The good news was that Sadie was able to transform into an SUV large enough to seat the six of them comfortably - even Shego, who Sadie studiously ignored when she spoke.
The bad news was that Ron and Shego seemed equally opposed to even coming into contact with each other. And since Kim's mother was sitting between the tweebs in front, Kim was forced to sit between Shego and Ron in back.
“We're almost at the rocket testing facilities, Mrs. Doctor Possible,” Sadie informed them.
“Good,” she replied. “Your father is very eager to see you, Kimmie.”
“Yeah, he wants to know if you've been seeing any boys,” Tim jeered from the driver's seat.
“We keep telling him he'll never have to worry about that from you, Kim,” Jim added tauntingly.
“Boys, stop that,” their mother warned them while Kim seethed in back.
“I'd applaud their talent for insults if I wasn't so nauseated by the happy family routine,” Shego muttered.
“Didn't you ever have a family?” Kim asked.
Shego was a model of consistency. When her past came up, she simply ceased talking.
“Is it just me, or is it getting dark outside?” Ron suddenly asked.
A shadow had seemed to settle over the vehicle, Kim noticed, and she wondered if it was about to rain. The weather forecast hadn't said anything about precipitation.
“Oh, that's just my cousin,” Sadie told them.
“You're a car. How can you have cousins?” Shego asked sarcastically.
Shego's seatbelt tightened around her body of its own free will, and her eyes bulged as she tugged frantically at the safety device.
Kim sighed. “Sadie, please stop throttling her. She doesn't always think before she speaks.”
“Very well,” Sadie said in a huff as Shego found she was able to breathe again. “And we were both created by Dr. Freeman, I'll have you know,” she said to Shego.
“What is she?” Kim asked.
The shadow suddenly vanished before they'd even had a chance to look overhead.
“She's a - “
“You know, Sadie, maybe we'd better let the doc handle that one,” Jim said.
“Your cousin does have strong opinions about her image, after all,” Tim agreed.
Kim and Shego looked at each other. “Huh?” Shego asked.
“Totally,” Kim said.
“Hold on,” Sadie told them as she veered away from the parking lots and drove over a field of grass.
“Whoa,” Ron, who hadn't seen the new invention yet either, breathed as they entered a clearing. “E.T. phone home.”
In front of the SUV was a large spherical ship with an opaque upper dome and a gunmetal grey body. It was at least twenty feet tall.
“Not bad,” Shego said appreciatively as she was the first to get out.
As Kim clambered out behind Ron, she heard her name being called. She turned and saw her father exiting the ship through an opening which had materialized in its belly. He had one hand over his head as he beamed.
“Hey, dad,” she said as she came over and hugged him. “Nice globe.”
“Don't compliment me, Kimmie,” Dr. Possible said modestly. “The credit goes to Dr. Freeman.” He gestured to the older African-American man just behind him. “Thanks to him, we've made the first real step toward unmanned, artificially intelligent space travel.”
“That was the smoothest ride I've ever been in!” Dr. Freeman said enthusiastically.
Sadie made a displeased noise with her engine.
“Other than you, of course, Sadie,” he quickly apologized.
“Wicked cool, Doc,” Ron said. “You built your very own UFO!”
A small white sphere attached to a flexible metal cable suddenly grew from the middle of the ship and focused on Ron, who took a step back. “I am no mere object, and I am most certainly not unidentified!” a woman's voice said. The sphere pulsed with a soft light with every word said. Then the sphere, which was either the ship's mouth, eye, or both, shifted to point at Dr. Freeman. “Doctor, I told you!” she said petulantly. Her voice was different than Sadie's, and sounded more mature, smokier. “This drab grey coloring is so not me. It's ruining my reputation, don't you see? Wouldn't I look better like this?”
The ship shimmered briefly and changed from grey to hot pink.
“Now, now, we talked about this. You look very nice like that, but it doesn't really have practical uses.”
“Like she's practical,” Sadie muttered.
“I heard that!” the spaceship snapped.
“Um, the machines are arguing, KP. Make it stop,” Ron said as he took cover behind Kim.
The spaceship took in the presence of Kim and Shego. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “Dr. Freeman, won't you introduce me to these lovely ladies?”
Kim blinked while Sadie made a disgusted noise.
“Sappho, this is my daughter, Kim Possible,” Dr. Possible told her.
