Maybe coming here was a mistake, but it’s not like I could’ve gone anywhere else. Had I gone to Dahntay’s house, he probably would’ve thought that I was acting like a drama-queen or a big baby. No one else understands just where I’m coming from with my recent problems, but this is so annoying. I swear, I might have to kill my friend’s pet to get a moment’s rest when I’m not at work. When I am at work, I might have to kill that dickhead Steve. I have to kill too many people in my opinion. I’ll even have to kill Shego, the one person that understands me, because she won’t like it if I kill her brat. But, damn it, that brat is a brat.
Betty was not sure what was worse, staying with Shego or going to work. One involved dealing with a spoiled brat and another involved dealing with a pompous ass. She supposed that the latter was more irksome because it reminded her how stupid she could be, despite being so intelligent. But then again, the former took place longer than the latter because she shared a living space with that spoiled brat for the moment. It would not have been such a big deal if it was not for last night.
Betty had prepared the perfect meal; all right, she considered everything that she cooked to be perfect. She set it out and called out that dinner was ready. The pets charged in as if dinner was the greatest thing that could ever happen to them. Kim had hit her chair with enough force to fall over, but Shego caught her and kept her upright. Betty gave Leonardo his food and then noticed Kim staring down at her meal as if it had insulted her. Betty hated to ask, but she had to know what the problem was. Kim began whining like a huge baby about how there was no ketchup on her food. The whining went on for over five minutes; in that time, the rotten kid could have gotten up and drowned her food in ketchup before drowning herself. Shego had not intervened and merrily laughed until Betty finally put the scarlet sauce on Kim’s meal. It was enough to drive Betty mad. She obviously was not used to dealing with Kim.
And at work, she had to deal with Steve and his damnable training program. She had provided him with some recommendations, including Will and Shego. Will passed the briefing, but he refused to look at Shego’s file. She tried to assure him that Shego was a great officer, if only to piss him off, which worked. He then went into a ten minute long rant insulting all of her recommended officers, declaring that if they were the best that she had to offer then her whole department was still lucky to be alive. Bastard.
And to make matters worse, there was still the fact that her mother and her brother were squatters in her house. She luckily kept everything well-hidden in the house, so her mother could not snoop through any of her personal belongings. People that were important knew to call her cell phone and not her house phone, so her mother could not intercept her calls. The only problem was her mail, but she doubted that anything important was going to come while she was not there.
She dreaded knowing that one day soon her mother was going to pop up in the department building looking for her, hoping to persuade her to go back to Steve. It would be much more than a cold day in Hell and aliens would land in front of the damn White House before she went back to that sharp-tongued demon. Her mother liked to argue that it was Betty’s fault because of the way that she spoke to Steve that made him lash out at her. Her mother swore that Betty had gotten accustomed to interacting with Shego and spoke to everyone the way that she spoke to Shego, so of course a man like Steve would strike back in someway. Betty and Shego disagreed with that.
First of all, Betty would like to think that since she was older than Shego that she was the one influencing the malcontent and not the other way around. It actually shifted between the two of them. And she spoke to Shego as she did often in jest or just because that was the way that they were with each other. They told the truth, bare and naked and more often than not, that truth was harsh. Shego certainly told the truth the second that she met Steve and that opened Betty’s eye to the problems that she had with the man.
Shego would argue that the way Betty spoke to her was different than the way that Betty spoke to other people. The one-eyed woman was always had a certain superiority in her voice, as if she was always in command, but she got that from her mother and she had a reason to sound that way anyway. That was just the way she spoke, but she was respectful to most and that included Steve as far as the green-skinned woman could tell. Shego knew Betty was not like her, namely cranky and angry at the world for no reason most of the time. Betty was sensible, responsible, and could easily get along with a lot of people if she tried. So, to Shego, Steve never had any right or justification to speak to Betty the way that he did when she met him.
“Hey, this place looks great,” Shego commented as she flopped down onto the sofa in her living room. She had been wasting her time working out while her houseguest paid her back for being able to stay at the apartment by cleaning up the living room.
“No thanks to that brat,” Betty remarked, motioning to the sleeping Kim, who was on the floor. Leonardo was curled up next to the redhead.
“I’m sure the dog help,” the pale woman pointed out.
