~Well, this about wraps it up. But don't panic! I'm not going anywhere. I've still got 53 Things to finish and a new project I'm super-exited about. You guys are the best; I love you all. Take care. :)~

Dr. Drakken can't eat at Bueno Nacho anymore.

It's not the food's fault. Drakken remembers it as a rich, tasty complexity of spices, a sort of hot shower for the palette, but he's sure any bite of it he ever takes will immediately turn to prison chow on his tongue. The fact is, he can't jingle the door open without seeing that bespectacled young assistant manager cowering in a corner, just as Drew Lipsky used to cower from nearly everyone at an age even younger and just as bespectacled. Can't rest his elbows on one of their tables - greasy, scrubbed-clean, or anywhere in between - without remembering the varnished, gleamy ones he passed money under that wasn't even his to pass. Can't even fly past their taco-shaped tower in the hovercraft without seeing it send ripples into the night, awakening the Diablos and instructing them to maim and destroy whatever was in their path - or whoever crossed them.

Drakken presses the back of his hand to his mouth as his gullet fights against nausea. Air suddenly becomes even more vital than it was five minutes ago, and he suckles it in desperately, rib cage hitching with each breath. Ugghhh, the reminders! Even the reminders of the reminders, which aren't nearly as distant as simple mathematics says they should be. . .

It's okay, Drakken repeats to himself until the acidic riptide in his stomach begins to peter out. It's okay. It's over. You're not that person anymore. You're done. You're safe now.

Pep talks work a lot better now that he doesn't have to lie to himself anymore.

Drakken's knuckles relax on the table, and he barely even cringes when his thumb brushes a sticky spot. All right, so Bueno Nacho is a catacomb of bad memories (or do catacombs only come in plural?) - at any rate, he avoids Bueno Nacho these days. But he is fortunate enough to have found another fast-food joint to haunt in Middleton, known as The Dairy Barn.

It doesn't have the bovine motif Drakken would have expected (after he confirmed that it did in fact read "Dairy" and not "Diary"), probably to avoid looking like a copycat of the Cow & Chow, an older restaurant that operates on the other side of town - and therefore in too close a proximity to Bueno Nacho to be an option for Drakken. The Dairy Barn, however, is painted a raspberry-sherbert-red, and the doors of its bathroom stalls are undecorated wood, just a step up from the kind that can give you splinters if you catch it wrong. The dining area stays heated all year round, which the tiny businessman inside Drakken admits is a smart tactic to get people to buy your ice cream. It's felt even nicer recently, as every day dawns chillier than the one before it and the wind goes from autumn's nip, refreshing and invigorating, to winter's bite, sharp enough to puncture your lungs.

And, for a person who can be very finicky about crowds, The Dairy Barn attracts just the right amount of people - enough so Drakken can't feel alone, but not enough to overwhelm him, their laughter jouncing Drakken's personal bubble, their heat shoving against him and pinching his nerves. It's the near-perfect place to work on a weekend, especially when one needs to focus on expense reports and can't afford to be distracted by the lab of endless possibilities just across the hall.

Drakken peers over the tops of the reading glasses Kim Possible helped him pick out last month, claiming they emphasize his "studious-beagle look." According to her, it's very cute. The girl really does have a sweet spirit, underneath that tongue that can gut villains with a single sentence. Luckily, "villains" no longer includes him.

He doesn't see her as much these days, partially because she is now a hard-working college student, and partially because he is no longer an aspiring despot. She and her boyfriend come and check up on him from time to time, when they're home from Paris, making sure he hasn't returned to a life of evil.

Evil.

Drakken pulls closer to the cushioned back of the booth and huddles his arms tight across his chest. Even now, the mere mention of the word transmits a tingle throughout his entire body - but not a good tingle. Less the type of tingle you get in seventh grade staring at your chemistry teacher's crooked, genuine smile and more the type of tingle you get when you're so busy staring at your chemistry teacher's crooked, genuine smile that you pour solvent onto your arm and wonder what's burning a half-second before pain sets the alarms off.

