I do NOT own Kim Possible.

Concerning the nightmares Ron and Shego are having. They will be the focus of a large part of the story. For now all I will say is that the nightmares are not linked. Each one is having their own separate nightmare(s) and they have a different cause.

Ron and Shego and the Homework Sitch, or Gender Bender

The days had passed and Mystery Meat day had returned once again to Middleton High. Once again the infamous substance had half the students packing their own lunches while the rest sneaked off campus to buy something more edible. Figures, Ron thought. The substance was once again extra disgusting. Too much so even for him. This used to be my favorite part of school, the sidekick thought to himself. Now it's the worse. He recalled how lunch period had usually ended with the few students who did buy the mysterious substance leaving it on their plates. He and Rufus would have a field day eating all the leftovers. It had been heaven, he thought.

He lifted Rufus out of his pocket and offered the noxious substance to him. The naked mole rate held its nose, squeaked "No way," and dove back into Ron's pocket. Ron shrugged and pushed the plate holding the substance away. He hated to see food go to waste but ... He shuddered. The alternative was just too much. And here he had pulled Rufus away from his attempt to beat the world record at Zombie Mayhem all for nothing.

He considered his options carefully. Make a run for it, off campus to get food, or sneak in and make use of the Home Ec. room. The school entrance he knew would be guarded by Barkin and Barkin would be keeping an eye out for him. On the other hand the Home Ec. room would be empty. Even Barkin couldn't be in two places at once and the joy of hunting down and giving detention to the hundred or so students who would be making a run for it would be too much for the teacher to resist. And he didn't really need much time to prepare something. It should be safe. Then there was the 'Book' as he called it. It would be a good time to test it out.

In the Home Ec. room he whirled into action. Chicken was fried, potato salad prepared, coffee was brewed. It was, by his standards, a pretty simple meal, but it would get him through the day. Especially since I can eat it in class, he thought. That is where the 'Book' came in. A week ago the library had discarded half of its books to make room for new ones. Ron had taken the largest book he could find. Large enough that it would barely fit into his backpack. He had then glued the pages together and hollowed out the book. It made the perfect disguise for sneaking food into class. He was excited. He stuffed the prepared meal into some plastic containers and shoved them into the book. Just in time as the bell rang signalling the end of lunch break.

It was only in class that he realized his big mistake. A mistake so obvious, so overwhelmingly ridiculous, that he considered it the sort of mistake Drakken would make. He had sat down in class, the Book in front of him, with the expectation of a delicious meal soon to be gobbled down only to see the whole class turn and stare at him. He had looked at the Book on his desk and then at the books on their desk. The obvious had sunk in. The class didn't use a book that large, no class did. Having it there just made him stick out like a sore thumb. There was no way he could sneak food out of the Book without the whole class watching. Reluctantly he had put the Book back in his backpack and taken out his regular book for the class. Somehow, he decided, I will make it to the next meal. Somehow. He sighed and looked up. Kim was there sitting in the seat in front of him, Mark was across from her. He forgot the meal and thought instead, Somehow I will make it to the next class.

Shego was bored. She flipped a page in her magazine and sighed. As usual she tuned out Dr. D's ranting and wondered what to do. In the lair there weren't many options. If she left the lair then there was Global Justice. Sure she had a pretty good disguise but a tactic would only work so many times. They had a dozen potential ways to track her and if they found out she was using a disguise then they would switch to another method.

She was also pissed. Dr. D. had forgotten to install a coffee maker in the lair. She had made sure he would remember next time. She flipped another page. This time she had really made sure he would remember the word coffee. She looked at the mad scientist. He wore a collar around his neck, on it was engraved the word, COFFEE. She looked back to her magazine.

"Shego? Shego?" Dr. D's voice eventually got through to her.

"What's it this time Dr. D." She asked, wondering who's invention he would ask her to rip off this time.

"Capture the Buffoon." The mad scientist ordered.

"Huh? The Buffoon? But why?" He had her attention now.

"So I can lure Kim Possible into my trap." The mad scientist cackled.

Shego sighed. Is he dumb or what ... "Dr. D., you know you really don't need bait to lure Kim Possible here. She's going to arrive the second you try to take over the world whether you like it or not."

