“Where is she?” Kim grumbled as she paced the tarmac. “First she makes me wait another five hours and then she’s late,” she groused, twiddling the amulet around her neck as she thought of Shego. The fiddling as she thought of Shego had become a habit of late, but Kim didn’t even realize she was doing it.
“Keep your shorts on, Princess; I’m here,” Shego called out as she strode up to where Kim was standing. “I got sidetracked. Nana Sheila says ‘hi’ by the way.”
Kim broke out into a smile at the mention of one of her favorite dead relatives. “Aunt Sheila appeared this morning? How is she? How is Aunt Mim?”
“Dead, like they have been for a while,” Shego replied wryly. Kim sighed and thought about smacking her, but ultimately decided against it. It would only lead to a full-on battle and she really wanted to get in the air. “And it was only Nana Sheila; Nana Mim stayed behind,” Shego added.
“Do we have a new mission?” Kim asked, thinking there might have been a reason for the visit.
“Nope,” Shego answered. “She just dropped by to tease me and meddle in my life.”
“Wow, that teasing part sounds familiar,” Kim said dryly, looking at Shego. “Nah, it couldn’t be genetic,” she concluded, shaking her head.
Shego rolled her eyes. “Yes, I get it. Nana Sheila and I are a lot alike,” she said exasperatedly. “Well, from what I heard this morning, so are you and Nana Mim, so I wouldn’t get too head up about it, Pumpkin.”
“What did you hear?” Kim asked, her curiosity piqued.
Shego smiled annoyingly and chuckled. “Just gonna have to ask Nana Sheila yourself, Princess,” she said, and this time Kim did smack her.
Knowing there would be retaliation, Kim flipped away from Shego to stand at the hangar door. Shego lit up and threw a blast Kim’s way, but Kim just stood there with a self-satisfied look on her face, not even trying to dodge. As the blast grew near, the amulet around her neck started to glow, and as the beam should have been impacting, it merely dissipated into a harmless nothing. Kim’s smile grew wider. Shego tried again, this time sending multiple blasts. Kim dodged most of them, but the last she dealt with by holding out her right hand. The finely etched ring she wore started to glow exactly like the amulet had, and again, the plasma disappeared. “Still okay with letting me keep them both?” she teased. Shego grumbled something unintelligible and Kim laughed. She turned to the hanger door, still chuckling, but prepared to move quickly if she could feel Shego come up behind her. “Identify: Possible, Kim,” she ordered.
A quick voice recognition protocol and body scan later, the security system complied. “Identified: Possible, Pink. Please state your command.”
Kim glared at Shego, who had recovered her good humor now that her prank had been successful. “Open door,” Kim said flatly, her annoyance with that nickname clipping her tone. The door slid open obediently, giving the both of them access to the Team Possible hangar.
The hanger was huge and mostly unused. At the moment it housed only their new plane and the hovercraft that Shego had “forgotten” to return to Drakken. Shego had plans, however, and at the very least by Christmas, they would have another jet, this one a more military style number that had once been painted in various shades of green, blue, purple and red. Shego had liberated it from her brothers, none of whom could fly it or in any way use it, and so while most people would have considered it stealing, she considered it reallocation of resources. The paint job was hideous, however, and so it was being repainted to match the other members of the Team Possible air force squad. Kim had no idea this was all going on; it was going to be her Christmas present and Shego was doing a good job of not telling her a damn thing.
Kim walked around the plane, inspecting it. Shego rolled her eyes at the anality, and went to the hatch. “Identify: Shego,” she said.
“Identified: Goshen, Junior. Please state your command,” the computer replied. Shego sighed. Maybe, just maybe, she had taught Kim too well in the past month. “Open hatch,” she ordered grumpily as she heard maniacal giggling coming from the other side of the plane. She stomped aboard, irritated.
