Fic: "Shego's Plan: World Domination For Dummies" (3/6)

[cdybedahl]

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Shego's Plan

Written by Calle Dybedahl

World Domination For Dummies

Shego felt good. She'd spent two weeks camping in Alaska, hundreds of miles away from the nearest human settlement, and it had done small miracles for her mood. She'd managed to fly all the way from Anchorage to Middleton without even once wanting to kill someone. Not even the children. Sure, she was pining for a steaming hot bath and a gourmet meal, but those were small things.

That she had enjoyed it so much came as a surprise to her. Usually, her idea of an ideal vacation was lounging at an exclusive resort with easy access to every luxury known to mankind. The closest things to luxuries she'd had out in the wilderness were a freezing cold lake and a bottle of good Jamaican rum. Unless, of course, she counted the blessed peace and quiet as a luxury. Which she was now inclined to do. Also, as a hiding place it had pretty much rocked.

But now she was back in the normal world. She sighed a little. Oh well. If nothing else she'd get to find out how her little scheme had worked, which she was pretty much dying to know. Although dying in a placid, unstressed sort of way. She ambled over to the cafeteria in the middle of the arrivals hall, and grabbed a large cup of coffee, a lox bagel and a newspaper. She sipped the coffee, unfolded the paper on the table in front of her and promptly sprayed coffee all over it.

'President Drakken Introduces 2000% Energy Tax,' the headline said. Under it was a picture of Drakken standing at the White House press conference podium. In a suit. With a proper, if very short, haircut.

For several seconds Shego just sat staring at it with her mouth hanging open. President Drakken? The idiot had actually gone and succeeded? When she wasn't there?

She frowned. No. It just wasn't possible. It was just barely on the very extreme edge of possibility that he'd be lucky enough that one of his harebrained schemes would put him in a position of power over the nation, but not as a bona fide president. There just was no way. And an energy tax? What was that all about? She got up and walked over to the cashier's desk, paper in hand.

"Excuse me," she said, "but I've been out in the wilderness for a while, and this paper says there is a new president?"

The girl behind the desk smacked her chewing gum before she answered.

"Yeah," she said. "Since last week."

"Just like that?" Shego said. "No election, no nothing?"

"I dunno," the girl said. "I only watch the soaps."

So much for the not wanting to kill people.

"Do you have papers from the last few days?" Shego asked.

"No," the girl said without even looking.

Shego gave up. She returned to her cooling coffee and started looking through the paper. Maybe there was something more to be found.

There was.

Apparently Europe had a president now, in spite of not even having been a nation went Shego boarded the plane to Alaska. A president by the name of Duff Killigan. Russia had a new president too, by the name of Dementor. China had Monkey Fist. India, SeÒor Senior Sr. The list went on.

Shego stared at the paper. While she was gone, something had gone seriously weird. Like, Twilight Zone kind of weird. She tried to imagine how this could have happened in only two weeks, but came up totally blank. But there was one phrase that snuck into her mind and refused to leave. A phrase that she'd used to consider cocky and kind of cute, but that suddenly sounded pretty damn scary.

She can do anything.

Fortunately the new President of the United States was protected by the Secret Service, so it only took Shego a couple of hours to figure out where he was and how to get in.

It certainly helped that the place he was in was his old lair, and nobody had bothered to change the codes.

What also helped was that Drakken apparently hadn't even let the Secret Service people into the lair. The place was deserted. Not even the henchmen seemed to be around. With every sense she had tuned to maximum alertness, Shego sneaked through the corridors towards the central lab. According to the lair computer system, that was the only place where the lights were turned on, so it seemed reasonable that that was where she could find Drakken.

Or that that was where the trap was set.

For the last bit she abandoned the corridor entirely and crawled through the air vents. The same air vents that she'd time after time tried to convince Drakken to change to some that people couldn't crawl through, but always been turned down on the silly grounds that a proper supervillain's lair should have them. She was not unaware of the irony.

Doctor Drakken was sitting in a chair in the middle of the laboratory. The view through the vent's grille wasn't very good, so she couldn't quite see what he was doing, but it sounded like he was crying.

Well, if she hadn't already been convinced that something was deeply wrong that sure would've done it.

She fished a screwdriver out of a catsuit pocket. A plastic one, so as not to make noise if dropped. She stifled a groan over the security insanity that was an air vent grille that could be unscrewed from both sides and set to remove it. It had a convenient little handle to reduce the risk of dropping it out of the vent while removing it, and the vent itself had a special indentation to store it in.

To imagine that she had even for a moment harbored the thought that someone with a mindset like that might have forced his way to the presidency!

She vaulted out of the vent and dropped soundlessly to the laboratory floor.

"Doctor D?" she said.

Drakken turned his head. It certainly looked like he'd been crying.

