Finally finished Chapter Four!

"Okay. Woo." Shego locked the lair's front door behind her, leaned against it, and sighed, loud and long, like she was the one whose body was doing everything she didn't want it to and nothing it was supposed to. And whose brain was snarled up into a knot she couldn't possibly untangle. And who had just made a fool of herself in front of her best friends and her worst enemies. And who needed to stop thinking about this, right now, because she was breaking out in a sticky sweat that formed little bubbles on her upper lip, and she was pretty sure supervillains weren't supposed to do that, either.

Drakken heaved a sigh of his own and hiccuped again, feeling his Adam's apple bob in his throat. So far, getting home didn't seem to have done much good. The lair was whirling around and around, just like HenchCo's basement - and the sidewalk - and the stars. He shuddered, and goosebumps prickled up his arms.

Drakken bent at the waist, trying to stop the gross churny feeling in his stomach. From this angle, he could see Shego better, and he tried to read her face. That was hard enough when his vision wasn't blurred and wobbly. Shego could make her face so blank sometimes, with no expression at all, which was kind of creepy. Made him a little jealous, actually - he could never make his own face look that smooth and cool, no matter how long he practiced in front of the mirror.

Shego's eyes met his, and she smiled a not-really-happy smile. It was almost as scary as the blank face. "Are we having fun yet?" she asked in that dry, sarcastic way she was good at.

Drakken opened his mouth to laugh - Shego could be pretty funny when it wasn't him she was mocking - but a strangled-sounding wail came out instead. Supervillains definitely weren't supposed to do that.

He clapped a hand over the general area of his oral cavity and looked around like he was wondering where the noise had come from. Maybe if he did that, Shego wouldn't know it had been him. Maybe she'd think it was Commodore Puddles. It sort of sounded like Commodore Puddles. . .

The room swayed - or was that him? Drakken couldn't tell. Weak in the knee region, he sagged back against the door, like Shego, and let himself slide down its length to the floor. His legs felt like sacks of wet oatmeal.

Ugh. Shouldn't have thought about food. "Shego," he hissed, swiping his hands through the air, clawing at nothing, for reasons he couldn't figure out. "I - I - I - I -"

Where were the right words? The only ones he could find were, "I need the bathroom."

Shego's eyes enlargened - widefied - whatever - they got bigger, and she reached over and grabbed his arm. Her grip was firm and hard - and tight, like a pair of handcuffs. His nerves freaked out and he jolted away from her, not understanding why.

And then, suddenly, he did understand, because he knew two things very clearly - well, as clearly as he could know anything right now. He hadn't expelled all the poison from his body, and he needed to get to a sink. Now.

Drakken tore down the hall, and a wall jumped directly into his path out of nowhere, for the second time tonight. Just like before, he wasn't able to dodge soon enough, and he crashed straight into it, face first. The pain receptors in his nose all woke up and started screaming.

Drakken spat out a swear word, surprising himself. He didn't usually talk like that. With his luck, his mother would probably hear him from all the way back in - what was that town called? - Middleton, and run across the ocean just to wash his mouth out.

He had a mental image of himself with his mouth full of soap, bubbling and foaming like he was a mad dog instead of a mad scientist. His stomach churned dangerously, and he pulled away from the wall and bolted to the bathroom door.

Three knobs stared back at him - well, they didn't really stare, because they didn't have eyes. Drakken pressed his lips together against his growing queasiness as he studied them. Let's see, Shego kept using the middle knobs, so they must work best. He grabbed the middle knob, felt its cool, solid, I-am-really-here weight against his gloved palm, and pulled with all his supervillain might.

Nothing. He squeezed his eyes shut so the turvy-topsy walls wouldn't distract him and yanked again. Still nothing. He wrenched, he tugged, he grunted and seethed and strained until he heard something pop, but the knob wouldn't budge.

Drakken opened his eyes to make sure he was holding the right one, but he couldn't see anything. The world was one big, cloudy smear, like he'd forgotten to to put in his contacts that morning. But he had had - he remembered it, because the right one had taken six blinks to focus, and that was a lot. Ooh - the poison was taking its toll, which was okay, since he was about to get rid of it, but he'd really prefer to do that in the sink. . .