“The brat should know better,” the older woman argued.
“So, the dog isn’t trained?”
“He doesn’t have a human brain.”
“Neither does Princess,” Shego remarked.
Betty had to yield because her friend had her there and she did not have anything else to counter with. She glanced over at the pair of pets. They had been rampaging through the apartment all day because it had rained and neither was allowed outside during a thunderstorm. So, they had acted like whirlwinds in the house, leaving the one-eyed woman to clean up when she came in, which she had not been happy about. She had had a tough day dealing with Steve insulting some of her finest employees and acting as if it was a burden for him to accept them into his stupid training program.
Betty was taken from her internal huffing about work and home life as her phone went off. She took the phone off of the clip that secured it around her waist. She looked to see who was calling her and balked at what she saw. She quickly shoved the phone into Shego’s hands.
“It’s my mother. Tell her I died,” the one-eyed woman instructed her friend.
“Okay,” the younger woman replied and she answered the phone. “Hello, Betty’s phone.”
“Put Betty on,” Eleanor Director ordered Shego.
“I’m sorry, but she died,” the pale woman announced in a voice mimicking a phone operator.
“Put her on!” Eleanor commanded in such a loud voice that Shego had to move the phone from her ear to avoid going deaf.
“I can’t. She died,” the moss-hued officer insisted.
“Don’t joke around like that, Cassandra. Now, put her on the phone or I’ll have to arrange a conference call involving Isabel.”
Shego frowned at the threat and mouthed “your mother is a bitch” to Betty. The one-eyed woman nodded in total agreement. Shego now had to consider her options. She could sell her friend out by giving her the phone or she could get into trouble with her mother by pestering Eleanor until the woman called Isabel. Her mother would get on her case too for acting disrespectful toward her elders and things like that. She sighed and handed the phone to Betty, who looked horrified. Pulling a gun on her would have gotten less a reaction. She did take the phone, though.
“Hello?” Betty said, but there was no response.
“I hung up on her,” Shego informed her friend with a shrug and a smirk.
“You hung up on her?” the older female inquired in disbelief.
“Yeah, she was getting too bitchy for me. Unfortunately, she’s going to call back with my mother on the line and we’re going to be scolded like we’re in elementary school,” the raven-haired woman explained.
“So, what should we do?” Betty asked.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I have that disease that makes it impossible for me to hear when a phone rings,” Shego remarked. It would work for them as long as her mother did not happen to be in Go City at that very moment.
Betty laughed a bit. She guessed that ignoring them could work. They were probably going to be in trouble with their mothers for the rest of their lives. It did make things interesting; annoying, but interesting.
(New day)
“Betty!” Steve shouted as he entered the chief’s office. She had a pounding headache and he was not helping. But, she did not expect him to help since he was one of the causes of the headache. She would stab him if he was not a government employee and that would bring more trouble in her life and she had enough of that for a moment.
“Major Barkin, how many times do we have to go through this? First, you should knock before entering my office and wait for permission to enter before barging in like a disgruntled rhino. Second, when in this building, you are to refer to me as Doctor Director or Chief, as I am in command around here. Third, if you insist on yelling like a chimp on drugs, I’m not going to listen. Now, let’s try it again,” she replied, speaking to him as if he was a child.
Major Steve Barkin frowned; he hated that his ex-wife was acting so high and mighty. She was only the chief of a division full of very crappy police officers. He did not see the point in her acting so haughty. Her job was not that great and he hoped that she was not letting the fact that she had a doctorate or two go to her head. It was not like she was a real doctor. She could not help him if he had a heart attack at the moment because she was not a real doctor; she would not have helped him if she could more than likely. In his opinion, she should have just remained his wife rather than run a crackerjack operation like she did now.
“What do you want?” Betty inquired when it became apparent that her former husband was not going to step out of the office.
“I need the training grounds,” he answered.
“And what’s that got to do with me?” she asked in a disinterested tone.
“Order your subordinates off of it,” he commanded her.
“It’s in use? Hmm…” Betty looked to the right side of her desk and grabbed a stack of papers. She flipped through the pages on her desk. “Ah, yes, Officer Killigan is training some explosive experts today. You’ll have to sit and wait for him to finish.”
“What?” Steve hollered in an outrage.