"Shego?" he said. "Is that really you?"

"The one and only," she said. "What's the deal here, Drak? I'm hearing some insane stuff about you being president."

He hadn't just been crying, it looked like he'd been scared halfway into another incarnation and pretty much stayed there. Not that he looked very healthy at the best of times, with the blue skin and all, but at the moment he really looked like death warmed over.

"She made us cooperate, Shego," he said. His voice was hoarse. "She made us work together to build... things."

Shego looked around. They were alone in the lab, as far as she could see.

"By 'she' I suppose you mean Kim Possible?" Shego said.

Drakken nodded frantically.

"I don't know what happened to her," he said. "She's not like she used to be. She's evil. Much, much worse than I ever was."

"Okay, calm down," Shego said. "What did she do to you?"

She suddenly noticed that there was a fresh cross-shaped scar on the top of his head.

"She put a bomb in my head, Shego," he said. "She put a bomb in my head."

She didn't know what to say. She felt faintly sick, but that was hard to put into words.

"If I don't do as she says, she'll blow it," Drakken said. "She said that I deserve to die for my crimes, but as long as I'm useful I can live to try to make up for them."

She stayed silent. Suggestions on how to fix the problem appeared to her, but she had a strong feeling that they wouldn't help Drakken's mental state. And Kim had certainly thought about them too anyway.

"Dementor has one too," Drakken said. "I don't know what she did to Amy, but she's been a total wreck ever since. She can still work, though. She made an Ebola strain tailored to Monkey Fist's DNA. If he doesn't get the antidote every day, he'll start releasing a virus that will kill him along with every monkey on Earth. Dementor made something for Junior that makes him look like the Elephant Man if he disobeys, and that pretty much keeps Senior under control too."

He sounded a little less desperate now, as if the confession was a relief to him. Shego, on the other hand, was feeling increasingly horrified.

"I made molebots," he said. "Nuclear molebots. If Killigan steps out of line, the hundred oldest and best golf courses in Scotland go up in mushroom clouds."

"So what about the presidencies?" Shego said. "It sounds like she's got puppets controlling most of the world's governments."

Drakken rubbed his eyes.

"Most of us had dabbled in mind control," he said. "My shampoo and things like that. When she forced us to cooperate..."

His voice trailed off.

Again, Shego didn't know what to say.

"We have to stop her, Shego," Drakken said. "I and the others may have done a lot of very bad things, but Kim Possible is a monster. I don't care if I die in the process, but she must be stopped!"

He had turned fully towards Shego, and was gesturing imploringly at her as he talked. A couple of steps behind him was one of the lab's control consoles. Too far away for him to have been working on it, as well as powered down. Her heart sank.

"Doctor D," she said. "What were you doing when I dropped in?"

He looked confused.

"Doing?" he said. "Nothing. She told me to go sit here."

So it was a trap. Kim had known she was coming all along. Shego rapidly looked around, trying to figure out where it would be coming from.

Only a step behind Drakken Kim Possible faded into view as her battlesuit's chameleon circuits deactivated.

"Hello, Shego," she said.

Drakken started so badly that he fell out of his chair.

"I didn't do anything!" he screamed. "I did just as you said! Please don't blow up my brain!"

Kim ignored him.

"Kimmie," Shego said. "I hear you've gone into the world domination business."

Her mouth was going on automatic. Kim looked fantastic. On the surface she looked the same as always, of course. Which was very far from bad to start with. She'd always been very self-confident, too. Which was also attractive. But this time there was something more. Something that Shego couldn't quite put her finger on, but whatever it was it was turning her on like crazy.

"I've been waiting for you, Shego," Kim said. The way she said her name sent shivers down Shego's spine.

"Sorry to disappoint, Princess," she said. "I came as soon as I heard something was up."

Drakken had crawled off to the side, obviously not wanting to be between them.

"That's all right," Kim said. "You're here now."

"Sure am," Shego said. She'd never noticed before that Kim's eyes were almost exactly the same shade of green as her own.

"I have an opening for an assistant," Kim said. "If you're interested."

"Assistant?" Shego said. "Don't you mean sidekick?"

Kim shrugged.

"We could call it that, if you want."

"What is it you're doing, anyway?" Shego asked. "Doctor D here told me some, as I guess you heard, but I'm drawing a blank on the big picture."

She was going to accept Kim's offer almost no matter what, she suddenly realised. She wanted badly to be near that girl. Or, really, she wanted a lot more than just be near, but she guessed that wasn't in the cards. She'd seen enough of the boys Kim drooled after to understand that. But she'd settle for near. The physical frustration she could deal with. There were plenty of pretty young women who weren't very particular as long as you had lots of cash to spread around. She probably could even find some who looked more or less like Kim.