She was soon joined by a still-giggling Kim. “Wade was my tech guy long before you joined,” Kim reminded her, “and I don’t call him ‘Nerdlinger’.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Shego replied, pushing a button in the cockpit that opened the hangar door. “Just close the hatch.” Kim grinned and did as she was told, although she knew that Shego could have just pushed a button on the control panel to close it automatically. Their new plane had all kinds of nifty little features like that because, at least on the surface, it was designed to be a commuter plane. It had a very comfortable cabin, communication abilities up the wazoo and controls that could be manned by a single pilot, perfect for the wealthy businessperson on the go. However, being as it belonged to Team Possible, it also had a lot of non-standard equipment as well, such as 360o radar, exceptionally powerful turbo engines and straps attached to the fuselage so that anyone that found herself on the outside of the plane while flying would have something to hold on to.
Kim joined Shego in the cockpit and sat down in the co-pilot’s chair. She waited patiently for Shego to take the plane outside, but Shego did nothing. “Um, Shego, aren’t we going for a lesson?” Kim asked.
“You wanted the lesson, so you have to take us out,” Shego answered. Kim looked slightly terrified yet excited at the prospect of driving the multimillion-dollar machine. “Look, Princess, the door out of here is about a football field wide. No one, with maybe the exception of Stoppable, could screw up badly enough for us to crash into the wall,” Shego explained. “Besides, you are the daughter of a damn astrophysicist; it should come naturally. Grab the controls, and use the pedals like you would for a car. Ease us out of here and when you do something wrong, I’ll yell at you,” Shego concluded, her smirk firmly in place. Kim glared at her. “You said you wanted to learn how to fly, Pink.”
“If this is the way you treated them, I am beginning to understand why your brothers never learned to fly,” Kim grumbled. “And don’t call me ‘Pink’.”
Shego smirked, but said nothing as Kim cautiously edged them out of the hangar. In spite of what she said, Shego didn’t actually yell at Kim when she made a mistake. She teased her about it, deftly corrected her, and made her try again. Soon, after a few trips up and down the runway, Kim was getting the hang of it. That accomplished, Shego started to go over the fundamentals of take-off, showing Kim how to manipulate her slats and flaps to give the jet more lift. Kim practiced for a while and Shego commented on her progress before taking the controls herself and getting them airborne.
Once up in the air, Shego showed Kim the basics like how to use the horizontal rudders to go up and down and the vertical rudder to go left and right before surrendering the controls and letting her practice. Kim did very well, much to Shego’s non-surprise. She was the daughter of an astrophysicist, after all, as well as being a perfectionist that had to do everything nearly perfectly the first time. She also had a talent for flying that her idiot brothers had never hoped to have, Shego mused.
After about an hour or so of practicing, Shego decided that it was time to go back to the hangar. “Time to go home, Kimmie,” she said. “That is enough practice for one day and I would like to do something useful with the rest of my Saturday.”
“But you are training me and I save the world. This is the most useful thing you could be doing,” Kim said immodestly. Shego quirked an eyebrow at the hubris, thinking Kim was joking, but Kim looked completely serious. Shego continued to look at Kim speculatively, and Kim finally cracked a smile. Shego smiled back wryly, both in appreciation at the joke and at the confirmation that she was not working for another megalomaniac. “Fine, we can go in, but only if you promise to give me more lessons tomorrow,” Kim offered.
“All right, but we meet at 2PM and you don’t call me at seven tomorrow morning,” Shego countered.
“Deal,” Kim agreed, and gently turned them around towards the hangar. As soon as she had completed the action, though, an alarm started sounding from the control panel. The noise startled Kim, and thinking she had done something wrong even though she knew she hadn’t, she looked questioningly at Shego.
“It’s not you, Princess,” Shego confirmed, frowning. “We are picking something up on radar.” She frowned at the screen for several more seconds and the frown turned quickly into a scowl. She reached for her headset and put it on, activating it. She unleashed a spate of technical jargon in the microphone, waited for a response, and when it came, she scowled even deeper.
“What is it?” Kim asked, slightly concerned.
