What’s the point in having a pet? What do they do? Nothing important. They’re just annoying creatures. Yeah.
Shego rose in the morning like she did everyone for the past week or so, cursing her alarm clock and her need for the irksome device. She came very close to breaking it, but good sense held when her brain pointed out that without the clock, she would sleep until noon and end up getting fired. She turned the clock off like a normal person would after realizing that she sort of liked her job.
She took a shower and got dressed. She had some toast for breakfast because she did not feel like eating anything heavy; she had not been able to stomach much for a few days. She then left for work, walking in the direction of the train station. She reminded herself to go hunting for a new car soon because she really could not stand taking the train every morning.
To get to the train station, Shego had to pass the precinct of regular police and she usually did not pay it any mind, but something caught her eye that day. She noticed two uniformed officers dragging a familiar redhead into the precinct. She shook her head; she actually could not believe what she was seeing.
“I’ll be damned, the moron is alive,” Shego muttered. “Hey, you two!” she called to the two officers while walking over to them.
Kim smiled a bit when she saw Shego coming; she would have bet that she would have been embarrassed if anyone else caught her in such a situation, but not with Shego. It was a little odd to the teen how she did not feel sheepish about being caught in such a situation, but she did know that a scolding was going to come her way when things were over. At the moment, though, everything seemed all right to the redhead; she even thanked fate or whatever force it was that delivered her to Shego.
“Yes?” one of the officers replied.
“That girl you’ve got there is mine,” Shego informed the pair; hey, it sounded right in her head.
“Yours?” they both asked.
“Well, my cousin,” Shego amended her statement.
“So?”
“Oh, my fault. I forgot to mention that I’m special officer Shego,” she told them with an attitude as she pulled her badge from her pants pocket.
“Ma’am!” both officers said and they straightened themselves up.
“So, how about releasing her into my custody,” the raven-haired woman practically commanded.
“Sorry, ma’am, but she doesn’t have any ID for us to confirm such a thing—”
Shego cut him off. “She left her wallet at my house. Are you calling me a liar?” she inquired.
“No, ma’am!”
“What the hell are you picking the moron up for anyway?” Shego inquired.
“This one’s a vagrant.”
“All right, you’re going to hold her for vagrancy. That’s about a day or two days in jail at most. Have fun with her because while you’re doing that, I’m going to get my boss to crawl so far up your boss’ ass that you’ll think she’s running an excavation up there. She’ll make his life a living hell and he will, in turn, makes yours worse than that. Trust me on this one, I work for a real go-hard bitch,” Shego promised them with a pleasant smile on her face.
The officers seemed to mill over the information. The green-skinned female was banking on her chief’s reputation preceding her. The regular police did hear all sorts of things about the woman in charge of the special officers and they hated her guts more than they hated hearing there were no more donuts. It was just that she always seemed to take over a scene when she arrived and made the normal police seem like naïve children when it came to handling a crime. Shego only had to wait a moment.
“Sorry about this, ma’am,” the officers both apologized and they released Kim.
“It’s all right. You can’t help it that my cousin’s an idiot,” Shego replied.
The police officers were not sure how to respond to that, so they did not. They marched into the precinct while Shego regarded Kim. She appeared to be all right; Shego was not sure why the girl looked fine, but she decided that she did not care. The redhead looked around for a second as if she was searching for something before turning her eyes toward her former owner.
“Thanks for that,” Kim finally said. She was not sure what else she was supposed to say. Maybe she should apologize, she considered, but she decided against that. She was not about to say that she was sorry for something that they both enjoyed.
“You’re so hopeless,” Shego commented.
“It’s a gift,” the teen replied with an amused smile.
“I’ll bet. Come on,” Shego commanded.
“Where to?”
“Home. Where else?”
“Home?” Kim echoed.
“Yeah, home.”
Kim trotted off behind Shego as she started down the block. They returned to the condo and Kim climbed up to the loft to see that all of her things were right where she left them; Shego had not touched a thing. She looked down at the door as Shego closed it and started for work again.
“So, this is home?” Kim asked herself and then she looked around at everything. “Yeah, this is home.”
(New day)
Shego stared down at her pet, who was sleeping peacefully in her lap. She thought about a question that Betty had asked her earlier when she was at work; the one-eyed woman desired to know why Shego kept the girl around. She asked outright “what’s the point of having a spoiled brat around the house that doesn’t do anything?” Shego had not been able to answer, not without embarrassing herself anyway and she was not about to do that.
