I'm ba-ack! :D

Kinda a weird idea for a story coming from a female, but I guess I got tired of seeing how weight-lifting ads and romance novels define "manliness." Plus, I saw great comic potential in trying to tackle the subject with Drakken as my ever-faithful guinea pig.

Grammar errors and the occasional non-word are meant to capture Drakken's "voice." And credit for the title goes to the ever-amazing Gravity Falls.

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Chapter One

The First Call

He puts his finger on the little white calendar square that marks today and carefully slides it - his finger, that is - down to the square directly below, the one that says "Thanksgiving Day" in letters almost too tiny to read. The thought brings on a grin.

Thanksgiving, his fourth-favorite holiday - well, fifth-favorite if you count his birthday. Thanksgiving, with its warm ovens making everyone feel cozy, even if it's below freezing outside. Its tables piled high with more food than even he can eat. The parade of blow-up things that look like they'd be so much fun to bounce on. The football games his henchmen always watched, which he never understood - what's the point of running around head-butting each other to gain some brown oblong thing - unless it's hollowed out and contains encoded information that could send you to prison if translated -

He shakes that idea away with a toss of his ponytail. Ah, well. Three out of four ain't bad.

And this year's going to be even better than most. He rubs his hands together in glee, the way mad scientists do, even if they've been reformed for almost six whole months. As long as he can remember, he's had two Thanksgiving dinners - one with Shego and the henchmen on the actual day, and one with his mother the following weekend. He always liked the first one - noisy and crazy like family dinners should be, with talking and laughing and fighting the henchmen over the wishbone. The second, on the other hand - well, he shudders just to think about it.

He's always up for extending the celebration, but it wasn't much of a celebration with just the two of them. Her cooing over him and reminding him she wants grandbabies and urging him to eat more turkey, which by this point was the last thing he wanted to do. Him sitting with his legs pressed together like he has to pee, chomping his tongue so he won't let anything slip out that'll reveal he's a supervillain.

Remembering that feels cold and lonely, but this year is a different story, and that perks him back up. This year, both of his families - the biological one and the evil one that's not really evil anymore - are coming together to celebrate. Mother will be there with her homemade pumpkin pie - cause she's the best cook in the universe - and his former henchmen will be there with board games - one of them has a Clue set from 1960 or something that he thinks might be worth a million bucks - and Shego will be there to just be Shego, ah, oh, the fun they'll have together! Makes him go all tingly inside.

He pictures them now, all snug around the table, shoveling in spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and cranberries, hunched over a game of Sorry! as they cackle hysterically at sending each other back to Start. His grin gets bigger when he thinks about how good it feels getting the last blue piece to Home while everyone else is still struggling around the board - and even bigger when he realizes he doesn't really care right now. He can get knocked back a hundred times and he'll only pout a little, because he'll be surrounded by people who love him.

At his house. He's going to be the host, which is the best part! He can see himself now, sitting at the head of the table, asking the blessing, carving the turkey - which will actually be a full-sized bird this year instead of those pathetic little dinky ones you have to buy when you're a family of two. Just thinking about it makes his mouth water - and his fingers tingle nervously, because he doesn't exactly have the best track record with sharp things.

But there's still somebody missing from the picture, someone to sit next to his mother and beam and say proudly, "That's my son that saved the world!"

He sucks in air between his teeth. It's moments like this when he understands why he stayed a supervillain for so long, even though he was never any good at it. It was so much easier to just blow up whatever hurt him.

How, he wonders, can you miss what you're not sure you ever had? Like a relationship with your dad -

Dad. The familiarity the word implies gives him the creeps. Somewhere out there is a man who impregnated his mother, but he is not his dad. Not the way men in Hallmark movies are to their kids or the way Dr. Possible - much as he's still not fond of the man - is to Kim, or the way Senior is to Junior.

An iota of an idea - say THAT ten times fast - sparks at the base of his brain, and he closes his eyes to let the thoughts spill into place. He sees the Seniors at their gigantic private island compound, carving a scrawny turkey, even though they could afford one that weighs forty pounds and comes pre-stuffed. Somewhere in his mind he hears a voice say, Thanksgiving isn't much fun with just one parent and one kid, is it? And he remembers the warmth of Senior looking at him with something more than respect -

The idea speck shoots down his spinal column, sending a jolt to every part of his body. He leaps to his feet and does a little Russian kicking dance with them, for no reason other than they're too excited to stay still.

Those overjoyed feet carry him from his bedroom to his office, where he rustles through notes about overdue library books and blueprints for Shego's Christmas present - a portable force field - until he finds last year's copy of Jack Hench's Villain Directory. He's been meaning to throw it out since the day of the U.N. ceremony just for him. Now he's so glad he didn't.

He tears back to his room, fumbles his cell phone out of his pocket, taps in the numbers with trembling fingers, and then immediately crosses them as it begins to ring. He's in the middle of hoping he won't choke on his own saliva or something equally undignified when the ringing stops. A voice that sounds just old enough to be comforting answers, "Hello, the Seniors' private island."

Suddenly he doesn't know where to rest the hand that's not holding the phone. Senior has politeness down to a science, but he's still learning, and his voice sounds kind of shaky and squeaky when he says, "Hello. Um - this - this is Dr. Drakken."

"Dr. Drakken! What a pleasure!" Senior says welcomingly, like he's just been waiting for him to call. "How may I help you?"

He takes a moment to gather up the words and let them out. "I was wondering if you - and Junior -" thank you, thank you for letting me remember Junior, he adds silently, not sure if he's talking to God or his own memory - "would be interested in attending my family's Thanksgiving dinner. I know it's just the two of you, and that's no fun on the holidays - I know because it always used to be my mother and I -"

Things start to go tangly - he didn't plan on saying all of that - so he decides to stop there, because who knows what might come out of his mouth next? Senior smooths over the silence with that way he has of saying everything perfectly. "How kind of you to offer," the older man replies. "Although we do not generally observe Thanksgiving -"

He chomps down on his tongue to keep from blurting a "Wha?" that would sound even goonier after Senior's warm, rich speech. It drops on him like a cartoon anvil - Thanksgiving is an American holiday. The Seniors are European. That's why they have those accents that make them sound like royalty and those little squiggles over the n in "Senor" when they write out their names -

Jerking his head around neck-poppingly fast, he studies the shiny golden medals hanging on his wall, one for winning the Evil Family Pie-Eating contest five years in a row, the other for saving the world, until the pinch between his shoulder blades that feels like he did something lame goes away. It's about halfway gone when Senior talks again and sends it, along with all of his other aches and doubts, scurrying away.

"-we would be delighted to celebrate with you and your family," is how Senior finishes. He actually does sound delighted, in a calm sort of way, and it makes his own more-excitable sense of delight race through his veins like a sugar rush. The man pauses briefly before adding, "May I offer my most heartfelt thanks to you for thinking of us?"

If he's not mistaken, Senior's voice thickens, and for a second he feels bad that this isn't really all about them. "Yes," he answers, even though it might be a rhetorical question. "Yes, you may."

"So when is this grand feast being held?" Senior asks.