"It swings in," said a disembodied, disdainful female voice from somewhere in the blur.

Oh. Right. Drakken blinked down at what he hoped was the knob, twisted his wrist, and pushed. The door popped open, which meant it wasn't there anymore to support the weight he hadn't realized he was leaning on it.

He stumbled into the bathroom, falling over his stupid feet in the process. Flailing his arms wildly, he managed to keep from falling on his sore face - or, worse, his churning stomach. He wound up lurching past the sink, but that was all right. He was sure his legs wouldn't be able to hold him much longer, and he had to stand up to reach the sink.

Okay. New plan. He dropped to his knees, slid across the floor to the toilet, flung open the lid, and retched.

()()()()()()

Don't let me die. Drakken rested his head on the toilet seat, its porcelain ice-cold against his damp cheek, and shook. Please, if anyone up there is listening, don't let me die.

He raised his head and squinted down at the toilet bowl, at the new water flowing in. It was as wobbly and shaky as he felt inside - and as blurry as everything else.

Why was his vision doing that? Was it an effect of the poison? Drakken didn't know - he'd never been poisoned before, unless you counted that one time at that quaint little Mexican restaurant, the one he could actually afford to eat at. (Turned out the food had been super-cheap for a reason.) But that had been food poisoning, not poisoning-poisoning. A little freaky, but not nearly as scary as this.

Drakken shivered and broke out in perspiration across his forehead and wriggled around in his lab coat to warm up. Or cool down. He wasn't sure which.

He also wasn't sure - never had been - why people said warm up and cool down. Was it because both sets of words were opposite? Was it because heat rose? Or was it just that way to confuse evil geniuses, to make them doubt their brilliance since they didn't understand it? Maybe it was all a massive good-guy conspiracy, thought up by that irritating adolescent cheerleader -

Drakken stopped and shook his head at himself, watching his crinkly reflection's head sway back and forth, too. He was too sleepy to ponder that right now. Much too sleepy - and very much too sick. He was so hot sweat dribbled down his forehead and plopped off his chin into the toilet, but so cold his teeth were chattering. He hadn't felt that way since the last time he'd had the flu.

Yeah. The flu. He let out a big breath, tried to calm down. Flu made you throw up and sweat and chatter your teeth and sometimes even made the room spin around you and he needed to stop thinking about it right now or he'd throw up again, and he couldn't do that. His throat already felt scraped-up and sore.

But there was a terrible feeling deep inside him that the flu had never caused. It was the sensation that he was spinning, worse than the room, going faster and faster until he drilled straight through the floor and fell into another world he couldn't escape from. There was nothing he could do, because his body had stopped listening to his commands. Drakken felt helpless and completely out of control.

He needed to get back to his room. Back to his bed, where he could bury his face in his pillow and pull the covers over his head and stay there until he felt like a supervillain again, instead of a scared little boy trying not to cry. It made him want to curl his lip at himself, the way everyone else already had.

Drakken put his hands on either side of the toilet seat and pushed himself to his feet. The room teeter-tottered, and a dizzy, too-warm wave of nausea washed over him. He bent back over the toilet, but his belly was so empty nothing came up except pain and a horrible wheezing sound.

He let his grip on the toilet loosen, sank to the floor, and slammed his eyes shut. The convulsions in his throat stopped, and he could breathe again.

That's right, Drakken. Just breathe.

Drakken curled over himself, trying to fold into a tiny ball the way Commodore Puddles did when he slept under his bed. Maybe that would make the shaky, shivery, spinny sense stop. Whoa - he just thought a lot of words that started with the letter "S." That should have been funny, but it wasn't.

It didn't matter, either. No matter how tight he squeezed himself up, how hard he hugged his legs and nuzzled his chin to his chest, the bathroom was still spinning. He couldn't see it anymore, but he could feel it, and that was one-thousand-and-twelve times worse.

He tried to lick at his lips, but his tongue was too rough and dry. He had to get to his room, where it was safe and the walls were stationary, and the bed was soft. . .

Drakken struggled to his feet again, with the same results. The unproductive heaves were worse than actually puking. It made him so angry he wanted to rip the toilet out of the floor and throw it through the wall. But he was too weak, and that made him even madder.