“This is Kim Possible? I've heard so much about you!”
Kim looked at her father. “Sappho?”
“S.A.F.O. Self-Automated Flying Orbiter,” Dr. Freeman explained.
“You named your spaceship Sappho?!”
“She's a little more high-strung than I expected,” Sappho observed.
A lazy smile spread across Shego's face. “I'm glad someone notices. Sappho, I'm Shego.”
“Shego?” Sappho asked. She sounded intrigued. “Nice name.”
“You too.”
“I've heard of you too. They say you're quite the bad girl.”
“I'm the baddest of bad girls,” Shego said proudly.
“Oh, Dr. Freeman, I like this one,” Sappho purred.
“This is turning into a weird conversation,” Kim murmured.
“It's working for us,” Jim said. He and his brother had identical naughty smiles.
“You would like her,” Sadie muttered. “She has no respect for others, just like you.”
“Hey, Sadie, let's race - first one to the moon wins,” Sappho shot back.
“They sound like you and your brothers,” Ron said.
“And I don't see why I should have to go into space without passengers,” Sappho complained. “It would be so lonely. Couldn't I even have just one? Shego, you'd want to see the rings of Saturn with me, wouldn't you?”
“I'm exchanging banter with the USS Enterprise,” Shego muttered out of the corner of her mouth to Kim.
“How about going to see Uranus?” Tim suggested. His brother sniggered.
“That's it, you boys have homework!” their mother said, glaring at them.
“But it's summer!”
“Anything's possible for a Possible. Now get in the car, we're leaving.”
“Bye, Dad,” Kim said, smiling at how the innuendoes had gotten just a bit too thick for her mother to take. “Nice meeting your, um, invention.”
“Remember, honey, family dinner tonight.”
Shego grabbed Kim by the arm. “If you even think of asking me to join you for family dinner, I'm going to have to kill you,” she warned Kim.
Kim smiled even more broadly. “Well, you could try, anyway.”
“Nice meeting you,” Sappho said as they left. “Any time you ladies want to take me for a test flight, you just come over.”
“How about me?” Ron asked.
Sappho looked at him. “Mmm, sorry, I'm busy.”
“Darn,” Ron moped. “She's just like the girls in Florida.”
Rufus and Ruby shook their heads and sighed.
“I thought you wanted to catch up,” Kim said.
“I do,” Ron protested. “I just also need to catch up on supplies. Besides, I thought you got over your prejudice against Smart Mart.”
Kim grumbled as she followed Ron into the complex. “It was a lot easier when I had a $100 gift certificate.”
“Ooh, a ten-pound bag of tortilla chips for four bucks!”
“Ron, come on. It's been over a month. I thought you wanted to talk.”
When he looked back at her, Kim was startled by the thoughtful look in his eyes. “What's the deal with Shego?” he asked.
She sighed. She knew this would be the first topic. “What's that supposed to mean?” she replied with a question of her own.
“Look, I understood the thing with the Acceptables. She was the only person you could turn to while you were hiding out. But that's over now! You can go back to saving the world, and she can go back to stealing it.”
“Ron, that's exactly what I don't want her to do,” Kim snapped as he put thirty pairs of white athletic socks (fifty cents a pair) in his cart. “I want her to be my friend, not my enemy.”
“I'm your friend.”
“Yes, and so is Monique. I'm allowed to have more than two, right?”
“Not when friend number three is, hello, evil? Criminal record as long as my both my arms and one of my legs? And a monkey?!” He paused. “Okay, so maybe she's not a monkey, but she was definitely descended from monkeys!”
“We're all descended from monkeys, Ron,” she reminded him.
“Don't even joke around like that, Kim.”
“And Shego is so not the drama, Ron,” Kim went on. “Sure, she's difficult to get along with - okay, and so maybe she goes out of her way to be rude - but when she lets someone get close, she's really not a bad person! And she wants to try being friends too.”
“Maybe she's just using you,” Ron said seriously.
“Not the way she fights me so hard sometimes,” Kim replied.
“Would you believe her if she made it easy?” Ron asked.
She didn't have a response to that for the moment, and they walked on in silence.
So Kim didn't have any difficulty hearing the conversation on the other side of the shelves.
“So, what are the newest figures?”