"A week from today - because that's Thanksgiving - though I'm sure you knew that -" He chomps his tongue again so he won't add "because you know everything." He definitely doesn't want to sound like some little starstruck teenager who's finally getting the chance to meet Brittina - if she's even still popular - it's been quite a while since he last snuck a peek into the teen world. Personally, he'd rather meet someone like Albert Einstein or Marie Curie, but -

But he's getting off track again. He shakes himself and continues, "Four o'clock Middleton time. . . that would be. . . I don't know what that would be your time. . . " He trails off and gives a jerky shrug, even though Senior can't see it. Makes him feel better. "Does that work for you?" His vocal cords wobble like a fifteen-year-old kid's, which is embarrassing, but he knows Senior doesn't care.

"Please hold on momentarily," Senior says as professionally as if he's been a customer-service representative at some point. "I will check."

There's a putting-the-phone-down silence that feels centuries long but, according to his watch, only lasts forty-five seconds. He scowls briefly - he hates it when his feelings don't line up with science - and then tries to distract himself by imagining what Senior's doing. Probably going to go check a calendar or maybe one of those nice thick planners with the giant squares you can actually write on, no doubt already filled out for the rest of the year. Senior's organized like that.

Speaking of Senior, he picks the phone back up just as he's beginning to run out of patience and tells him they can come. "Yes, it appears that we have no other obligations on that date," are his exact words, and he couldn't be happier if Senior were telling him he'd won the lottery.

He thrusts a fist in the air like the champion he just might be after all and starts to cry "Boo-yah!" But then he remembers that nobody likes to be yelled at over the phone, especially not someone as distinguished as Senior, and he cuts himself off at the first syllable.

"I mean - okay, that's great," he coughs with what he hopes is even a fraction of Senior's dignity. "It's going to be at my house. My new house in Middleton," he adds, straightening his spine into proud-host posture. "That's 1076 Ward Avenue." Shego calls it "the looney Ward," but now that he's not being tailed by the police 24/7, it's nice to be able to give out an address.

"Ward. . . Avenue . . ." Senior repeats slowly. He hears a pen scratching across paper, and he's sure that must have been exactly what it sounded like when they signed the Declaration of Independence. "Will we need to bring anything? A dish, a dessert. . ."

He starts laughing for no real reason, except the fact that there'll be two more places around his table next week. They'll all have to squeeze in a little tighter, but it'll be totally worth it! "No, the food's already been taken care of," the one part of his brain that's not dissolving with relief makes him say. "Just bring your appetites!" That's something Mother always says, and it gives him that host-y sensation again, and he breaks back into laughter, just because it feels good.

Senior laughs too, a crackly chuckle that vibrates through you and tells you you're safe. He wonders if that's what a father's laugh should sound like.

"I will bring mine -" and if it were anyone but Senior, he'd picture him wiggling his eyebrows here - "and I can tell you Junior will most assuredly bring his." Each word is as precise as a master chemist's measurements, and he sighs a little to himself. He could sit here and listen to Senior talk all day if he didn't have to go to work.

But he does, so he needs to get off, so he clears his throat to finish this. The longer you wait, the harder it'll get - like taking off a Band-Aid. "So - I'll see you then?" It comes out as a question, because he still can't quite get himself to believe this is really happening.

He can imagine Senior lifting his hand in acknowledgment - it's always so cool when he does that. "Until then, Dr. Drakken," he answers. He's sure he hears a twinkle in Senior's eye somewhere in there, even though that's not anatomically possible.

He hangs up the phone, in a daze brought on by exposure to such pure gentleman. . . ly. . . ship. Senior even knows how to say good-bye in just the right way, and it makes him search through his brain for something more formal than "Toodles." The best he can come up with is "May the Force be with you," and it doesn't seem quite the same.

Not that any of that matters, once it hits him - in spurts, because his brain can only handle so much awesomeness at once. The Seniors! - are coming! - to spend Thanksgiving! with us!

With me!

Now he does thrust his fists in the air like a football player who just scored a home run and holler "Boo-yah!" at the top of his lungs. Then he collapses onto the bed with joy, wraps both arms around his belly, and giggles hysterically. This is the best thing ever - well, okay, he's not so sure about that. So many wonderful things have happened since the night of the alien invasion that it's hard to rank them. But this is definitely way up there.

He closes his eyes again, ceasing to laugh only because he's running out of air, and Photoshops the Seniors into his mental image of the family celebration. He isn't quite sure where Junior fits in, so he sticks him behind the potted mini-tree in one corner. Senior, though - he knows right where to put him. In the place of honor, right next to Mother - who he'll treat like a queen, not like the creep who left her -

He stops all of a sudden and his thoughts ram into each other and fall down, leaving him dizzy. Needs air. Air is important. How has it never occurred to him, in thirty-four years, that the evilest man he knows abandoned somebody else besides him? In fact, she was probably primarily the one being abandoned. Nobody ever gets divorced just because they don't want to see their kid anymore.

The realization, as logical as it is, makes him want to zip over to Connecticut or wherever the stupid job transferred him and pummel the guy's face with his fists, even though he's never done anything like that before. How could anyone desert his mother, so good and sweet and pure? All right, so she can be pretty annoying with her cheek-pinching and cooey gushing, but it's not worth breaking her heart over. That's why he never wanted her to find out he was a supervillain. Well, that and the fact that he'd be sent to bed without dessert for the rest of his life.

He sits there for a minute or two, knees hugged up to his achy chest, his whole life lumping up in his throat. Mother deserves a life so much better than what she has. Especially considering her only son doesn't trust himself to provide for her, since he's almost as much of a workaholic as the jerk she was once married to and doesn't always remember how much she needs him. No, she should have someone who'll never forget to bring her flowers on Mother's Day, who'll take care of her as she gets older and wake her up with a good-morning kiss.

Had anyone ever done that? He shudders again at the thought of his mother's soft, sweet lips even brushing those of his fath - her ex-husband. Her trusting him, leaning on him, bearing his child -

The old hatred burns up his back like his vertebrae are on fire. He tries to force his mind to something else, because he's been known to try to annihilate whole continents when he's hating someone that badly. It spirals away in freefall and lands on the thought that Mother must be as lonely for a husband as he is for a father.

Wait a minute. . .

A tingly feeling grips his whole head like the one you get in your nose when you need to sneeze and a sneeze won't come. A plan is tapping its way in up there, a brilliant one. He knows what it is - he can sense what it is, but he can't figure out how to say it, even to himself.

What he can see is the picture he's created of the perfect Thanksgiving. The tingle zooms in on Mother and Senior and draws a perfect, pink heart around them.

That's it!

He leaps to his feet - on the bed - he tries to yell "Of course!", but it comes out "Ob clod!" because his tongue is so amazed by this revelation that it forgets its way around his mouth. He arches his neck a little to improve the blood flow to his brain, so it won't get overwhelmed, too.

He'll set Senior up with his mother! His chin tilts a few degrees upward like it always does when he's thought of something this bragworthy. He hasn't researched the subject himself, but he remembers hearing somewhere that a statistically significant amount of people just love it when old people get married. "Inspiring," they call it. And it'll fix everything - Mother will have somebody to look out for her, and he won't have to pretend anymore, because Senior will really be -

He stops. No, he's not going to say it, not even going to think it, until it's real. Can't jinx it. Even after saving the world and reforming and realizing that he didn't need to force everybody on Earth to recognize his genius, this hope's still as fragile as silence. One whisper-thought, and it'll shatter like glass.