"It's my plan Shego. Do as I say." The mad scientist ignored her comment.

"Okay okay." She muttered. "Just one thing first." She lit a fist just to make sure she had his attention. "Dismantle that damned self-destruct button he always pushes."

"Shego, there's no need for that. He will be in chains."

Shego growled. She lit both fists. "Dismantle it now! Or ..." She turned and threw plasma at the wall.

The mad scientist got the idea and hastily went to work dismantling the self-destruct. Shego wasn't happy until he had completely dismantled that section of the built-in console that came with the lair, courtesy of Jack Hench.

Shego grabbed the hovercraft and left. She figured the Buffoon would be leaving school around this time. She hovered above the entrance and found out she was right. Students poured out and scattered. She spotted the Buffoon leaving alone and wondered where Princess was. A fight would have been nice. Oh well, seems this is going to be easy. Too easy. She thought.

Shego let the hovercraft hover ten feet above the boy and opened the door. She fired a bolt of plasma at him. Not enough to really hurt him, just enough to knock him unconscious for a few minutes. She blinked as the sidekick ducked the attack and took off running. Seems it's a chase then. Still easy. She dropped out of the hovercraft and gave chase.

Ron was hungry, not having eaten since breakfast. His stomach rumbled and he thought, just a few more minutes to the house. Then food!

Rufus was in his pocket. The mole rat was eager to get back to Zombie Mayhem. He had been spending ages the last few weeks on the game. Poor guy is getting addicted, Ron thought to himself.

Rufus poked his head out of Ron's pants and looked around. He wanted to see how far they were from the house so he could back to his game. He looked up and saw Shego with her arm extended about to fry his master. "Danger! Run! Ron! Run!" He squeaked.

Ron was running from the instant he had heard Rufus utter the word danger. He felt what he knew to be plasma miss his back by inches, if not less. It left his back tingling. That was close, he thought as he kept running, considering what to do. There was no way he could outfight Shego. In a certain environment he might outrun her. This wasn't one of them. He was going to be captured. He dodged automatically, knowing she would be sending more plasma his way. "Rufus, get Kim." He told the naked mole rat. Then as he dodged around a corner he dropped the naked mole rat in a trash can. He kept running, dodging.

Shego gave chase. She had chased the Buffon before a few times, not really giving it any thought. This time she did. She came to a startled conclusion. He's running, but he's not running blindly. She had always thought with his yells and obvious signs of panic the Buffoon was just blindly running. She watched as he dodged around obstacles. He knows he can't outrun me. I'm faster. Plus a straight line would make him an excellent target for plasma. No, he's running around stuff that he knows I got to dodge too. And the dodging does slow me down a bit. Not enough for him to get away, I'm more agile. But it does slow me down. Plus if he's dodging around obstacles then it makes him a harder target for plasma. He's not panicking, or at least if he is, he's still thinking. This was interesting. She wasn't bored any more. Or at least not as much as she had been.

Ron wished he had time to drop the backpack he had on. The weight was hampering him a little. It wasn't making a big difference but it was making some. He saw a parking lot ahead and ran for it. It was full of transport trucks. Reaching it he began to twist and turn, dodging around the trucks. Here Shego had no open view of him that would last long enough for her to aim plasma. She might see him long enough to blindly toss some his way, but not to aim it. Plus the split seconds he could dodge out of view behind a truck would help keep the distance between them. She would have to pause long enough as she rounded each truck to determine which way he had gone. Or she could take the high ground, he thought. He considered that possibility.

Shego leapt to the top of one of the trucks. It will, she thought, give me a better view of the Rodent. She'd decided the way he was able to dodge and keep running deserved the name Rodent more than Buffoon. She easily tracked where the Rodent was and aimed. Her plasma missed as he dodged and then scrambled under a truck. Your mistake Rodent, she thought and jumped. She fell back on her behind. Rising she slipped again. The ground around her was covered in grease. My bad luck, she thought but then remembered the Rodent had just scurried over the same spot. The grease hadn't been there then. Shego growled as she realized the Rodent must have somehow dropped some grease on the ground just as he hid beneath the truck. That makes random jumping a bad idea, she fumed. She looked under the trucks to see if she could spot him. She saw nothing. Either he had fled the scene, not likely in the two seconds or so she had been delayed. Or he was hiding behind the wheels of one of the trucks. She took the high ground again, leaping to the top of another truck and began her search.

