I want to say that I don’t know what I’m doing here, but I do know. I’m here because my pet was going to go without me and leave me for whatever number of days and I didn’t want that. Now, I’m seeing how my pet is when she’s also someone’s sister and daughter. She seems almost normal and so does her family. So, I wonder if one day she’ll leave me to go be normal somewhere or will her family take her from me to make her normal? I don’t want her normal; I just want her to be mine, like she should. I just want her to be mine.
Shego was attempting to settle into the guestroom in the Possible household. It was a slightly difficult thing to do because the room seemed so much like a hotel room and it had the slight smell of old people. She wished that she could just fall asleep because she was sick of thinking about the day that she had just had and what she had just learned.
She had just spent a very odd day seeing how semi-normal people lived, how a semi-normal family got along; it was semi-normal because the Possible family were all super intelligent and that kept everything from being totally normal. She had witnessed a meal eaten civilly without someone having to shout or someone being wounded; she saw talking without threats being involved for the most part or at least threats that would not be acted upon; and she even witnessed some board game time. It bored her all right, as the name suggested, but it also stunned her.
Her pet came from somewhat normal people with normal backgrounds in a normal town; she decided to not count the fact that the Possibles were a neurosurgeon and a rocket scientist as she thought about things now. It was just a warming, loving environment and it puzzled her that her little monster came from such a place because she believed that Kim was not normal, until she saw the redhead interact with her family anyway.
Kim turned out to be normal with her family. She ripped on her little brothers verbally like any regular big sister would. She listened to her parents like a normal, good daughter. She got embarrassed when her parents started sharing stories from her childhood like any other person would. She nearly jumped on her mother when the neurosurgeon was going to show Shego some baby pictures, just like any normal person would. Kim was normal for the most part and that led Shego to a bizarre line of thinking.
Would her elf one day leave her to be normal? Would Kim one day just decided she was done playing the eccentric pet/hero and go find a husband, live in the suburbs, have two kids, and call it a life? It did not sound like Kim, but she considered that it could happen since she was now seeing a side of Kim that she had never witnessed before. She just did not know what to think.
Shego wished that she could turn her brain off and go to sleep. She just could not get comfortable enough in the bed to do that. She tossed and turned, but no space seemed just right in the comfort zone. No place seemed to be just right and she could not figure out why.
Shego then suddenly tensed up as she heard a small noise outside her door. She made a fist as the door inched open, preparing for something that she did not even know what it was, and then she relaxed when she saw who it was. Kim was coming into the room.
The green-skinned woman did not say anything as Kim climbed into bed with her; the slender hero was silent too. The redhead sighed as she curled up next to Shego as she did every night. She kissed her mistress on the cheek as a goodnight gesture and she was about to go right to sleep, but her owner halted her.
“Princess,” Shego said.
“Hmm?” Kim acknowledged her mistress with a noise.
“You said your parents don’t know that you’re my pet, right?” the raven-haired female inquired.
“Right, it’s a really hard thing to try to tell parents,” the younger woman answered.
Shego nodded to show that she understood and agreed that it was probably a hard thing to tell parents. “Do they know that you’re bisexual?” she inquired curiously. She wondered what kind of things Kim could tell her parents; they seemed a bit too clean to accept the news that their daughter was bisexual.
“Yeah, they know,” Kim replied.
“You told them?” the super-powered officer asked. She considered that the parents could have just caught Kim in compromising position back when the girl lived in their home.
“Yeah, I told them,” the redhead confirmed.
“How’d they take it?” Shego inquired.
“Well, they didn’t disown me, which was good. They weren’t very happy with the news. My dad didn’t really understand it at first and my mother had to explain it to him. I don’t know if they ever got over the idea that I’m not straight, but they accept it. It’s a part of me and they accept that, you know? It’s just who I am,” Kim answered with a bit of a shrug.
The slim hero was trying to sound neutral as she spoke to give off the impression that it did not matter one way or another, but she was not fairing well. It seemed like she wanted something more than acceptance, but she did not share what that was. Shego wondered what more her girl wanted from her parents; at least they accepted her. Other parents would have had a fit more than likely to find out their child was bisexual.