For now, just knowing it's going to happen will be enough to push Thanksgiving up several more notches on the list of Best Things Ever. And he knows it. He'll have to play matchmaker, which isn't a hat he's worn often - but he can do it. After all, who did he trap under the mistletoe that one Christmas at the North Pole? And who wound up a couple not even eighteen months later? Hmm?

Now that's inspiring. So much so that he yells "Yieeet!" - another cry too excited to form itself into words - and slams his fist down on his nightstand the way he always did when world domination seemed to be within his grasp. This time, like ninety-five percent of the time in the past, the darkened wood catches his hand at just the right angle.

The wrong angle. A nerve on the side that's basically the manual version of the funny bone.

Pain makes his whole hand warm and fuzzy, the kind of pain where you have to grind your teeth and hiss to stay inside your own skin. He pulls his hand to his chest and cradles it with his other hand, and it throbs and throbs like a scolding. Tears well in his eyes, just because it hurts so much.

Even as he's biting back a series of whimpers, he hears a voice - with his memory, not his ears. It's been so long since he actually heard it that he doesn't really remember what it sounds like, but he knows it has a hard, angry edge because it's annoyed with him. Suck it up, the man who fathered him says. Be a man.

Of course. Richard Lipsky - that's his name, right? Richard? - never had any patience for crying fits. How many times had he scolded him for wailing like a baby when he was six whole years old - or seven - or eight? How many times had he heard him complaining about how often Mother cried and wanted to scream at him, "If you weren't such a jerk to her, she wouldn't cry so much!"?

All his muscles stiffen, and he swipes a sleeve across his nose, which is suddenly runny and has gone all tender in pre-tears mode. Just like that, he doesn't feel very much like a champion anymore.

Be a man. He doesn't even know exactly what that means. Watching football? Playing football? At least having hands big enough to hold a football?

He glances at himself in the full-length mirror on the wall across from his dresser and pictures his dad, a dark-haired Eddy in a business suit. The thought upsets his tummy and plants deep wrinkles in his forehead. Why couldn't he have gotten the creep's body instead of his addiction to his work?

His father's genes got him to five-foot-nine-and-a-half, but his mother's made him stop there. He scowls at his reflection like that'll change its size and shape. At one point, he would have classified himself as "lean-yet-sturdy," a perfectly masculine look. But prison stripped him of any hint of muscle, and eighteen months later he still looks breakable, with ribs he just barely can't see anymore and shoulders that need pads to look square and strong now.

It's Eddy he sees now, all sharp cuts and points and muscle-bulging line segments, his chin a perfect right angle. Not like his cousin, who's so crazily out of proportion he looks like someone stretched his entire torso out on a torture rack, then slapped it on a pair of runty little legs and added two arms apparently snatched from an ape going through puberty for good measure. His cousin, who's pointy everywhere a man should be firm, smooth muscle and soft everywhere a man should be pointy.

His jaw's rounded in a way he likes because it reminds him of Mother's, but it sure doesn't look manly. He does have the jutting Lipsky cheekbones, but on a face that long and oval and hairless, they seem ridiculous, rather than masculine. And his belly is definitely plumper than it was at this time last year. He can only imagine how it'll look after Thanksgiving.

Now the room seems cold, and he shivers even though he's used to dark, dank lairs meant to chill you to the bone. (He's not quite sure what "dank" means, but it sounds good and it goes well with "dark.")

His dad - Richard, he corrects himself - is the only person he's ever known who didn't pig out on Thanksgiving. Staying in shape was really important to him - he went to the gym every day on his lunch hour. And the day after Thanksgiving, he'd always come home laughing at some guys with red faces and round tummies running on treadmills like they thought the things could actually take them somewhere. "Doing penance," he would call it. He, himself, never understood what the man meant. Now he thinks he does.

For the first time in his life, he sucks in his stomach. And he immediately feels like he lost something precious that he'll never be able to get back.

Every Thanksgiving, as reliable as a comet passing through the Earth's atmosphere, he stuffs himself until he can barely walk. That shouldn't be making his knees wobble the way they are - everybody pigs out on Thanksgiving, he reminds himself. But it's not just Thanksgiving with him. It's Christmas, Easter, Halloween, restaurant buffets, church potlucks. . .

Church. Now that's a whole different can of soup. It's a big, square, happily-worn-down building full of the high ceilings that he always loved so much in a lair and friendly people he wishes he'd met earlier. He feels right at home there - until he makes a mistake.

Even then, most of the people are still really nice to him. But there's this one lady, a little old one like his mother - only she's nothing like Mother, except that they can both make you feel guiltier than a unanimous jury. She's always pursing her lips and "tsk, tsk"ing whenever he drinks more than his fair share of sacred grape juice - because those little glasses were so small, he thought he was supposed to take three or four - or claps his hands over his ears whenever anyone mentions the devil - because he's seeing little cartoon action figures turning into monsters straight from hell - or blurts out "how come?" in Sunday school - because five months of church doesn't erase twenty-three years as a supervillain. And "a whole different can of soup" isn't a real expression, is it?

Hmmm. Can of beans. Can of fish. Nope. Still doesn't sound right.

Anyway, the Tsk-Tsk Lady goes around after those potluck dinners clucking her tongue at the guys who lie around groaning that they ate too much. He's not sure what rule that's breaking - he still doesn't know all these things - but he knows ugh-you're-a-pig disgust anywhere. He used to see it on his own face when he'd yell at the henchmen for being too heavy to succeed at Stealth Mode, back before he was fat himself for, like, twelve hours and experienced the shame that cut so deep he thought for sure he'd die. It seems to work on the potluck-pigger-outers, too, because it's never the same people each time.

Except him. Always him. Those last couple times, the Tsk-Tsk Lady's started clucking and pursing as soon as he walks in the door of a potluck - to save time.

And if Richard P. Lipsky saw him, he knows he'd do much worse than that.

. . . and, oh yeah - Father's Day. He's eaten himself sick on the third Sunday in June as far back as he can remember, because part of him felt achingly empty, as if someone had scooped out all the stuff that was supposed to be in there. He can diagram the human anatomy in near-perfect detail, but he's never been good at identifying a source for those interior pains, so he assumed it came from his stomach and he was hungry. Which was a perfectly logical conclusion, but now he's not convinced it was the right one.

They talked about something like this once on one of those radio talk shows he used to listen to every now and then just so he'd be able to answer Mother's questions about his "job." "Emotional eating," the good doctor on there called it, and the people he talked to had said stuff that made perfect sense - about mistaking an empty feeling in your chest for one in your stomach, about food never letting you down, about warm, soft, sweet things reminding you of being safe at home with your mother.

Those things were as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice, but he'd never figured out a way to say them. Every single one of those people must have been the wordish version of a genius.