“The tower confirmed that there are supposed to be no other flights in the vicinity,” Shego answered. “I wanted to make sure that we would be relatively alone up here so you could practice, so I confirmed with the tower before we headed out. Those guys should not be here. Them suddenly showing up is giving me the heebie-jeebies and I think we should get back to the hangar as quickly as possible.”
“Okay,” Kim agreed, a little freaked out herself at how the situation was unsettling Shego. She increased the throttle and they surged forward. Shego watched the radar as they did so and growled when the blips did the same, not only matching their speed but increasing it so that the blips were coming ever closer.
“I knew we should have gotten weapons on this thing,” she growled.
“Shego, look at this!” Kim commanded, snapping Shego’s attention back to the front.
Two unmarked black jets were speeding toward them, and it was clear that they were on an intercept course. Shego took the controls. “My turn, Pumpkin,” she declared, sending the plane on a series of complicated maneuvers. The black planes followed suit, and in spite of Shego’s skill, the planes soon flanked them on both sides, their wings almost touching the wings of the Team Possible jet.
“Land that plane immediately,” an imperious voice boomed out from one of the black planes.
“Bite me, asshole,” was Shego’s immediate response.
“We are prepared to make you land if you do not comply,” the voice further informed them, and to prove his point, used his wing to nudge their wing, causing the plane to dip. Shego’s temper snapped.
“Enough of this bullshit,” she spat, unbuckling herself. “Take the controls back, Princess,” she ordered. Kim did so hesitantly, but without comment. “Keep us flying straight and steady. I’ll be back in a few.”
“You can’t be going out there, Shego,” Kim protested. She got no answer. “Shego? Shego!” she yelled when she felt the cabin depressurize and then repressurize.
“That’s why we put in the straps, Pumpkin!” Shego called out cheerfully, the background noise from her being on the outside of the plane coming through as a dull roar on the COM link.
“But it is not fair that I have to fly this thing when you get all the fun!” Kim pouted. “Besides, I barely know how to fly it at all!”
“Best way to learn is to jump in with both feet, Princess,” Shego replied, and Kim could almost see the smirk on her face. “All right, dickheads. Let’s play,” she murmured, resettling her grip on the strap as she planned her move. She let go and jumped to the neighboring plane, lighting up and taking a swipe at the wing as she did so. The pilot, never expecting anyone to be jumping from plane to plane without a parachute, was caught completely flatfooted and did nothing to prevent her attack. Her plasma-aided claws sliced cleanly through the metal as Shego landed with a thud on the main part of the fuselage. A significant portion of the wing detached itself and plummeted downwards and the rest started to smoke while the plane started to fly erratically. Shego knew it was time to bail and made a crawling leap for the safety of Kimmie and their plane. She had it timed right, but the crippled plane she was on moved unexpectedly and she missed the strap. Within seconds, she was free-falling with nothing beneath her but air and lethally hard ground. “Aw, shit,” she breathed into the COM.
Kim heard the curse and knew something had gone wrong. She flipped on the outside surveillance cameras and after finding no sign of Shego, turned them downward. The bright green of Shego’s clothing was instantly visible, and without thinking about what she was doing, Kim sent the plane into a nose dive, leveled off and turned in a sweeping arc to position the plane about 100 yards below and a yard or two to the right of Shego’s position. Shego, in spite of her predicament, quirked an eyebrow when she saw the maneuvers. “Damn, girl can do anything,” she thought, as she positioned her fall to make a grab for one of the straps. She caught it this time and when she was sure of her grip, climbed back up to the top of the plane.
The other black jet was still several hundred yards above them; it had not yet had time to react to Kim’s sudden movement. Shego grinned evilly and took careful aim, sending a barrage of plasma bursts straight up. The black jet was hit in several places and it started to spark and smoke. It attempted to reestablish its position, but the damage was too severe and it was forced to retreat.
Kim saw the other plane depart from her place in the cockpit and smiled. The smile was short-lived, however, when the radar signaled another warning. “Crap,” she muttered. “Shego!” she yelled into the microphone. “We got three more!”