“Their acceptance means that they try not to act surprised if they see you with a girl?” Shego asked.
“Something like that. It’s cool, as long as they don’t freak out or something. They’re trying, which is cool,” Kim replied with confidence. It was believable that she was pleased with them trying, but there was still more to it.
“Is there anything uncool to you?” the older woman inquired, just to tease her munchkin a bit.
“Hmm…not having you all to myself is very uncool,” the slender adventurer replied and she hugged her mistress close to her.
Shego laughed a little; it seemed that no matter what her pet would always be hers. How could someone that seemed so normal be so weird, Shego wondered as she looked down at her mini-monster. The older woman did not know the answer and she did not care to know it. As long as Kim was hers, everything was all right. She was willing to bet that everything would be all right.
When Shego woke up the next morning, she was alone in the bed. She was not used to that since she generally woke up before her pet. She was not the only one that was surprised; when Kim woke up, she was astonished too. The redhead had actually been confused when she woke up first, thinking that maybe it was the middle of the night and she wanted a snack or something, but then she saw the time. Kim then realized that she had woken up her usual time for when she used to live in the house. Her body had responded to the environment that she was in, not that Shego knew that.
The pale woman went to take a shower and she could hear that the Possible family was already awake and rolling because she could hear Kim yelling at “the tweebs” for whatever reason. She did not pay the siblings any mind, only thinking that Kim was better than she was when it came to the boys because she would have threatened her little brothers a long time ago to shut them up, not that it would work. Instead of getting violent, Kim usually had some kind of smart aleck, scientific theory to shut her brothers up; the fact that they would never travel past the speed of light was typically sufficient and almost always shut them down.
“Kimmie, don’t discourage your brothers,” Ann scolded her daughter.
“Tell them to stop acting like such tweebs then,” Kim replied.
“She’s just mad because physics is a better science than biology,” Jim commented.
“And we’ll have doctorates before her because she’s lazy,” Tim added.
Kim scoffed and merely countered with, “As if.” She also rolled her leaf-colored eyes. She would probably have three doctorates before they even finished undergrad.
“Kimmie, don’t you think you’re a little too old to be having this argument,” Ann said to halt the discussion.
The slim hero rolled her eyes once again and decided to leave her brothers alone to avoid being reprimanded again. She went in search of her master to see if the older woman was up. She thought that maybe they could go do something if Shego was dressed. She went to Shego’s room and found it empty. She then noticed the noise in the bathroom, so she guessed that her owner was in there. She waited in the guestroom until Shego came back in because she figured that if she went in the bathroom, it would make her mistress angry. She also figured that if she went to wait in her own room, her master would not think to come get her so that they could be together.
“What’s up, Pumpkin?” Shego inquired as she entered the room to discover her pet just sitting on the bed.
“Want to go outside?” Kim proposed with a smile.
“Aw, you want to go for a walk?” Shego teased.
“I figured I could show you around town,” the redhead explained.
“Okay, not like there’s anything better to do around here,” the pale woman commented.
Kim took her mistress to the mall before anything else to show her all of her favorite spots. She knew that there was nothing about the Middleton mall that would impress the older female considering the fact that Go City had some of the best malls in the country. Shego looked rather unimpressed when they entered the mall, but she scanned the area in case she spotted something for herself or for her pet.
“Monique used to work there,” Kim informed her master while pointing to Club Banana.
“That’s the fashion conscious one, isn’t it?” Shego asked. She got her pet’s friends confused sometimes, so she just needed to get them straightened out mentally before she could comment on them. She actually knew her pet’s friends better than she liked. She did not see the point in knowing Kim’s friends, yet she knew a few things about them. It was weird as far as she was concerned, but she let it go.
“Yeah, that’s her,” the shorter female answered.
“I guess that was the perfect place for her to work. Where’d you work?” Shego asked to taunt her pet because she doubted that the girl ever held a job. She did not see how it would be plausible for her girl to have held a job with the way that she hopped all over the world.