Only one problem. They were all women.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a woman. . . unless you're supposed to be a man. Dr. What's-His-Nose had even said that some men - but not very many - ate emotionally, though they were more likely to crave a nice juicy steak or a hamburger.

He's never craved a steak in his life. It's always been sweets all the way.

Be a man? Yeah, right.

And it's hard to look at himself anymore. He closes his eyes, hoping that when he opens them again he'll be staring into the face of someone who absolutely oozes masculinity. But no. Just a skinny, baby-faced man-child, and when he blinks, he can almost see Drew Lipsky - glasses, corpse-pale skin, the only kid in the world who managed to have an underbite and an overbite at the same time.

It skips through his mind then, tightening his veins in the not-good way he remembers from his villain days. Richard Lipsky wanted a son who was athletic and popular and tough - as much a man-in-training as a third-grader could be. Not like him. It's a thought he's had so many times that he was sure it had gotten to the point where it couldn't hurt him anymore. Even now, all he feels is a slight ache on one side of his heart, surrounded by a numbness that's frightening in and of itself.

Logically, scientifically, he knows his non-dad didn't leave because of him. But as he searches his own anxious gaze in the mirror, he can't help but wonder - did he make it easier for him to leave?

He sags against the mirror, a gumball pressing at his throat, but he's too used-up to cry over this by now. He slips his eyes shut again, just to get those pesky emotions in order, and in a moment that threatens to burst his heart into shards, he thinks he might see the face of the man who gave him a Y chromosome and black hair and dark eyes and absolutely nothing else.

It's gone with a breath-in-breath-out, though, replaced by the image of Senior. Senior, the dignified and well-bred and proud, watching him gorge himself on repulsive unmanliness at Thanksgiving dinner - and being driven away forever.

Okay, maybe that's a tad harsh. Senior will keep being polite to him, because Senior's polite to everyone. He'll probably even stay his friend. But he won't be proud of him and want to be his -

He cuts himself off with a sharp snap of his head, wrenching his brain back into his control. No, he can't think like that or he'll spin back down into the panic and the so-aloneness and the self-pity that drove him to become a supervillain in the first place. At least that's what his therapist says.

So this is not the time to freak out, he tells himself. It's the time for cold hard facts. Those he can do: Senior's coming over to his house next week to celebrate. If he eats - well, the way he always eats on Thanksgiving he'll disgust Senior, and he can forget about him falling in love with Mother. Pigging out could ruin everything.

The solution seems simple. "Okay, so I won't," he tells his reflection. It doesn't look like it believes him. His gut shifts uneasily, and he hasn't even filled it to bursting yet.

So - he'll watch Senior and just copy what he eats, which'll probably be a nice, reasonable one serving of everything, not three or four. Surely someone as classy as Senior never gets indigestion. He's certainly too much of a gentleman for overeating.

Okay - good plan. His chest heaves with a sigh of relief and he watches it in the mirror, remembering how that used to make his chest muscles swell into a hump. But those muscles were thinned by prison, and now he has the physique of an ironing board. All right, so he's not quite as flat as he was when he first busted out - was that really over a year ago? - but sometimes he wonders if he'll ever get his pectorals back.

Well, he technically still has them - everyone possesses a set, unless they're a mutant or something. They're just not defined anymore. To be honest, they probably never were defined, not the way Richard Lipsky's were - and probably still are. He's afraid to peel off his shirt and check on the six-pack situation.

What's up with this? he wonders, even as he flexes a bicep in his best He-Man pose and only achieves the slight curve of a linear-model graph. He thought he came to terms with his looks a long time ago. He begins a scowl that causes the tendons in his neck to set hard. Remembering Richard always turns everything all kerflooey.

Brains, not brawn, he reminds himself, the way he has ever since about second grade, when the kids first discovered how different it was to be smaller and slower and smarter. Carl Thompson and his mini-henchmen may have been able to throw a ball through the big-kids' hoop, but they didn't have a clue that that ball and that hoop were constructed of atoms until their science book told them the next year, and by then he'd moved on to basic chemical formulas.

It's not even that they were stupid, much as he hates to admit that. They just weren't as smart as him.

He squirms a little, somehow feeling like he's in the wrong skin. That sounded a bit too much like the old Drakken, the evil one with the ego problem. But he doesn't need to be better than everyone else anymore because he knows he's just as good. It was his scientific knowledge that gave him the powers that saved the world, it's what makes him a valuable asset to Global Justice, and it's what's going to impress Senior.

Grabbing his blue backpack by its one functional strap, he hoists it over his left shoulder and straightens them both, as if to shrug off his doubts. Yeah - he's saved the world. Reformed. Done his best to right his old wrongs and make amends with his former enemies.

He's got nothing left to prove.

()()()()()()()

Some good hard work turned out to be just the thing he needed. All thoughts of Senor Senior, Sr. and Richard Lipsky and the Tsk-Tsk Lady were vaporized the minute he stepped into Lab 591 and heard the chemical concoctions bubbling happily inside their beakers. He's as safe and secure in a laboratory as a bee is in a hive, and just as productive. In fact, he decides as he skips out toward the hovercraft, gazing up at the sky that's already starting to turn dark and starry since it's the end of November, he'd say today was a better-than-average day at Global Justice.

They experimented with the truth serum that he helped perfect - not to brag or anything. Tested it in its solid, liquid, and gaseous forms, marking each one's potency and storage convenience and ease of transport, and whether or not you can hide it in something else. They'll work on that for weeks, probably double-checking and triple-checking everything. Sometimes he gets tired of all those tests - wants to get out there and do something with all that info - but he's made enough foolish mistakes, especially in his career as a villain, to know why they're so important.

And when Professor Richardo looked over his notes at the end of the day, he said he hadn't made any transcribing errors. Somebody always has to check what he jots down, because his brilliant-yet-dyslexic brain has a tendency to rearrange letters and numbers. A measure of 5.8 milliliters might be written as "8.5 lillimeters," and when you work with powerful compounds like the truth serum, that kind of mix-up can be dangerous. But they never make him feel stupid about it. Nobody at Global Justice ever treats him like he's incompetent - except that arrogant little Will Du, and from what he's heard, the kid does that to everyone.

He stops by the library to return some items, the latest Oh Boyz CD and a video documentary on the life of Alfred Nobel and an overdue sci-fi novel he finally finished, leaving him feeling like he'd won a battle against a worthy opponent. He drops them with a satisfying thunk in the returns box and then wanders over to the magazine shelf, trying to appear sage as he scans the rack for the latest issue of Nano-Tech.

But it's not there, just a big empty off-white space between Macho and Organic Living. It reminds him of a smile with one very important tooth missing, and he sags down in the nearest squishy-backed chair until he's eye-to-eye with the model - can you say that about men? - on the cover of Macho.

The guy's shirtless, of course, making his own upper body feel cold and exposed, and he hugs his arms around himself as he studies the gorilla-like chest and six-pack you could store sodas in. He's about to react with his customary snort and the reassurance that Nobody really looks like that, but that suddenly seems like very faulty reasoning. This man really looks like that - unless they digitally enhanced him. Which he knows is a distinct possibility because they did it to him for his shampoo commercial. . .