“He had it booked first. It can’t be helped. It’s not like I can just kick him off for you. You had the schedule, so you knew he’d be out there right now. Why are you complaining if you knew?” she asked in an irked tone.
She had provided Steve with everything he required to start his program, including a schedule of the training grounds. He knew what times the grounds had been reserved for him, so he did not have the right to complain now. He should have complained a few days ago instead of agreeing to those times like he did.
“You’re supposed to cooperate and provide me with everything I need,” he harped on her.
“I am. I have certainly given you everything that you need to run you nutty program. You have resources, competent officers, and our complete training grounds. If you want to see me not cooperating, keep getting on my nerves,” she dared him.
Steve frowned deeper than he had already been doing. She eyed him with a determined expression on her face. She hoped that he tried to test her because she would not mind making two weeks of his life Hell on Earth. After all, he had made three months of her life Hell once upon a time. He used to yell at her for some of the dumbest things and had her mistaken for a housewife when she was anything but that sort of creature. She had been in school and training for an intense job in law enforcement, so she did not have time to play the housewife for him. He did not seem to understand that, but she had put up with it for a while. She put up with it until Shego pointed out the guy was a very noisy ass.
“I demand the training grounds now,” Steve declared.
“Really? Fine, you can have this time slot tomorrow,” Betty seemed to concede.
Steve was not going to accept that. “Today,” he demanded.
“Go get it yourself if you want it now,” she replied smoothly. “Just watch out if you hear the word ‘fore’ being shouted in a heavy Scottish accent. Actually, no, don’t watch out because we’re not liable if you’re blown up in the training grounds.”
“Listen here—” he started.
“Good day, Major.”
“Betty—”
“I said, good day,” she growled.
Steve scowled and marched out of the office. Betty turned her attention to her phone. She grabbed it and called Shego into her office. The green-skinned female showed up almost seconds after the call.
“What can I do for you?” Shego inquired.
“Can you put together a team to train everyday for the next two weeks in the afternoon?” Betty proposed.
“From the people around here?” the raven-haired female asked in a confused tone.
“No, just any team,” the one-eyed woman replied.
“Do we have to do anything specific?”
“Drive Steve stark, raving mad,” Betty answered.
“I’ve got a few people in mind as long as I don’t really have to train them.”
“Well, we’re going to call it ‘training,’ but it could be whatever the hell you want. You guys could go out there and play the fiddle for all I care,” the boss commented.
“No problem, although that fiddle thing might be a bit difficult,” Shego remarked with a wicked smirk on her face. She did not really care who she had to associate with in order to get on Steve’s nerves because she hated him. She would like nothing more to send him fleeing into the night, screaming at the top of his lungs about the horror. She hoped that he got all red in the face from his anger and he might even try to do something stupid. She would get a real kick out of that. All she had to do was go gather some pests and she had a good idea of the crew that she could use.
(New day)
“Um…what are we doing here again?” Ron wondered aloud as he, Yori, Monique, Felix, and of course Kim were lined up in what appeared to be a demolished section of the city, but it was actually the training grounds of Doctor Director’s law enforcement division.
It was a large area with buildings lining the streets, but the buildings all looked ready to fall over. There was a small park space too with a muddy pond. It was set up to look like the city because the city was where the officers that operated. It was used mostly for real life simulations, even though they did have a holo-room. Nothing beat solid, real spaces for danger, though.
“Because I said so,” Shego barked. She was dressed to look like a drill instructor, only to get on the group’s nerves.
“Yeah, but we did we agree to this?” Monique asked Kim.
“We had two choices, doing this or going to Mexippon again,” Kim replied and Monique made a face that looked like she was going to throw up.
“We made the right decision,” the chocolate-eyed female decided. She did not understand why they kept going back to that place when only Ron seemed to think that it was the greatest idea ever to mix Mexican and Japanese food.
“Totally,” the redhead concurred. She had proposed that they all spend their free time running around the training ground, shooting paintballs at each other because her mistress had told her last night that she wanted her and a few other people to cause some fun sort of trouble. How could they pass up on fun trouble, especially since it involved no deceitful actions? All they had to do was bug out and play paintball; well, those things and listen to Shego’s orders, but that was a given for Kim.
“All right, you maggots, do you all have your weapons?” Shego inquired.