Somewhere, deep down, far below the milkshake he just consumed, Drakken thinks he will never be free of evil. There are times when he could swear he sees it lurking in everyday shadows, reaching inky fingers out for him, goading him, luring him back until he masters it - or, much more likely, until it masters him. And he fears it, more than he fears thunderstorms or too-small spaces or bugs of the creepy-crawly variety.

And that, that is why he avoids Bueno Nacho. Shadows don't come any deeper than the ones there.

The thing about evil is that it never truly goes away. All human beings, Dr. Director has told him, are capable of evil, although Drakken could fashion a very strong argument with Mother as a counter example. "Being good isn't a matter of having no desire to do wrong," she always says - Dr. Director, that is, not Mother. "It's a matter of choosing not to do wrong."

It could be much worse. There could be actual physical withdrawal symptoms kicking around inside him now. Drakken's not an expert on such things, but he has seen several guys in prison, mostly the local jails but occasionally on a penitentiary level too, coming off a drug - "coming off" being the guards' ultra-sophisticated way of saying they were trying to quit.

Often involuntarily, and Drakken understood why just at a glance. The guards said they were "in bad shape," but as far as Drakken could tell, they were in no shapes at all - nothing but squiggly lines. Their eyeballs jumped around in their sockets as if they were keeping time with some song inside them that only they could hear, and they rattled back and forth so violently that even the hairs on their arms convulsed, so violently that Drakken couldn't even envy them that manly dusting of arm hair. He could only make himself small on the bunk and pray to go unnoticed.

As a person whose compassion has increased by four-hundred-and-fifty-nine percent this past year, Drakken feels sorrier for them now than he did then. He may have been obsessed with his evil schemes, but at least he never collapsed to the floor and had a seizure because he lacked one. Of course, different things are at stake here. A guy on drugs can hurt himself, hurt a lot of people around him, but he is not a giant machine of destruction with laser arms and feet built to crush houses.

Never, ever, ever again, Drakken re-vows, straightening his shoulders. They feel startlingly narrow in the flannel long-sleeved tee he pulled on this morning while throwing all his lab coats in the washing machine. Yet even thin and deprived of the shoulder pads he once clung to like security blankets, no one would mistake him for the weakling in prison who gained a new bruise practically every time a guard turned his back. After all, he has his powers now.

And his conscience. Also, his medal.

His gold. Shiny. Medal.

Drakken squeaks delightedly into his hand. He both always believed and never believed it would actually happen. It would be delivered alongside the world, he always figured, delivered by shaky, ousted global powers, and he had carefully crafted exactly how he would receive it:

The do-gooders would realize they'd been beaten, and they would sigh and part with the praise no lesser man could have wrested from them. It would hang in the air a moment, resplendent in its perfection, and then it would slowly be absorbed into his pores, as a salamander garners moisture. And he would smile, ear-to-ear (if not wider) and dazzle them with, "Was there ever any doubt?"

What no one ever prepared him for is the part where it lands more humbling than flattering.

Or the part where that feels so much better.

In the carnage of metal machines bedecked with flowers, Drakken looked out upon the world and made an unconscious decision not to harvest it for his own benefit. Whether it was too big to carry or too small to grasp, he still isn't positive. All he knows is that he couldn't carry it.

That - or maybe he saw something inside himself that hadn't been there before. And not just Hydro-Pollinator fluid. Something that massaged his fists until they unclenched, swept away the holographic ego he'd been hiding behind so long, and whispered to him to come home.

Look what evil did to the Lorwardians. Look what it did to Monkey Fist. Look at it that way, and it was about as desirable as a two-ton kidney stone. Drakken didn't want it ruining his life - or Shego's.

Shego.

Just thinking her name sends a hopeful grin skipping across Drakken's face. Shego, his very best friend. Shego, the one who came to his medal ceremony and stood with him, because he never would have been able to so much as shuffle across the stage without her, he knows. Someday he might even admit that to her.

He hugged her - with some help from his flowers. Of course, the tabloids loved that. The very next day, one claimed that Drakken and Shego were dating now. Next day, a different one countered that they'd already been dating for the last three years. A couple of days later, a third announced that they were secretly married.

As if. Of course, Shego is smart and funny and amazing and talented and beautiful and strong and spunky. She's also a sourpuss, a big tease - and just about half his age.