It's the words dangling next to the guy's perfect brawny elbow that catch his attention, however. His dyslexia doesn't scramble the letters this time, and for once he wishes it would. Written in thick black type meant to gloat to him, they say, "Brains beat brawn? Maybe not. See page 36."

How can that not be aimed directly at him? The safe ground he found to stand on this morning is now red-hot and covered with holes than ooze lava, and he actually hops on one foot over to the magazine shelf so they won't grab him.

He snatches Macho up in a desperate grip that he hasn't used since the day he reformed and shakes it to change what it's saying, which he knows is downright irrational and yet can't stop himself from doing. If anything, the man on the cover's smirk grows cockier, so he has to flip the magazine open and escape it. His veins are getting tighter, and the one on his left temple threatens to pulsate right into a migraine.

It falls open to page 19, and for a moment he's so flustered he doesn't remember if that comes before or after 36. His belly gives a brief, blender-like churn.

Once he locates page 36, he can only stop and gape. Spread across the glossy pages are tons of men - and they're every inch men, with muscles like tough steak and the rugged hints of five o'clock shadows - which on him would be more accurately named noon-the-next-day shadows. He feels his entire body turning into one giant thumb.

At least the pictures kindly break up the text into little hunks his brain can mostly manage. It says, "We've all heard the old adages 'brains, not brawn' and 'mind over matter'."

A-ha! So an "adage" must be a saying. He files that away in his Mental Dictionary of Neat Words.

"But how well do they hold up in reality?" the article continues. "Our staff randomly surveyed single women from everywhere from Hollywood to Lizard Lick on what they're most attracted to in a man."

Now there's a topic he knows basically nothing about. Also - who or what is Lizard Lick? Sounds like a reptile-transmitted disease that you'd wish on your worst enemies.

"What they found may surprise you."

The blender whirs to life in his belly again. He has a feeling that's not going to be a good surprise.

"Sparrow Ditsch, a 19-year-old college student, had this to say: 'I like a guy with brains as much as the next girl. I mean, I'm certainly not going to date a stupid one. But don't count muscles out. After all, chemistry is important too, and no woman is attracted to a skinny little nerd with glasses.'"

The blender begins to puree stuff that's already partly digested, and it leaves him a little light-headed. What about a skinny little nerd with contacts?

Actually, he's confused. She says chemistry is important - and then writes off nerdy guys? Doesn't she realize that most of the people who agree with her on the subject's significance fall into the "nerd" category? His logical, scientific brain takes over immediately, trying to turn what he just read to mincemeat. But in the secret place where Dr. Drakken hides his insecurities, he's afraid.

The sentences that follow, though written in the same plain black type that's almost too small for him as the others, seem to rise up to meet him in sizzling orange letters. "Hope Less, a 35-year-old journalist, added, 'Muscles definitely aren't the only thing that matters, but I want the guy I go out with to at least be in decent shape. Come on, there's more unattractive than a man with a spare tire!'"

Why? It shows he's prepared in case of a flat.

The article doesn't bother answering him, however. It just continues with, "Perhaps the most telling answer came from Misty Meaner, a 28-year-old graphic designer. She told Macho, 'Women have evolved to be drawn to buff men, because we know they're the ones who are strong and healthy. Just like we're biologically predisposed to revulsion towards the overweight because we know they could drop dead of a heart attack any second. And the rail-thin guys? They wouldn't last a day in the wild. It's nature's way - survival of the fittest.'"

Um. Gee. Well. What's he supposed to say to that - someone who says she can scientifically prove he's not a man? Except he hasn't seen any proof yet. He's no biologist, but what she's saying sounds pretty fishy. And even though he can kind of see where she's coming from on some things, she didn't cite any sources, which are a must if you want anyone to believe you.

He sure doesn't believe her. Can't believe her. Science cannot betray him like this.

Then those pathetic excuses for muscles start seizing and jittering as if an electrical current is jolting through them. Something has jumped into his head, something he can't kick out no matter how hard he tries. This article's talking about what women are most drawn to in a boyfriend - but what if it's true for fathers and sons, too?

Something sandy seems to coat his lungs, and then he's shaking in the grip of the first real panic attack he's had since he's reformed. His heart's broken into jagged pieces, and the edges keep poking him. He doesn't know which emotion's settling so heavy in his throat - anger, fear, indignityation - but he's sure it'll kill him.

His eyes swim across the page, moisture blurring his gaze. As freaked out as he is, it might as well all be in mirror writing - except a couple lines that jump - shazaam! - right off the page.

"But for those of you who don't measure up as men, there's still hope! With our 6-day Man Plan, you too can become a babe magnet and impress Senior so much at Thanksgiving dinner that he'll beg to join your family."

He blinks against the burn that's turning his contacts into weapons of toxicity. Sure enough, those last words aren't really there. But they're branded into his brain, clawing at the edges of the logical-thinking skills would be able to reason them away.

Still, he has to give those skills credit for trying. They tell him that Senior would never beg for anything. Ask politely, yes, but not get down on his knees and clasp his hands together and whine the way he, Drakken, has been known to do when he doesn't get his way -

He gives that thought a hard punch to shut it up temporarily and then jams his mind Thanksgiving-afternoon-full so there's no room for it come back in. All right, so Senior won't beg. But he'll be proud. So proud.

He battles a breath, fights to exhale it without choking or sobbing. He pictures the that's-my-boy gleam Mother gets in her eyes when he so much as remembers to wipe his feet on the doormat before coming in. And he tries to transfer it to the image he has of Senior's eyes, but his father's face keeps popping up in between and knocking it away so he'll never be able to see.

Richard Lipsky's features are smudged, because his memory doesn't work so well that far back. But he knows beyond the doubts of shadows - whatever those are - that they're oozing the exact opposite of pride.

Raw waves of pain lap at his ulcer, and he clutches the magazine to his chest, trying to keep from going under. He grapples with the words six day Man Plan, six day Man Plan, until it hits him what they're actually saying.

Six days! That's exactly the number sandwiched between today and Thanksgiving! He glances frantically back down at the article to check that he's not hallucinating. Nope, there it is, in letters so big and clear even he can't mangle them: SIX DAYS TO MANHOOD.

And it's splashed above the pictures of dozens of men that only strength his resolve to be just like them. They're in everything from swimsuits and suits and ties, and their skin ranges from medium-rare to deep, dark brown, but they all stand the same way - proudly, with their big shoulders thrown back. No matter how hard he looks, he can't see a single similarity between them and what he saw in the mirror this morning, and it nags at his self-esteem like a mosquito bite in some unreachable place. A song he heard in a movie a long time ago dances through his head:

For there's no one as burly and brawny

As you can see, I've got biceps to spare

Not a bit of him's scraggly or scrawny

And every last inch of me's covered with HAIR!

Speaking of hair, he gives the page another quick scan to make sure wearing it a certain way isn't a requirement. Doesn't look like it. Some of the Gastons have cuts so short they look like they belong in the army, but he sees one equally macho-looking man with waves that come to just below his shoulder blades, like his own. Phew. He's not sure he'd be able to subject himself to anything more than a trim, even for the sake of manliness. His neck freaks out without his ponytail to protect it.