He lowered himself to the floor, turned over onto his stomach and pounded the ground with his fists, kicked at it with his feet, and shrieked until his voice was so hoarse he could barely hear himself. Sometimes that was the only way to get rid of the frustration that threatened to split his chest in two.

Finally, when his fists ached from being smashed into the floor and his legs hurt from kicking so hard, Drakken raised his head and peered through bleary eyes at the bathroom door. It was hanging slightly open in that way that drove him crazy, and it only looked a few feet away, but those feet might as well have been miles. Standing up was obviously out of the question, let alone putting one foot in front of the other. He was stuck - and he was going to die right here on this hard bathroom floor - and he really didn't want to die next to a toilet -

Calm drak, Downkin, his panicked brain commanded him. There are other ways to move besides walking. There have to be - you didn't walk until you were about a year old. How did you get around before that?

Well, let's see. Drakken looked down at his hand and let it unfold from its angry little fist. Mother had carried him a lot. That wasn't going to work, because she wasn't here (and because he was nearly a foot taller than her). But the rest of the time, he had -

Crawled!

Drakken felt his lips trembling up into a smile. He could do that! He was already basically on his hands and knees. All he had to do was pull himself to the door, and then Shego would help him back to his bedroom.

Gulping at the lump in his throat, he started to scramble toward the door. But the slick fabric of his lab coat, made even slipperier with sweat - like, how could sweat be sticky and slippery at the same time? - slid out from under him, and he landed on the ground, belly first. He gasped out loud at how bad it hurt.

Drakken fought back the lump again and gazed at the door, which seemed so very far away. That should have worked. Of course, lots of things that should have worked tonight hadn't. Like his stomach and his legs, and several lobes of his brain.

Okay, okay. He breathed in a ragged breath through his nose. If he couldn't crawl on all fours like a baby, maybe he could slither on his belly like a snake. That would be easier - and better for his villainous reputation, to boot. Snakes were much more menacing that babies. He wasn't scared of snakes, but lots of other people were.

Drakken grasped at the floor, trying to sink his nails in the linoleum. The tiles were cold under his shaking fingers - all twenty of them. And so smooth. Why hadn't they ever gotten a rug for the bathroom? "Too villainous," he'd said. Or was it not villainous enough?

Whatever. Drakken stretched his arms as far as they would reach and grabbed the floor again. His fingers were still trembling, but the ground didn't try to shake them off. It stayed still and safe.

He extended his neck until his head was even with his hands, then pulled his chest and torso after it. Slowly, carefully, he slid his hips forward. "Nonexistent hips," Shego had called them last week, when he'd lost his cowboy pants and had to wear that significantly less stylish barrel. But they existed, he knew. They had to exist, because he was moving them forward, and they were jittering as badly as everything else on him.

Last of all, he managed to drag his rubbery legs and almost-numb feet forward. There. He'd moved his whole body. The door was a little bit closer.

Good job, Drakken. Now you just have to do it again, his brain told him. At least, he was pretty sure that was what it had said. His thoughts were as scrambled and slurry as his speech.

Again? his muscles yelped back. You've got to be kidding; we're dyin' here!

Come on. Just one or two more times, said some other part of his body - he was too tired and dizzy to figure out which one. You can do it.

Drakken found enough stubborn determination to set his jaw. Yeah. He could do it. He was a feared mad scientist, a man in the prime of his life. He extended his arms again and groaned as his back crackled in protest.

Well, okay. Maybe a little past his prime.

He used his arms to scoot himself forward, first head, then neck, then chest, then stomach, then hips, then legs and feet. Then paused to rest. Let his head fall to the floor, squishing his cheek up and making it even harder to see. Panted for breath. Listened to the sound of the toilet gurgling in time with his stomach.

Drakken repeated the process of dragging himself by the arms until his hands were touching a different floor. This one was deep, dark red instead of tan, and smooth and flat rather than broken up into lots of little square tiles.

He felt his face break into a wobbly smile. It was the hallway! He'd made it!

Drakken flopped over onto his left side, innards sloshing, and grabbed the doorframe. Digging his fingers in as far as they would go, he struggled to his knees. The room quivered a bit, but not enough to make him fall.