“What the fuck. Honestly,” Shego grumbled, preparing to take more of them on.
“They are coming in fast,” Kim told her. A smile formed on Kim’s face as she gripped the controls a little more tightly. “Hold on,” she warned Shego
“Hold on? Pumpkin, what in the hell are you doing?” Shego demanded. Kim didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to as the plane suddenly went spiraling toward the ground. The plane subsequently went up, down, in loops, corkscrews and all other kinds of motion and Shego, going strap to strap and holding on for dear life, made her way to the cabin door. “I had better damn well get in before Kimmie finds the button for the turbo charger,” she told herself wryly. Her words were prophetic, for the instant she had gotten in the door and closed it, she was thrown back to the rear of the cabin by a powerful burst of speed. “She found it,” Shego sighed, picking herself off the ground and making her way to the cockpit.
“What the heck were you doing out there?” Kim berated her the moment she came in. “Trying to get yourself killed?”
Shego shrugged. “Not especially, Princess,” she said nonchalantly. “Besides, I knew you had my back. Nice flying by the way.”
Kim blushed. “Thanks,” she said simply, too embarrassed at the attention to say much else.
“You’re welcome,” Shego replied sincerely. “But we still have three planes on our tail, so I am taking over for the time being. I am going to land so the rat bastards will at least have to fight the both of us and do it face to face.”
“Works for me,” Kim agreed and without easing up on the throttle, Shego made for their hangar. The landing was not the smoothest, but they were coming in very fast and they both expected the whump that accompanied touchdown. Shego taxied as quickly as was safe across the tarmac and after opening the hangar door, scooted their plane inside of it. They locked everything down, looked at one another to make sure that they were both ready and then exited the side door.
The pilots of the planes they were expecting. The whole of the Middleton police department pointing guns at them they were not. “Stop right there and put your hands up!” the officer nearest them commanded. Completely bewildered, Kim and Shego both obeyed without question, wondering where the ambush had come from and why.
“Wait a second, Lieutenant,” one of the other officers called out. “That’s Kim Possible. She’s apprehended Shego for us.”
The lieutenant was instantly apologetic. “Please accept our apologies, Ms. Possible,” she said. “We had no idea you had already been called in.”
“I haven’t been called in for anything,” Kim said honestly. “Shego is a member of my team now and she was giving me flight lessons.”
“Shego is a member of your team?” the lieutenant echoed incredulously.
“Looks like someone missed the memo,” Shego murmured to Kim, and Kim resisted the urge to smile. The police did not seem like they were in a joking mood.
“Yes,” Kim answered, her face dead serious.
“I would have thought that you would be more careful about who you admit to your team, Ms. Possible,” the lieutenant said condescendingly. “A wanted criminal does not fit in with your image.”
Kim took instant offense. “She is no longer wanted for anything,” she said flatly.
“Except for the two heists that we have her fingerprints all over,” the police officer countered.
“What heists?” Shego demanded, ready to kill her moronic brothers if they called the cops on her for taking a plane that they did not need.
“As if you didn’t know,” the officer scoffed.
“No, I don’t actually. So why don’t you enlighten me?” Shego offered, this close to really losing her temper.
“The Middleton Botanical Gardens were robbed of a particularly valuable and rare plant on Monday around ten, and the Space Center was robbed of a propulsion device this morning between seven and ten,” the lieutenant read off of her pad. “We have evidence connecting you to both of them.”
“Well, I hate to spoil your little arresting party, sweetie, but I have alibis for both of those times,” Shego replied.
“Bull,” the officer retorted.
“Mondays at ten I am in Freshman Honors English at Middleton Community,” Shego replied matter-of-factly. “That Monday, we were discussing Lysistrata and whether sex could trump violence in human nature. If you don’t believe me, call Dr. Brueck at MCC; she will vouch that I was there.”
“And what about this morning?” the lieutenant challenged.