The longer he gazes at the Gastons, the smaller he feels, and he has to jut his chin out to keep from hollowing out inside. Something in his spirit, though, warms to an idea.

He's got six days. Anything can happen in six days! A lot of the people at church say a whole world could be made in six days. Some say it would take a lot longer, but he doesn't really see why it matters, especially not now.

What matters is making a good impression on Senior, and this article just might be - has to be - the ticket. It's like performing a chemistry experiment that's already been well-documented by hundred of scientists. Just gather the right ingredients and follow the instructions, and something amazing will happen.

Palms still secreting sweat, he closes the magazine, smooths the cover that must have gotten crumpled when he was deciding whether to cling to it or rip it to shreds, and starts to bound off toward the check-out counter. After two skips, he comes to a halt so abrupt it almost plants him nose-first on the threadbare carpet. He doesn't know exactly how men are supposed to carry themselves across a room, so he settles on a nice brisk walk. His lab coat swishes between his legs, and he feels more masculine already.

He slides his library card and the magazine across the counter with precision and gives the librarian his biggest, friendliest smile when she hands them back, just so she'llsmile at him. He went so long without being smiled at when he was trying to conquer the world that now he likes to keep track of every grin he gets. This lady's about sixty-five or so, and the wrinkles by her mouth crease when she smiles at him. He decides he likes that almost as much as when a baby dimples at you and shows all four of their teeth.

As he pushes the button to open the door, just because he loves doing that, another smile - this one a secret one, meant just for him - slips across his face. He's got the secret to manhood tucked in his backpack and hope working on pounding out the dents in his ego. He has to keep an eye on that thing, because if it gets too small, he used to blow it up all big, and that's when people got hurt.

Yeah, by this time next week, he'll finally be a real man, like Alfred Nobel and Richard Lipsky and the Gastons. And Senior. If Senior's not in a category all his own, somewhere beyond "man."

He imagines the look on Senior's face when he greets him on Thanksgiving with all his scraggly, scrawny bits pruned into the form of a man. He's been very into gardening metaphors ever since he basically became part plant. "Why, Dr. Drakken," he'll say. "Have you been working out? You seem. . . bigger somehow. Manlier. Much more. . ."

Much more something he doesn't even know the word for. For a second, he considers charging back into the library and paging through the dictionary until he finds out how to say what he's trying to say. But he shakes his muddled head and concentrates on hopping down the library's big stone steps, which would make the perfect entrance to an evil lair if he were still into that kind of thing.

No, he wants to be pleasantly surprised when the perfect word rolls off Senior's lips and sizzles through him and makes everything all right. He swings himself into the hovercraft, a spot in his heart beginning to warm up hopefully, and his pulse beats to the rhythm of I'll-wait-I'll-wait.

He scowls as he wrestles with his stupid seat belt, which is acting like it's magnetically repelled by its stupid holder. Waiting has never been one of his strengths.

()()()()()()()

The Gaston with skin like Hershey's chocolate is jogging across the double-page spread, half of him on one page, half on the other, which has the somewhat amusing effect of making it look like there's a staple in his right leg. But he keeps running anyway, because he's just that tough. Real men must do that. Men who don't cry at getting their blood drawn.

Peeking out from under the chocolate-skinned Gaston's heel are the type of tiny, very-black, thick-lettered words that he knows are just meant to correspond with this picture. And, even though he has to squint his contacts into super-focus to read them, they're so much less intimidating than the paragraphs stacked on top of each other he'd encounter if he picked up where he left off. It says, "Running or jogging is one of the easiest ways for a man to stay in shape."

In shape. What a funny phrase. He knows what it means, but every time he reads it he sees himself stuck inside a triangle or something. Now he stifles a chuckle as he raises one leg and holds it out in front of him to imitate the chocolate Gaston's pose.

The chuckle dies when he realizes he can't do it. His legs are about six inches shorter than the magazine man's, and the harder he tries to stretch them, the more his muscles cry out that he's asking for the impossible. Finally his balance is thrown off beyond repair and he falls with scientific precision, right on his bony backside.

He sinks his teeth into his tongue, bites away the pained yelp before it can escape. "Okay - jogging," he says out loud, to take his thoughts off the bruise he's surely going to have tomorrow. "Somewhere between walking and running. It's easy. Anyone can do it."

Even you.

It's a nasty whisper from his own self that he hasn't heard since the day the UN pardoned him. Insecurity - as toxic as radium and not even shiny to make up for it - turns the whole world dark, replacing the happy golden glow he thought would always been with him now that he's reformed.

He tilts his chin at his doubts - they're invisible but still very much there, like ninety percent of the organisms on Earth. The only good thing about these things coming from his own brain is that he doesn't need to address them aloud. His lips are frozen shut, but he manages to cobble together a thought. I'm going for a jog - to burn off that bowl of Fruit Loops I had this morning, he informs them. A vine tingles at his neck, waiting for the command he won't even have to voice.

The poison shrinks back a few inches, like him cringing away from his mother's touch. It leaves behind a clear space where he can see, he can breathe, he can cope. It's a feeling of hanging on to sanity by your fingertips that he remembers well from his days as a supervillain. Back then, it was about the closest he ever came to a sense of steadiness. Now he wonders how he ever lived in it.

He tries to remember the science of it all, examine the psychology behind the human fear process. But none of it's coming to him, just the toxin, and he runs away from it, right out the door and down the street. Well, technically, down the sidewalk, since he doesn't want to get run over.

It's as good a way to start a jog as any, outrunning the stuff he didn't know 'till today can still turn him inside-out. He watches his feet slapping the pavement over and over, bringing him closer to manhood with each step. Thump, THUMP, thump. Thump, THUMP, thump. Makes a pattern he could almost hum to - if he felt like humming, which he does not.

He casts a hopeful glance up at the sky, searching for a constellation to navigate by. But God seems to look back down at him from between the stars, as if to say, You are not yet worthy to hold your head high - what did Shego call him once? - half-a-man. It was the kind of thing you could do as ruler of the world, which was one of the many reasons he spent decades trying to become exactly that.

Right now's one of those times when it's really hard to accept that he's not and never will be. Still, he lowers his head humilitaly, but the sidewalk's not very interesting, so he keeps his gaze fixed on mailboxes and lawn gnomes as his feet carry him onward. Once he reaches the stop sign, he - well, stops, and turns to look back at his house, which never fails to bring on a grin.

It's a nice house, rectangular in shape and sandy in color, like all the houses on Ward Avenue. He bought it because it was fairly cheap - and close to Shego's. And he liked the big roomy kitchen and the spring-bouncy padded stairs, but he hated the cookie-cutterness. Heck, even cookie cutters come in fun shapes.

Anyway, he wanted a house that screamed "Dr. Drakken Lives Here!", and his usual decor - acid baths, shark tanks, pits full of spikes - didn't sit well with the Homeowner's Association or his emerging conscience. So he painted the shutters bright blue, but when the job was done it was only a minor improvement, and he still had a lot of paint left over. And almost before he knew his arm was the one controlling it, his brush speckled the entire front of the house with polka dots like giant molecules. The first time Shego saw it, she laughed so hard he thought she was going to throw up or something.