Kim laughed a bit and hid her face. She would never tell her mistress that she worked at Bueno Nacho, even though it was not very long. It was one thing to not be embarrassed when she was with her master, but even as a pet, she had some self-respect.
The pair wandered the mall for a little while. Shego was not sure why, but she seemed compelled to buy things for herself and her pet; it typically occurred when she was in or near shopping centers. Kim came away with more clothes when she went out with Shego than when she went shopping with Monique. It might have had something to do with the fact that she and Monique were always on a budget while it seemed that her mistress never ran out of money. The redhead never said anything about it, but maybe one day, she would bring up the fact that her master spent money the way she drank water and see if she could get an explanation for it.
“Kim, what are you doing here? Buying more out of season clothes?” Bonnie asked as she noticed the redhead and her master. Kim groaned when she saw Bonnie not even five feet away.
“Bonnie, don’t you have classes you should be failing?” Kim countered.
“As if,” the brown-haired girl answered. “I’ve got an audition with a ballet troupe. I don’t need school anymore, unlike some people,” she commented, as if that was an insult.
The scientist was about to respond to that, but someone else called her name; it seemed that she was popular that day. She turned to see who it was and noticed a blonde woman a few yards away that looked very familiar to her. The blonde walked over and completely ignored Bonnie when she made it to the scene; she did not pay Shego too much mind either, not that Shego cared.
“It is you, Kim. It’s funny running into you. A colleague of mine was just showing me some of your photographs of snakes and other reptiles. They were lovely shots and then I was reading the article that went along with your pictures. The person interviewing you didn’t do your work justice,” the blonde commented in a sort of uppity tone.
Kim was a bit stunned because of who the woman was that was complimenting her. She was too shocked to speak for a couple of seconds because the woman that she was looking at was Justine Flanner. Justine was complimenting her work? It had to be the end of the world, but someone forgot to send out the memo; it was the only way for Kim to explain the reason why Justine Flanner was paying her work homage.
“Justine, I didn’t know you were interested in the natural sciences. I thought it was all about theoretical and experimental physics with you,” Kim finally replied. It was the first thing that came to mind and it was better than just standing there like a speechless moron.
“Well, yes, but then I saw your work. It was brilliant, for a biologist anyway. I was shocked to hear that you didn’t have your PhD yet and I was a bit disappointed. What happened?” Justine inquired and she noticed that Bonnie was still just standing there. She decided to rid them of the Rockwaller annoyance. “Miss Rockwaller, this conversation might be a little out of your league considering we are going to be using words with more than five letters, so perhaps you would like to move along,” she insisted.
Bonnie looked thoroughly insulted by the blonde’s words. “As if I’d hang around you science geeks anyway,” she huffed before walking away.
“You’ve still got a way with Bonnie,” Kim remarked, speaking to Justine.
“The little peasant needs to learn her place amongst her betters. Now, come on, out with it, why haven’t you gotten your PhD yet? I’m certain it’s because of all of your extra activity. I’ve told you numerous times that you need to focus on the science. You are a scientist,” Justine pointed out, speaking in a calm, yet forceful manner.
“Are you done scolding me yet?” Kim inquired with a playful smile.
Shego was now interested in the new comer. She was a little curious about the blonde and the nerve that she had daring to reprimand her little monster with her standing right there. She decided that she did dislike what was happening already and she did not even know exactly what was going on yet.
“Well, what happened?” the blonde genius demanded to know. She continued to speak in a superior tone to Kim that the redhead did not seem to mind, but her master certainly did.
“She did other shit,” Shego replied, irked with the pushy blonde. Justine appeared shocked and offended by the statement and turned her attention to the raven-haired woman.
“Oh, Justine, this is Shego. Shego, this is Justine,” Kim introduced the pair, who merely glared daggers at each other. The slim adventurer was certain that if life were like a television show, lightning would have shot from their eyes at each other.
“Kim, you allowed a woman to distract you from putting your mind to work?” Justine inquired as if she was very dissatisfied with the slender hero.