Sure, he studies her lips more these days, a fact that Tabloid #2 supplied as their only photographic evidence, but it's not to imagine what they would feel like on his. Sandpaper drags down his spine at the very suggestion. It's because he doesn't want to miss the moments when they turn up at the sides. That open, candid motion softens the peak of her chin and leaves her looking as young as she should look. It's so rare, like water in the desert, that it makes Drakken want to collect buckets full of it and snap its picture twelve times - but also not disturb it, not ever disturb it.

Shego, happy.

Shego, proud of him. Yet another thing he both anticipated with roller-coaster intensity and never imagined would ever be his.

Drakken isn't sure if they deserve a second chance, the two of them - he likes to believe they do but, factually speaking, not all the evidence supports that conclusion. Nevertheless, here they are being offered one, like a courtesy donut just for showing up at the weather-machine lot.

And Dr. Drakken has never been one to turn down free donuts.

The Dairy Barn's door opens. It doesn't jingle like the one at Bueno Nacho, instead making a sound remarkably similar to the one produced by a doomsday contraption after it's swallowed your peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and neither appreciates it as much nor digests it as well as you would. A pack of three boys jostle in, red-cheeked and running-nosed from the cold, shrugging off starchy-looking jackets that must have been new this school year, ambiguously small - are they third grade? Eighth grade? Kindergarten?

Before Drakken can deduce the necessary information, they turn and head his way.

Unease squirms Drakken around in the booth, squirms his milkshake around inside him. He's never been gifted with children. In his experience, they tend to be not smart enough to be talked to about protons or atomic numbers and yet too smart to waste time on polite questions and careful answers. His newfound, still-fragile confidence threatens to desert him, and then he'll be left with nothing but his ego, which could get stick in place like a stubborn bottle cap and then have to be pried off by someone's unfriendly hands just like before.

Drakken yanks his straw up and down in his milk carton, the scratchy noise not at all conducive to clear-headed thinking. He suddenly wishes something he's never wished before, as far as he can recall - that Kim Possible's sidekick were here. Harebrained as he might be in many other areas, he never appears at a loss for charm or for off-the-cuff remarks.

Strange expression, off-the-cuff. Seems like it should be talking about the moment when your hands are freed from handcuffs - a sensation that would be synonymous with relief if it weren't always and instantly followed up with a cell door clanging shut and light striping in through the bars until you were raiding photography books in the library to remember what a nice, natural sunbeam looked like.

Drakken tries smiling at them, but he can feel how pinched and snappy it is, a clothespin-smile.

And it doesn't appear to do its job any too well, either. The boys pull together into a lump that almost matches the one in Drakken's throat. He has seen this happen, far too many times, boys of this age and size congregating a few feet away to review whatever they have in store for him.

The whispers begin then, static on a radio, the kind that always seems to misalign Drakken's teeth. Anyone who says middle school girls have the monopoly on gossip has clearly never walked a mile in Drew Lipsky's hand-me-down loafers.

Anxiety begins doing laps around Drakken's stomach. Thrashes all the way to the end, touches the wall, pivots without stopping, and circles back. Cripples his appetite for anything, even ice cream.

The word "blue" filters over from the group and is then quickly overpowered by the roar, the rush of his own blood, as if he has clamped a seashell over each ear. Drakken tries to console himself with the fact that he at least knows that is what you hear inside a seashell, not some mystical remnant of the ocean. Why, any similarly-shaped object would produce the same sensation, including objects that have never been near a beach. . . most people aren't aware of that.

Yes, he knows what pigment his skin takes on in the spectrum of visible light! Even if his own vision were broken, he would know just from the number of times he's been told by people dumbfounded or jeering or both. Simple science indicates that the body tends to build up a tolerance to just about anything it is exposed to for too long, but those hissy comments must be something Drakken is allergic to, because every single time they sting and swell and constrict his breathing as if he has never experienced anything like it before.

Only now he has an Epipen and is slowly learning how to use it, now that he is a superhero and not a supervillain. Funny how two words with the same prefix can oppose one another so starkly. . .