It definitely stands out, though, especially today. It's a warm day for November, but it's still November. And with gray clouds starting to blot out the sky-that-matches-his-lab-coat and his friends the stars, and the branches bare and as scrawny as his fingers, the houses look all the same, even more than usual, giving the neighborhood a bleak feel.

That gets his feet running again, his eyes scanning his surroundings for anything to fill up his goodness meter. If he sees enough goodness in the world, it lets him believe there's enough in him to counteract the part of him that still thinks it would be really neat to have the power to make anyone do anything he wants. The part that didn't just disappear when he reformed.

Even now, little details break through the beige - an appropriately blah word for a blah color - and their differentness pings reassuringly in his brain. A giant stone rabbit. A flag clanging against a pole. A statue of an angel. A house that's the exact same shade of reddish-brown as the few stubborn leaves still clinging to the tree in its front yard.

He remembers to look both ways and then darts across the street, legs covering the ups and downs of the sidewalk in strides that he can feel stretching his muscles, making them grow. Someone's managed to keep their lawn very green, even though all the other grass on the block is yellow and dead and stiff. Thunk, thunk, thunk, his feet pound out in time with his quickening pulse. The streets go by in a blur. Sunset Lane. Franklin Parkway. Lakeview Street.

At the corner of Schooley and McCorkle, his lungs decide he needs to stop and catch his breath. He leans heavily on a big solid oak tree that won't let him fall, taking in the crisp air and the smell of a fire in somebody's fireplace. (At least he hopes it's in their fireplace.) In spite of the nip that stings his nose, he's sweating through the lab coat in patches that give him shivers down to the marrow when the breeze hits them. His legs are still burning with extra energy - the only thing wrong with his job is it doesn't give him much of an opportunity to use up the bounciness he awakens with every morning - but his lips are wind-chapped, and he's sure his knees didn't used to hurt this bad last time he went for a jog around the block.

Panting, he wonders if his biological father's knees ever ache like that. Or if his back creaks and groans if he stands up wrong. Or if even he ever wakes up with a random crick in his neck that he has to hunch his shoulders against for the rest of the day.

He shakes his head, something wavering deep down inside him. Nah. Aging's probably as scared to cross Richard Lipsky as everything else is.

It curls bitterly through his thoughts, and he can feel his goodness meter falling. He resumes his jogging, faster this time, like maybe he can leave behind the only person on this planet who can make him forget he saved it. Did you see me on the news for that? he wants to wail, but his tongue's sticking to the roof of his mouth, thirsty and losing moisture by the second with his anxiety. Weren't you proud of me?

A giggle brings him straight back to the present, away from the long-ago pain. No one's standing nearby, and he rubs his ear for a second, wondering if he might be having auditory delusions. But if he strains his gaze, he can just barely make out two forms five houses down, sitting on the porch swing that everyone on the cul-de-sac has, and decides it must have emanated from them. His hearing's been extra keen - that's a really cool word, keen, and he wonders why the teens today don't use it more often - ever since he got his plant plowers.

Even now, he hears a woman's voice, sounding muffled as if it's coming from behind a cupped hand, saying, "Here comes another one." And since he's already determined there's no one else around, they must be talking about. . . him?

Another what? Jogger? Male? Mad scientist with blue skin?

"So," the voice continues to hiss, "scale of one to ten. What do you rate this guy?"

Oh. The rating game. Like back in middle school. He and Eddy used to play that, though he's not sure they did it quite right, because he never wanted to rate a girl below six to avoid hurting her feelings, and every girl was a ten to Eddy.

"Can't tell yet," a second woman replies. "Wait 'till he comes closer."

Good. That gives him enough time to finger-comb his spikes into almost-neatness. Run his tongue between his teeth to get rid of any lunch crumbs. Puff his chest out to maximum buffness.

And put on his biggest smile, like he just happens to be passing through looking this good. He commands his eyes to look casually in the opposite direction, but he still catches a glimpse of the women through his peripheral vision. They're probably in their mid-thirties - a little young for him, but it's still flattering.

He barely registers an older guy - their brother? - sprawled lazily at their feet, before the second woman rubs her chin, and he has to pretend to take great interest in the birdbath across the street, breath held. "Hmm. . . " Her voice slides around thoughtfully, then falls with a flat, "Five."

He slams into it like it's a brick wall, hardly managing to keep his balance.

"I mean," she continues, "you gotta knock off a couple of points for the blue skin."

He's heard some variation on that so many times he should be used to it, but it still pangs through him. He fights the urge to clamp his hands over his ears. So far, they don't know he can hear them, and if they did, they'd. . . well, he doesn't know. He's never been able to predict bullies - especially not women bullies, who generally aren't kind enough to just sock you and get it over with.

"And he's too skinny for me," the woman finishes - at least, he hopes she's finished - with a disappointed sigh. With those words, she shines a spotlight on the gawkiness he noticed in the mirror this morning. All of a sudden, he's painfully aware that his arms are so long and gangly that his wrists practically hang level with his ankles, and he's not sure what to do with them to disguise that.

"Yeah," the first woman agrees. "Still, at least he doesn't have as big a gut as a lot of guys our age."

Somehow, this fails to make him feel much better.

Another whisper creeps its way in from the porch. Harsher, deeper, maler. "Look at him!" who he assumes is the brother cries in glee. "He runs like a girly man!"

Wha -? He glances down instinctively. Does he? Does he really?

He's never noticed before, but his legs are awfully short and thin, so he sort of skitters like a nervous little bird. It's not the most masculine thing he's ever seen, though he's never paid much attention to the way girls run, so he doesn't know if it's feminine, either.

Now that they know they're being watched, his legs forget what they're supposed to be doing. His feet tangle together like they're dyslexic too, and next thing he knows, he's face-down on the mean siblings' driveway, specks of gravel biting into his palms. Before he even tells himself that maybe they didn't seem him, he hears their laughter.

The women's giggles are like hissing cats, and the man's between-the-teeth snicker isn't any friendlier. For the second time today, the hatred wraps itself up his spine, and it stings worse than his scraped-up hands.

At first he thinks it's the sting that makes him think the man's laughter sounds familiar. It's the kind of laugh that has physical power, the threat to beat you up, like the worst of boy-bullies. But it's also got a sly, clever edge that says it can get inside your mind and push all your buttons until they jam and you explode. Like the worst of girl-bullies.

It's a laugh he hasn't heard since the day he graduated from high school, but it seems to bruise every part of his body, just the way it did then. He tells himself that he's crazy. Paranoid. Completely mad.

While he's searching for other ways to describe his fraying mental state, his neck, obeying a command that he didn't realize he was giving it, jerks up and around, just to reassure himself that it's not. But he takes one look at the man's face and knows it is, and memories hitch in his throat and snuff out his breath.

The face is older now, with laugh lines around the eyes from years of picking on people, but there's no mistaking it. It's Carl Thompson, the biggest bully at Middleton Elementary. And Middleton Middle. And Middleton High. The guy whose idea of being merciful was to stick your head in a clean toilet.

A prayer for help and a bad word spring into his mind at the exact same time.