“That’s not what happened. Shego put me back on the path actually,” Kim informed the blonde scientist. Her mistress looked rather proud as those words left her mouth. In her mind, Shego was saying “take that, bitch!”
“So, you’re working on your PhD now, aren’t you?” Justine grilled the redheaded adventurer.
“Of course. I’ve got my research going and everything is all planned out. I’ve got all sorts of things going as far as my science. I’m fine,” Kim replied.
“So, I’ll be seeing more of your work with reptiles?” the snobby-looking scientist asked.
“Reptiles, snakes especially and also natural toxins. I have been wondering what you’ve been working on lately,” Kim answered.
“Nothing worth noting. I’ve been teamed up with a group of annoying know-nothings on some government project. There is this exceptionally irksome fellow who is completely blue and utterly mad. I’m thankfully on vacation right now. I figured I’d stop by and say hello to my parents for a few days and then I’m heading to Germany for the rest of the month. What about you? You have a spare moment and we could get together and talk,” Justine sort of proposed.
Her words were an order disguised as a proposal. She was not in the habit of suggesting things, especially to Kim. People were to be told what to do and she expected them to do it posthaste; Kim was not an exception to that rule. In fact, she expected Kim to comply more readily than others.
Kim glanced at her mistress and she could see that Shego did not like the idea of her meeting up with Justine very much; the pale woman definitely did not like that idea. She bet that her owner would like it even less if Shego knew more about her history with Justine. Kim decided to be courteous while making sure not to anger Shego; after all, she had to go home with the green-skinned female.
“I actually don’t think I’d have time for that, Justine. I mean, I’ve got to get back to my parents’ house for their cookout today and then tomorrow I’m leaving,” Kim explained.
“Oh, that is a shame. We always did have so much to talk about. Well, with luck, I’ll see you around,” Justine said and then she dared to reach out and caress Kim’s cheek right in front of Shego. She then locked eyes with Shego and smirked at her; it was like she was challenging Shego to kill her, the super-powered woman thought anyway.
The moss-hued officer growled from the nerve of the blonde bitch before her. She was so upset that she could not even speak to give the girl a proper tongue lashing for being so bold. The first words that popped into her head were words that she could not even speak because they would sound so weird; she thought to say “bitch, keep your hands off of my pet.” That line was borderline ridiculous even in her own head and she actually would have been embarrassed if she allowed such words to leave her mouth, but she could not just allow Justine to get away with such blatant disrespect and then try to walk away. That notion was beyond ridiculous.
“With luck, you’ll get hit by a speeding car in the parking lot,” Shego remarked in a clear tone as Justine stepped away to leave.
“What was that?” Justine asked as she turned around.
Kim got a little nervous and worried. She decided to intervene before things got out of hand. After all, she would hate to see Justine end up in the hospital for trying to get into it verbally with her owner.
“Nothing, she said with luck you’ll have a spanking vacation,” the redhead interjected before her master could repeat herself.
Justine would not have backed down from the insult and then Shego would have more than likely eaten the blonde alive. Kim would not have known what to do if that happened, so she hoped that Justine just took her word on what Shego said and continued to leave. It was a holiday, no one needed to die in the mall, in Kim’s opinion anyway.
“Feel free to call me sometime, Kim. My number hasn’t changed,” Justine said and she winked at Kim before starting to walk off again.
“I’ll try,” Kim replied while putting her hands over Shego’s mouth to keep her from barking something else to provoke the blonde further.
Once Justine was out of sight, Shego finally managed to yank her pet’s hands away from her mouth. She wished that she had a magazine or a newspaper because she would have whacked her naughty munchkin with all of her might. She had things to say to that uppity blonde whore and now she would not get the chance.
“What the hell, Princess?” the pale woman demanded to know while turning to glare at her mischievous pet.
“Sorry,” Kim apologized for her behavior. She really did not want to see her master kill Justine, though.
“Who the fuck was that snotty, uppity bitch?” Shego inquired while pointing in the direction that Justine exited in.
“Justine. Hmm…I guess, in retrospect, you could call her my original mistress,” Kim mused aloud and that got her master’s total attention.
