“John, have you seen Shego?” Anne didn’t have rounds to make that particular Sunday so her breakfast was going to be a little more elaborate. She hoped that it might serve to cheer her daughter up.
“No, dearest, I haven’t, not yet.” John didn’t have any work today either; he’d dressed in more casual clothes so that some pending housework could be done in the yard and garage, and had also planned to invite Shego to assist him if that would lift her spirits any.
Kim came down to the living room at that moment and they asked her of the whereabouts of her sister.
“I thought she was already down here. She was already up when I got up.”
This didn’t sit right with any of them, especially not in light of recent events. John confirmed that the two cars were still in the garage and Kim saw that Shego’s bike was still there as well. Anne called Shego’s cell phone, but was dismayed to hear it ringing in the hallway; the pale girl didn’t have it with her.
“But she never goes out without the ‘Shegophone’!” John looked at Kim, nonplussed.
“Excuse me? The what?” Kim rolled her eyes and made a snort of exasperation.
“Our cell phones! Mine is the ‘Kimmunicator’ and hers is the ‘Shegophone’. Duh!”
“Yeah, come on, Daddy-o, get with the picture!” In this moment of tension, Anne decided to make a feeble attempt at humor. John rolled his own eyes and smiled weakly.
“Could she have taken a walk?”
Kim ran back upstairs.
“YES! Her favorite pair of walking shoes are gone, and so is her jacket!”
Anne looked at John with a mixture of concern and relief.
“If she’s just out for a walk, maybe that’s the private time she needs to fit everything back into place? Should we go after her or leave her alone?”
“We… leave her alone. She’s a big girl, and smart.” John reached out and held his youngest daughter close. “Both of my girls are smart; she’ll be fine.” John hoped that he was more convincing to them than he was to himself.
After getting an early start, Shego was on the other side of Middleton; she’d walked the whole way but didn’t remember more than a few details of her entire trek. Being an early Sunday morning, few people were on the streets to stare at her and laugh, so she felt fortunate that she had that much going for her.
Her destination had been an abandoned strip mall at the other side of town. This was apparently the property leased by Drew Lipsky when he’d been ejected from the propulsion center and had vowed to start his own independent research company. Shego was hoping that he would remember her; that he would be willing to talk to her.
That he would be someone that could understand her now that he was different, too.
The vacant lot was choked with long grasses and weeds thrusting up from between cracked layers of asphalt. Several of the buildings had shattered glass storefronts or roofs that were falling in. One building, however, seemed to be in an unusually good state of repair, even if it had been painted and artificially cluttered to make it appear more like the others. Shego approached the only door and knocked.
The door was opened and an enormous man looked out at her menacingly. He was huge and ugly and his face looked like a clenched fist.
“What?”
“Is… Mr. Lipsky here?”
“No.” The door was slammed in her face. Shego made it as far as the end of the block before she turned around and walked back to the door. She knocked again.
“Look, babe, there’s no Lipsky here, savvy?” The scary man glowered down at her like she was a piece of meat.
“Please…” Her voice didn’t want to obey her. “Please let him that Shego Pos… that Shego is here.”
Fist Face looked her up and down and slammed the door again. Shego sank down and sat on her haunches beside the door; it was several minutes before it was opened again. It was the scary man, but he didn’t speak to her. Instead, he held the door open wide and another voice came out of the darkness within.
“Shego? Little Shego Possible? Great day in the morning, how are you?” The voice seemed far too happy and light for such dismal surroundings.
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Bless my soul, look how you’ve grown! You know, I once told your father that you were a little princess, and that’s just what you’ve become!”
“Thank… thank you.” Was this man the first person to call her that?
“What ever can I do for you?” A voice from the darkness was a little disconcerting, but she decided to venture on regardless.
“I read about you on the Internet.”
Silence.
“I read about the accident; I saw your picture afterwards.”
More silence.
“Since we’re both, you know, different now, I thought…”
“Oh, I know what you thought.” The timber of the voice had changed, became harsher. “You thought that since we were different, we’d understand each other all the better, right? That good old Uncle Drew just might be someone that you could confide in, tell your fears and secrets to, right?”
The man was practically raving now. Shego was too frightened to move.
“Oh, YES, I am certainly DIFFERENT now! And I UNDERSTAND everything all too well!” There was a long and violent laugh. Even the beefy man holding the door open looked uncomfortable. Shego felt that she had no other recourse.
“May I please come in and talk?”
