There's Still Fireworks: Part XII

The Goat Has Been Gotten

Shego liked pushing buttons.

Oh, they weren't the kind that were made of plastic and housed in a panel. Anyone could do that. It was just a matter of reaching out with your fingertip and pushing downwards. She did enough of that sitting at the master video screen panel, trying to dull the boredom that came from sitting around the lair without anything constructive to do.

No, the buttons she liked to push weren't something you could reach with just your finger.

The object of her pass-time was pacing back and forth in the vast central chamber of their latest lair. To her, it looked just like any other, the interior painted a ghastly shade of dark red, with huge braces mounted on the walls of what had once been a mountaintop fortress of some medieval despot.

Her attitude would have been a little different if he'd come up with a logical reason for building a new lair. Maybe something like it being too easy for Possible to find them at their home base in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, he was making little pretense of actually hiding what they were doing. If she had her druthers, the exterior of the old castle would have been left alone, but that didn't fit into his plans.

Instead, the outside was fitted with glittering spires, some of which reached into the heavens like the spiky precipice of the big baddie's fortress in that incredibly long trilogy about an evil ring. It was only after Drakken forced her to sit and watch the DVD's of the whole thing in one sitting that he hatched his current plan. If she didn't know any better, she'd think he was deliberately trying to emulate what he'd seen there.

No, she did know better. It was highly likely that was exactly what he was doing.

That irked her to no end, especially since, at the end of the day-long movie marathon, that particular fortress was sent tumbling to the ground when the big-bad was defeated by those hairy footed midgets. It irked her enough that she had to do something to lighten her foul mood.

Time to push some buttons.

Drakken was not only pacing the length of the floor, he was giving orders to his hooded goons. He might have been a mad genius when it came to designing ridiculously complicated doomsday devices and the convoluted plans that went along with them, but he was utterly useless with tools in his hand. That meant getting the poorly educated excuses for henchmen to do the heavy work for him. In doing so, he was in reality much like many other scientists who relied on large, complex machines.

There were a number of ways she could get his goat. For one, she could simply start tapping his shoulder, or, she could blow on his neck to get his attention. It was rather obvious the man did not like other people touching him. Personal space for Doctor Drakken wasn't just a preference, it was a way of life.

All of those ways of bothering him were rather easy, but her personal favorite was easier still.

As usual, his constant orders and badgering of his crimson cohorts had turned into one of his trademark rants. With the silence that came with her quasi-ninja training, Shego came up behind him and simply stood there, adopting her own trademark, a look of unconcern and pure boredom.

"…and once my plan is in motion, and the world sees what they're up against, all will bow down to…"

Drakken stopped suddenly, wheeling around on his heels and snarled at her. "Will you stop hovering like that?!"

The sudden intensity and rage in his voice surprised even her. For half a moment, she was actually at a loss for words. "I…er…I…eh heh…" The look on her face was like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It was one thing to get his goat, it was quite another to get him angry like that. Normally, he was all bark and no bite, but there had been times when she'd pushed him just a smidge too far when he had actually been somewhat threatening, like the time when she'd lost his body while he was trapped in that lame Army private's form.

He turned back to his 'work,' ignoring her once more.

Shego stood her ground, her embarrassment slowly turning to anger. She wanted to push his buttons, and she was going to do that. How dare he ruin one of her favorite pleasures just because he was feeling a little snippy that day? Finally, as he stood there silently, watching his henchmen, she had enough.

"I wasn't hovering!" She bellowed at him, making a fist that momentarily sparked with tiny green flames.

He slowly turned around, his face still angry, though not as intensely as it had been only moments earlier. Apparently whatever had triggered his sudden outburst had already been spent. She put it off to him burning the candle at both ends as he usually did during that stage of his whack plans.

"Don't play that game with me, Shego. Anything within the radius of a foot and a half distance is considered hovering." He glowered at her for a moment, his eyes narrowing when she remained rooted to the same spot, almost precisely that distance from him.

Time for another button, she thought.

"What lame-o plan are you working on now?" Despite the fact he had just been ranting about that very thing, he actually hated it when people asked questions.

He stood his own ground for a moment, his arms crossed, his eyes locked with hers. For a strange moment she realized his black-looking eyes were actually very dark blue, though that could have been a trick of the light, or just a by-product of whatever had turned the rest of his body cerulean.

"If you must know, it's called the Atmosphere Disrupter. It will make the air of the entire planet completely unbreathable, so if anyone wants to actually breath, they will have to bow to my will, making me ruler of the entire world!"

"Blah-blah-blah, Doc. Have you considered we have to breath the air too?"

He blinked, his jaw drooping slightly as he stared at her. Once again, he was so focused on the kernel of his idea that he had left and important factor out of consideration. Rapidly, he covered his gaff.

"All of that will be taken care of in due course, Shego. After all, we have to build the weapon first." He clasped his hands behind his back and sauntered across the room, sitting down at the master console, randomly pushing buttons, though the screen itself remained off.