The boys jostle each other in the ribs - playfully, Drakken surmises, for there are no sulky faces to be seen among them. As they scamper for position in front of Drakken's booth, he notices with some relief that even standing up, they are shorter than he is sitting down. Then again, so are thornbushes, and Drakken has been barbed by those plenty in his life.

One of the boys steps forward and breathes in deep. "Are you Dr. Drakken?" he says.

It's a question Drakken has heard at least thirteen thousand times over the decades, and it's usually asked by people who are getting ready to put him on the cuff and drag him back to the realm of bars and orange jumpsuits and no privacy. The first few panic cells begin multiplying inside Drakken, and they make him spread his shoulders wider, expand his chest, trying to fill in the gaps left by his somewhat-less-than-chiseled muscles. It is a ridiculous reaction, Drakken knows - this boy's voice hasn't even acquired that prepubescent crackle yet - and that knowledge is the only thing that holds Drakken's own voice back from its deepest, sharpest cannonball of a pitch as he says, "Yes."

The boy breaks into a grin. Not a sneer. Not a smirk. Not even a clothespin-smile. An authentic, genuine, cheek-wrinkling grin that makes Drakken automatically return it and let his lanky places slump back to normal.

"Cool," the kid says.

For an instant, Drakken loses the booth under him and floats back into space. People don't tend to use "cool" and "Drakken" in the same context. Especially not people like this kid - Drakken sneaks a look down at him, and his shoelaces are neat and knotted and pristine. They alone would probably fetch a higher price at an auction than everything Drakken's wearing put together.

Drakken tilts his head, imagines the confusion in there dribbling from one side to the other like slush off a windshield. "Cool?" he repeats. "Did you just call me 'cool'?"

The kid stares at him as if Drakken has abruptly begun speaking a whole other language (or at least some hard-to-understand regional dialect). "'Course I did. You took DOWN those aliens!"

"Yeah," the second boy, the one whose hair is cut down into short nubs, adds. "They were all like, 'Oooh, look at us! We're here to conquer this stupid little planet Earth!' and you were all like, 'Not on my watch, punks! I'll beat you with flowers!' and they were all like, 'What? Flowers? That's stupid!' but then you totally kicked their butts!"

The Drew Lipsky living somewhere inside Dr. Drakken begins to shake. He pinches his arm through the flannel, and yelps with delight when it hurts.

When it's real.

The third boy swings his backpack to the floor, unzips it, and produces a composition book and mechanical pencil. "Can I have your autograph?" he asks with more than a pinch of bashfulness to taste.

KA-POW!

Drakken's reality explodes into a kaleidoscope of beauty and wonder and light and tropical fish and choirs singing "Praise the Lord!" Don't faint, he instructs himself as he replays receiving his gold medal, followed by a proud look from Shego, followed by his first honest paycheck. Don't faint, don't faint, do not faint!

"Can you?" Drakken tosses his head back and laughs and there's a cannonball sound in that, too, only this cannon is shooting confetti and Drakken has no intention of cleaning it up, ever. He manages to flop his left hand toward the pen until it maneuvers between his fingers. "Can you ever!"

All three boys watch, enraptured, as Drakken flourishes his name across the page. Looking down, he sees some of the letters have been printed while others flow in calligraphy. Yet the way these boys are gazing at him with veneration in their eyes. . . he could have misspelled his own name and it would have mattered not a whit. (Nor would the fact that he doesn't know what a "whit" is.)

Enraptured, veneration - those are the words he's focusing on. The words so long denied him drive down any swelling, outside or in.

"You saved our school, ya know," the boy with the fancy shoelaces says.

Drakken would frown were that within his capacity at the moment. So many things happened that night that the details sometimes tend to smear together like oil paint, a glorious, vibrant smudge. He stops himself from saying, "I did? Really?" in the nick of time.

"Lowerton Elementary," the boy with the nubby hair supplies. "We were all in the gym for Honors Night - you know, Perfect Attendance Awards, National Fitness Exam, songs for the fifth-grade graduation -"

Elementary school ends at fifth grade these days? flashes through Drakken's mind, but he wouldn't interrupt this story for anything short of an elephant stampede. Maybe not even then.