“NO!” The refusal hit her like a slap across the face, but he wasn’t finished with her yet.
“You are DIFFERENT, but are you SPECIAL? I only have time for SPECIAL people these days, so unless you are SPECIAL, I’m afraid that we have nothing more to talk about!” Understanding that this was an order, the beefy man began to close the door.
“Wait! I…”
“Good day!” The door was slammed for a third and final time. Shego started shaking so bad that she fell back against the wall and slid down to the ground. The sobs wracked her chest so hard that she felt her ribs might crack. Tears burned her cheeks and she was blind and deaf to the world.
She sat there for a long time before forcing herself to stand. There was no activity around her and she was alone, no one was here to care or care for her. Without a plan or any conscious thought, she moved aimlessly across the deserted parking lot until she almost ran straight into a telephone booth.
Was this a sign? Did the Fates want her to call home and let the Possibles come and get her, to take her back?
How can they take you back? They don’t want you. They have a perfect daughter.
Suddenly that man-made construct of metal and glass came to represent all of the weakness and failure that she felt about herself; to call home was to admit defeat, to bend under the strain of as many personal demons that a five year old mind can create.
Fists clenched, Shego felt the hate and fear and despair build. Her hands tingled.
She opened her eyes to see a thin veil of green flame flowing over her hands like gloves, and its eerie glow coruscating across her chest and arms. The last time she had looked upon this, her beloved sister had almost died. The self-hate continued to grow within her, and the strength of the green flame shone brighter with every second.
Desperate to get it away from her, Shego cupped her hands together as if to brush the energy away. As she did so, she felt it coalesce, to gain mass and resistance in her fingers. Sensing that she might now be able to toss it away like a used rag, she thrust out her hands and breathed a sigh of relief when the new born ball of glowing green energy flew out of her hands and struck the telephone booth.
Seconds later, she was inspecting herself for cuts after thousands of tiny shards of melted glass and twisted steel had gone flying in all directions; her hearing had also been replaced by a giant soundless vacuum that was slowly giving way to regular ambient noise.
The flames were out, but she felt as if she’d known what she was doing that time; that their generation wasn’t exactly random. She could do it again if she wanted to.
Shego started walking back to the closed door. She’d show them just how ‘special’ she really was.
The Possible home had now become the center of operations for locating Shego. It had been several hours without a call or sighting of her anywhere. Kim had called all of her friends and even some of Shego’s classmates and no one knew where the girl was. Anne had been calling every hospital and morgue and they had nothing to tell her either.
John was arguing with the Middleton police over how long someone must be ‘missing’ to be officially ‘missing’.
All the while, her parents kept asking Kim if Shego had said anything to her last night, if they’d discussed anything that might have led to this. Kim continually told them that no, they hadn’t, and that no one wanted Shego back more than she did.
This constant questioning did give Kim an idea. She waited until her parents were occupied and then ran upstairs to see if she could find Shego’s diary. The pale girl rarely went a day without making several entries, and Kim thought that she knew where her sister was hiding it these days.
Kim had first found the diary a few years ago and Shego had been madder than her sister had ever seen Shego get when Kim had been caught reading it. Kim hadn’t read much, but there were a few things in there that made her worry a little about her big sister.
Sure enough, she found the book and checked the last few entries before she hit pay dirt, of a sort.
“Dad, who’s Drew Lipsky?”
“What’s that Kimmie-cub? Drew? Gracious, I haven’t thought about him in ages.” John was leafing through the phonebook, looking for more authorities that he could contact. “Why, sweetheart?”
It was here that Kim told her first intentional lie to her parents; she could not risk them reading the diary and seeing the entries that Kim had once read.
“I think I say his name written on one of Shego’s old birthday cards.”
“Wow, that’s strange. Anne!” John called out to his wife. “Drew Lipsky hasn’t called here, has he?”
“I should say not! And he’d better never do so either!” Anne replied from the next room.
“So what’s the sitch, Dad?” John was very tired from the stress of worrying over his little girl; he took advantage of this distraction to rest his head in his hands and close his eyes for a minute.
“Well, Drew and I were old college buddies. We even worked at the propulsion center for a while. Then I got the administrative directorship and he was ejected for using unsafe experimental practices and falsifying some data.” John raised his face; his eyes were glazed as he sorted through his memories.
“The last I’d heard of him, he’d been performing another experiment, probably using himself as a test subject, had a terrible accident and was injured both physically and mentally. Kim, Drew Lipsky is bad news; never go near him.” John resumed leafing through the phonebook.