The green-skinned female had thought of several smart aleck answers to the question. Her first was to counter with the fact that people never asked why some schmuck kept a disgusting ball of fur of any kind like a dog, cat, or rodent, or some pointless fish or lizard that did not even do mindless tricks, or some noisy bird. The purpose of having a pet seemed to utterly pointless; a pet never really did anything no matter what kind of pet it was. Well, except for those helper monkeys or work dogs anyway. At least her pet was clean.
The raven-haired woman stroked her sleeping pet’s soft red hair. Why did she keep the girl around? She had never asked herself such a question, but now she thought about it because she let it enter her mind. She thought a lot of people got pets because they had been denied one when they were children. Well, she had never been one of those kids that wanted a pet and her parents did not get her one.
Quite the contrary, she did not want a pet, but her parents had gotten her and her brothers all sorts of critters. She hated every pet that they ever had. As a child, she had seen more hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, rabbits, frogs, lizards, rats, mice, snakes, turtles, birds, spiders,ferrets, cats, and dogs than most vets see. Her brothers had an unbelievable knack for killing creatures, which she noticed early in life and she guessed that was why they had so many pets. She thought it would have been more humane of her parents to stop providing her brothers with victims after a while.
She understood why children got pets; they usually liked animals and had fun with them. Her brothers had sort of liked animals, in their own twisted ways. They had fun with them and they tended to give their pets decent burials; except for when a rodent bit the dust and they happened to have a snake in the house too.
She always thought that when adults got pets it was because they were lonely and needed something to put meaning into their lives, but they were too much of losers to go out and make some friends. Well, she did not think that anymore because she was certain that she was not lonely. She was not social, sure, but she was not lonely. She was not a loser either, she told herself.
“So, what do I keep you around for?” Shego wondered.
The older woman just could not fully answer the question, not for herself anyway. She could always tell herself that she kept Kim around for the girl’s own safety. Kim was too dependent to make it out in the real world, she figured. But, that did not explain why she kept the girl; it only explained why the teen stayed.
It was not like Kim could do anything special or entertaining. She scared easier than a three-year-old, she was barely smart enough to operate the sink, and she was completely and utterly dependent on Shego for almost everything. Look at what happened to her just from being on her own for a few days; she had been picked up for being a vagrant. She was nothing more than a bothersome brat.
“You’re such a lost cause,” Shego whispered into her pet’s ear before kissing her cheek. “But, you’re my lost cause.”
Kim purred in her sleep as if she was aware of the affection bestowed upon her.
Shego was not the only one with curious friends. Kim’s friends were just as curious, if not more so, as to why she was willing a person’s pet. No matter how many times she explained it, they could still not grasp why such a thing was not demeaning. She was the Kim Possible after all. She was a human being.
“I don’t get why you stay with her, Kim. It just doesn’t make any sense,” Monique commented. Their usual crew of four was hanging out; if Rufus was counted then there were five of them. They were sitting in a booth at Bueno Nacho.
“Why do you say that? It makes perfect sense to me,” Kim replied, which earned her looks of disbelief from everyone, including Rufus.
“The genius has crossed over,” Ron teased.
“Yeah, that line, she’s all over that insanity side of it now,” Monique concurred.
“How in hell does it make sense to you? As sadistic as your owner sounds, I’m surprised you’re not chained to a wall in her apartment,” the blonde commented.
“Or in a hole in the basement,” Monique said.
“It puts the lotion on its skin (1),” Ron remarked in a gruff tone, which caused him and Monique to start dying of laughter.
“I feel I have missed the joke,” Yori stated while looking at her amused boyfriend.
“We have got to catch Yori up in movies because that was damn funny,” Monique said.
“You guys are taking this way overboard. Shego isn’t sadistic,” Kim argued.
“Girl, she threatens to set you on fire when you sleep in her bed,” the chocolate-eyed female pointed out.
“But, she never actually acts on the threat. I read between the lines with her. I look at her actions and I don’t listen to her words. She threatens me all the time, but she never hit me, except that one time and it was a regular punch. A good regular punch, but a regular punch nonetheless,” the redhead argued.
“Why the hell did you kiss her anyway? What were you thinking?” Ron inquired. It seemed to him like Kim wanted to get set on fire if the woman hated Kim sleeping in her bed, of course she did not desire to be kissed by the teen hero. It sounded logical enough to him.
“I was feeling really good and she wasn’t. I wanted her to feel better,” Kim answered.
“By sticking your tongue in her mouth? You knew that wouldn’t help,” Monique argued.