Kim answered for her. “She was home at seven. I called her and woke her up.”
“I said that the robbery happened between seven and ten,” the officer persisted. “What about after you hung up?”
Shego grimaced. She did have an alibi for that time, but she had no idea how she was going to tell Lieutenant-Stick-Up-Her-Ass that she was talking to her great-great aunt that had been dead for 15 years. “Someone dropped by my house and I was talking to her until I had to come here and meet Kimmie,” she said, truthfully but vaguely.
“And who dropped by? Would this mystery person back up your story?” the lieutenant asked.
“She would,” Shego replied. “But Nana Sheila is kind of dead, so she only appears every now and again.”
“Now I have heard everything; a ghost is your alibi,” the officer snorted.
“Well, I do live at the Middleton Mansion and people have said for years that it is haunted,” Shego pointed out. “And it is not like you need an alibi for this morning anyway.”
“Why? Am I just supposed to take your word for it?” the officer jeered.
“No, you could try doing some actual police work instead of making shit up,” Shego replied angrily. “Your ‘evidence’ is crap and you know it. You said that the two robberies were committed by the same person. Well, I have a rock solid alibi for the first robbery, so I don’t need one for the second. And even if you now change your tune and say they were committed by different people, based on the fingerprinting evidence you say you have, it couldn’t be me. In the first place, I always wear gloves on a job. I pretty much wear them all the time. Secondly, even if I was smoking crack that day and did not wear them, you still couldn’t have any fingerprint evidence because I don’t leave any fingerprints. I have them, but I don’t leave them. So even if you found prints at the scene, you couldn’t match them to me because I have no prints on file.”
“Everyone can be printed,” the lieutenant said evenly.
Shego was through with talk. Moving too quickly for anyone to stop her, she snatched the pen the lieutenant was holding to take notes and broke it, smearing her currently bare thumb thoroughly with the black ink. She then pressed that thumb right in the middle of the officer’s forehead, and sure enough, there was no print. There was just a thumb-shaped oval with no design of any kind. “Believe me now?” Shego asked sarcastically. “Now, since you have jack for evidence and nothing to hold me on, please get the hell out of here before I am forced to call my lawyer and sue your ass for harassment.”
The officer glared at her, but knew her bluff had been called and she had lost. “The next time something is stolen in Middleton, I am coming straight for you,” she warned, scrubbing the ink off her forehead.
“Try it,” Shego replied with a smirk. The lieutenant glared some more, but then ordered her men to pull back. Within a minute or two, Kim and Shego were left standing alone.
Shego stood there a tad awkwardly, still pissed off about the false accusation and worried that Kim might think it had some validity. Kim alleviated those fears by not even commenting on the charges but instead grabbing her hand and looking at her ink-stained thumb in fascination. “You do have a print,” she said, examining the digit closely. “How come you don’t leave one?”
“It has to do with my powers,” Shego said. “My skin isn’t exactly normal anymore.”
Kim smiled and shook her head. “No wonder you made an awesome thief,” she commented. “So, do you think some one is trying to frame you or that the police just came here first?” she asked.
Shego thought about it, but she was distracted by Kim’s nonchalant but obvious faith that the police were off their collective rocker, and even after she was able to clear her mind, she was still undecided. “I don’t know, Princess,” she admitted. “I think the police had more than they were telling, and those jets that harassed us weren’t cops. Middleton cops don’t have jets. I have a feeling that this is way more involved than a couple of random thefts.”
Kim smiled. “Spanking. Sounds like we may have a mission after all,” she said happily.
“So it seems,” Shego sighed, unhappy. Missions meant work, even if they were to clear her own problems. And, missions meant lots of time with Kimmie, which, at the moment, Shego was really on the fence about.
“Quit being pissy about the work and come on, Shego,” Kim ordered good-naturedly. “I want food. We can call Ron and talk about this over some nacos.”
“I really hate that place; you know that right?” Shego protested as Kim dragged her away toward Bueno Nacho.