“Yeah,” the group confirmed, holding up rifles. They also had side arms. They guns were safe because even though they looked real, all they did was shoot paint.
“All right. We’ll play a game where two of you will be criminals and the other three—” Shego was cut off.
“Four!” Rufus squeaked while popping out of Ron’s pocket, which caught the officer’s attention.
“You’re walking around with a bald squirrel in your pocket?” Shego inquired with a craned eyebrow. She now knew that she had picked the right screwballs to drive Steve off of his rocker.
“He’s a naked mole rat and where else would I keep him?” the blonde countered in a confused tone.
“Touché. Well, the criminals are going to get more firepower than the good guys—” Shego tried to continue on, but she was interrupted again.
“Do the winners get a prize?” Ron asked.
“Yeah, I don’t kill you,” the pale woman replied. “I might not be able to keep that promise if you keep interrupting me, though,” she added.
“I’ll be quiet,” he eep-ed.
It was decided that Kim and Felix would be the criminals in the game, which was just cops and robbers with paintball guns. They had lost the coin toss and that was why they had to be the bad guys. They were provided with additional weapons that their friends were not told about to add to the realism of the game. The pair was let loose into the crumbling model of a city neighborhood.
The other three were then given their own firepower. They waited for a while to let their friends set up whatever the pair was going to do. The “good guy” group rushed in once they were released and they hoped that things were going to be as fun as they seemed. Shego walked around the edge of the training grounds for only a few seconds before Steve and his crew showed up.
“What’s going on?” Steve demanded to know.
“Nothing,” Shego answered with a shrug.
“Then what are you doing on my training grounds on my time?” he huffed.
“I had no idea you owned all of the time, but then again, I didn’t even know you owned the training grounds. I must behind in the times,” she remarked.
“Now see here—” he started.
Steve was cut off as a weapon came between him and Shego. They both hopped back to avoid being hit and a knife was stuck in the ground. Steve turned his anger-filled eyes to Shego, who turned her attention to the training grounds. Those kids were playing rough, she noted.
“Holy shit! Yori’s throwing kunai!” Felix shouted loud enough for all to hear. He had dodged one, but the other that she threw, he noticed was way off course. Kim had told her friends that when they saw a big guy with brown hair was when the trouble part of their deal started. Yori had obviously spotted Barkin and wanted to shake him up a bit with the weapon.
“What’s going on?” Steve demanded to know because there were people apparently in the training ground and they were engaging each other when he was supposed to be using the grounds. There was also the problem that one of those people had come very close to injuring him.
“Oh, just some kids I’m training for a community watch thing,” Shego answered with a shrug. She did need an official reason to use the training site because of the paperwork. Betty had come up with story that she was training some young people that wanted to form a neighborhood watch group and learn the basics of self-defense.
Steve was about to go off; he was getting red in the face from his fury. But, then a certain redhead came running toward them. Shego arched an eyebrow in regards to why her munchkin was fleeing the scene. She wondered if her monster might actually be outclassed by her nutty friends.
Kim was holding one of the larger weapons that Shego had provided her and Felix with. Kim stopped right in front of the pair and flung the weapon up on her shoulder; it was a rocket launcher that shot a shell full of colored powder. She started mumbling to herself as far as they could tell. She was actually thinking out loud and calculating the right angle that she was going to need to hit her friends with the weapon while Felix was holding them at bay from a sniping position. As she was about to fire, Steve grabbed her and made her shot go awry.
“Aw, damn it,” Kim groaned while throwing the weapon to the ground in a huff.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, girl?” Steve barked down at the redhead. Shego’s self-control was pushed to its limits watching him try to manhandle her mini-monster.
The petite hero misunderstood the question. She assumed that he was inquiring about her calculations in hoping to get her friends with the projectile. She began going into the mathematics of what she had been planning. He only grew angrier with her as she continued on speaking.
“Do you expect me to believe you were going to hit people you can’t even see on calculations from right off the top of your head?” he inquired incredulously in a very hostile tone.
“I would’ve if you didn’t grab me. I knew their exact location, the power of the weapon, the distance between us, not to mention how the weapon works. Why wouldn’t I hit them?” Kim countered. She did not understand how it was plausible to not believe her when her calculations were sound and she explained it well in her opinion.