"Yeah, an' then, all of a sudden, the roof got ripped off!" says the boy who clutches Drakken's autograph to his chest. "Then the sirens were all blaring - "

"-we thought it was a tornado, but then -"

" - we saw those huge-o machines with the legs -"

"- oh, man, those were wicked -"

" - runnin' by the windows -"

" - some of the kids said they were aliens, and we all thought they were craaa-aazy -"

" - but then our principal got a call from some school here in Middleton. He tried to be quiet, but the other guy didn't. Said one of his students had just been sucked up into a spaceship while she was givin' a speech - "

" - and we knew it really was aliens -"

" - too dangerous to leave the gym -"

" - hid us under the bleachers -"

(You could trace a nice isosceles triangle from the pattern of Drakken's bobbing head.)

" - had to stay there and watch our playground get stomped to death -"

" - nothin' we could do -"

" - all the girls were crying." This from the first boy. His neat shoelaces shamble back and forth as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

Drakken glances at him, and he can feel what he believes is called a knowing twinkle taking shape in his eye. In a moment of great wisdom and mental acuity, he says the words he wishes someone had taken the time to say to Drew Lipsky: "It's okay if you were crying, too."

Three cool masks slide off, three miniatures of what Drakken remembers wearing for most of his life. There are no tears involved in the process - just limp relaxation.

"And then," the nubby-haired boy begins again, "finally, the whole back wall of the gym got smashed in. One of those machines came stompin' in, goin' right for the bleachers, about to knock 'em over -"

"But then you showed up!" says Fancy Shoelaces. "With petals and that funky flower-gun and everything! You sprayed that machine and your flowers killed it, and they even knocked it outside instead of on the bleachers -"

"My big sister was under that set 'a' bleachers," whispers the boy with Drakken's autograph. Even veneration, one of the best words Drakken knows, is not enough for what he sees in the shimmer looking back at him, the shimmer that could dissolve into sobs any second.

"And the gym was saved!" Nubby Hair says, throwing his hands skyward in what appears to be one of those strange baseball-coach signals.

Just a heartbeat before it would puff from his mouth, Drakken cancels the sigh he was planning to release. In all honesty, he would much rather have saved a chem lab than a gymnasium, but he supposes superheroes such as himself cannot pick and choose.

And these are children, these messy, inexplicable, small-scale beings. Rescuing them seems as good a place to start as any when you don't know what to do with them. For another heartbeat, Drakken allows himself to imagine that sweet little Japanese girl he saw on the news over a year ago, maybe old enough now to have shed her pigtails, looking on as the man responsible for her trauma saves her from the Lorwardians' cruel grip and is forever branded in her brain as a hero.

It's selfish, but he hopes it happened like that.

Come to think of it, somewhere in the rich-oil cacophony of that night, he thinks he does remember a school with a playground crushed, a roof scalped, and a set of bleachers about to cave. Might just be the power of suggestion, though Drakken chooses to believe otherwise. He must have an accurate snapshot in his memory, because he strongly suspects he will cross paths with Will Du or a person of his ilk again someday, and he will need it to resuscitate himself - the sight of intact bleachers sheltering a cherished older sister Drakken didn't even know was under there.

Drakken draws another quick sip from his milk carton. Really, he's giddy enough to blow bubbles in it, but he won't do it, not in front of these kids, not when imitating him at home will get them scolded for sure.

They continue gazing at him with shimmers in their eyes - the sheen of a gold medal catching the sunlight, of dawn rising on a planet that worships him. A planet that invites him to help it heal from the invasion. After an almost-lifetime of gnawing on destruction, Drakken is still stunned at how much nourishment there is to be found in rebuilding.

He has tasted something sweet, and with one bite it has made him aware of the tartness he once consumed every day.

"Anyway, we just wanted to say thank you," Autograph Boy says.

Although Drakken's movements cease entirely, it isn't accurate to say he freezes. He couldn't possibly, not with this liquid hot caramel that's been injected into his veins. No, "injected" implies needles and pain and chewing the inside of your mouth into ground beef. This is one-hundred-percent internal, secreted by the helpful, hopeful clear place inside him, no penetration required.

Thank you? He's heard those words maybe once every three years, on average. Of course, who does he have to hear them from? Who has he ever really shown kindness to? Besides maybe Shego, who has never really been the type to express appreciation.