Feeling a bit braver, he moved his grasp higher up and managed to get to his feet. He'd done it! He was upright!

Grinning triumphantly, Drakken let go of the doorframe. That was when the ground shifted forward and took him with it. Small, strong arms caught him for about the sixteenth time tonight.

He glanced down into a pale green blur that he guessed was Shego's face, closed his eyes, and held his breath, waiting for the perfectly chosen smart remark that would be just sharp enough to shatter his ego into millions of tiny pieces. As if it wasn't in ruins already.

But all he heard was "Dr. D?", like she wasn't sure that who he was at all. There was disgust in her voice, just like he knew there would be - but maybe something else was there, too. Maybe worry?

The terror in his chest thickened. If Shego was worried, something horribly bad must have been happening.

And it was. Something blinked in Drakken's brain then, clear and bright, just for a minute before it disappeared back into the murkiness - his head felt like it was full of ball bearings, heavy and metallic and weighing him down. But it was long enough for him to know something for sure, ninety-nine-point-nine-perfect, theory-changing-to-scientific-law sure.

It wasn't the floor that was tilting at obtuse angles and whirling in circles. It was him.

Drakken's mouth dried out. "Shego -" for the first time, he noticed he was pronouncing it "Suhego," and that frightened him - "what'sh wrong wif' me?"

Shego let out an I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that noise. "I told you before." Her voice was flat and cold again, which was sort of reassuring. That, at least, he was used to. "You. Are. Drunk."

Forget reassuring. The words hit him like one of those sassy cheerleader's kicks to the gut.

Drakken staggered backward, mind reeling. Him, the great and mighty Dr. Drakken, soon to be ruler of the world, drunk like some common thug? It couldn't be.

But then - there was the way the room spun. Not being able to walk without stumbling or talk without slurring. The way he couldn't think a clear thought, despite how hard he was trying. The throwing up. The randomly generated emotions. Being drunk made sense.

Except for one thing - one very important thing. He hadn't consumed any alcohol, and that was sort of required in order to get drunk. Could the punch have gone bad after he drank it? Were conditions in the human stomach suitable for fermentation? He should have known that, but he didn't. . . because he was drunk, even though he wasn't supposed to be, and he really didn't want to be.

Drakken took another step back and bumped into the doorframe. He shook his head, back and forth, back and forth. The ball bearings jostled around, clacking into each other, making his head hurt even worse. No matter how hard he wagged it, though, he couldn't shake out the memories flashing in his mind. Memories of things he'd seen on TV.

Men in westerns staggering out of saloons and puking in the street. People being dragged off to jail in handcuffs for driving drunk - "under the influence," they called in on cop shows. Someone who wasn't arrested in time crashing his car and killing six people.

A guy with one of those stubbly beards that every other adult male got if he didn't shave for three days, wearing a dirty undershirt and boxer shorts, slouched in a fold-up chair on his porch, a can of beer in his hand. Some lady - his wife? - stood over him, hands on her hips. A glare on her face. Obviously chewing him out. "You worthless drunk," she spat.

Worthless drunk.

Those words hit harder than any kick, even one in the face. He burst into tears, and not reflex ones. Horrible, whimpery, nose running sobs that, all things considered, he had every right to cry.

Shego made another disdainful sound, down lose in her throat. Before Drakken could even start to go prickly, she reached up and draped his arm around her shoulders, using her body to help prop up his. With steady, sure steps, she led him down the hallway, up a flight of stairs, around the shark tanks, past the torture chamber stocked with brain-tapping devices and DVDs of the worst in preschool television. The leaky kitchens sink mocked him, each drop seeming to say, "Drunk. Drunk. Drunk. You're drunk, drunk, drunk."

Finally, they reached his bedroom door. He recognized the the large black-with-white-letters "Keep Out!" sign, the only thing he'd been able to afford to buy from Jack Hench, that he'd put up to make entering his room more ominous. And the deep gashes in the wood, nicks he carved himself with the Feline Hypnotism Blade-Cutter-Thing to make it even more ominous. Everyone knew that a scarred-up door was undeniably villainous.

His hand traced the familiar, rough pattern under his eye, the way it always did when he thought of that blade. Fortunately, so was a scarred-up face.

