Beyond the Drama Chapter Two: Lining Up the Dates Everything in his perfect plan was coming together nicely. The hostile takeover was on schedule. The brain tap machine was operational. In fact, Shego was away picking up the next piece of the plan - not that she really knew why she was doing what he had asked. She'd gotten lippy about it, too. Regardless, everything was in place. Well, almost everything. His visitor from so many months ago still hadn't come through with her piece, yet. Oh, he had a back- up...which he named Erik, because what did he know about popular names? But he was still nervous about this loose end. Loose ends always came back to bite you. "Everything's right on schedule, I take it?" came a voice from the other side of the room, which caused Drakken to jump suddenly to his feet. "How did you get in here this time? With the security upgrades-" "Don't trouble yourself about me," the familiar stranger said as she crossed the room toward him. "You still have great security, Drew. I'm just special." At any other time, Drakken might have spent more time on this, but one thing continued to bug him about his assistor. "Why do you insist on calling me Drew? It's Dr. Drakken." "Dr. Drakken? Are you serious? I'm your partner, not your sidekick." "It's not about being a sidekick. It's about respect." "I'm still not referring to you that way." The blue man raked his hand through his hair in frustration. "Why do I get no respect? Shego's always lippy and talks back. Kim Possible never lets me gloat properly. And the new girl won't use my title. I bet Professor Dementor never has to put up with this kind of mutiny." "Of course not," his visitor agreed. "He chose his title well. Powerful with just the right level of pretention. You don't have the educational level to be a doctor." "Well, be that as it may, you haven't yet produced the level of help needed for the title of partner. Where's you help?" "Preparing," the woman said as she tossed her hair, worn down this time, over a silver clad shoulder. "He'll be here in two days." "Two days?!" Drakken growled. "Why the wait?" His visitor rolled her eyes. "Because this is all about timing. Trust me on this." "Fine. Not like I have a choice." At this point, Drakken would have said more, but then his intercom buzzed. "Shego is making her approach" one of the henchmen relayed before cutting the line. "I think your presence is being requested," the silver draped stranger pointed out. "Fine. I'll go. But don't think this is over. I want to see that help in place soon," Drakken insisted as he walked toward the door. As he turned back to look in the room, he found his "partner" had vashined again. At least Shego hadn't seen her. After Drakken left the room, Laude stepped back out of the portal opening. Glancing at the bank of TV screens, each with camera feeds of various parts of the lair, she saw and heard the entire Drakken/Shego exchange. She even laughed at the "Must you always break my toys?" that Drakken uttered. But she was more interested in the synthodrones battle abilities than anything else. If a drone managed to take out Terry early on, it wouldn't do her any good at all. But she was relieved at what she saw. In the suit, Terry would be able to handle them. Now she just needed to work out a few things so she could handle Terry. He wasn't going to trust her - and she planned to use that to her advantage. As it was, she had a lease on a furnished home that she had to finalize. *** It was a sunny early afternoon at Hamilton Hill High. The in-crowd, the wannabes, and the nobodies sat in their basic groups, as they jostled for status and power in the high school structure. Gossip was exchanged. Food was shared. Another day in high school... ...that had one Terry McGinnis sitting at a table - by himself - pouring over his notebook. He had enough windows open on the laptop that it was making his head spin. "I don't believe it. Terry McGinnis is doing his homework." "Oh, haha, Max," Terry groused as he looked up from his laptop to greet his best friend. Her brown eyes were dancing in amusement and her pink hair stood out as much as ever. More than likely, she was going to get curious. Terry hadn't decided if that was a good or bad thing yet. "So," Max said as she dropped down next to Terry to look at his laptop, "what are you doing? I'm pretty sure you aren't studying for the government quiz next period." "Government quiz? What government quiz?" "Terry, sometimes I don't know what to do with you. But, seriously," Max returned to her initial question, "what are you working on?" "The physics assignment." "Really?" Max gasped as she leaned across Terry to have a better look at what was on his laptop. "I was so shocked when you asked to work on that for your physics project. So was Mr. Inchor. He asked you for clarification six times." "Which was unnecessary," Terry groused. "Not really. Be honest, Ter. You do not come across as someone seriously interested in exploring the breakthroughs in Physics coming out of Gotham U. Which leads me to my next question-" "Which is?" Terry learned a while ago it was safer to try to address Max on the front end than to let her stew too much in her own head. Scary things came