Ron listened carefully. Focusing only in the direction Shego was. Soon as he heard her land on a truck roof he dropped down and slid under the truck he'd been hiding behind. He stayed there considering his options. He couldn't make a run for it. Shego would spot him. He wondered how long it would take Rufus to find Kim. He sighed. Staying here would buy a few seconds, but eventually she would look under the trucks again. It would take too long to break into one of them to hide. She would spot him in that time. He sighed again. Options were low. There was one though. He recalled camp Wannaweep and cringed. He'd learned things there other than crafts and pain. He blocked out the memories of pain. He had no time for that now. He crawled out from under the truck.

Shego searched, seeing no signs of him. She cursed. This was not the easy chase she'd expected. She heard a sound behind her. She whirl around and searched. She jumped around, from truck to truck, searching for any sign of the Rodent. She was pretty sure the sound had been close. He couldn't be too far away.

Ron listened Shego as she jumped. He drew in his breath, curled his tongue and made another sound. Just random noise, but it was projected away from him. Throwing his voice had been one of the those other skills he'd learned at camp Wannaweep. One of the counsellors had tried to teach it to the kids to entertain them. He'd been going in to be a stage magician and knew quite a few tricks. Ron had been intrigued. It was something cool he could show Kim when he got back home. Of couse he'd never done that. By the time he got back home camp had been something he hated. He wanted no memory of it. He listened to Shego continue the search, jumping again and again. He drew in his breath, curling his tongue again.

Shego was furious. Somehow the Rodent was running around the truck and crawling under it in every which way. Look as she might she couldn't spot him. She was tossing plasma bolts at the ground in pure fury hoping to drive him out into the open. Jumping again she heard a sound and looked. At last, she thought as she jumped. She'd spotted a bit of color under one of the trucks, as if the Rodent was trying to hide there but wasn't quite far enough under the truck to be fully hidden. Her eyes were wide, watching the ground in case there was more grease, there wasn't. She landed and dropped to the ground, hands reached out ready to grab or throw plasma as the situation demanded. She froze. There was no one there, just a tiny scrap of cloth. She'd been tricked ... pain blossomed in her leg and she whirled around, still on the ground.

Ron had tore a part from his jersey and left it for Shego to spot. Then throwing his voice he listened as Shego continued jumping around. In position he uttered the last few sounds and heard her jumped to the ground just a few feet away around the corner of a truck from him. He gave her a second and then rounded the truck, dropped a handful of grease, and kicked with all his might at the back of her knee. He heard her scream and she turned with blinding speed. He took off. Hiding again. The grease had been found in a pail a while back. Not an unusual item in these types of places.

She threw plasma as she tried to turn around but slipped on the grease. It threw off her aim. She cursed. He vanished behind the corner of a truck and she tried to jump to her feet. The grease on the ground sent her back to the ground. The fact her knee now hurt like hell didn't help any. She blasted the corner of the truck where he'd fled. This was not going the way she'd expected. Jumping around on the top of the trucks was now out of the question. Well she could, but with her knee as it was it wasn't worth it. Plus he now had the advantage in agility for running. He was, she realized, thinking at least one step ahead of her. To be outwitted by the Rodent was unthinkable.

Ron fled. He wondered how bad Shego's knee had been hurt and how far he could get. The chase wasn't over yet. She had other resources. All he could do was run and hope Kim showed up. If she did then Shego, with her bad knee, would have no choice but to give up the chase.

Reluctantly Shego called the hovercraft and it appeared seconds later. She limped in and started to search for the Rodent from the air. She wondered just how far he could have gone. She'd expected a short chase, something to break the monotony. She'd gotten more than she'd asked for. The infrared scanners of the hovercraft showed only three sources that were human sized within a hundred meters. Only one of which could be the Rodent. She was above his location in seconds.