Not that he felt particularly villainous at the moment. Good grief, how lame must he look, drippy-eyed and runny-nosed, leaning on his sidekick for support? Worse than embarrassed again, Drakken wrenched out of Shego's grasp. Drunk or not, he still had some dignity to maintain.

He took two steps, tripped over nothing, and stumbled, bonking against the half-open door and knocking it all the way open. With a thump, he landed on a very large, very flat surface that he guessed was his bed.

So much for dignity.

But the bed felt good, better than anything had all evening. It was so soft, and it sagged under his achy body in just the right way. Drakken felt himself sagging with it.

Grunting, he scooched himself forward with his elbows until his head bumped his pillow. His wonderful giant red pillow. Relief washed over him as he buried his face into the pillow and inhaled his own smell - a blend of chemicals from working in the lab, apple-scented shampoo from the shower he took yesterday, a little bit of sweat from the dreams that had had him tossing and turning all night.

Drunk. How could he possibly be drunk? And how did he get undrunk?

Drakken lifted his head, felt a shallow breath shudder through his lungs, watched a tear plop down onto the pillow, right next to his nose. Another dizzy spell came over him, and he squeezed his eyes shut to let it pass.

But it didn't. The bed seemed to flip completely upside-down and he clutched two handfuls of sheet to keep from going with it. The sick feeling clogged his throat again.

Drakken's eyes flew open, and he found himself staring at a green-and-black smudge. Shego. If anyone could fix this, she could. Shego could do just about anything. And, as frustrating as that was sometimes, it was just what he needed right now.

"Shego," he moaned. It came out "Suhego" again, but this time he didn't care. "Make it shtop."

The smudge's black mouth moved like she was saying something. He couldn't hear what. Maybe his ears were drunk, too. . .

Drakken could feel his eyelids drooping lower and lower, darkness taking over his vision. But that was okay. Darkness didn't spin. It was safe. He closed his eyes and let himself fall into it.

()()()()()()()()()

"Dr. D?"

No response.

"Yoo-hoo?" Shego waved her hand in front of her employer's face, even though his eyes were closed. "Yo, chief?"

Still nothing.

Okay, so he'd fallen asleep. Or passed out, depending on how much he'd had to drink.

Not that anyone would tell her that. She'd questioned Duff Killigan, Dementor, and all of Professor D's henchmen, but the responses had all been basically the same.

"I don't know."

"I wasn't keeping track."

"It's not my day to watch him."

No, it was her day. Like always.

If she had to hazard a guess, though, she'd say two, three, maybe four glasses of wine. Enough to knock him for a loop - surprise, surprise, the man couldn't hold his liquor - and upset his stomach, but not enough to require a trip to the ER or anything. And he'd been with-it enough to know he shouldn't drive, which may have been the closest thing to a miracle she'd ever witnessed, and she could tell by the way he wouldn't look Senior in the eye that he was sober enough to be ashamed.

Shego crouched down on her knees and leaned in to study the Doc's motionless form - something he never could have achieved when he was conscious. All right, so he was breathing. His chest was rising and falling in an even rhythm, instead of the hyperventilating he'd been doing earlier, and every time he exhaled, he breathed out the pleasing aroma of alcohol and vomit.

Ugh. Charming. She turned away from him, coughing, and pinched her nose shut.

It looked like Drakken wasn't in any immediate danger. Or wouldn't be until morning, when she would yank his ponytail out by the roots for what he'd put her through tonight.

Satisfied by the mental image of herself snatching Drakken half-bald, Shego stomped out of his room and let the door slam slap shut behind her. Honestly - she warns him not to stuff himself this year, and what happens? He goes and gets drunk instead!

The more she thought about it, the madder she got. For two whole weeks, she'd been looking forward to spending an evening socializing with her fellow bad girls instead of baby-sitting Drakken. Which she had every right to do, no matter how lonely he got without her.

He'd never admit it, because it wasn't menacing to manly or any of the other things he was trying, pathetically, to be. But Dr. D did not have a good poker face - or, heck, even a good Go Fish face. The way everything on him drooped when she walked away from him said it all. He looked like a puppy someone had dumped on the side of the road.