“What the hell do you mean?” Shego almost shouted. She recalled being told that she was the only one that Kim had ever played the pet for and now she was being told that she was not Kim’s first mistress. What the hell!
The slim scholar smiled a little bit; she thought that it was a bit amusing that her master was so flustered by her response. She decided to explain why she had said such a thing. As they continued to walk around the mall, she went into telling Shego that she went to high school with Justine, who was very much the intellectual snob that she seemed to be. The blonde had at first looked down on Kim, feeling that the redhead’s so-called genius was an insult to her real genius. Kim had taken some insult to that, but nothing much more and graduated without any wounds dealt by the blonde.
It had taken a chance meeting at a science convention after Kim and Justine had graduated for them to see eye to eye at least a little bit. They ended up talking and the blonde yielded that Kim was not as stupid as she thought; her exact words were something to that effect. Despite her uppity persona, Kim did not think that she was as bad as she seemed when they talked to each other. They found out that they were attending the same university and then the next thing that the redhead knew, they were dating…well, sort of dating.
Justine was a very domineering personality and Kim, though hyperactive and competitive in her own right, had grown out of always wanting to be right once she had gotten out of high school. Justine, however, always wanted and had to be right. So, the slim hero tended to avoid arguing about pointless matters; well, things that she dubbed pointless, but Justine seemed to believe that every little thing mattered to the point that she badgered the redhead over the smallest, simplest things. Justine tended to order Kim around as if she was a servant and things like that because Kim had mellowed and was never really looking for a confrontation in her personal life. That was why Kim referred to her as the “original mistress.”
“I was more like her slave than anything else. She liked ordering me around all of the time. She didn’t really take care of me or anything. She was nowhere near as good a mistress as you are,” Kim informed Shego as they started back to the car to get to the house for the barbeque.
“You’re just a glutton for punishment, huh?” Shego quipped. She really did not get her pet at all. Out of the all of people on the planet, the redhead had fallen for a manipulative, cheating male artist, an arrogant, domineering female scientist, and then her. It just did not make any sense that her pet did not fall for somebody that would treat her properly.
“I don’t think of it like that. You live, you learn,” Kim replied with a shrug.
There was no point in stressing over people that were either not in her life anymore or in her life in a different manner. As far as her current mistress, she would not rather be with anyone else. She doubted that anyone would treat her the way that her master did anyway. Sure, she was dubbed a pet, but who would cook for her, clean up after her, make sure that she was doing something positive with her life without telling her what she should be doing, shampoo her head whenever she requested it, clip her nails if she asked, rub her scalp, massage her and everything else that Shego did for her? She would never even be comfortable enough around someone to want them to do most of the things that Shego did for her. Her mistress treated her just fine and always made her feel special. She could not ask for anything more in her opinion.
“So, who broke up with who in that one?” Shego inquired, referring to her pet’s relationship with Justine.
“She broke up with me. She had a problem with the hero thing and the fact that I was doing biology instead of physics in school. She always barked on me about it,” the olive-eyed female explained.
“What the hell does it even matter? You were doing something with your life and that hollow head of yours and that should be enough,” Shego stated.
Kim only smiled. She loved that about Shego; the fact that she did not need to be doing something specific, it just had to be something. Shego did not have some divine plan that she believed that the slender adventurer should follow. All the pale woman wanted was for Kim to go out and do something with her life and then come in the house and be as lazy as possible. It was not a difficult thing to do.
“So, how many other mistresses are you hiding, you little monster?” the green-skinned woman asked in a teasing tone. For some reason, she felt at ease rather than apprehensive about her pet possibly having other “masters.” Sure, she wished that she had heard something about Justine sooner, but she did not see the blonde woman as a threat to her. She felt like despite everything, her pet would always remain true to her because that was what a pet did. A pet was loyal to her master; Kim was loyal to Shego.
“Just her. My other real girlfriend was more laidback, so I wouldn’t consider her a mistress. Our relationship was much more adventurous equals jumping off of things together and laughing all the way down,” Kim replied.