"I'm saving the world, of course," Kim said. "Nobody else is doing it, so I'll just have to do it for them."

"Saving the world," Shego said.

"Our lifestyle isn't sustainable," Kim said. "We know that perfectly well. Things are already changing for the worse, in the climate and other places. As the large masses of people in China and India come wanting the same standard of living that we have, things will only get worse faster."

Shego knew this, of course. She'd even donated pretty serious amounts of money to Greenpeace and similar organisations. If nothing else, she didn't want her favourite seaside resorts under fifteen feet of water.

"People won't change voluntarily until it's already too late," Kim said. "So I'm going to make them change now."

"Right," Shego said. "That makes sense. I guess. And you want me in this to do what, exactly?"

Kim shrugged.

"There'll be plenty to do for an enforcer and highly skilled thief," she said. Her gaze travelled slowly down Shego's body.

"There may be other... opportunities, too," she said.

For a moment, there was a complete standstill in Shego's head. She must have imagined seeing that. There was no way that Kim Possible had just flirted with her. But if she had...

"So, um," she said, inwardly cursing herself for stumbling over her words, "what kind of payment are we talking about here?"

Kim smiled.

"You like spas and luxury resorts, right?" she said.

"Who doesn't?" Shego said.

"I'm thinking that you could get the Bahamas," Kim said. "You'd have to abide by global regulations on energy use and emission control, but that should still leave a mindboggling amount of luxury if it all went to just one person."

For the second time in the same conversation, Shego found herself speechless. She'd been mentally preparing herself for being offered a staggering amount of money and preparing to demand more, but this was quite something else.

"What do you mean 'get'?" she said.

"Yours to do what you want with. President. Queen. Dictator for life. Whatever you want to call it."

Kim smiled at her.

"You know I can deliver," she said. "And you won't get a better offer anywhere else."

"But, um," Shego said, "wouldn't I have to spend a lot of time and effort to keep rebellions and such down?"

"Oh no," Kim said. "After we're done, everyone will be perfectly willing to obey your slightest whim."

Part of her just wanted to scream "Hell yes!" and go for it. Undisputed ruler of a paradisaical tropical archipelago? Not a deal you were offered every day.

On the other hand, an annoying part of her pointed out, you'll be putting yourself in the company of Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and people like that. Except worse, because they only enslaved people's bodies and it sounds like Kim is planning to enslave people's minds. You may have left the superhero gig to be a mercenary villain, but are you really prepared to do that?

On the third hand, her instinct for self-preservation said, turning this chick down would probably be an extremely bad move, considered from a wanting-to-stay-alive point of view. And possibly from a wishing-we-were-dead point of view.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Drakken cower against a computer rack.

"Sure, Kimmie," she said. "I'm in."

Kim smiled at her.

"Welcome aboard," she said.

Kim was staying at a hotel in Upperton, it turned out. She'd taken over the entire top floor, most of which was used as offices and laboratories. It was all temporary, she said. A more permanent base was under construction, in the form of an airship two miles long. It'd cruise at very high altitude, get its power from super-efficient solar cells covering its topside and never land. It would be, Kim claimed, the most energy-efficient form of transport ever built. Once it was airborne, it would only need to take aboard food. All water would be recycled, and there would be a significant amount of hydroponic gardens. Kim said that the thing was partly inspired by the Biosphere projects, and that she hoped to eventually get it entirely self-sufficient.

It would also be a highly visible symbol of power. Kim didn't say that, but Shego supposed that was just because it was kind of obvious.

But that was the future. The present was a hotel room. Well, suite, actually. Still very modest for someone who had forced herself into a position of power over roughly four billion people in two weeks time. It had felt strange walking through the hotel to get there. The working parts of the top floor had a lot of people in them, and nobody had even looked at Shego as they walked past. All eyes had been either aimed at Kim, or averted. In either case, there had been enough fear involved to make them completely ignore the shapely green-skinned woman in the figure-hugging suit.

Being ignored was not something that happened to Shego a lot. It unnerved her.

Kim sat down in the middle of a large couch and spread her arms along the backrest.

"So, Shego," she said. "What have you been up to lately?"

She was so close to blurting out "Hitting you with the ray from Electronique's modified Attitudinator", but managed to stop herself in time. She had no idea if saying that would get her a bonus or killed, but she didn't feel like taking the gamble.

"Oh, nothing much," she said, still standing. "Spent the last two weeks camping in Alaska."

"Alone?"

"Just me and the grizzlies," Shego said. "And, well, a gazillion mosquitoes."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"So," Shego said without thinking first, "what have you been up to yourself?"

Kim giggled a little.

"Taking over the world," she said.

"Oh," Shego said. "Of course. I knew that."

"It hasn't left much time for anything else," Kim said. "I had to skip cheerleading practice, and I think I missed a Latin test."

Shego sat down in an armchair. Everything felt surreal. In all her time with Drakken, she'd never really thought about what it might be like if one of his schemes ever succeeded. Perhaps because that happening was so incredibly unlikely. Or, more likely, because it was actually a pretty frightening prospect. Even if you were almost at the top of the new order.

"Why don't you come sit here?" Kim said, nodding towards the spot on the couch next to herself. She was looking at Shego with a definite come-hither look.

Shego swallowed. Kim was flirting with her. Might the Attitudinator have turned her gay as well as evil? Shego hoped not, because she did not like the implications of that one little bit.

"I, um," Shego said, "just thought I should keep a respectful distance. Not get into your personal space. Now that you're my boss and all."

While she talked, Kim unzipped her battle suit an pulled the top half down to her waist. Under it, she was wearing a thin white tank top. Only a thin white tank top. Shego could clearly see Kim's nipples poking at the fabric. She swallowed again, in spite of her mouth having gone all dry.

"Let's say that when we're in this room, we're equals," Kim said. "And I kind of want you in my personal space."

"I'm starting to get that," Shego said. "And it sounds really tempting, but I came here straight from two weeks in the woods, a really long flight and crawling through the air vents in Drakken's lair. Without ever passing through a shower, bath or, lately, bed. So, um, rain check? Until I am a little less tired and a lot less ripe?"

Kim pouted a little.

"I guess I'll have to accept that," she said. "But on one condition."

"Condition?" Shego said.

"Come and give me a kiss," Kim said. "To tide me over."

Shego didn't dare deny that. Nor, if she was honest to herself, did she really want to. Kissing Kim Possible had been high on her list of things she wanted to do some day for a pretty long time now.

She got up, walked the few steps over to the couch and sat down next to Kim. Kim put her hand gently on Shego's cheek and guided their mouths together. The kiss was slow, gentle and almost broke Shego's heart.

"You weren't kidding about being pretty ripe," Kim said after they'd separated again. "Your room is two doors up the corridor. If it's not as you like it, call down to reception and tell them that if they don't fix it very quickly I will be disappointed."

Shego stood up, the feels of Kim's lips on her own still echoing in her mind.

"Thanks," she said. "Er, see you tomorrow?"

"Bright and early," Kim said. "We have a lot of work ahead of us."

As Shego was on her way out through the door, she turned and looked back at Kim. She had picked up a laptop and was typing at it.

"Kim?" she said.

Kim looked up at her.

"If you make most of the people in the western world live at a much lower standard than they're used to, don't you think they'll be pissed off? Try to revolt and such? Even if we can easily put down one riot or control one country, there will be a lot of riots in a lot of countries."

"No, silly," Kim said. "Forcing them to do it would never work. We're going to make everybody want to. We're going to make saving the environment everybody's deepest desire, forever after."

Shego's room turned out to be larger and fancier than Kim's. It had a panoramic view of Upperton, a bed that could easily accommodate a medium-sized orgy, every kind of entertainment electronics she'd ever heard of and a mini-bar that really didn't merit the prefix 'mini'. The bathroom had so many functions and settings that she needed to read the manual in order to turn the shower on. Once she'd got it working in a way that wasn't horrible, she undressed, got in, sank to the floor and buried her head in her hands.

This was not what she had imagined when she hovered outside Kim's window, waiting to hit her with the Attitudinator. She'd imagined Kim on their side. One of them. A friend instead of the strange kind of enemy she used to be.

She'd certainly not imagined this. This wasn't Kim Possible. This was a monster that looked like her, talked with her voice and used the same sandalwood-scented bath soap. This was, she really had to admit, a terrible mistake. One, she was starting to realise, she would have to undo. Somehow. The non-evil Kim had been hard enough to beat. This version? Might not be doable at all. But she had to try, even if it meant that she'd wake up with a bomb in her skull, or whatever fate Kim could come up with to terrify all sense out of her. Drakken might not have been Shego's favorite person i the world, but what Kim had done to him was just wrong.

She got out of the shower and stood naked in the darkness of her sumptuous room. She could have all this. Permanently. She could have even better than this, for as long as she lived.

She picked up her suit and burned the grime out of it with her comet fire. She sat down on the bed and pulled the now clean suit on. Once dressed, she walked out on the balcony. If it was still called a balcony when it was almost big enough to play volleyball on. She looked down. There was a pool down there, twenty-eight stories below. It would do.

So, instead of a life in luxury she was going to piss off the world's most powerful person, live in hiding and try to fight against overwhelming force. All in order to save the entire world from being brainwashed.

She aimed carefully and then somersaulted over the balcony railing, straightening out into a straight dive.

Some poor excuse for a supervillain she was.

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