So he'd been lonely - no one ever wanted to hang out with him, for some bizarre reason. Worried about not fitting in. Thought a little liquid courage would help him loosen up, only he'd had a little more than a little and was either too stupid or too wasted to know he was being laughed at.

Shego activated her plasma glow and only by grinding her teeth together did she keep from flinging it at the wall. And just when she'd finally gotten into a semi-intelligent conversation about how hard it was to be taken seriously as a villainess. Some chick named Adrena-Lynn had said that no matter what she did, all the male evildoers seemed to see her as just another pretty face. Shego could sympathize with that - happened all the time when her evil careers first started - but this gal didn't even have superpowers to back her up, and her fighting skills were mediocre at best.

Still, she'd managed to stick Kim Possible's dopey sidekick and a random classmate of hers in separate death traps simultaneously, so Kimmie should have had to choose who she wanted to save. Now that was twisted, especially considering the thick layer of eye shadow and inch of mascara couldn't hide the fact that Adrena-Lynn was even younger than she was. Couldn't have been over twenty. Shego kinda liked the kid, even if she was almost as obnoxious with her constant use of the word "freaky" as Drakken's Neanderthal cousin was with his "seriously"s.

She'd been about to say that was one of the things she'd always appreciated about Dr. D - that he'd never treated her differently because of her looks - when loud laughter had roared from the back of the room. The kind that said, We're making mincement out of someone and enjoying every minute of it.

Above it all, she could hear Drakken, but it wasn't his ripping-somebody-apart laugh. It was his usual delighted chortle, only louder than it should have been, even for him. Thick with something that swirled her stomach into a sickening knot, that told her something was very wrong.

And all kind thoughts about him had disappeared from her mind.

Shego had followed the sound of the laughter, fully intending to tell them to lay off and then go back to her life. No doubt they had double-dog-dared Drakken to lick a doom ray or told him that if he kissed his elbow, he would immediately become the undisputed king of the world.

But Drakken had swayed when he turned toward her, slurred when he greeted her, and her plans for the evening had gone down the toilet. Literally.

She threw open the door to the guest bedroom down the hall from Drakken's and banged it closed. She crossed to the bed and parked herself on the very edge of it, resentment stabbing at her. She hated spending the night at his lair, but she wanted to still have a job come morning. And to do that, she needed to still have a boss come morning. And to do that, she needed to make sure he wasn't going to wake up in two hours and take a long walk off their short cliff.

Tempting as the idea was.

Besides, sleeping in her clothes, surrounded by laser guns, tornado-in-a-bottle science experiments amped up to the point where they could produce actual cyclones, and all the other comforts was home was nothin' compared to the rest of the crud he'd put her through tonight. Shego flicked off the lights and laid down, her spine so stiff she half-expected to hear it pop and snap the way Drakken's always did.

She'd stalked up to Jack Hench and demanded to know what he was thinking when he'd decided to serve alcohol. He was lucky that Drakken just turned into an even bigger goofball when he was intoxicated, but what if he hadn't? What if he were the type to get angry or violent? What if it had been someone like Dementor, who wouldn't have been a cute little drunk? Really, who wanted to deal with an inebriated supervillain, especially in a building full of annihilation rays and flesh-eating chemicals?

Not to mention, if Adrena-Lynn was as young as she looked, she was legally still a minor. SSJ probably would have been, too, if he was here. Not that she cared, but she'd thought Hench might. He was always covering his butt, making sure not to do anything technically illegal.

"We're terribly sorry for the inconvenience," Hench had replied, oozing like the slime he was. "But we cannot be held legally responsible."

"I don't give a rip about your liability - " she'd started to say, but Hench talked right over her.

"You see, none of the minors present have consumed any alcohol," he went on. "It's up to the mature, sensible adults to make sure they drink responsibly."

The smile he gave her was so condescending, Shego wanted to knock his teeth out. If she hadn't needed to go check on Drakken, she just might have. As it was, she'd snapped back, "Mature, sensible adults? Drink responsibly? This is Drakken we're talking about about!" She'd tossed her hair and walked away, leaving Hench to reassure himself that none of this was his fault.

Dr. D was still sitting in the same booth he'd been at when she left, but his face had gone from its usual baby-blue to an icky grayish green. Shego had known before he said a word that he was about to hurl. She'd steered him over to a trash can and mentally crossed her fingers that he'd hit it.

For accuracy, she'd give it a B+. Naturally, though, it wasn't good enough for Hench.

"My carpet!" he'd cried. It was the farthest away from the slick, always-in-control salesman tone Shego had ever heard his voice get. "I just had that professionally cleaned!"

She'd turned away from Drakken's gag-fest and looked Hench square in the eye. "We're terribly sorry for the inconvenience," she'd said between her teeth. "But we cannot be held legally responsible."

Thinking about that now made her lips twitch, but only for a moment. As they were leaving, they'd had the good fortune to encounter the Seniors outside. Now, there were two villains she'd actually looked forward to seeing tonight. Senior leaned a little too heavily on that lame Villain Code of Honor, but he could come up with a decent plot when he put his mind to it, and he had a great evil laugh. And talk about classy - especially compared to Little Mr. Burp-in-her-face, Sir Wipe-his-snotty-nose-on-his-sleeve, the King of Forgetting to Put the Toilet Seat Down.

And poor Junior had looked crushed when he saw she was going. She was actually pretty bummed about not getting to hang with him, too. Sure, the kid's evil laugh sounded like Drakken's poodle chasing something in his sleep and he wasn't exactly what you'd call a criminal mastermind, but he was a sweetheart. Actually listened to her and respected her opinion, unlike SOME people she could name. Not the brightest bulb, but had enough brains to question the traditionally evil way of doing things. Willing to learn from his mistakes. There was a lot of untapped potential there. He wasn't hard on the eye, either.

But instead of spending time with them, she'd had to taken her drunken idiot of a boss home and wait outside the bathroom with a magazine while he barfed his brains out again. The thought made her want to vomit.

Shego crossed her legs and stared angrily up at the ceiling. She almost wished Drakken or one of the henchmen would wander in and say something moronic, just so she'd have an excuse to claw his eyeballs out. Otherwise, she might have to start in on her own.

She rolled over onto her right side, then flopped over to her left. Raised her head, smoothed out the creases in her pillow until the thing looked like it had been ironed, and lay back down. Lifted her hair off her neck and wished she had some rollers to keep it up - one of the henchmen must have nudged the thermostat up a few degrees from the biting cold Drakken usually set it at. Pulled the covers up to her chin, then kicked them off.

She felt ridiculous - as ADHD as the Doc. But she could not relax, and it was only partially due to the snorts and puffs and nose-whistles coming from his room.

Drakken's dead to the world in there, Shego, her shoulder devil hissed in her ear. You could probably go in and draw a mustache on him or something, and he wouldn't even stir.

Only because if she didn't do something soon she would go insane - and because she didn't know where Drakken kept the Sharpies - did she take her shoulder angel's suggestion instead. She hopped out of bed and flipped on the lights, for all the good that did. Dr. D kept all his bulbs extra-dim to give the lair a dark, damp, sinister atmosphere. The freeze-your-tail-off temperature was probably maintained for the same reason. He was weird like that.

Shego retrieved her laptop from the living room, booted it up, and connected to the Internet. Her glove-blades made hollow clacking sounds on the keys, way too loud in the relative stillness of the lair, as she typed a-l-c-o-h-o-l p-o-i-s-o-n-i-n-g into Google's search box. She had to make sure she didn't need to haul Drakken to the hospital - cause wouldn't THAT just be the perfect way to end this fun-filled evening?

Didn't look like it. According to the first site that popped up - and what she remembered Mego telling her in eighth grade - her genius employer had a very mild case, "in which the victim probably does not require medical attention, but should still be kept a close eye on."

Great. Translation: I get to stay up all night and watch him to see if he remembers to breathe.

"No matter how mild a case is, however," the website went on to warn her, "if the victim is unconscious - "

That was definitely Dr. D.

" - he/she should be turned onto his/her side, so that in the event of vomiting, he/she will not choke." In a strange, detached way, Shego wondered why they had never heard of gender-neutral pronouns.

For the love of Pete - how could he have anything left in him? Plus, she hated how they kept calling Drakken "the victim." That didn't even come close to describing him. Sure, he was drunk, but it was his own stupid fault. It wasn't like anyone had pinned him to the ground and poured the booze down his throat.

