The moment she started walking up the short porch that came before the front door, the barking started.
Shego sighed as the incessant yapping continued. Thank god she was paying rent on an actual house and not an apartment. “Enh, serves me right for getting a Lhasa Apso…” she muttered, opening the door.
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you, I hear you! You can stop barking now, alright?” Shego said, closing the door.
The dog stopped, tilted its head as it listened to her voice – then – surprise, surprise – resumed barking.
Course, if she’d been cooped up in a pen all day without a bathroom break, she’d be jumping up and down and yelling to be let outside, too. Shego laughed to herself. Persistent little mutt… A lot like-
“Okay, okay, OKAY!” Shego walked over to the pen and looked at the puppy jumping eagerly at the walls of the pen, whining and yipping away. “Lha mo, Lha mo, LHA MO! Chill, girl! Chill! Sheesh! Yes! Okay! I get it! You wanna go outside! Right, girl? Well, you can’t go outside if you keep barking!”
This only made the dog antsier. Shego dropped her head. It was a futile effort, really. The only way to get her to actually shut up was to let her do her duty outside. She picked up Lha mo’s leash and unlocked the pen. “Okay, girl, c’mon, let’s go outside, okay?” The dog sniffed her up and down while she knelt to put the leash on its collar - bolting for the back door before she could. “Hey! Lha mo! Get back here!” The dog turned around and anxiously ran back to her, sliding on the floor as it stopped - and this time, Shego grabbed the dog’s collar so it wouldn’t bolt away as she put its leash on. Finally done with that, Shego stood up and walked to the back door. As she unlocked the three locks on the door, Lha mo looked at the door, at her, and back at the door, whining, tugging anxiously on the leash, trying to get outside. “Yes, Lha mo, I know you wanna go outside, but I have to open the door so you can do that, okay?” Shego scolded. The door unlocked, Shego opened it - and was nearly tugged into the backyard.
Of course, as soon as the dog cleared the doorway, it stopped, the sudden jerk on the leash actually pulling Shego back a few inches. “Arrgh… C’mon, Lha mo!” Shego groused as the dog looked around. It wasn’t a big deal. Lha mo did it all the time. Bark and whine incessantly – then before she’d even reached the grass in the backyard, stop dead in her tracks. The damn thing was more picky than her and about as indecisive as Drakken. However, Lha mo was only like that whenever Shego took her outside. She was probably just stopping to take in all the scents of the outside. Dogs did have more sensitive noses than humans. Shego lightly tugged on Lha mo’s leash, keeping a light tension as the dog resisted - not to choke Lha mo, but enough to tell the dog to move. Come to think of it, it was probably the most gentle thing Shego had ever done in her life. “C’mon, girl, go to the bathroom.” Eventually, against the continuing tension of the leash, Lha mo relented and finally walked out into the yard. Shego sighed. She’d never understand why the dog did that. She waited as the dog did its duty – which took a while.
Fifteen minutes later, Shego walked back into the house followed by Lha mo. The dog shook itself off – it had been raining slightly – then she got antsy again as Shego locked the back door. “Yes, Lha mo - Hold on a second, girl…” She kneeled down to lock the lock at the bottom of the door – at which point Lha mo jumped up, putting her paws on Shego’s knees, whining. Had the dog’s claws not dug into the bruised part of her skin from where she’d blocked a particularly vicious punch from Kim Possible earlier, Shego would have chuckled. “ Ow! Yes, hi Lha mo, I know you’re there, you can stop jumping on me now – Yes, I know! I know! Hold on!” she repeated as Lha mo whined some more. Shego stood up. “Okay, Lha mo, time to get back in your pen! C’mon!” The dog eagerly walked back to the pen – but only because she knew that a reward was coming. Hmmph. One of the few things Lha mo had in common with her owner: Claws (even if Shego’s were clawed gloves), and selfishness. “Go get in your pen, Lha mo!” Shego told her. After running smack into the side of the pen – which Shego couldn’t help but smirk at – Lha mo backed up and found the open part of the pen, bounding eagerly over to her dog bed and turning around to look back at Shego. Shego took a biscuit from the box on the table close to the pen – rattling around the biscuits first in order to perk the dog’s ears up. She walked into the pen and stood right next to Lha mo, looking down at her. She didn’t say anything for a while. Lha mo, anticipating the biscuit, grew increasingly impatient with the silence. Soon, she was whining and jumping up on Shego – not getting any further than just above Shego’s knee, considering that Lha mo was about a foot tall – and then she began barking at Shego. Shego waited patiently for it to play out.
Soon, Lha mo got the picture and sat, staying quiet. Which was when Shego held up the dog biscuit. “Dance!” said Shego, waving the biscuit around a little bit. Lha mo instantly jumped up on her hind legs, reaching her front paws out – and as she usually did, turned a full circle as well. “Sit!” Shego commanded – and Lha mo sat back on her haunches. Again, Shego waited. Having done this a thousand times over, Lha mo already knew what the next command was going to be. After sitting for about a half-second, she immediately flattened her front paws out, lying down. “Sit!” Shego repeated – and the dog sat back up. But quickly, the dog laid down again. “Nooo – sit!” commanded Shego again. This time, Lha mo sat, and stayed sitting long enough. “Lie down!” At the command, Lha mo laid back down. But her front paws weren’t completely flat against the ground this time. “All the way, Lha mo!” Shego snapped her fingers, pointing down. The dog got the picture, complying. “Good girl!” said Shego, and tossed the biscuit at Lha mo’s front paws. Lha mo snapped it up, finishing it in a matter of seconds.