As Kim returned to her room to change clothes, she committed the address to memory that she had seen written beside Drew Lipsky’s name in the diary. In the back of her closet, she removed an outfit similar to Shego’s, except that the midriff-bearing shirt was black and the cargo pants were olive drab.
“EXCELLENT! Oh, this is OUTSTANDING!” The safe had been constructed from one of the most durable metals known to man; now it was a puddle of molten slag.
The interior of the deserted storefront at the abandoned strip mall was just that: deserted. But the basement level beneath the empty room was amazing. Every known device for testing, scanning, tabulating and calculating was mounted against every foot of surface area, and machines that Shego had never seen before were around every corner.
For the past several hours Uncle Drew had instructed his men to locate and assemble collections of different materials; piles of bricks, ceramics, metals, and glass had been destroyed one by one under the glowing fire from Shego’s hands.
“My dear, you ARE special, aren’t you?” Uncle Drew was still a little manic, but he was now speaking to her like he had all those years ago; patient and friendly, not wanting to scare her away. The voice helped, but his appearance was still intimidating.
Upon entering the building, Shego had immediately displayed her power by blasting away a section of the roof. Uncle Drew’s men had run for cover, but he simply let the debris fall around him, giggling like mad. Since then, he’d had her test her power again and again. Shego was frightened at first, but he’d assured her that there was nothing wrong in doing something that she was able to do naturally.
“Oh, don’t fret, my child! I’m all too aware of your history! Having been exposed to the meteor fragment as you were, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised!”
In addition to the physical changes he had undergone, Drew was dressed in a distorted style of a scientist; his insulated gloves were black and his long lab coat was a deep, lustrous shade of blue.
“After all, it’s better when things match, is it not?” He was indicating her green and black outfit as he said this.
It was when she’d finally punched a hole through steel plating that she started to feel excited about using her ability.
“Well, not actually ‘punched’, my dear. More like ‘vaporized upon impact’.
Uncle Drew eventually had her stop and sat her down while he reviewed the results of his scans. He returned to explain to her that she was generating a frequency of super-heated plasma, so strong and powerful that it could destroy or weaken most earthly substances.
“But, Uncle Drew, how…?”
“DO NOT CALL ME BY THAT NAME!” Shego cowered slightly under the brunt of this verbal attack. He scowled at her for a moment, and then seemed to collect himself.
“Please forgive me, Princess, but my past is so troubled that it pains me to hear my own name.” He turned his eyes to her, now sad and wet. “I’ve begun using a different name in dealing with my current business endeavors.”
“So what should I call you?” This was getting much too weird for Shego, but the sixteen-year-old girl could see no other future except what she could make with this man.
“Well, you can call me DRAKKEN! Dr. Drakken to be precise.”
“Riiigght.” She was learning fast that the best was to talk to the man was to humor him.
“Together… not to sound too melodramatic, you know… you and I can RULE THE WORLD!” Hands thrust skyward, he laughed that maniacal laugh that she’d heard far too many times that day for this man to be right in the head.
“Drakken and the mighty Shego! How does that sound?”
“It sounds a little like ‘Dark and Nightshade’.”
“AHH! A Bradbury fan! GOOD for YOU!” How could the man’s eyes shine like that? It was unearthly.
Kim peddled her bike as fast as she could, narrowly missing a few street signs and mailboxes as she navigated the deserted streets of this economically depressed section of Middleton. The deserted strip mall was just up ahead and she wanted to get there as fast as possible.
Ostensibly to ride around their school and the library and mall to search for Shego, her parents had allowed her to invest the early evening hours in this manner of search as long as she took her Kimmunicator with her. The twelve-year-old promised to be home before full dark, and she hoped that she hadn’t lied to her parents twice in one day. If it meant finding her big sister, she’d gladly accept being grounded.
It seemed almost funny to chain her bike up when the area seemed so abandoned, but Kim had passed the remains of a telephone booth that looked like it had been hit by a mortar shell. Who knew what dangerous sort of people prowled this area?
Kim approached the storefront of the address she’d memorized and checked the door; it was locked tight, just as she had suspected. How was she to gain entrance? Looking back at the pylon she’d chained her bike to, she saw that it supported an awning that ran across the entire face of the strip mall. Kim drew on a pair of thick, non-slip traction gardening gloves and shimmied up the pylon. Swinging up onto the awning, she quickly noticed that the address she’d sought had huge gaping holes in its roof.