Shego was right on his heels, Taking up a position precisely one and a half feet from his left shoulder.

Sensing she was there, he popped back to his feet, glaring at her with his arms crossed once more. She glared right back at him, matching his scowl. Slowly, a quirky smile spread across her black-glossed lips.

Drakken shrank away from her slightly as her smile turned into an implausible come-hither expression. For the moment, she didn't know if she was actually still trying to push his buttons, or if something still remained of the strange feelings the Moodulator had instilled in her.

"Betcha like it when I hover." She whispered, pursing her lips as if in a prelude to a kiss.

Drakken's eyes shot wide open. The last thing he was expecting was for her to say something like that, or to look at him that way. Almost senselessly he turned around and sat back down, though this time he didn't make any move to act like he was operating the console. After a moment like that, he looked back over his shoulder and grinned at her with a funny little crooked smile like she had only seen on the buffoon.

Her heart actually skipped a beat when her mind registered what he said next. "Yes."

Shego was still reeling from that when he looked at the ceiling, as if he realized the ramifications of what he'd just said. "Er, I mean no." He muttered. "I…I mean…I mean…"

Taking a chance, she slipped even closer to him, hooking her chin over his left shoulder. The feel of her cheek against his neck sent a ripple through her she wasn't completely expecting. Every test Drakken had run on her over the past week said that she was completely free of the Moodulator's influence, so why was she feeling so good touching him that way.

"Ahem." Drakken cleared his throat, his eyes narrowing once more. He stood up and grabbed her shoulders, though not roughly, and shoved her a few feet away from him.

"Go stand over there!" He ordered, giving her one good shove.

"That's what I thought." She snickered gleefully, as if her mission had been accomplished.

Her smugness evaporated as she wandered away from the work going on around her boss. In one moment he seemed receptive to her strange attraction. In her mind, she imagined his unseen eyes closing for a moment when her skin touched his, but that wasn't enough to blot out what really was an utter rejection of the same advances.

Drakken obviously didn't feel anything for her. That much seemed clear enough to her. On the surface, it bothered her because of her vanity. She knew she was a very sexy, very desirable young woman. More than once she had to teach the more brazen of Drakken's henchmen that she wasn't available for some dimwitted lackey's attentions. A dark cloud formed over her head as she stomped down the hallway to where her personal apartment was set up.

The real hurt of the rejection went a little deeper, though she wouldn't acknowledge it.

"Gah! What am I thinking?" She muttered aloud as she locked the door behind her. Why worry about whether she could have any kind of feelings for him when she could have pretty much any man she please? It wasn't as if he was some kind of catch. All the better to think of him as the boss, or, as he once put it, that they were some kind of evil family.

She sat down on the end of his divan, clutching a pillow to her chest as if it were a stuffed animal she hadn't seen since she left her former life behind in Go City.

Kim and Ron sat together (obviously) at the breakfast table, alternately glancing at themselves and the unfurled newspaper that hid her Dad. That, and his mannish hands at its edges were all she had seen of him since they had come down from her room that morning. At any moment they both expected him to fold that paper up and calmly set it on the table, fixing each of them with his steely gaze, his jaw set as he considered what punishment he would hand down on the naughty teens across the table from him.

Up until that moment earlier that morning, both of them thought they had gained…the upper hand over their sitch. They were stuck together until the solvent could be found, but they figured they were actually in control of how their bodies were joined. Maybe there was more of the stuff lurking just below the surface of their skin, or maybe they just got into a position where the bond had shifted unexpectedly. They had no clue which.

The problem was that, unlike most of the day before, they couldn't quite get the leverage they needed to shift the bond back to their side and hip. Not only was Ron's hand rooted to where it had come to rest, so was his entire arm. That made them think back to their ordeal in Barkin's office. It had taken both of them prying, along with help from the large man, to get their arms free at the time.

That made them both think the unthinkable. They would somehow have to get up, cross the room, climb the main staircase and do something Kim would normally never consider – going into her parent's room uninvited. Not only that, it would be painfully obvious that at least Ron had been up to no good on the couch, despite her Dad's best designs.

They redoubled their efforts to get disentangled from each other on their own.

Moving the contact point was like moving the sticky residue of a label that had been peeled off. They could get it off one place, but they couldn't get it to let go completely. Ron finally managed to get his elbow and part of his arm loose, but his hand remained firmly attached, not having any place for the bond to go. It was clear he would have to get first his fingers, then his hand free and let the bond travel back down his arm, the same way it apparently had come.

They were still struggling like that when the stairway light came on. Moments later, a lithe figure was silhouetted in the door.

Both of them flushed deep crimson, so much so that it was probably visible in the dim light. To make matters worse, Kim's top had been pulled partially up so she could assist with her own hands.

The scene looked far worse than it actually was. It had the appearance of them struggling to get her top completely off, though it had only been pulled up for purely practical purposes.

Kim's Mom didn't say a word, only set to helping them get back to their previous status quo. Once that had been accomplished, she shooed them up to her room, figuring there they might actually do some sleeping after getting caught once.