“It helped for like a second. She kissed me back. She opened up to me, like she always does. She let down the shield for a couple of seconds. You guys don’t know Shego. She’s not really mean to me and she needs me around. She knows she does, she just doesn’t want to admit to herself. Without me, she caves in on herself from all the tension and stress. If she didn’t need me, she wouldn’t have let me back in the house,” Kim explained.
“You know, I hate when you try to prove something by saying because of ‘a’ to ‘b’ that equals ‘c’,” Ron said.
“Um…Ron, it’s called logic,” his best friend replied.
“Kim, are you looking at this as one long mission?” Yori asked because it sounded like the redhead was staying to be of assistance to the older woman just like she helped everyone else.
“No, I don’t look at it that way. She needs me, so I stay. It’s not a mystery to me,” Kim answered with a shrug.
“Why does this woman need you, though?” the ninja inquired.
“I take the burden off of her. She would lock herself in her image and she wouldn’t be happy,” the redhead stated.
“But, why you?” Yori asked. She could understand that Shego had an image that she wanted to uphold and that image forced her to act a certain way all of the time, adding on pressure over time. But, why was it that the image did not continue on when she was with Kim? Why did she relax around Kim?
“She won’t show herself to anyone else,” the hero replied.
“But, why will she show you?” Monique clarified the question.
“Well, because I’m not human,” Kim answered with a shrug.
“What?” they all asked and that included Rufus. She looked close enough to a human from where they were sitting.
“To her, I’m not human, so it’s safe to act how she really wants to when I’m around. She can do all of the things in front of me that she won’t do when other people are around. She can watch sappy movies, cuddle me, smile, laugh, and not be the tough-as-nails bitch that everyone else expects because I’m just a pet. I’m not a person, I’m a pet. You wouldn’t act the way you do in public if no one was around except for a cat, would you?” Kim countered, hoping that explained it.
“But, you’re not a cat,” Yori pointed out.
“Yeah, definitely not a cat,” Ron concurred.
“Even if you keep wearing those ridiculous ears,” Monique added while motioning to the costume black ears that Kim was sporting on the top of her head; she was leaving the house with them more often than not lately.
“To Shego, I’m the equivalent of a cat. It makes things easier for her,” Kim explained with a shrug.
“And you?” Monique asked.
“I get two cooked meals a day, spanking meals at that, a comfortable place to lay my head, a warm place to sleep, and to help someone out. I’m loving the experience,” Kim declared with a grin.
The friends laughed a bit; they should have guessed that she would say something like that. Kim acted like life was an RPG sometimes like she needed experience points to level up, they all thought. Kim the adventurer, that was who she was and, boy, was she having some adventure. She was such a Possible, they all thought as a joke.
(New day)
“Princess, what exactly do you think you’re doing?” Shego inquired as she came into the apartment to see one of the last sights that she wanted to, which were decorations for the holiday season. She thought that she would be escaping the holiday madness once she got home; leave it to her imbecilic pet to ruin her sanctuary.
“Putting up Christmas decorations, duh,” Kim answered as she continued on with her self-appointed task of getting the place ready for Christmas.
“What makes you think we celebrate Christmas in this house?” Shego asked in a tone that her teen usually would have acknowledged that she upset her owner, but at the moment, it seemed that Kim had selective hearing.
“Are you Jewish? I could take this stuff down and then go ask Ron what to put up….” Kim started to muse out loud.
“I’m not Jewish,” Shego assured her pet.
“Okay…then what’s the problem?” Kim asked because she was not following. She was going to venture one more guess on a holiday that Shego might celebrate, but the older woman did not appear to be of African descent, so she decided against wasting the guess.
“There’s no Christmas in this house,” Shego informed the redhead.
“Why not?” Kim whined. She should have guessed that her owner was a scrooge.
“Because I said so.”
“Why?” Kim whimpered.
Shego did not respond, so Kim went into full, all out tantrum mode. She threw herself on the carpet and started kicking like a child. She also pounded the carpet with her fists and made an irksome noise that almost sounded like she was crying, but Shego knew it was just a ploy to irritate her.
“I just told you the reason,” Shego replied coolly.
Kim sat up and puffed out her cheeks, but that did not do anything either. Shego walked off, but that did not stop Kim from going about her business of preparing the house for Christmas. She even purchased a small tree because it was going to be Christmas in the apartment if she had to kick, scream, and possibly suffer second degree burns. There was a knock at the door while she set about decorating the tree.
