It had been only a few weeks ago since that afternoon at the state facility where John and Anne Possible first met Sheila Gordon face to face. When the day came to finally bring her to her new home, there were a few rough moments, but nothing out of the ordinary for introducing any adopted child to a new family. The upper loft at the back of the house had been converted into a bedroom and play area for the little girl and with the exception of a brief episode of ‘night terrors’, Shego settled in nicely.
Anne could not have been a more devoted and loving mother; John made it clear to the little girl that they would be there to take care of her no matter what. New games and traditions were started, some rules and discipline established, and there was soon a happy little girl running around the Possible home.
“Mommy! Daddy says he not play with me!” The chubby face pouted up at her mother with an expression that only a puppy dog should have; it was a look that Shego had quickly learned from her new mother, but one that her father seemed immune to.
“And why not?” Anne slipped on her lab coat and crouched down to match her daughter’s height.
“He got ‘kwazees’ and ‘co-fishes’!”
“Well, you go back and remind your father what us girls think about all those equations and coefficients, Ok?”
“Kay!” The pale girl gave her mother a big hug and ran back to the study. She stopped herself at the door and carefully knocked rather than rushing inside.
“Come in.” John had been waiting for the girl to return; in an effort to draw her out of her periodic silences, they’d used her as messengers between themselves on occasion, never saying anything to confuse the girl, but just to get her used to talking to them. It seemed to have worked very well.
“And what can I do for you, young lady?”
“BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!” Shego giggled and smiled as her father sat there with his eyes bugging out and mouth hanging open.
“I’ll have you know that this is very important stuff!” John stood and lurked around the desk, blatantly creeping up on the giggling child. He held her in his arms and swung her up and onto his shoulders and they walked back to the kitchen where Anne was expecting them.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes, I’d rather stay here, but my leave is over and there is so much waiting for me at the hospital.” She looked up at the emerald eyes shining down at her from John’s shoulders. “And so much for me right here! Oh, I don’t want to go!”
John bent down to let Anne give Shego a kiss.
“We kay, Mommy!” In the months since Shego entered their lives, the happiest days were when she first started calling them ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy’. There was hardly a time when she would revert to the quiet and sullen figure that they’d first encountered.
“I know you will be, Pumpkin. Take good care of Daddy for me!” Anne leaned in to kiss John, Shego reaching out to muss her mother’s hair. Anne let the hair stay exactly as it was when she left for work.
John led Shego to the back yard, but only after she ran up to her room to collect her dolly. It was one of those odd bi-species combinations sold under the brand name ‘Cuddle Buddies’, harmless enough, and Shego’s was called a ‘Panda-Roo’.
They played a rather one sided game of catch in the back yard, with John missing most of the throws that came his way. He was glad to see that other than adding a few vitamins to his daughter’s diet, she was very healthy and had all the makings of being a star athlete some day.
“Hello? John-boy, you back there?” A familiar voice floated over the rear gate.
“We sure are, Drew. Come on back.”
The gate opened and a man walked through. He was thinner than her father but was dressed much like John in a conservative white shirt and dark trousers; he also wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses and his black hair was long enough for a small ponytail.
“I just stopped by to see those reports, and…” His eyes found the little chubby girl standing behind her father’s leg. “Well, hello, Princess!”
Drew Lipsky didn’t have a natural affinity for children, but knew better than to scare one; he walked over and sat down on the edge of the rear deck while John and Shego walked over to him.
“It’s Ok, Pumpkin, you can say ‘Hi’ to Drew if you want.”
The little girl clutched her dolly to her chest and slowly moved up to the stranger. Drew knew about the recent addition to the Possible family, as did all of their friends and coworkers, but he was seeing the girl for the first time. Her coloration was different, but not that odd and certainly didn’t make her one inch less of the pretty little thing she was.
“My name is Drew Lipsky! Is that your doll?” This earned him a careful nod.