Exhausted, and utterly humiliated, Kim quickly fell into a deep sleep once she was in her own bed, despite the fact they were both facing execution later that morning. Ron, being Ron, wasn't far behind her, though his hands remained propped behind his head the remainder of the night, lest his hands go 'exploring' in his sleep.

The kitchen was awfully quiet that morning, neither adult speaking to them as they sat down to a breakfast of eggs and bacon. Kim had an odd thought that perhaps it wasn't proper to be serving her boyfriend a pork product, but she quickly remembered he would eat just about anything, whether it was considered kosher or not.

Kim almost spit her fried egg out and Ron tried to shrink under the table when her Dad finally spoke.

"Ronald, what exactly are your plans for my Kimmie-cub?"

They looked at each other once more, both of them swallowing hard.

"I…uh…we…"

James looked over the top of his paper, his face much more pleasant than either of them expected it to be. Somehow, he didn't have the look of righteous retribution.

"I understand your cousin Reuben is getting married next week. I was just wondering if you were going to take Kim along with you…as a date."

The teens both sat there slack jawed for a moment. Kim finally looked over at her Mom, who fixed her with her own steely glare for a moment, then smiled tenderly at her.

"I hadn't thought about that much, Dr. P. I've kinda had my hands full the last couple days...OW!" He yelped as Kim roughly jabbed him in the ribs.

James caught the motion, but apparently didn't know the why behind it. He just grinned at them. "Girls, girls. Don't make me separate you two. Separate you two. The old man's still got it."

"Ha-ha, separate…funny." Ron laughed half-heartedly.

"So not funny, Dad." Kim muttered. She took one more bite of her eggs, then gave Ron's knee a slight squeeze. "I didn't know Reuben was getting married. Why didn't you mention it, Ron?" Kim asked, still shocked that her Mom apparently had kept the early morning festivities to herself.

"I kinda sorta've been blocking it out. It's complicated."

Kim rolled her eyes slightly. Once they were free from each other there would be time to get a proper explanation from her paramour.

"I think it might be a foregone conclusion who might be coming back with the bouquet." Kim's Mom said as she sat down at the table with her own plate of food. She gave her daughter a slight wink.

Kim blushes as James glared at Ron. Much as he liked the boy, sixteen was far to young for them to be considering such things as marriage.

They were spared any further discussion on the subject when the Kimmunicator beeped from the corner of the table. Kim picked it up, wiping her mouth with one hand as she pressed the accept button with the other. "Hey, Wade."

"Morning, Kim. I've been getting some funny biometric readings from the Kimmunicator…"

"No big." She quickly changed the subject, both wanting to steer the convo away from what may have caused those readings, and wondering exactly what her tech-guru could see with the device's sensors when it was supposed to be turned off. "Wade, tell me I about to lose one hundred forty pounds." She glanced over at Ron, who didn't even seem to notice the reference to his weight as he hungrily downed another strip of bacon.

"Sorry, not yet. But I thought you should know I've been registering power surges all over the globe."

"Dementor!" Kim growled.

"I haven't been able to pin down an epicenter yet, but I'll let you know the moment I do."

"Please and thank you." She chirped pleasantly as she shut the device off.

Putting her hand over Rons, she twined her fingers with his, giving them a slight squeeze. "Looks like we get to spend the day together."

"Booyah! So, what's it going to be? Batting cages?"

"I don't think so. How are you going to swing a bat without hitting me in the head?"

"Oh." He seemed lost in thought for a moment. "The pool at the Y is open. We could chill, and maybe you could wear that…" He trailed off as her Dad's expression darkened slightly. He still wasn't completely on-board with the fact they still had to bathe together.

"If I went to the pool there, I'd want to swim some laps, and I don't see that happening with you attached to me. How about some shopping. They have a new color at the makeup counter than I think would work for me."

"KP, you don't need makeup, you're fine the way you are."

She gave him a light kiss on his cheek. "That's sweet, but I still want to try it out."

"I dunno, Kim. Me, at the makeup counter, dodging the sales-girls who like to spray cologne on you…not my scene."

"Pwease?"

Ron froze. That word alone told him what he would see when he looked back at his girlfriend. Her bottom lip would be sticking out, and her already large green eyes would be the size of saucers. Her 'rents might have been able to resist, but he was utterly powerless against one of her most powerful weapons.

"You're doing the Puppy-Dog-Pout, aren't you?"

"Wouldn't my big, strong boyfriend want to do anything to please me?" She asked, still using the stilted voice.

Unable to stop himself, he finally looked over at her, getting the PDP at full power.

"Okay." He said, surrendering to her superior tactics.

"…but not cologne!" He said as she dragged him away from the table and up the stairs so they could change into their day clothes.

a/n - The Drakken/Shego scene is adapted directly from Skinny-Mini's "Stop Hovering" comic on DevArt. She's got some really great stuff, and you can see some of it in my favorites there. Her rendition of them is dead-on model. You can also see where the story is going next, if you're paying attention.
Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney