"Is this a typical weekend for you, Kimmie? Trying to get the sidekick through school?"
Kim spun around to find the speaker leaning against the wall behind the stairs up to her room. "Shego! It's... it's daylight! How..."
"Super villain, super sneaky," the green girl answered with a shrug.
"I only came up here to get-"
"Blackmailed into staying and talking," Shego interrupted, walking around the heroine to sit on the chest at the foot of her bed, "Or I tell everyone at Middleton High about your country linedancing parents."
Kim blanched. "You heard that? But... I'm supposed to be looking after the tweebs!"
"They can take care of themselves," Shego admitted without thinking. Luckily, Kim seemed to miss the compliment entirely.
"It's not them I'm worried about, it's the state of the house when my parents get back! They've already smashed one of the kitchen windows and-"
"Tough. You were smiling at me."
Shego's predaliction for interruption was getting on Kim's nerves, but that simple statement derailed her rant completely. "What?"
"Yesterday, before the action started. You were smiling. A lot. At me."
"Oh! Well..." Kim tried to ignore the heat rising to her face. "It's just... I saw you standing there, looking like you didn't have a care in the world... but I knew what you were waiting for, and... I guess I couldn't help myself," she finished lamely.
"Then why'd you go after the buffoon instead of me?"
"I was going to help him, before you got in the way. You'll remember I wasn't smiling anymore at that point."
"But that's how it's supposed to go, pumpkin. The boys have their slapfests or thumb wars or whatever they do, while you and I actually fight." Shego's smirk broadened into an enthusiastic smile. "And you gotta admit, that was a good one."
"For you, maybe. I'm lucky you didn't take my hand off, and I still have bruises from when you threw that container at me."
"I didn't appreciate you knocking me on my ass, either. Come on, you didn't enjoy it?"
"I..." Kim hesitated. Taken out of context, the fight had been exciting. But... "Drakken used the machine and you two got away."
"Yeah yeah, another point for the bad guys..."
Kim was startled by Shego's nonchalance. Did she really not care? "What's Project Phoebus supposed to do, anyway?" she decided to ask.
"You don't know?" The green girl sniggered. "And you think I'm gonna tell you? That's cute."
The heroine shrugged. "It was worth a shot. Let me ask you something else, then: have you always been able to cut through metal with your gloves? Because, since Halloween, they've been getting hotter..."
"The glow's a kinetic enhancer, and thermal energy is kinetic energy," Shego explained, sounding rather proud. "Once I learned that, it was just a question of feeling out how to get the heat effect."
"You can control it like that?" Kim asked, amazed. Shego responded by holding out a hand, palm up, and igniting the glow.
"You can put your hand in it. Just don't touch mine."
The redhead only hesitated a moment. Shego felt an unfamiliar sense of gratification at the display of trust as she watched her archfoe slowly put her hand in place, palm down, above her own. She watched as the girl stared at the green energy flowing about her hand without discomfort.
"If I slapped your hand right now, it would be little more than that, a slap. But if I ramp it up..." The villainess made no move to indicate that she had done so, but all it took was a twitch of her hand to send Kim's flying as far as her arm would allow. Shego smirked as the teenager shot her a complaining look. "Heat's the same. I don't know how hot I can go, but it has to be pretty damn hot if it lets me cut through steel with claws designed for slashing."
"It's not the gloves, is it," Kim realised as Shego extinguished the green energy.
Shego blinked in surprise. "No, it's not the gloves..." she sounded unsure for some reason. "You think I got this complexion from wearing these?"
"You're working for a guy with blue skin. And you two aren't the only ones with unusual skintones. I figured it was a villain thing." Another thought struck the redhead, and a wide smile broke across her face. "I've been going toe to toe with a bona fide supervillain."
The villainess couldn't help smirking back at her. "Yes you have. And you've been getting better at it, which is why I've been stepping up with the glow."
Both girls fell silent for a moment as the mutual respect between them went up another notch.
"Oh!" Kim suddenly remembered why she'd come up to her room in the first place, and hurried over to her closet, from which she retrieved a baseball bat. "You better get outta here before any of the boys find you," she told Shego, her smile turning predatory. "I have a model rocket to destroy."
Shego snickered at the familiar sensation brought on by sibling rivalry before rising. She wasn't going to slip away just yet, though. Instead she went through the door and into the den, which had a view of the back yard. Keeping to the edge of the window, she watched as her nemesis destroyed the rocket mid-flight, causing the tweebs to retreat to the garage. Bringing herself into view, she mimed applause when Kim noticed her. The teenager waved a hand in a shooing motion before heading back inside.
"Head still intact?" Kim asked Ron as she entered the kitchen.
"Yeah," Ron admitted, before holding up the brush and dust pan in his hands. "I figured the least I could do for you trying to help would be clean-up duty." He went back to clearing the breakfast nook of debris from the window.
"Thanks, Ron..." Kim faltered as Shego's face appeared outside the broken window. She took a moment to inspect the damage, then smirked at the increasingly agitated redhead. The smirking devolved to silent giggling as Kim started making faces at her to get out of sight. Ron caught one of them and Shego was forced to duck as the boy looked to the broken window.
"Don't worry, KP," he told her sympathetically, "I'm sure your parents won't be too upset. It's just a window. And y'know, I think everyone's gotten used to your brothers' antics."
"I guess," Kim admitted as Shego peaked back over the windowsill. Admitting it was time to retreat, the green girl gave Kim a half-wave, half-salute before disappearing from sight.
Kim huffed in relief before fetching the trash can from under the kitchen sink.