“Ah, who the hell is that? Pumpkin, get the door!” Shego ordered from her bedroom.
“Gotcha!” Kim saluted before realizing that her owner was not even around to see.
The redhead climbed to her feet and marched to the door. She opened it without asking who it was because if it was not one of the two people that usually came to the house, she still did not care. It was not like she could not take down anybody trying to harm her. It turned out to be one of the two people that usually visit; it was Drakken.
“Happy holidays,” the powder blue-skinned scientist greeted her with a puzzled smile.
“Happy holidays,” she replied. She could tell that he was not expecting her to answer the door just from the bewildered look in his beady little eyes.
“You’re staying with Shego for some school holiday?” he asked curiously.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever,” Kim replied with a shrug, showing that Shego was obviously rubbing off on her. Like owner, like pet, she thought with a small smile.
“Where is Shego?”
“In her room. She should be out in a little while.”
“All right.”
Kim went back to her mini-Christmas tree. She had to be careful with the ornaments because some of the things were too big for her little tree. She ignored Drakken as he looked around at the work she had done.
“It looks like Christmas in here,” the guy commented.
“Boy, nothing gets by him,” Kim muttered to herself. “That’s the point,” she informed him.
“But, Shego doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” Drakken pointed out.
“She’ll celebrate this year, whether she likes it or not,” Kim declared with a smile on her face. She was actually impressed that he knew her mistress did not celebrate Christmas.
Drakken did not argue and did not make another attempt to speak with the redhead. Kim heard the door to her mistress’ room open and then turned to look in the direction that Shego was coming from. The super-powered woman came to the archway that led to the living room and ended up standing next to Drakken.
“What are you doing here?” Shego asked the scientist.
“I just came by to keep you company for a while,” Drakken answered. Aw, that was sweet, Kim thought.
“You should’ve called first,” Shego stated.
The redhead decided to interject at that moment and save the man for doing a nice thing. “Hey, you two,” the teen called.
“What?” Shego barked.
Kim smirked. “Look up,” she instructed them while pointing above the couple’s heads. They turned their eyes upward to see what she was going on about and saw they had stepped into a trap.
“No fucking way,” the raven-haired woman muttered when she noticed the strategically placed mistletoe.
Kim grinned like a demon while Shego and Drakken looked at each other after giving the mistletoe a few moments of appropriate gawking. The couple then looked over at the teen, who appeared rather proud of herself; Shego could not guess the reason as to why her pet would look so especially pleased with her work. They then turned their attention back to each other.
“Well, it’s a Christmas tradition,” Drakken mumbled, which caused Kim to suck her teeth.
The redhead could not believe he would even think such a thing, let alone say it out loud, especially with his girlfriend standing right there. Was he really that much of a maniac, she wondered. Did the man just not know how to cut loose? Now, he was making it seem like he was obligated to kiss Shego instead of doing it for the sheer pleasure of touching her lips. Just when she had been ready to give the man some cool points, he had to go and muck it up.
“Hey, don’t do me any favors. I don’t even celebrate,” Shego told Drakken.
“Will you two just kiss already. It’s bad luck if you don’t,” Kim informed the pair. She was not sure if she was making that up or not, she did not care as long as it got the two to make their holiday special.
“And why are you trying to be so helpful?” Shego asked with a suspicious look in her emerald eyes.
“It’ll make you happy,” the redhead replied easily.
Shego rolled her eyes; she did not want to believe that her selfish pet would be so selfless as to assist her in getting something from Drakken. After all, she was aware of what the teen thought of her. Would Kim really try to help her just because it would make her happy?
She decided to stop thinking about her pet’s motives and she turned her attention back to the scientist, who glanced away for a moment. The cerulean inventor turned back to his girlfriend and then he leaned in to give Shego a rather awkward kiss, in both females’ opinions. It was not so much a kiss as a disgusting looking mess of a peck; apparently, he did not know how to cut loose, Kim thought.
The teen was not sure if she had ever seen a person look so uncomfortable while doing something not only voluntarily, but that was delightful; after all, Kim knew first hand what a pleasure it was to kiss Shego. Drakken did not attempt to make the kiss deeper or more passionate than what it started as, not that it had much momentum in either area. He pulled away after about five seconds, if it was even that long. Kim could not understand it; she knew if she was in his place, she would have stayed there until she seriously required air.
Shego rolled her eyes when Drakken pulled away. It was actually one of his better kisses and she noted that he appeared to be slightly proud of himself. She could not guess why he was proud, except for the fact that he did not run away screaming like a little girl. She then looked at Kim, who smiled and shrugged.