out of Max's head - like creating computer programs to discover the secret identity of Batman, for one. "Why are you interested in that project? I would have thought your 'after school job' would keep you way too busy to be paying attention to GU grad students." Max had just the right ironic eyebrow lift when she said "after school job". Of course, Max was on the short list of people who knew Terry's place in the Bat family. A list that had recently gotten a little too long for Terry's comfort. "It's related to my after school job, actually." That silenced Max for a moment - but only a moment. "How? Is this something the Old Man-" "No. Laude Tempus." "The new freak of the week? What did she say to cause you to take an interest in Physics?" "Well, she mentioned a classis show from the 1990s called Sliders-" "I'd heard of that. Wasn't that the inspiration behind the grad student project at GU?" Terry nodded. "And she threatened to crush me." "Laude threatened to crush you? Well, I'm sure that's not fun, but villians threaten to crush Batman all the time. It won't ever happen." Terry narrowed his eyes at Max. "First, never say never. There were a few times with Inque...but that wasn't my concern. I didn't say Laude threatened to crush Batman." "Yes, you did!" Max insisted, "You say Laude threatened to crush-" Max suddenly stopped as what Terry had said clicked in her head. Her eyes grew huge. "Me," Terry confirmed Max's fear, but didn't elaborate. After a few beats, Max whispered to her friend, "She knows who you are?" "Apparently. And - out of the kindness of her heart - she decided to tell me how she was going to destroy me. That led to the mention of Sliders and my sudden interest physics." "How?" Max asked, suddenly very worried about her friend. "By destroying the team that could do anything." "What does that even mean?" "I don't know. In some ways, Laude is worse than Wayne. But I have been keeping a closer eye on GU lately...and I've been a little concerned about some of the early thefts this project reported before the breakthrough, but-" "Yeah. I could see why you'd suddenly care a lot about Physics." Max fell silent a moment as she looked at her friend. He looked tired and shell shocked. Since he'd taken up the mantle, the tired was normal. The shell shocked was also expected, given what Terry just shared, but Max had a feeling something else was wrong. "what else happened this weekend?" she asked quietly. Terry looked over in surprise at Max. How did she know something else was on his mind? It didn't really matter, though. He did want to talk about it. "I found out Mom was adopted by my grandparents as a little girl." "Wait, your mother was adopted?" "Yep. I noticed how she didn't look like my grandparents. I mentioned it and she fessed up. The odd thing is she had never said anything before. I wonder why she suddenly said something now." "Does she know anything about her biological parents? Did she ever try to find them?" Terry sighed. "Mom knows amazingly little about her biological parents. She did try to find them, but she couldn't. She did tell me a story that my grandparents told her about the day they adopted her. It didn't seem like her biological parents were super happy about letting her go. Her biological mother even said something about being able to do anything but not being able to do that." "Of course it would be hard to give up a child, but - wait a sec," Max interrupted herself. "Mary's biological mentioned being able to do anything?" "Yes." "And Laude mentioned breaking up a team that could do anything?" "Yep. Right before she mentioned history and revealed she knew my identity. The exchange kinda held my attention," Terry added a little sarcastically at the end. "And she mentioned Gotham University and their research on time, space, and dimensions?" Terry nodded. Terry watched as his friend processed all of the information. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head...and then stopping. "Well, what could this mean?" she finally asked. "Slaggit, Max. I don't know for sure." Terry jumped up, frustrated. "It almost sounds like Laude is hopping through dimensions, causing trouble, possibly trying to kill my biological grandmother. And I somehow have to follow Laude, find this team that could do anything, and protect them. Sounds blitzed out, doesn't it?" "Slaggit," Max muttered herself as she moved to stand next to her friend. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she wanted to say something that showed she was in his corner. What came out of her mouth was, "Whatever happened to the old days when I had to distract robo-bims our stupid friends bought while you swooped in to save the day?" "Cynthia did put you through your paces. That was some house party Howard threw." "Yeah," Max agreed aloud. Quietly, she decided she would put a lot of energy into helping Terry with his Physics project. As blitzed out as it all sounded, she believed it. Being a friend of the Bat will do that to you. That and being kidnapped by snake people who wanted to become dinosaur people. Yes, Max had seen some weird stuff in high school. Living in Gotham was much more broadening experience than most people realized. - to be continued -