She pulled out a balaclava to cover her bright red hair; she could forget any attempts at stealth since her hair would stand out like a beacon in the darkened room beneath her. Kim carefully crawled to the edge of one hole and looked down. She noted lengths of supports for the metal ceiling plates, each one designed like a horizontal ladder and looking very strong. Kim found these perfect for climbing along the ceiling to the inner wall, where she shimmied down another support girder to the floor.
A muted klaxon began to sound a warning inside the basement lair.
“NUTS! Just as I was getting to the good part of my plan!” Shego watched as her Uncle Drew, or rather ‘Dr. Drakken’, threw a caliper at one of his men and pounded his fists on a workbench. For the last half hour, the man had been expounding to Shego on the capabilities of his invention. The machine before them looked like an enormous satellite dish with a focusing laser projecting up from it. The machine hummed with power.
“With THIS device, I will IONIZE the upper ATMOSPHERE, creating unwarranted PRECIPITATION, deafening SONIC percussions and VAST fields of ELECTRICAL discharge!”
“So, you’re going to make a thunderstorm?” This was a weather machine?
“Well, let’s see YOU make one!” Observing that she could not do so, he gave a self-satisfying grunt and returned to the finer points of his plan. The klaxon interrupted him and he whirled to Shego.
“You! This will be the final test of just how special you are!” He located a button and slammed his fist down on it. The access elevator to the ground level activated.
“Go see who it is and get rid of them!”
“But, how do you want me to do that?” So far, she had just blasted and melted construction materials; did he expect her to use her power on a person? That would kill them!
Dr. Drakken had nothing of the man she’d once called ‘Uncle Drew’ left in his eyes when he slowly turned on her. Shego had spent the afternoon displaying powers that could render this man’s body to a charred ruin, and yet he was able to terrify her with a glance.
“I don’t care, JUST DO IT!”
Shego ran for the elevator if for no other reason to get away from this madman.
Kim heard the floor open up behind her in the darkness and slid behind an empty cardboard box to keep out of sight. She had walked around the inside of the big empty room and had guessed that there was some other area that she’d not located yet, but eventually would. Since the noise sounded like a freight elevator, she knew that her guess had been right.
The shadowy figure crept through the darkness; Kim couldn’t make out any details but this had to be someone who knew where her sister was! A deep voice came out of the darkness.
“You’d better leave now if you know what’s good for you!” Shego masked her voice as best she could to make it sound deeper and more masculine. No one was going to be scared away by someone with only a Learner’s Driving Permit!
“Nothing doing! Where is Shego?” Kim cupped her hands around her mouth to give it more resonance; no way would her squeaky voice intimidate any body!
Shego froze, her heart turning into a dead lump of coal in her chest. They’d found her; somehow her parents had found her and were going to make her pay for what she’d done to their Kimmie-cub. Her powers were now under her complete control; she ignited the plasma fields around her hands and moved towards the unseen intruder. The green glow made her stand out like a specter.
“Spooky chick?”
“Kimber-dweeb?”
They stared at each other in shock, but only for a few seconds before the floor collapsed under their feet and they fell into oblivion.
Shego awoke with a humming in her ears and flashes of light in her eyes. She was leaning against a wall down in the lair while Drakken and his men continued to perform calibrations on his weather machine. The humming was from the machine itself as it gained strength, greedily sucking power from some unseen source. The lights were from tiny arcs of electricity that covered the main housing of the machine as it towered over them all.
Looking down at herself, Shego noticed that her outfit was torn in several places but that she was unharmed. This made no sense because she could look overhead and see that she and Kim had fallen ten feet or more.
KIM! Where was she?
Drakken had seen her moving and looked at her with mad glee.
“Sorry, my dear! We’re on something of a tight schedule, so I decided to use just a tiny bit of this machine’s power to smash the floor above to powder!” He chuckled for a moment, but then became serious. “Or should that be ’ceiling below’? Oh, never mind.”
Pulling herself to her feet, Shego staggered over to Drakken and stood next to him; he looked her over and mused.
“Interesting! When this little drama is over we really should test your recuperative and healing capabilities. You don’t seen to have a scratch on you!” He lifted his chin to point in the direction of the machine. “That little girl over there didn’t fair quite as well!”