“This is ridiculous! Get them out of there right now! I’m not playing games, so move it!” Steve ordered Shego.
“I can’t do that,” the pale woman replied with a shrug.
“Kim, where the hell are you?” Felix shouted over a communication unit that Shego had provided the clique with. He was trying to get his partner back in the “game” since he could not hold the others at bay forever and he had no interest in losing.
The slender hero easily pulled away from Steve and charged back into the mayhem. They were all having a good time playing around with high-tech, harmless weapons in such a complex space. Steve yelled something at the redheaded girl as she run back into the carnage, but she ignored the man, and she disappeared around a building corner. Steve turned his attention to Shego to vent his fury on her.
“You call those punks in there now!” Steve ordered the raven-haired officer.
“Sorry, I can’t do that,” Shego replied.
“You do it or I’ll send these guys in there to flush out your little miscreants,” he threatened her.
“First of all, don’t use words you don’t know the meaning of and just heard of TV one day. Second of all, which is more important, I don’t care. You can go ahead and try to flush them out, but let me warn you, they’re heavily armed,” she replied with a smirk.
“I don’t care either. Listen up you poor excuses for police officers,” Steve said to his group of ten. “I want you to go in there and drive out any of the people that are not in this group right now!” he commanded.
Nine of the ten officers charged off. The one left was Will Du. He began to explain how it was against regulations to dish out orders that might possibly put civilians at risk. Steve was not trying to hear that and just barked at the young man, who quoted the book of regulations in response. And that argument went on for a while.
Shego, on the other hand, warned her group over the communication units that a group of nine individuals were coming to spoil their fun and it would best for them to not allow that to happen. She informed them that they might want to defend themselves if they ran into the officers unless they wanted to be dragged out of the training ground covered in paint; paint if they were lucky anyway. They would also be laughed at mercilessly.
The friends were not in the mood to be laughed at and joined forces against the police officers while Steve was ready to pull his hair out thanks to Will. To irk Steve further, not even ten minutes later, his group fled the training ground, obviously defeated since they were covered in paint. They appeared as if they had just gone through a serious ordeal.
“Where the hell do you pussies think you’re going?” Steve demanded to know as his men continued to run away, even when they were safely out of the training ground.
“Those kids are nuts!” one of the officers replied as they continued their flight.
“Get back in there!” the Major ordered.
The officers did not argue and halted. They unwisely returned to the onslaught to avoid getting into trouble and possibly have marks on their records. Shego laughed the whole training time because she could hear her fellow officers whining about the maniac kids they were facing. Steve and his team eventually withdrew; his team went first and then he had to follow because they refused to go back inside. Shego called her team back once Steve was gone. The friends were covered in sweat and laughing their heads off. They had had a good time.
“That was way better than Mexippon,” Monique declared.
“Absolutely,” Yori concurred.
“Just watch those shuriken next time,” Felix complained. A throwing star had almost gotten stuck in his chair and he did not want to worry about the problems that might cause.
“I don’t think it’s fair that Kim was using those hero gadgets either,” Ron chimed in while picking some gummy substance off of his shoulder.
“At least I wasn’t throwing kunai,” Kim argued.
“It was only five,” Yori retorted. She was carrying over a dozen and she had only thrown five. They were getting too bent out of shape on the matter in her opinion.
“Do you bunch feel up to this again tomorrow?” Shego asked the crew.
“A chance to play around with high-tech weapons? Hell, yeah, I’m here,” Felix answered.
“I could use such a thorough exercise,” Yori concurred. Training alone was nothing like what they had just done today. She wished that they could do it everyday.
“Well, I’m here with my babe,” Ron declared, even though he was not as much a fan of all the work. It was still fun.
“Okay, fine, I’ll come and shoot it out with you guys again,” Monique agreed. The exercise was fun and so was the shooting, but she was not sure if she would like to do it everyday.
“And you’re coming no matter what,” Shego informed her pet, who shrugged.
Well, the stage was set. It was time to bother Steve Barkin until he learned some manners. Well, to be honest, it was just time to bother the Major. Shego doubted that he would learn anything from the ordeal. He was just too hardheaded for that. After all, he still could not figure out the reason why Betty left him. Obviously, he was an imbecile as far as Shego was concerned.
Next time: Betty gets a bit of a break.