Ron sensed a movement in the air. An hovercraft, cloaked, he realized. The chase will soon be over. He ducked under another truck, plasma burned the ground only inches away. He had nowhere to run. He knew what he would do if he were Shego.

Shego set the hovercraft to maintain a position directly above the transport truck the Rodent had hid under. She then started to demolish the truck with bolt after bolt of plasma. Eventually the Rodent would be forced out from under it. If he tried to run in either direction she would have a clear view to fry him. Stun him, not fry him, she reminded herself.

Actually she wasn't angry at the Rodent. She was angry at herself. She could have hunted him down using the hovercraft right from the start and had chosen not to. Shego was someone who bored easily. Chasing him down on the ground had been a way to add a bit of excitement. She hadn't expected it to be a real chase, and she had never expected to be outwitted by the Rodent. It had been, she thought, a good chase. It was just embarrassing to lose to the Rodent. It was sort of like playing with the Princess. Shego had decided she would only use her powers to a certain limit. What Kim Possible had seen of her plasma power was just the beginning.

Shego wasn't plasma proof. The more plasma she used the more it could backfire on her. And the more she used the more it could hurt. Shego shuddered. Having your whole body engulfed in what was basically fire wasn't fun. Her body emitted electro-magnetic forces that created the plasma. Normally it would also keep the plasma from touching her skin, but that could fail if she lost focus, or if something disrupted the plasma. When it did, she was the one who burned. She recalled how Hego had forced her to train and cursed his name.

She saw a hand reach out from under the truck waving something white. She held back on the next barrage of plasma. The Rodent crawled out from under the truck, looking only a little worse for wear. Shego landed the hovercraft next to him and ordered, "In. You're being kidnapped."

Ron stepped in the hovercraft. "Hey Shego." He said. He hoped she wasn't too mad over the knee.

Shego started to pat him down, looking for hidden devices. Wade, she knew, could cook up just about anything. But most of the stuff seemed to go to Princess or her new boy toy. She pulled off his backpack and started to toss it away.

"Hey. Those are my book, I need those for studying." Ron spoke up. It was true. He'd not just started working out physically but was also trying to improve in class. Like his physical workouts the results were mixed.

Shego looked at him. The sense of the surreal had started again. He should be cowering. Or something. Not speaking to her normally like they were ordinary people chatting in a supermarket. She sighed. She went to toss the bag out again.

"You know Shego, I'm probably going to be chained up in some lair for some time. You might as well let me have something to keep busy with."

Shego sighed again. Oh well, what could he have? They hardly ever give him any of the devices. She opened the bag and checked through it. Books. Nothing dangerous there. Pens and pencils. She threw the pens away. Who knew what could be in those. And last of all a calculator. That she made sure to toss out. She wondered just how wise it was to let him keep anything. She shrugged and tossed the bag at his feet. It could, she thought, be a sort of thank you for a good chase.

Ten minutes later they were back at the lair. Again, why does he build those things so close to Middleton? Shego wondered, not for the first time.

"Hey Shego. Why does Drakken always build his lairs so close to Middleton. You know how easy that makes it for Kim?" The Rodent asked.

Shego sighed. Even the Buff... Err, Rodent, knows that much, she thought. She kept quiet.

Drakken looked up as Shego dragged the Buffoon into the lair. "You're hurt Shego? You're limping?"

"I banged it in the hovercraft door." She explained.

He blinked. "The hovercraft door. How did that happen?"

"Shutup and never mind." Shego growled.

She lit a fist and Drakken wisely went back to work. She heard the Rodent suppress a snigger as she gave her explanation. "Quiet!" She ordered and dragged him to a cell. She tossed him inside and chained him to the wall. He had enough chain to move a little. Enough to sit and do homework, she thought. She left him and headed to the kitchen. All the plasma she'd used demanded calories. A lot of them. She sighed. Most women had to diet to keep their figure, she had to eat like crazy. Not that she minded, usually. But in the last few lairs the kitchen had not been well stocked. In fact all this lair had was more bloody peanut butter and bread. Same as the last one. She sighed.