Kim was trussed with chains against a stanchion supporting the massive device; she appeared to be unconscious and Shego saw cuts and bruises on her sister’s head and arms. There was a thin rivulet of blood on Kim’s forehead.
“I do NOT know and do NOT care who that is, but WITNESS as she becomes the FIRST casualty to my machine!” The tiny arcs of electricity were increasing in number and power, and occasionally one would connect with the stanchion and Kim would twitch slightly.
“But… that’s my sister!”
“Your what?” Drakken didn’t seem insane any more; all signs of madness where gone, replaced by utter confusion.
“That’s Kim Possible, my… baby sister.”
“Do you mean to tell me that SHE is another DAUGHTER of John and Anne POSSIBLE?”
“…yes.”
“PERFECT! Don’t you SEE? We don’t need to wait for the MACHINE to take care of her! YOU can do it?”
“What?”
“You will KILL her! Fry her to ASHES with your AMAZING power! That is how you can finally CUT yourself LOOSE from that family!”
“But, she’s my SISTER!”
“I don’t care of she is your LOVER, I command you to KILL her!”
Immeasurable power was slowly building inside the heart of the device, and her little sister was right there next to it. Suddenly, Kim was the little red-haired infant sleeping in her crib; the vigilant but powerless Panda-Roo standing guard while the flames crept closer for a deadly kiss.
“Uncle Drew, that is SICK and WRONG!”
Using all of the athletic skills that she’d learned but denied herself, Shego leapt at the devise and ignited her plasma. She slashed at the chains and they parted like spider webs; Kim started to collapse to the floor. Just as quickly, the plasma was extinguished and Shego ran for the freight elevator, Kim draped over her shoulder.
“STOP THEM!”
Drakken’s voice cut through the chaos that was building in the air. Shego could see his men everywhere, their mouths were hard lines and their eyes were like stone as they contemplated murder.
“Shego, you can put me down.”
The pale girl almost dropped her sister when she heard Kim’s voice. The red head looked a little worse for wear but her color was good and none of the cuts were bleeding anymore, not even the one on her head. She felt so light in Shego’s arms and looked so tiny and helpless, that Shego never wanted to let her go.
“Please, I’m Ok, really.” Doubtful at first, Kim was allowed to stand on her own feet and quickly proved that she really had regained some of her strength.
“Kimmie, I…” Kim shushed her big sister with a finger across the pale lips.
“It’s Ok, we can talk about it later.” She looked around at the men encircling them. “Is this as bad as it looks?”
“It’s definitely worse than a few school yard bullies, that’s for sure.”
Kim gestured at Shego’s hands; they were still glowing and rife with deadly energy.
“How well can you control that stuff? Can we fight our way out of here?”
“Well, I can.” Shego looked at the petite form of her little sister. “But you’d better stay behind me.”
“No way! I didn’t take all those after school martial arts classes for nothing! Watch this!”
Kim ran right at a massive bruiser standing in front of her. Before Shego could react, Kim had jumped at him and kicked him in the groin; when he doubled over in pain, she clocked him across the jaw with her two fists locked together.
“Wow!” Shego was impressed. “But you stay right on my tail or I’ll tell Mom!”
“That’ll be easy… your tail is certainly wide enough!” Kim blew her a raspberry.
Together the two girls waded through attacking thugs until they’d reached the elevator. Shego made limited use of her power, because she just couldn’t bring herself to really hurt anyone; instead she blasted holes in the floor to trip their attackers, or to slice through any weapon that came within reach.
Kim climbed onto the platform and Shego was right behind her when something struck her in the back of the head and thoroughly rang her chimes. She blinked away the pain and barely had time to reflect that maybe he did heal faster than other people, when she saw Drakken standing over her, a length of twisted pipe in his hands. He raised it above her, preparing to strike.
Shego raised her hands to blast him, but the plasma didn’t appear.
“SHEGO, you are FIRED!”
Two feet flew through the air over Shego’s head and Kim Possible planted them right in the center of Drakken’s chest; he fell back and hit the floor, insensate. Kim picked herself up and quickly helped Shego onto the platform. Shego was already feeling much better and asked Kim to wait as her younger sister was about to hit the button to take them up.
“Hold on Kimmie, we can’t let that Drakken keep that machine.”
Drakken had regained consciousness and, as he sat up, the first thing he saw was a massive field of plasma heading straight for him. He screamed and rolled out of the way, taunting his teenaged foes as he did so.
“HAH! You MISSED!”
“No, I did NOT!”