“I’m this many.” Three pudgy fingers were held up to the man.
“Well, that’s old! I’m this many.” Drew held up both hands and wiggled all ten fingers several times; this earned him a shy smile.
“What’s your doll’s name?” Shego moved closer the held the doll out to him.
“Panda-Roo?” Her hesitancy made the answer sound like a question. He accepted the doll, but placed it at the edge of the deck next to him. Shego slowly walked over and sat down on the opposite side of the dolly from the man. Drew and John exchanged grins at seeing the girl feeling this comfortable.
“So, how’s Anne doing?”
“Very well. She’s back at work today.”
“Man, that’s a bi… shame! That’s a real shame.” Drew covered his mouth at his faux pas and sheepishly mouthed ‘Sorry’ back up at John; Shego’s father relaxed after his breath had caught in his throat and he motioned to signify that it was Ok.
“She’s a cutie, this one. She seems really happy, too.”
“She sure is.” John smiled at how his daughter, having grown bored already with this exchange between the two adults, was kicking her little legs back and forth and signing to herself. “Let’s get you those reports.”
The three went into the house and to John’s study; his job, unlike that of his wife, allowed him to work from home in a way that she could not.
“Thanks, Johnny, this is exactly what we’re expecting to see.” Drew shuffled the printouts and scanned the data. “Mark my words, one day men like us will harness forces that the world barely understands right now.”
“How many times have we said that before? ‘Drew The World Saver’, that’s you!”
“Hey, ‘save’, ‘control’, whatever…” Drew noticed that Shego was still nearby, observing everything that the men said and did. He lowered himself to one knee.
“You’d help me take over the world, right?” The chubby girl pursed her lips and shook her head in negation. Drew made himself look stricken.
“You won’t? Why not?”
“Gotta go potty.” Drew accepted that answer with good grace.
“Sounds like a good enough reason to me!” He reached back to shake John’s hand. “This sounds like my cue to split. You three take care and I’ll see you back at the center in a few days.”
Drew Lipsky was allowed to kiss Panda-Roo on the head and Shego gave him a shy wave as he walked back to his car. When Shego was placed at the table for her lunch, John simply watched her eat and marveled at how much joy such a tiny, little girl could bring into their lives. He found that he agreed with Anne on her assessment that maybe they were selected to care for this little miracle after she’d lost so much so early in life.
A year came and went; Shego’s birthday was the high point and lasted an entire week. Not wanting to lavish the child with too many toys, they took her all over the state to events and fairs and to plays and museums and showed her more sites than her little eyes would take in. There some tears also, from time to time, but Shego was a well-behaved child and the Possibles didn’t think of themselves as being anything other than blessed.
It was early one evening when everyone’s life changed.
John arrived home from the center at his normal time, entering the house to find the two most important women in his life making dinner in the kitchen. The aroma of meat and spices filled the rooms.
“Mmm, what’s that I smell? Is it meatloaf?” Shego ran over and wrapped her arms around his legs, looked up and bared her teeth in a snarl.
“BRAINS!”
“Honestly, John, I will never understand why you let her watch those disgusting films with you! Rampaging zombies… how she can sleep at night I’ll never know.” Anne wiped her hands clean with a kitchen towel. “Now she won’t even eat meatloaf unless we shape it like a human brain.”
Anne bent down and kissed Shego on the forehead.
“Now, little lady, you… you go… and…” Anne’s knees folded and she reached out to steady herself, harmlessly sending a used mixing bowl clattering to the floor. She landed on her side, her legs tangled and scaring the Hell out of her husband and daughter.
“ANNE!”
“MOMMY!”
Anne found her voice after just a few seconds, already feeling twelve times the fool for falling over like that; she couldn’t explain herself and they ran to her, holding her, while she caught her breath and could speak to them.
“Oh! I don’t know what happened there, I just… got so dizzy for a second.” She looked fine and said that she felt fine, but John had Shego sit on the floor with her while he called their family doctor.