In some distant way, he notices triumphantly Carl's hair is streaked with gray that has yet to invade his own shaggy head of jet black. Still, not a second later, he has to admit that his old enemy wears it, and the wrinkles, as well as if he pulled them out of his closet this morning. And he has the perfect body - broad shoulders, lean, muscled arms, a waist that neither caves in nor pooches out, long, strong legs. As for himself, he can practically feel his much slighter build shrinking even smaller, his teeth sliding out of alignment, zits forming on his chin.

He forgets his superhero self, his supervillain self - even his adult self. Nothing's changed since middle school, dances through his hysterical brain. Nothing will ever change now.

Instinctively, shame stains his cheeks and he has the urge to duck his head so he won't get kicked again. Then the anger starts to rise, boiling until it something's beyond fury. The hate eats him alive, and he has to get out of here before he does something with it that'll send him back to prison.

He leaps to his feet and they carry him, stumbling and staggering, away from the house that he's just decided is the most horrific shade of dark green, like mold. Away from the Thompsons, though their laughter follows him, beating him up in a way fists never could.

There's no happy rhythm now as he circles back around the block. Just an uneven tread - clop, stomp, boom, bash, scuff, stamp, crash - that makes him feel queasy somehow. All the while, his blood is trying to flow to where it's needed, and it pumps a terrible question with it: Did Carl recognize him?

Since they've last seen each other, time's put a little meat on his bones - not enough, but some - and sharpened his cheekbones; he's grown his hair out, gained a very obvious scar, gotten contacts and, oh, yeah, turned blue. Could Carl tell who he was, or did he just know the girly man was an easy target?

He's still turning that over in his mind - he's not sure which would be worse - when he pulls his body into the driveway of the polka-dotted house with the porch lights glowing to welcome him home. By now, he's drenched in perspiration, breathing like Captain-America-before-he-was-Captain-America at boot camp, and it feels like someone's clamped his entire left side in a vise. "Side stitch" doesn't even begin to do that wretched thing justice.

On legs that might as well be made of melted plastic, he makes his way up to the safety of the porch. It's a tiny little porch, just the right size for him and a trusted friend. Barely big enough to hold the porch swing - basically a bench suspended from the beams above, where he loves to sit, watching his feet dangle and dreaming up new science experiments.

But he doesn't head for the swing today. Through eyes now burning with humiliation, he sees that it looks as old and tired and creaky as he feels. He stands there straight as a yardstick, forcing himself to remain upright because he's pretty sure real men don't collapsed in a heap on their own doormats. Not unless they were just hit with a Doom Ray that liquified their ligaments or something, he decides, congratulating himself on his alliteration skills.

He bends over for a pant, then manages to raise his head, which feels like a balloon full of cement, and examines his reflection in the storm door. One glance at the sag to his mouth and the sparks in his eyes tells him his goodness meter's hit bottom. Plus, his face is spotted with big pink blotches, and he can't figure out why. Embarrassment? Anger? Out-of-shapeness? Embarrassment and anger at the out-of-shapeness?

Air coming raggedly, he rests his soaked forehead against the frosty glass and closes his eyes. He can feel himself curling up inside, like a timid hedgehog showing his spikes to the world. Only he doesn't have any spikes anymore, except for in his hair.

There's a roaring in his ears that almost frightens him, fills him with determination that that blooms in his very center and seeps outward until it reaches his fingertips and toetips. Toenails. Toepoints. Whatever. He can't keep it stuffed inside or it'll fester.

He gulps in oxygen like he's addicted to the stuff, which right now seems like another weakness, even though he knows that's absurd. "Carl Thompson!" The name comes out like spit, like something he can't bear to taste. "You think you're all th-"

But that sentence is too heavy with stuff from the past to be successfully expelled from his oral workings. It drives him back several steps and contorts him into a cower.

He grabs at the ripped-apart edges of himself, forces them back together, stitches them up with a trembling hand. He suddenly feels like he has a lot more scars than the places on his left cheek and right arm where doctors had to do the same thing. He thrusts his jaw at his reflection, whose entire torso is heaving in a way that would show off ripped pecs if he had any.

"So, Carl," he begins again. "You think things are just like they were when we were seventeen, huh? That you can just jump right back in and start mocking little Drew Lipsky again, because he's a nerdy wimp and you're a real man? Well, that may be true right now, but just you wait! A week from today, I shall be so manly that my very sweat -" he swipes a hand across his face and comes back with a glistening palmful - "will consist of nothing but pure testosterone! Then we'll see who the wimp is! Oh, we shall see!"

At least the voice he can still hear bouncing off the trees in echoes sounds like a man's, deep and booming, if a little unsteady. And the familiar old rant is comforting, though he's not sure that's a good thing. He has to squeeze his eyes shut again and unfold his fingers from the fist he didn't know he curled them into in the first place. Even so, for the first time in months, they ache to curl around a Doomsday device. A certain coldness in his chest is fusing with the molten contents of his stomach, creating a rush of something that once made him dangerous.

No. He shakes his head back and forth, so fast it makes him dizzy. That's one thing that has changed. No one else is going to get hurt at the hands of Dr. Drakken.

Not even Carl Thompson.

Of course, he's vowed that before and then broken it almost instantly as events whirled into something beyond his control. And before he knew what was happening, he had as much concern for people's safety as a character in one of those video games where the only goal is to obliterate everything that crosses your path. Shego plays those, because it's a healthier outlet for her anger than actually doing it to real people. . .

Spine squirming, he fumbles for something he didn't have when he was swinging between the juicy image of himself reigning over everything and the horror of some little girl nearly being squashed under things of his invention. Please, please, please, don't let seeing Carl turn me evil again, he prays clumsily, in phrases wobbly and rusted from underuse. Keep me good. Oh, please, keep me good.

He repeats that until the desire to disintegrate Carl weakens somewhat. But proving him wrong - that's a whole different story, isn't it? Good guys do that to bad guys all the time. Kim Possible hardly ever touched him back when they were nemesises, but she always showed him that, no, his plans were not foolproof and no, he wasn't destined to conquer the world today - or ever - and it chopped a hole straight through his ego.

Carl could use a few holes of his own. And who better to punch them in than his favorite victim?

It's not his father's voice he hears in his head this time, but his own, nudging him toward the starting line of a race he's not sure his legs will make it through. Go on, Drakken, it urges him. Be a man. Make Senior proud. Make Carl eat his words.

That's a really strange expression - and he hopes Carl's words taste particularly nasty - but it doesn't matter because he's groping around for God again. Please-let-me-be-a-man-and-not-pig-out-this-year-s o-Carl-will-see-he's-wrong-and-Senior-will-want-to -join-my-family-and-just-let-be-manly! Please - I'm-tired-of-being-a-wuss-and-I-need-Senior! All of that spurts out in one mental breath that he hopes God can interpret, because a pause will surely break him.

No Essence of Manliness, carefully extracted and bottled, drifts down from on high to fix it. He hates that.

Well, fine! He's not helpless. Every muscle pulled taut, he stiffens his neck, throws back his once-broad shoulders, and marches inside, slamming both the storm door and the door-door in the process. The only good thing about not being a real man yet - the glass doesn't shatter and drip in shards onto the porch behind him.