Kim stopped. It couldn't be…
“Sales have risen seven percent,” another voice replied, “since we began advertising more. It's not adding much to profit margins though.”
“Give it time,” the first man assured the second. “Soon we will dominate the world!”
Kim grabbed Ron by the arm and practically dragged him into the next aisle. “All right, Senior Senior, give it up!”
Señor Senior Senior looked up, surprised. “Miss Possible? What a splendid surprise!”
“Planning to dominate the world again, Señor? I may owe you for last month, but I can't let you do it.”
The other man, who was dressed like a Smart Mart employee, looked at Senior, confused. “Is she from out competitors?” he whispered.
Senior smiled craftily. “Oh yes, Ms. Possible. I will cover the planet - with these!” And he gestured behind him.
“Uh, KP? I think you're overreacting here.”
Kim looked up and realized she was in the pet department. And behind Senior Senior, in an enclosed space they couldn't escape from, were several naked mole rats. “What?” she said.
Ruby excitedly scampered out of Ron's pocket and ran over to where the other mole rats were. They all chittered energetically.
“You see, Ms. Possible, recently I became the new owner of Smart Mart,” Senior explained.
Ron was kneeling in front of him before he could say another word. “May I kiss the ring of the Lord of Smart Mart?” he asked humbly.
Senior looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don't mind him, sir, that's just Ron, one of our best customers,” the other man said. “You know, Ron, we're having a special in Aisle 138 on toaster pastries.”
“Dude, you are the best! I'll be right back, KP.” Ron dashed away, leaving Rufus with just enough time to decide he'd rather stay with Kim - or more appropriately, Ruby and the other mole rats.
“At any rate,” Senior continued, “after spending some time with Stoppable's pet last month, I realized what excellent pets these animals made. So I purchased Smart Mart with the intention of making the naked mole rat the world's favorite pet. It has been a slow process,” he allowed. “If only I could find an appropriate spokesperson… I would do it myself, but I am not quite as ‘hip’ as I used to be. Oh, where are my manners? I haven't even introduced you!”
“Introduced me?” Kim asked weakly, convinced she'd fallen into the Twilight Zone the moment she set foot in this place.
He reached into his pocket. “This is Ricardo.”
“Hola!” the mole rat said.
Kim stared. “You know,” she said slowly, unsure of how to respond, “Ron has two mole rats now. Maybe he'd be a good pitchman for your product.”
“Hmmm,” Senior mused. “It's an idea, although people do have a tendency to forget his name. Still, I will consider it. So, Ms. Possible, how is Shego? I have not seen her since the day my son was rescued.”
“She's okay,” Kim said. “Actually, she's in town with me.” She wasn't there, of course. Ron had wanted to talk to Kim alone, and Shego had seemed more than willing to find some place far from the rest of Kim's family. Kim didn't even know how they were going to handle Shego's sleeping arrangements. She was so uncomfortable around the Possible brood that she would probably sleep in the back seat of the car before sleeping in the same house with them.
“Really? You must tell her to come in some time while I am here. I'm conducting a tour of my establishments. I have only a few thousand to go. I could get her a great deal on those outfits of hers.”
“I don't think Smart Mart is her idea of - wait, you sell her outfits here?”
“We sell everything here, Ms. Possible.”
Señor Senior Senior, she decided, was much scarier as the owner of Smart Mart than he was as the would-be world conqueror. “You know,” she said, changing the topic of conversation to her career, “Shego says your son gave her a hard time the other day, along with a bunch of other villains.”
“Ah,” he said. “I was very proud of Junior when he told me how he wanted to take over the world…”
It figured, she thought.
“But my work prevents me from helping him. Anyway, he is truly a man now, and I am sure he can take over the world on his own. That is, if you and Shego do not get in his way,” he added, smiling at her.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Unfortunately, no. He has his own hideout. I could ask him to leave Shego alone in the future - I thought I taught him better manners than that - but he may not listen to me. Sons, they want to be independent, they don't listen to their fathers,” he sighed theatrically.
Kim hid a smile.
“I won't ask you to go easy on my son, either,” he said.
“Good,” she told him. “I meant it when I said I owed you - “
He waved a hand. “You got my son back. We are even, Ms. Possible. Although,” he suggested, “I could get you thirty percent off one of our mole rats.”
“You know, I think Ron has enough for both of us.”
To be continued…