Ron sat in his cell. He wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. That collar Drakken had been wearing with the word COFFEE on it was ... He sat down and snorted, trying not to laugh too much. He didn't want to bring Shego in, plasma flying. Then he remembered. Coffee, and not just coffee. He quickly opened his book bag.

Shego munched on one of the ten slices of bread she'd put peanut butter on. Drakken was busy at something, muttering about sex. She was pretty sure she didn't want to listen to Dr. D. talk about sex. Might as well check on the Buffoon and see how he's doing in captivity, she decided. She had also decided to forgive him for the embarrassment of outwitting her. Bad enough to be outwitted by a Buffoon, let a lone a Rodent, she added, thinking to herself.

She reached the cell door, opened it and peeked in. She froze. She blinked. She slammed the door shut again. Not real, I'm hallucinating, I didn't see that, she screamed to herself. She opened the door again and peeked in. She close the door again. Not real. I checked his bag. I patted him down. She looked at the bread and peanut butter she had. Lack of decent food is driving me around the bend. That's it. She opened the door again. There sat the Buffoon, drinking coffee, munching on a chicken leg, with a book spread out in front of him. He was reading the book, muttering something about integration and derivatives. He looked up. Shego felt that sense of everything being surreal increase again.

"Hey Shego! Want a chicken leg? There's also some coffee and potato salad. Help yourself." He went back to reading.

Shego sighed. If it's a dream, she decided, at least it has coffee in it. She went over, sat down across from the Buffoon, poured herself a cup of coffee and grabbed a chicken leg. It was good. Not your usual fare, she thought. Herbs and spices that create an unusual flavor but it works. And it's fried to perfection. She took a sip of coffee. It wasn't a blend she'd had before but it was also exceptionally good if a little too cold. She held a finger over it and soon it was hot. She looked up. The Buffoon was looking at her. It was as if he was pleading for something.

"What?" She asked.

Ron held out his cup.

Shego blinked. Oh, she realized. She held out a finger and soon his cup of coffee was nice and hot too. So he can make food appear out of nowhere, but he can't warm a cup of coffee. That, she noted, just makes things seem even more surreal.

She looked at the book he was trying to read. It was math of some sort. It didn't look like high school material. The Buffoon seemed to be having trouble with it.

"That what they teaching in high school these day?" She found herself asking.

"Sort of. Kim is in the advanced class so those are the classes I end up taking too. She gets straight As most of the time while I got to struggle just to get a pass." He sighed. "Of course she's got to work for those As, stuff is tough even for her. Only Justin and Felix ace everything."

Shego sat thinking. So the Buffoon is in the advanced class. Why does that surprise me? He can build doomsday devices for crying out loud. Question should be why isn't he acing the stuff like those two he mentioned, Justin and Felix. The educator in her was curious. She did after all have a degree in education and psychology. She studied him some more.

"So you can break into a top security area with no problem and build a doomsday device no problem, but math has you stumped?" She finally asked.

Ron shrugged. "Those two things were just luck. Only thing I'm good at is cooking. I can look at a recipe once and remember it word for word. Every degree and every measurement. But anything else and I'm lost." He sighed. "Don't guess it's a big deal. I mean I am going to be a chef. Still be nice to get good grades and not be thought of as an idiot."

Shego thought for a few moments and then grabbed some paper and a pencil from his supplied. On it she wrote:

Buffoon and Rodent Recipe

- bake coffee at 147C

- boil tea at 99C

- stir paper and rinse, baked at 200C

- peel potatoes, dice, boil at 174C

...

She wrote fifty lines of nonsense. She held it in front of him, keeping hold of the paper. "Read." She ordered. She counted to sixty and removed the paper. "Recite." She ordered. To her amazement he did so. The recipe was nonsense, just random items she'd thought of with temperatures. Yet he recited it all, word for word. Unbelievable, she thought. He remembered well over a hundred details, the items and the temperatures, in a minute. She let the paper fall to the ground. And he thinks he's an idiot. She remembered Zorpox and shuddered. Same brain, same knowledge, same capacity, she realized.

"When you were planning the break-in how did you organize it?" She asked.

"I just studied all the plans and then wrote down all the details. It really made my head hurt. Ended up writing everything down step by step. Sort of like I do for a recipe."