The eccentric adventurer wondered if she should tell her master about how Shego was actually the only person that she ever returned to in the same role. She considered the thought because she thought that her owner might be a bit upset about the fact that she had sort of had another mistress, so she thought it might be reassuring for Shego to know that she was the only person Kim ever returned to with saying that they were only going to be friends. Whenever others let her go, Kim left and never looked back; lovers were included in that. Life went on when it was implied that she was unnecessary or unwanted by everyone, except for Shego. When Shego let her go, she felt injured, wounded, unfulfilled, empty, even deprived without her mistress. She always needed to get back to her master.
“So, did she leave you too?” the pale woman asked Kim about her other girlfriend.
“Yeah, she couldn’t handle the brain that came along with the adventure,” the redhead answered.
“Why? You’re not a snob about it,” Shego pointed out. Most of the time, she even forgot that her pet was a genius. Sometimes, she even thought that there were rocks in her monster’s head because of the things that she did.
“Yeah, but every time that she asked a rhetorical question about how something worked or something like that, I answered. It got annoying for her,” the younger woman explained.
Shego laughed a bit; her elf was a know-it-all now that she thought about it and she was well aware of that from watching television trivia shows with the redhead. It did get irksome sometimes because she wondered why the girl even heard of some of the answers, but she found it a tolerable, cute annoying. She usually batted her mini-monster with a pillow or something to let her know that she was being bothersome if she was just getting ludicrous with things. It was not something that she would ever get rid of her adorable imp for.
“We should get back to the house. The food is probably on the grill already,” Kim realized.
“Like you even know what time it is. You don’t wear a watch,” Shego commented.
“The position of the sun suggests that it’s past noon,” Kim pointed out.
“You are a snob about it now,” the pale woman stated and her pet offered her a cheeky smile.
Shego was lounging in the Possible backyard, eating a slice of watermelon while resting in a chair that she had leaned far back. Kim was talking to her mother while they were both feasting on chicken kabobs. The twins were acting stupid, in Shego’s opinion, but the boys thought that they were being impressive to their girlfriends. Yes, the tweebs had girlfriends, much to their sister’s surprise.
As far as Kim could tell, her brothers’ girlfriends were semi-normal; she could not bring herself to admit that any person dating her brothers were completely normal. They seemed like nice girls, not that she interacted with them much; she and her brothers had completely different taste in women and she did not find anything interesting about the girls that made her want to get to know them. Her mother did report on the girls and she even still seemed to be on the fence about the girls. Apparently, she could not figure out why the boys liked them aside for the fact that they both were cute blondes. And then another blonde made his presence known and the topic was lost for the moment.
“The Ron-man is in the hiz-ouse!” Ron announced as he entered the backyard with Yori. Rufus leaped out of his pocket the second that they hit the backyard and made a beeline directly for the food.
“Ron, do you suppose we could keep Rufus from helping himself?” Missus Possible requested because it was just a little disturbing to see a small rodent fixing his own plate, especially to the few guests that were not accustomed to such a thing.
“He takes the bald rat everywhere, huh?” Shego remarked.
“Why not? You take Kim everywhere,” Ron countered and it would have been funny anywhere else, but where they were now. It also gave a clue as to where he was going with the conversation, but no one could stop him in time. “At least I don’t force Rufus to wear a collar and put him on a leash every time we leave the house. I’m a way better pet owner than you are. I’m shocked you don’t tie Kim up outside of the grocery store,” he declared.
“Ron,” Kim groaned and then she dropped her head as she noticed her parents looking at her.
“Kimmie, what’s Ron talking about?” Ann inquired.
“You know, how Kim is Shego’s pet,” Ron actually answered and everybody just gawked at him.
“This kid’s a fucking moron,” Shego sighed.
Monique and Felix entered the backyard moments later. They noticed how everyone was eyeing Ron. The couple knew that Ron had done something stupid before he could even open his mouth to address why all eyes were on him.
“What did I do?” Ron inquired.
Next time: the reaction to Ron’s big mouth.