“John, please don’t make a fuss! Really, I feel alright now.” She lifted her head from where she’d been resting it atop Shego’s own. “You’ll frighten her!”
The tiny girls long hair was meshed with that of her mother’s, and she cried as she held Anne in her chubby arms.
“Please don’t die, Mommy! Please don’t die!”
“It’s for her that we’re doing this. You scared both of us and I want to know you’re really Ok.” He reached down to touch his daughter’s head. “I want her to know, too.”
John suggested that Anne consider it payback for scaring them, but he made her go to the hospital emergency room when their doctor suggested it. Making sure that the brain loaf was put in the refrigerator and that the oven was off, they all went to the hospital together. Fair or not to the rest of the patrons, Anne’s friends and coworkers made sure that she got sent right in to see the attending physician.
Angry with herself and still feeling foolish, Anne let the nurses look her over carefully as John and Shego walked around the building, taking in the fresh late-evening air.
“Is Mommy gonna die?” Shego walked along a short wall, holding her father’s hand for support. Her tears had dried but she looked to her father for assurance and he prayed that he was able to give it to her. They’d been all over the hospital grounds and were both avoiding what might be bad news.
“No, I don’t think so, Princess. Mommy’s just sick, I guess.” Please let that be all it is. “Let’s go back in and see her, Ok?”
Most of the emergency room staff were on a first name basis with Anne, so they all knew about the adoption and were aware of what Shego looked like; after some initial curiosity, no one even thought about her coloration anymore. They smiled at the serious look on the little girls face as her father led her back into the hospital. The father and daughter were surprised to hear the attending physician speaking to Anne in a raised voice.
“Calling me in here, making me worry, and for what?” With a snort of derision, the doctor brushed past John, briefly turning to offer some decidedly non-medical advice.
“John take this woman home and give her a swift kick in the pants, will you?”
Anne was dressed and sitting on the examination table, apparently ready to go home, looking chagrined and avoiding John’s direct gaze.
“Honey, what’s going on?” She finally looked at him and smiled, a rosy blush suffusing her entire face.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Is Mommy kay?”
John’s brilliant mind needed a moment to wrap itself around this information, but once it did he walked to his wife and lifted her from the table, holding her to his chest so tight that her feet were well off the floor.
“Your Mommy’s just fine, Pumpkin. Just fine.” They left the hospital together and after a very late meal her parents explained to Shego that she was going to have a baby brother or sister.
“Gonna buy her?” The little girl didn’t quite understand. The Possible’s laughed at their inability to properly explain what was going on to their daughter. They tried again.
“Snowman Hank gonna bring her?” Anne lifted her daughter onto her lap and took the girls hands in her own, placing them on Anne’s stomach.
“Now you know that it could be a brother or a sister, right?”
“SISTER!” The pale, greenish child was adamant.
“Regardless, the baby is right here, in Mommy’s tummy.”
Shego’s eyes became huge and she stared long and hard at her mother. Then she jumped down and ran around the room screaming.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Are you sure that our degrees didn’t come from a box of ‘Cracker Jacks’?”
“I blame you and those horrible movies.”
“MOMMY ATE THE BABY!”
For all of her problems conceiving, Anne’s pregnancy was textbook perfect. Shego quickly calmed down and all three of them looked forward to the newest member of the Possible family. John and Anne waited until well after Shego had been tucked into bed before they had a particular discussion.
“John, we are happy about this baby, aren’t we?” Anne was on the couch reviewing her notes for a JAMA article she was writing, her legs were drawn up and she was dressed for bed. John folded his paper across his lap and smiled.
“Well, I sure am! We tried for how long? You couldn’t have made me a happier man.”
“You do realize that this will be our second child, don’t you?”
“Sure, after all…” Comprehension dawned. “Oh, I see what you’re getting at.”
John left his chair and sat on the floor beside his wife, slightly lower that eye level to her. He placed his hand on her belly, slightly rounded from the developing live within.
“This is the baby that we’ve tried to have for so long, but that beautiful little miracle in the bedroom upstairs is the bestest little girl in the world, and we’ll never let her feel otherwise, right?”
Anne nodded, suddenly finding tears in her eyes.
“Right. Am I a terrible mother for feeling this way? For not putting our own child first?”
“Yes, you are a terrible, terrible mother.” John let her whack him in the head with her cushion as hard as she pleased. Then she kissed him.
“They are both our children, regardless of who bore Shego and cared for her the first three years of her life. You could never be less of a mother to her if you tried, and this little one,” John kissed her stomach, “will only make this family a better one.”
“If we can make this family any better, we’ll have achieved the impossible!” Anne looked at her husband; no sooner had she said this than he’d gotten a thoughtful look in his eyes.
“Honey, you’ve given me an idea for a name. How does this sound…?”
Kim Possible, full name Kimberly Ann Possible, was born six months later to proud parents John and Anne Possible and big sister Shego Possible. The labor was not overlong and both mother and child were resting comfortably.
Upon bringing the baby home, the house was quickly besieged with guests and relatives, all wanting to fawn and coo and marvel at the child. Shego’s Grandmother Nana and Uncle Slim stopped by, as well as the many friends and neighbors. Often finding the house a little too crowded for his tastes, John would take Shego out into the backyard and play catch until things quieted down.
Some of this was very confusing for Shego, and a little intimidating, but every night she got to be the big sister and read a story from one of her ‘Little Golden Books’ to the sleeping infant. Shego was allowed to participate in as many child-care activities as her parents thought that she could, and no one in the extended Possible family would have even dared to think of her as being ‘less’ than a full member of the family.
It could be argued that she was more so, because she was chosen.
When a new baby enters a household, however, there can be many difficulties for the older sibling who, up to now, had the full attention of their parents; it was no less difficult for Shego. Sometimes she would ask if the baby could be returned, or if they could trade her for a monkey, but John and Anne weathered these well enough. There was also the occasional tantrum when it was even hinted that little Kim might be able to wear some of Shego’s clothes when she got older, but these were also handled with tender loving care.
For the most part, Shego liked being the big sister, and would often hold little Kim across her pudgy legs, making up nonsensical stories and jokes and singing tuneless songs to the infant. Shego loved her mother’s beautiful red hair, so she was entranced when Kim’s hair also proved to be the same fiery color. Kim also seemed entranced by Shego’s long mane of midnight-black hair, and was far too young to notice their different skin tone; but Shego noticed.
Something else was about to happen that no one could have foreseen.
One morning Shego was out in the yard playing ‘gardener’. This mostly involved mud pies and very little actual gardening, but while she was pretending to plant some flowers a bee stung her.
It was not clear if the same event that resulted in Shego’s change of skin color also affected her overall physical makeup, but the little girl rarely became sick or got infections or even an earache. She didn’t have any allergies and would likely not be adversely affected by the sting. The bee landed on her hand and, deciding that he was a threat, promptly drove its venom-laden stinger into the soft flesh.
Reacting more from fear than pain, Shego felt her rage spike in her head and her tiny hands were suddenly covered in a layer of cascading green flame. The bee vanished in a greasy puff of smoke. Shego was entranced for a few seconds before she thought to become frightened; she stood up and ran to the house, shaking both hands and screaming.
Both parents happened to be downstairs and they met her at the patio door. The little girl barely noticed that the green flames had gone out and through ragged tears she simply told her parents that a bee had stung her. She was coddled and her wounded hand tended to, and she was brought into the living room to watch cartoons while little Kim played in the playpen.
The worst event stemming from Kim’s arrival was the night that Shego couldn’t locate Panda-Roo. Her parents helper her look all over the house but they didn’t find it anywhere. When bedtime came, they asked her to be strong and she promised that she would, even though it would be her first night without the beloved toy beside her. Let it be known that there was no plan or duplicity on behalf of her parents; they truly did not know where Panda-Roo was.
Getting up later after a few restless hours, Shego tottered to the bathroom and drank a cup of water. She tip toed back to her bedroom, but took a detour through Kim’s room to check on her baby sister. The door was always kept open and the little night-light kept the room bathed in an amber glow. Shego glanced around the room to see if Panda-Roo was here and, not seeing him, walked to the crib to see how Kim was doing.
Kim was fast asleep, Panda-Roo leaning against the opposite side of the crib, watching over her like he used to do for Shego.
The pale child could not have explained her feelings if she had tried, but the anger and betrayal flared within her as it only can to a five year old. The amber glow from the night-light was suddenly competing against a bright green glow from Shego’s hands as she gripped the side of the crib in her childish anger.
The side of the crib caught fire, smoldering under her hands. Shego backed away in shock and terror, but the fire from her hands had been too hot this time, the contact with the crib too prolonged; the wood burned freely and quickly spread to the blankets.
Scared though she was, Shego didn’t run away immediately; she ran to the crib and did her best to avoid the flames in an attempt to pull Kim out. This fire was hot and reddish yellow, not like the green on her hands; it would burn Shego as eagerly as it would anyone. The five year old grabbed onto her baby sister’s bedclothes and tugged her out of the crib to safety.
It was only when the red-haired infant screamed in pain that Shego saw that her hands were still glowing with a green fire of their own. Kim’s bedclothes were badly burned from Shego’s touch and the exposed skin beneath looked red and raw. It was at this point that several things happened at once.
The flames from the blankets reached the curtains and they burst into flame as if they were woven from match sticks, Shego’s resolve broke and she started to yell for her parents, and the smoke detector inside the room became alive with noise and light.
“DADDY! MOMMY!”
John staggered into the room and his instincts took over; he pulled Shego and Kim out by whatever part of them he could most easily grab and handed them to Anne, who had also run across the hallway to see to her family’s safety. He then found the fire extinguisher that he’d placed beside the door and worked to put out the fire.
Anne took the children outside and inspected them for damage; she saw that little Kim had received a bad burn across her upper back and began treating the area as best she could with the items she’d kept in the first aide kit from the kitchen. When the fire and rescue squad arrived minutes later in response to the automated dispatch they’d received, Anne let the paramedics take a closer look at her youngest daughter.
The flames were really quite minor and the fire stopped well before the home was in danger of being lost, but since the crib itself had been on fire, not to mention the risk of smoke inhalation, the dangers had been all too real and had the smoke detector somehow failed to operate, Kim could have died if not for Shego. When both Anne and John could finally get Shego to stop crying, they asked her to tell them what had happened. It was at this point that Shego told her first intentional lie.
She told them that she’d gone for a glass of water, had seen flames in Kim’s room, and had gone inside to see if she could help.
Her parents had absolutely no cause to think that anything other that this could be the true story. John had seen Kim in Shego’s arms when he’d entered the room, so they had no reason not to believe her. Later, when the room was inspected, the plastic casing of the light-light was found to be badly melted, lending credence to the idea that it had been the culprit.
The Possibles decided that they needed to get away from the house for a short time; this would allow repairs to be made to the baby’s room and for them to all relax after this near-tragedy. They made a long road-trip west to stay with John’s brother for a few days, then down south to see grandma Nana.
Before they left, Shego begged her mother to take Panda-Roo, slightly scorched and smelling of smoke, and give the doll to Kim to be her very own. Anne was reticent, but John felt that Shego was too close to feeling as if she’d almost lost her family all over again, so the dolly remained in Kim’s possession for the rest of her childhood.
Shego also demanded that Kim sleep in her room from now on, and from that day there were few moments when little Kim wasn’t under the protection of her big sister.