Shego nodded. "So when you do homework, handle it like you would a recipe. How are you at history?"

"Terrible." Came the reply.

"So write down all the details you need to learn like you would a recipe. You should then be able to memorize it. What was on that paper was gibberish, yet you remembered it no problem. It should work the same for any subject. Then try to understand it the way you would a recipe. Try it with the math you're doing now."

Ron thought for a few seconds. Then he started writing, starting with 'Recipe for the Chain Rule.' It took him an hour too fully think it out and write it down as a recipe. But it made sense. For the first time since he'd started calculus the Chain Rule made sense. He blinked as he read through what he'd written and realized that.

Shego saw the understanding in his eyes. I wondered if he can make more coffee appear, she wondered and pushed the thought away. That way lay madness. "Now apply it." She ordered.

Ron did so. It took five minute to do homework he had thought would take five hours. And like a recipe, he realized, I won't ever forget it. I know this now.

"Shego. Kim Possible is here." The voice came from somewhere and they both looked up.

"Guess I better be going, Buffoon." She said. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Be seeing you again soon Shego. Thanks for helping with the homework. That recipe trick really works." He smiled at her, and began to gather his stuff together.

"Won't be seeing me too soon Buffoon, those chains are titanium, as is the door." She took off. The whole time she'd been in that room things had seemed surreal. She shook it off. The rest had her knee back to almost a hundred percent and she had Princess to fight.

Ron looked at a binder. He sighed. It couldn't be helped and he started tearing it apart. Soon he had two long, thick, wires. He took two erasers and punched a hole through them. Looking at the electrical outlet in the cell he wondered just how much voltage it had. Enough, he hoped. He took off his belt, something he'd only started to wear recently, and wrapped it around his wrist inside of the chain. Soon he had a very crude cutting torch and, he hoped, enough protection not to electrocute himself with what he was about to try. He didn't. Five minutes later the cuffs on both hands were gone. He'd considered the time but knew this couldn't be rushed. He put the badly burned belt back on. It really helped with certain mishaps he was famous for.

He looked at the door and sighed. Do idiots make these lairs, he wondered. The hinges were inside the door. Right where a person can get at them, he thought. He went to the cot in the cell and started ripping at it to get at the spring. He ended up needing his cutting torch again to cut the wire, not having anything else to use. He was very aware of the time passing.

All in all it took him fifteen minutes to get out of the cell. Way too long, he knew. Wonder how it's going with KP.

He peered into the main room of the lair and gasped. There were at least forty synthodrones in the lair. No wonder we didn't see any on the last few missions, he was saving them up for this. Kim and Mark he saw were both tied up in a corner. With forty synthodrones plus Shego Drakken had had overwhelming force this time around.

Drakken was cackling evilly about his Gaminator 2.0 which resembled the machine from the last mission they'd had against Drakken. Ron wondered what it did. Drakken's rambling was really hard to understand. He also noted the dismantled self-destruct device and sighed. That would have been too easy. The backpacks the two carried for missions was close by the door, right beside him. Lucky, he admitted.

He wondered if Rufus was around. He tapped two fingernails gently on the floor. No one could hear that, but to a mole rat used to underground lairs it was entirely different. The little guy came running, keeping out of sight of the two villains. Taking Kim's laser lipstick out of her backpack he gave it to him and told him, "free them." Speaking as low as he could. The naked mole rat nodded and took off.

Both Shego and Drakken had their back to the door he was in. He moved into the open and waved. Mark saw him. Ron put a finger to his lips indicating 'quiet.' Mark pretended not to see him, staring instead at Drakken and Shego. Ron could see that the corner of his eye was on him though. He tried with crude sign language to get him to understand they weren't to move even when Rufus freed them. He hoped they understood. Even if they were freed with forty synthodrone and Shego to fight they would just be captured again in less than a minute. He watched as Mark whispered to Kim.

The dismantled console with the self-destruct was out in the open, just behind Drakken and Shego. They were focused on whatever contraption it was that Drakken had built. Ron crept to the console and studied the ruins. If Shego turned even a little this way she would spot him. He gently sighed and kept low and tried to be as quiet as possible.