“Huh?”
The plasma sphere hurled across the basement lair and struck the heart of the machine. Key instruments ceased to properly regulate the balance of electron flow and the energies were suddenly being released in an uncontrollable manner. The metal walls buckled and the concrete floor shattered as the device created a thunderstorm right down there in the basement.
“Drakken, I quit!” Shego kissed her little sister on the nose. “Kimmie, let’s get out of here!”
“You got it, spooky!”
Once reaching the ground floor, it was nothing for Shego to make the locked door a footnote. Explosions shock the ground around them and they found that they could not keep their feet; they tripped and held each other close as that entire section of the strip mall collapsed into a maelstrom of uncontrolled force. The devastation limited to the immediate vicinity, however, so no one else was in danger.
Just before the final blast brought the whole structure down, the sisters saw something float up from the wreckage and pass over their heads.
“You think you’re ALL THAT, Shego Possible, but you’re NOT!” Then, it was over.
The sisters lay together on the dirty asphalt while they caught their breath, wiping grit from their eyes and hair, and Kim looking in the direction of the demolished lair.
“I think my bike just got totaled.”
“Doy! Kimmie, I’ll buy you a new bike!”
“Thanks. So, this ’Drakken’ guy was our Uncle Drew? I don’t really remember him, but I’m guessing that he’d changed a bit, right?”
“Yeah. He was around when you were too young to really remember.” Shego looked around them; the night was clear and cool, the lights of Middleton brighter in the distance. Kim stood up and brushed herself off.
“Can we go home now?” The question made Shego feel sick all over again.
“Kimmie, I don’t know if I can.” Kim just looked at her, arms crossed.
“I mean, there’s something that I did… long ago, and… Mom and Dad, well…”
Kim reached out and stayed that way until Shego accepted her hands. The smaller girl helped her big sister to stand and gave her a big hug.
“Promise me that you won’t get mad.” Kim was giving Shego the dreaded pout.
“Ghaa! What’s that for? Kimmie, this is serious!”
“Promise me.”
“Ok! Ok, I promise. What is it?”
“I read your diary.” Kim’s hug became tighter as Shego’s knees buckled.
“Then, you know?”
“I read what you wrote about the fire, yes.”
“It was my fault that you got burned.” Shego was sobbing now, the tears flowing freely. “That scar on your back is because of me! My hand! I almost killed you! You almost burned to death!”
Kim was shaking her head, much to Shego’s amazement.
“What I know is that you have enormous power, but that a five year old would have no more chance of controlling that power than the man in the moon! I also know that it was that same five year old girl who risked herself to pull a baby out of a burning crib.” Kim reached out and held her sister’s face. “Didn’t you think that Mom and Dad would be proud enough to tell me what you did?”
“But they don’t KNOW!” Shego was in serious danger of having her psyche crumble beneath the weight of guilt and shame. Kim let Shego lay across her legs and cry while Kim made a short call on her Kimmunicator.
Their father came to collect them; he was there in no time at all and was loaded with questions. Kim did her best to ward him off, leading Shego into the car and sitting with her in the back seat while they returned home. John hung back while Kim and Shego entered the house and Kim greeted their mother. Anne could barely contain herself and had burning questions of her own, but those were immediately discarded when she saw how both girls were wearing tattered clothing and Kim showed signs of minor lacerations.
“Kimberly Ann Possible, what on Earth has happened to you two?”
“Um, I had an accident on my bike. It kind of got totaled.”
Anne already had the first aid kit out and was dabbing antiseptic at the small wounds. Shego was sitting quietly at the dining room table, looking as if she were waiting to be shot. John and Anne stole veiled glances at her and John slipped into the kitchen to make his girl some cocoa.
“Where is your helmet? And I see that you aren’t wearing those kneepads either. Young lady, starting tomorrow you are grounded for a week!”
Anne was close to tears with relief at the safety of her girls and did her best to keep from smiling as she handed down Kim’s punishment. Kim slumped in her chair, more from conditioned response than actual frustration; it would be a small price to pay for her sister. Shego still said nothing.
When their parents happened to both be out of the dining room at the same time, Kim leaned in.
“Well?”
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“Please, for them? It’s tearing them up inside not knowing why you feel so bad.”
“They’ll just think it’s about the adoption.”
“Well, is it?”
“No, not really. That I can deal with. It’s just… all the little things that are going to be different because of it.”
“What? Tell me what’s different now?”