Another section of the sight referred to him as "the sufferer." Eh, she'd give 'em that. Clearly the expression "feeling no pain" didn't apply here. She'd seen it in his eyes right before he collapsed into bed: he was miserable.

But victim or sufferer or just plain idiot, Shego headed for his room to roll him over. (She was so getting a raise for this.)

She cracked open Drakken's bedroom door and resisted the urge to clamp her hands over her ears. He definitely hadn't forgotten how to breathe. The dude was still snoring like a chainsaw.

Shego made her way over to the head of his bed, put her hands on his shoulders, and gave his body a heave. Dr. D was a pretty slim guy, and usually it didn't take much of her strength to move him. But tonight he was as heavy and floppy as a wet towel, and she had to strain to roll him on his side.

Drakken finally flopped over and acknowledged the change in position with a particularly loud snore. His feet churned like he was chasing something in his sleep - or being chased, more likely. Shego half expected him to spring out of bed and dart down the hall.

She'd never known the Doc to sleepwalk, but, then, he was just fulla surprises tonight. What if he decided to go for a stroll in the middle of the night and fell down four flights of stairs? Or what if he woke up at 2 AM and was still loopy enough to activate the self-destruct mechanism on one of his nastier machines or chug a beaker of iodine or whatever chemical he was using for his latest wacky experiment because he mistook it for a glass of water? There would go the only halfway decent job she'd ever had.

Shego began to scan the room with her eyes. She figured she'd hear him if he got up. Dr. D was a klutz to start with, and drunk, he practically tripped over his own shadow. Still - better safe than sorry.

Her gaze finally landed on a giant, almost-perfectly-round piece of metal sitting on top of what looked like an enormous tripod. Drakken had used it last month, trying to disrupt the Earth's magnetic field. Since it didn't seem too lethal, she pushed it across the room, with much less effort than it had taken to turn Drakken over, and placed it directly next to the bed.

There. Now he wouldn't be able to get up without letting the whole lair know about it.

Shego let the air hiss out of her chest in a big ol' disgusted huff. Propping her suddenly-exhausted self against the Whatchamahoozit of Doom, she glared down at Drakken's unconscious form.

He was way more trouble than he was worth. And as soon as he woke up tomorrow, she was going to give him a tongue-lashing he'd never forget. Being yelled at with a hangover - it tended to stick with you.

The only reason she hadn't already laid into him was that she was still in shock, a sensation she hadn't thought was even possible for her to experience anymore. Over the years, she'd seen Dr. D gorge himself on sweets, misplace a Doomsday device big enough to be seen from space, get beat up by a naked mole rat, and nearly drown bobbing for apples at the evil family picnic.

But never had she seen him drunk before. Heck, she'd never seen him drink anything stronger than that "cocoa moo" stuff he wouldn't shut up about. For all the worst-case scenarios that had skipped through her mind the minute she heard Professor Dementor's unmistakable cackle across the room, this had NOT been one of them.

Really, why would it be? She'd brought champagne to toast the New Year with once; Drakken had taken a few gulps and promptly spewed it out as if it were rat poison. She couldn't begin to picture him sipping wine with dinner or having a beer while watching football with the guys. And when he was down in the dumps because one of his harebrained schemes had gone haywire, he reached for a box of cookies, not a bottle of liquor.

Even as Shego watched, he whimpered from somewhere deep in his dreams and brought one tiny hand up to paw frantically at the air. His little blue lips were trembling.

Darn it, Drakken. She sharpened her glare and set her jaw. Do NOT make me feel sorry for you.

With that, Shego turned on her heel and very deliberately walked away from him before any infuriating pangs of sympathy could start poking at her. Took the rest of the hallway in quick, angry strides. Forgot about restraint and slammed the door to the guest bedroom as hard as she could, not knowing whether it would wake Drakken up and not particularly caring if it did. Skimmed the website one last time to make sure she wasn't missing some key piece of information that would be crucial to his survival. Found nothing. Turned off her computer and the lights. Climbed back into bed, lay down, and closed her eyes.

And she waited for dawn.

()()()()

EDITED 11/13 for typos.