He studied the console. He had an innate understanding of machines. It was something he had only started to realize recently but it was true. Where it came from he wasn't sure. Maybe from being around the tweebs as Kim called them. They made enough inventions that maybe some of that ability had rubbed off on him. Or maybe it was all the doomsday machines he'd seem. Or maybe ... It didn't matter. He studied the console and had a basic understanding of how things should work. The two wires leading out of the wall was where the signals would be sent to the destruct device that was somewhere in a lower level of the lair. Basic.

He began to rewire it. The console had had dozens of functions. He only needed to put one back in order and even that one just enough to get it to work once. It took four minutes. When it was done he sighed again. All he needed to do was press a button. Even he could do that.

But ... He sighed. Curiosity killed the cat, he told himself. He stood up and cleared his throat. Both Drakken and Shego nearly banged into the ceiling as they jumped.

Shego whirled around. The Buffoon was there, not more than eight feet from her. Things started to seem surreal for her again. That cell had been practically a solid box of titanium. At least the self-destruct doesn't work, she noted to herself. This is as close as Dr. D. has even been to actually succeeding. She went to lit a hand to toss some plasma his way but the Buffoon held up his hands, she held off on the plasma wanting to see what he had to say.

Drakken pointed at him and said. "Buffoon." As thought he were surprised. He too held off doing anything else as Ron spoke.

"You know Drakken, in all that rambling you never did really come out and say what that machine does." He saw Kim watching him surprised. He was glad she was staying still. He hadn't been sure if she would just get up and attack Shego. She was like that. Focused.

Ron pointed at the Gaminator 2.0. "Just what does it do?" He asked.

"It's a Gender Bender." Drakken said, as if that answered everything.

Ron sighed. He looked at Shego as if asking her to explain.

She shrugged. "Don't look at me. I never pay attention to his ideas anymore."

Drakken sighed and spoke as if talking to children. "It changes people's gender." He said.

"What?" Everyone in the room spoke at the same time with the exception of Drakken. Kim and Mark, still didn't move. Ron guessed they were as shocked as he was.

Shego went pale. "Dr. D. Are you saying if you fire that machine I will turn into a guy?" She didn't seem too pleased with the idea.

"No no no, Shego. It won't do that." Drakken exclaimed, obviously puzzled why no one could understand what he meant.

Shego breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived.

"It just switches ones gender identify." He paused wondering if he should it explain more. '"It makes straight people gay and gay people straight." He finally said.

Shego, not to mention everyone in the room with the exception of Drakken, were froze in shock.

Finally Ron turned to Mark and said. "Dude, please be gentle with me."

"I'll try." Mark spoke back, nearly in a whisper. He wondered how Ron could joke in such a situation.

"Like hell." Shego tossed plasma at the machine.

"Shego what are you doing? Stop that. Besides it's totally one hundred percent plasma proof. I've had too much stuff destroyed when you got angry over some trivial matter." Drakken wondered why Shego was so upset, after all the world would soon be theirs. He pressed a button and the machine started to glow.

Drakken cackled. "In two minutes everyone's gender will be switched. In the confusion I will take control of the world."

Kim and Mark were on their feet ready to fight. Shego had her hands lit again. Obviously a fight was about to start. Ron cleared his throat again. Everyone turned to look at him.

"Hey Shego?" Ron asked. "You mind if I destroy that?"

She shook her head in a daze. If anyone could break the machine she knew it was the Buffoon. "Go ahead." She stepped out of the way.

"Hey Shego what are you doing? The world is ours!" Drakken was confused.

Ron pressed the self-destruct. The countdown started. TWENTY, NINETEEN, ...

Shego stared at the console, at the self-destruct button on it. She thought she was in love with that button. And the sound of the countdown.

Ron cleared his throat again. Again everyone looked at him. "Shouldn't we all be running right now?"

End of Chapter.

Ron is still cooking great food, Shego still feels things are surreal when he's around. She only helped with the homework because to her it was a curious problem to pass the time on. Besides she had great food so she was in a good mood. She gets bored a lot.

Not much dialogue with Kim or Mark, but this chapter ended up way longer than what I had expected. Other chapters will have more concerning them.