hot guys, but kissing wasn't part of the bargain, as if that was somehow reserved for something deeper than a short-term (as in one-night) fling.
Frowning, she wondered what else she might have done during the cloudy period while she was under the Moodulator's spell. There was the 'Breakipoo' in the park…ice cream at the lair…their 'evil date'…
…that had to be it. Certainly, if she remembered kissing him so clearly, she would remember if they had done anything else. Halfway through breathing a sigh of relief, she caught herself.
Would that have been so bad?
"Ew!" She said aloud, igniting both her hands, incinerating the Moodulator and the strip of photos. The remains of the latter dropped to the stone floor, only the top part showing them kissing remaining, slowly being consumed by the green flames.
Drakken looked over his shoulder as he entered a room he used as his private study. Shego was long gone, and most of his henchmen had been sent home for the evening, leaving him pretty much alone in the lair. Perfect!
Opening a laptop computer, he called up a complicated set of schematics. He may have dropped out of the Middleton Institute of Science and Technology before graduation, but he still had gained a tremendous amount of knowledge from his years there, and, despite being utterly insane and often quite clueless about a great many things, he had more than enough intelligence to understand the theoretical science underlying the technology.
Slowly, a very large grin spread across his cerulean jowls, displaying huge, perfectly white teeth.
"Kim, how many times to I have to say I'm sorry?" Ron pleaded as he tried untangling the coil of ropes he was carrying over his shoulder.
"Just drop it, Ron. I forgave you. It's not big, really."
She pulled her Kimmunicator out and linked up with Wade. "You sure they're inside?"
"As much as I can be. I'm having trouble tracking them now because of the security at the lab, but I did intercept a report that they have lost contact with two of the sentries. Dementor and his henchmen are definitely inside."
Kim nodded, pulling her grappler with one hand, stuffing the omni-device back into her pocket with the other. "Ready, Ron?"
"Just a second…YIPE!" He quickly squelched his scream as he was reeled to the top of the building by the scruff of his mission shirt. Of course, he had his own grappler, but since he was already on his spare pair of pants, Kim wasn't willing to take a chance that he would end up making them sail right over the wall like he did on occasion. There might be a time, somewhere down the road, that she would want to see him in his boxers, but being in the midst of trying to stop the mad Teutonic professor wasn't that.
"KP, I just didn't mean…you know."
She stopped and gave him a tiny kiss on his cheek. "Ron, the train lurched and you had to grab a hold of me so you wouldn't fall down. You've done it hundreds of times before."
He shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "But it's where I touched you."
"Ron, just drop it. I know the difference between being groped and you trying to keep from landing on your butt. Just because we're dating doesn't mean you have to think that every time you touch me. Come on, you had your hands all over me when you caught me with the jet-pack."
"Yeah, but like you said, we weren't dating then, and I've got big hands, and…they're…right…there."
"Ron, don't unspool the drool. If you'd grabbed me like that while we were kissing a little while ago, I'd have been angry. Just…try not to think of it."
He very nearly replied with 'it's hard not to' but thought the better of it. All he knew was that he was standing there behind her, waiting for the train to come to a stop, then the next he had his hands full of…her. Worse than that, it took him a couple heartbeats to realize exactly where his hands were, making him feel that much worse for not realizing it sooner.
The strangest part was that she didn't say a word, just gave him a little smile while he turned a shade of red only slightly lighter than his 'civilian' jersey.
The Kimmunicator was out once more. "Got a lock on him. He's in the main chamber, directly below you. He's using some kind of jamming device to disrupt the security beams." Wade said, sounding a little more serious than he needed to.
"We need to get in there quickly, but I don't see a window we can use. Any ideas?"
"Hold the Kimmunicator out. I'm going to use a hyper-sonic pulse to smash through the roof."
"All ready here. Ron, have you got the ropes ready?"
He responded with a big thumbs up as he tied the riggings to his waist.
Kim turned her attention back to the roof, doing just as Wade had said. For a moment, she wished she had both hands free to cover her ear, but the blast only lasted a moment, causing a large crack to form in the roof, until part of it caved in, giving them a hole just big enough to let them descend. The lab would be paying for a new roof, but that was better than letting Dementor get away with whatever he had come for.
Dementor, who was busy with the security cage enclosing the device he was trying to, as Drakken sometimes put it, outsource, jerked back as the small section of concrete roof came crashing down not twenty feet from him. The cable from his equipment came loose, and the bright white glowing security beams came instantly back to life, once more protecting the technology.
Kim landed like a cat, one hand on her grappler, the other wrapped around Ron's waist. She got one look at the knot he was tying and grabbed him instead. "Unh! Hope you don't mind me and my boyfriend dropping in, Professor Dementor."
"Boyfriend? Vhat? Ah, I seriously doubt that." The Bavarian fire plug mocked, trying to turn his attention back to the security beams.
Ron slipped out of Kim's arm, landing face-first on the floor. "No, dude, it's true, really." He replied, trying to get up.
"Hmmm, no, sorry, don't believe it. I'm certain Fräulein Possible could do much better, no?"
Kim dropped into a combat ready stance, keeping an eye both on Dementor, and his two thugs, who were already in motion, trying to flank the couple. "I'd like to see you do better, Professor."
"I can AND I HAVE!!! GET ZEM!!!" He screamed as the beams winked out once more. With a grin, he wrapped his pudgy fingers around the blue-grey canister and turned to watch the proceedings.
Kim had already knocked one of the Henchco© goons to the floor, using him as a springboard to sail up and over the second. Ron, on the other hand, was still scrambling around on his hands and knees, doing his best not to get in the way of his 'supposed' girlfriend.
He almost shook his helmeted head as the red-haired firebrand pulled something from her hair, throwing it at the second goon. Since when did today's teen girls actually use hair pins? What, did she think she was her own grandmother? What she expected such tiny things to do, he couldn't imagine…
…at least, until one of them activated the henchman's rocket pack, sending him flying into the wall.
It was such a good thing he insisted his goons wear helmets!
"Enough of ZIS!!!" Reaching in to his jacket, he withdrew a spherical object that was roughly twice the size of a golf ball, throwing it at the crime-fighting duo with a malicious grin. Only, it did not have the effect he was expecting, because, at the very moment it would have struck, Ron chose to crawl directly behind Kim, tripping her backwards as the other goon advanced.
Dementor never saw his Bondo-Ball bounce once, then land in Kim's cargo pocket.
"Sorry, KP." Ron muttered, trying to disentangle himself from her long limbs."
"Don't get up on my account!" Dementor screamed, grabbing the device and heading for the ceiling chunk lying on the floor. "Ah, it looks like it is indeed my lucky day, thank you so much for providing me with an exit. So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good-bye!
At that very moment, Ron managed to regain his composure, hopping up into a pose that distantly resembled a proper fighting stance. "Ha! To Ronster is ready to go up side! ...Oh." His jaw dropped as he saw the villain and his goons sailing through the gap in the ceiling.
Kim just rested her chin in her palm, still lying on the floor, slowly shaking her head.
a/n: Wait! What's the Bondo-Ball doing in Kim's pocket? and what is Drakken up to?
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