“Fine, we’ll celebrate the stupid holiday,” Shego proclaimed with a huff.
“Slamming!” Kim cheered.
Shego cooked a meal for the trio. It was not very decked out, but it was enough for them. They sat down and ate dinner in silence for a little while before Kim made the mistake of asking Drakken about what he was working on lately. Shego wanted her neck to swallow her head or Drakken’s neck to swallow his head, whichever happened first just to escape the rant that was impending. Kim was sorry she asked after about five minutes of him going on without letting anyone else say anything.
“Sounds complex,” Kim noted once the scientist was done going on about the great weapon that he was constructing for the Go City police department.
“Well, yes, I wouldn’t expect a kid to get it,” Drakken replied in a rather flippant way that caused Kim to arch an eyebrow.
Inside of the teen’s mind two entities rose to do battle with each other; it was a frequent occurrence in her head. Part of her, the Possible entity, was telling her to shut him down completely by explaining his little toy away in such complicated language that he would not even know that she was ripping into him. The other combatant was the wanderer part of her, the mellow part, the modest part, and it was telling her that it was no big. His opinion did not matter. Who was he, after all? Just some absentminded inventor with emotional problems that did not even know how to kiss right. It would be beneath her to start with him and it would be annoying. Yes, yes it would be annoying, she decided and she did not say anything to the scientist. The Possible in her had been losing a lot of the conflicts against the wanderer lately.
“A lot of the time, Shego doesn’t get my genius either,” Drakken commented.
“Yeah, where the genius part comes in,” Shego remarked.
“So, Mister Drakken, did you get Shego anything for the holidays?” Kim asked while wondering how in the hell the three of them and their huge ass egos fit in the house together; they had to be defying some fundamental rule of physics.
“I was going to get her flowers,” he answered.
“Yeah, because that’s what I need right now, more shit that will just die,” Shego mumbled. If she wanted dead things around the house, she would just kill her pet, she thought to amuse herself. She probably would not even notice the difference because her pet was in dead sleep most of the time.
“Yeah, she doesn’t like flowers,” the redhead mused.
“I know that—” he tried to continue, but Kim was in the mood to be a brat.
“So, you didn’t get her anything?” the teen asked to be sure.
“I got her something,” Drakken insisted with just a bit too much conviction.
“Really? What?” Shego inquired in an intrigued tone.
“Something nice!” he persisted.
“More like something imaginary,” the officer remarked.
“I did buy you something,” he promised.
“Then where is it?” she asked just to see him flustered. Hey, her pet started it, but now she was entertained.
“I…uh…I left it home!” he proclaimed.
Shego rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, that’s so believable.”
“I’ll bring it by tomorrow,” he vowed.
Shego walked Drakken to the door and bid him goodnight, thankfully. She sighed as she shut the door and then glanced up at the loft area, where her pet had retired to over an hour ago. She had a notion to go bug her pet and wake her up, just to be mean, but decided against it; her Christmas gift to the girl.
The raven-haired woman turned to go to her room and as she passed the living room, she noticed something sitting on the floor. At first she thought it was a trap of some kind that was set up by her annoying pet, but then she realized that if anybody was going to pull a prank on someone else in the house, she would be the one to do it to Kim. She bent down see what was on the floor.
“What the hell?” Shego muttered as she picked up a box that was wrapped in green foil. There was a white paper rose on the top of it. Then suddenly she felt a weight against her back.
“There one’s flower that won’t die, just like how I feel about you,” Kim informed the older woman. She was pressing herself into the older woman's shoulder, nuzzling her cheek into Shego.
“Pumpkin…” Shego was not sure what to say, but Kim kept going anyway. She was not sure if she had ever in her life got a gift that someone put some thought into how she would feel about it and that was just a paper flower. She could only wonder what was in the box.
“And just because you don’t like Christmas doesn’t mean I didn’t have to get you anything.”
“Princess…”
“I really like being with you and I want you to know that always and forever.”
“Pumpkin.”
“Yes?”
“Look up,” Shego commanded.
Kim glanced up to see that they were underneath the mistletoe. She laughed a little bit while turning back to Shego, who kissed Kim without hesitating. Kim was surprised for only a moment before just welcoming the affection and enchanting sensation. She was glad that she stayed up.
(1)- Ron’s line comes from the great movie “Silence of the Lambs.”
Next time: After such a merry Christmas, how can New Years go so horribly wrong?