Shego sighed again. It still didn’t make sense to even her why she’d bought Lha mo. It seemed to go completely against her character as a villain. But then again, all people acted different once the door was closed and they were out of sight of the rest of the world. Well, except for Drakken. But then again, the dimwitted mad scientist was lost in own world. He really didn’t have time to care about the real one. Shego, on the other hand – she knew well about the real world. She had been the most wanted woman in it. But she’d acquired that title before she’d even met Drakken, so even she’d grown bored of it quickly. And when Drakken had gotten Commodore Puddles, Shego had become jealous – not because the poodle was spending more much time with Drakken than she was, no – Shego spent the least amount of time around Drakken as she could. No, it was because Drakken had refused to let her spend any time with Puddles. Hilarious now, back then, his words had felt like one of the biggest insults in the world:
“You’re not a poodle person, Shego! Go…Go help Dementor with his big Dash-…Dash-uh… Daschles – with his giant freaking Oscar Myers, if you want to raise some small dogs you can actually handle!”
“Fine! FINE! I guess I’ll have to go out and get my own small dog, then! Huh? I’ll prove you wrong, Blue Boy! I’ll show you I can handle a cute, small dog! Just you watch! Eh? Just you watch – DREW!”
So, after that horrifyingly juvenile delinquent scene of retaliation, Shego, having laid down the challenge, had pretty much forced herself to prove to him that she could, in fact, raise a cute small dog. If not for the fact that she never went back on her word, she could’ve avoided it all. But she’d kept to it. Going to the nearest pet store, she’d asked – after actually showing them some cash and proving she’d come in to buy a pet and not steal anything – if she could see the cutest small dog puppy in the store, figuring if she was gonna prove she could handle a cute small dog, she might as well get the cutest one. The pet store person had told her he’d show her the dog everyone said was the cutest, but then hadn’t bought. That had perplexed Shego for a short time, wondering what exactly he’d meant by that. However, the moment she’d laid eyes on Lha mo – who, at the time, was a little mop of reddish-tan fur with green eyes viciously attacking a rawhide bone about twice her size – all had become instantly clear. And when the puppy had turned and first looked at her, instantly running at the door of its pen, barking and growling with a ferocity most people would associate only with rabid dogs, Shego’s heart had melted. She’d actually said “D’aww!” for the first time in a long time – and bought Lha mo on the spot.
4 years later, and Shego wasn’t regretting it. She’d quickly proved she could handle raising a small dog. But after the smaller Lha mo – whom Shego refused to have spayed – had landed her self-attempting suitor Commodore Puddles in the animal hospital with some especially painful and nasty-looking wounds – Drakken forbade the Lhaso Apso from living in his lair. So Shego had found a small house to rent out, and set up shop in there. It had no fence - but honestly, when the house’s owner could hurl green energy flames, having no fence was no big deal. And that was where she was now – home after a day of fighting Kim Possible, watching her Lhasa Apso ravenously devour the dog biscuit it was given.
She looked at the bruises on her arms. The only bruises she had. She really didn’t need this right now…
“C’mon, KP. Why’d you let her go? She tried to kill you – what? 200-something times in the course of 4 years? Do you even need to second-guess her motives? I mean, come on already – this is SHEGO here!”
“Ron, 1) It’s been nearly a year since the Lil’ Diablo incident. She was released on good behaviour, and we haven’t heard a peep from her since. 2) When, in any fight I’ve ever been in with her, have you ever seen Shego not only JUSTblock my attacks, but stay silent the whole time? She didn’t banter at all!”
“Um… Ugh, C’mon, Kim! She’d been threatening this place for a while now!”
“Honestly, Ron. What exactly did she have against the Middleton Pet Shelter? Drakken’s poodle isn’t there, so she wouldn’t have been going after that – and she was wearing a business suit, on top of that!”
“She was?”
“Ugh…Wade, can you pull the security footage of Shego coming into the place?”
“Sure thing, Kim – there ya’ go!”
“Hey, you’re right, she is wearing a business suit…And she’s got two women with her – Wow, she looks pissed – Waitaminute…” Ron snatched the Kimmunicator from Kim’s hands. “That’s Rufus’ vet!”
“Huh?” asked Kim.
“The woman on the right! That’s Judy Art, the veterinarian I take Rufus to!”
“What the hell? Wade, can you I.D. the woman on Shego’s left?”
“Yeah, hold on a sec…Jackie Diane!”
“The big lawyer? What’s she doing in Middleton?” Kim wondered.
“What’s that in Shego’s hand?” asked Ron, pointing.
“Whoah! Wade, zoom in! …reby sum – HEREBY SUMMONED TO APPEAR?”
“That means, that means, I know what that means, Oh, what does that mean?” Ron asked.
“What it means, is that I just got called up to stop Shego from delivering an official court summons!”
“…And that means?”
“She wasn’t trying to rob the Middleton Pet Shelter…I stopped her from telling them she’s suing them.”