“I’m not their daughter any more. OW!” Kim had slapped her big sister across the back of the head.
“Don’t EVER say that again! That’s crap!” Voices came to them from the other rooms of the house.
“Kimmie-cub, language.”
“Don’t you dig that hole any deeper, young lady!”
“Sorry Dad, sorry Mom.” Kim looked hard at Shego, not saying another word.
“Mom? Dad? Could you please come in here?” Shego cleared her throat and her parents returned. With worried looks on their faces, they took seats at the table; they were surprised, though only slightly less so than Kim, when Shego lifted her younger sister onto her lap and held her just like her dolly, once upon a time.
“I want to tell you about something.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper.
John looked the most pensive and couldn’t wait any longer.
“You weren’t out with some boy, were you?” Shego began to both laugh and cry at the same time. She held Kim tighter and Kim started to cry too from the release of tension.
“OH, JOHN, HONESTLY!” Anne looked as if she would strike John in the back of his head. John withdrew the question.
Shego looked them square in the eyes and over the next several minutes she told them as much as she could remember of the night so long ago, when a fire had almost claimed the life of their newborn Kim. She told them about Panda-Roo and finding him in the crib, of how a strange power had manifested itself shortly before and how it had been unleashed that night. She also told them that she remembered lying to cover up her shame.
At first her parents looked as if she were telling them about a dream that she’d had, some terrible nightmare spawned from that event when she’d still been a child; how could their beautiful little Princess possibly be the cause of that night? Then Shego gently placed Kim on her own chair and ignited her left hand. All eyes were riveted on the glowing plasma.
“Ever since then, I was afraid that you would find out. That you would know what I did to Kimmie…” Shego turned to Kim and reached for her with her right hand, already finding her younger sister reaching back. “And then when you told me that I was adopted, I thought… I thought,” her voice failed her and cracked. “I thought that you wouldn’t want me any more.”
“Shego please put that out.” John’s voice was firm and Anne’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. This was it; it was all over. Now she would be hated and alone.
“I’m so sorry…” She raised her hands in supplication to beg forgiveness; John and Anne almost ran at her as Shego howled her sorrow like an animal.
Both parents grabbed Shego so hard and so suddenly that she was wrenched up from her chair and held several inches above the floor. Both were weeping and but they were coddling her and kissing her and telling her that everything was all right and that they loved her and that there was nothing to forgive.
That she was the bestest little girl in the world.
The hour was late, or early depending on how you look at it, and everyone was exhausted from a long and stressful day. It had pained John to see one of his girls feel so much anguish that she was crying until her whole body shook, but Anne calmly pointed out that some wounds needed to be cauterized before they can heal. Everyone went to bed that night tired but feeling as if the next day would be worth it.
Upstairs, Kim had taken the old Panda-Roo doll off her shelf and was about to throw it away.
“Wait.” Shego motioned for her to stop. “He has scars too. Let him stick around for awhile.” Kim smiled and nodded and she handed Panda-Roo to Shego.
“Here, he was yours until you gave him to me. You can have him back.”
“No, that’s Ok.”
“We kicked some major buttage today, didn’t we?” That exuberance was still there, even after a day like today. “You know, we could do that sort of thing on a regular basis.”
“What? Fight bad guys? Save the world?”
“Yeah! That would be spank’n!”
Shego looked wistful. “Do you think you could… you know… just for tonight?” The sixteen year old look much younger than she really was at that moment.
“Not too old for that, are you?” The twelve year old set Panda-Roo down on her bed and walked across the room to sit on the edge of Shego’s bed.
“Please?” Shego’s ‘puppy dog pout’ was as powerful as ever.
“Ghaa! Ok! I submit to the mighty Shego!”
Kim snuggled against her big sister and Shego turned out the light. Before she fell asleep, she leaned down to kiss the scar on Kim’s back, such a small thing really, hardly noticeable.
“Goodnight, Kimmie.”
“Goodnight, Shego.”
The End
This story was written as a token of appreciation for three special people: Apoptosis, Mag (fortheloveofpizza) and Rinacat, in alphabetical order.
Author’s Notes:
There have been so many variations of Shego’s ‘real name’ that I have no idea how original mine is. If you’ve written a story and I’ve used your name, please excuse the matter as coincidence.
Kim and Shego… no matter how you slice it, they belong together.
Please excuse the ‘fat’ comments between Kim and Shego; I really have no idea how teenage girls might tease each other.