Drakken rests one finger on his straw and works on keeping his emotions in check. Children don't much like it when adults cry. But it's hard not to get choked up a little - or a lot - when he's slammed with the reality that he's finally done something worthwhile with his life.

Something he'll be remembered for someday.

"Believe me," Drakken says, and his boom is shaky, the cannonball banging around in a space too big for it, "it was my pleasure."

It's the kind of sentiment he used to practice delivering with a snarl in front of the mirror, rehearsing for his performance as the greatest supervillain on Earth. Now he hears nothing even resembling a snarl, because he has been written into an entirely different role, one he never would have auditioned for himself, and hardly anyone seems to think he has been cast against type. Not even Kim Possible, not by a long shot. She's been his personal cheering section ever since the night the aliens attacked. All those injuries he's inflicted - or tried to inflict - on her, and she still has it in her to reach down and pull Drakken out of the pit he dug himself into, and the thought only amplifies his warmth.

Fancy Shoelaces looks pretty warm, too. His cheeks almost match the burgundy sweater his mother must have ordered onto him the second the wind chill dipped below fifty. (Drakken can relate.) "Well, actually, we didn't just want to say it. We wanna do somethin' for ya."

"Yeah," Nubby Hair says. "They should, like, build a statue of you!" He pantomimes chipping away at a rock.

Each of those words ignites as it passes through Drakken's atmosphere, turning them from random chunks of space debris to projectiles of flaming intensity. The Dairy Barn disappears in a blink, and Drakken stands in a palace of his own design, beholding his imagined glory, immortalized in gold - hey, go big or go home, right? Every detail has been captured perfectly, from the tragic scar to the ponytail he's bringing back into style to every individual tooth in his celebratory grin. Hysteria threatens to bubble over, and perhaps some of it does in the form of a few squeaks Drakken can't swallow.

Yet something is fussing inside Drakken, way down in the back of his newly renovated soul. Something that drives his fingertips to bounce off each other like a pair of disagreeing rhinos even as the massive, impressive statue that graced the halls of Intercontinental University takes shape in his memory, how it looked before those dratted earthquakes he forgot about knocked his evil plan apart to collapse on it. His heart does triple the speed limit.

His heart always wanted a statue.

Then again, his heart also always wanted a flag, an international anthem that sang his praises, and a shark tank to dispose of anyone who crossed him. And while Drakken trusts his heart to pump his blood, he doesn't necessarily trust it to make all of his decisions.

Drakken takes that moment to hook his fingers under the tabletop. Everything he's ever wanted glows bright in front of him, but suddenly they look like UV rays. Like they can hurt him if he gets too close. He puffs his chest against the front of his lab coat and rifles through his brain until he reaches the clear space.

Go on, Drakken, it says. Do the right thing.

He wonders if that'll ever stop being a wonder to him.

Nubby Hair still wields his pretend chisel, and Drakken can almost feel it plink-plink-plinking against the top of his spine. What is the right thing? When the Lorwardians sent down their doom machines, they were practically issuing advertisements of their evil, but at this point, there's nothing that glaringly obvious. A crawly feeling walks down Drakken's neck, as if the dark has turned invisible and tried to sneak up behind him.

With one more mental glance at the statue of his fantasy, he notices there's no triumphal gleam in the carved Drakken's eyes. In fact, they droop in pity at the corners, down at a second figure balanced on the golden pedestal - the scrawny, nerdish, frightened little boy that Dr. Drakken rose from. Nervous smile full of braces. Scabs he tried to hide from his mother. Angry thoughts that would eventually darken into plans for vengeance.

Drakken slurps the last remaining drops of milk from his carton and swirls his straw around in a frantic three-sixty. He has to use this straw, he now understands, because to chug his milk directly from the tiny cardboard container is to look over both shoulders, waiting to be slammed face-first into his cafeteria hot lunch by some figment from his past. Some figment whose shoelaces were just as fashionable thirty years ago as these kids' are today.

He knows happiness. Pure undiluted happiness, so chemically potent that it's hard to hold. Maybe it can't be held, not on your own.

Slowly, the statue in his mind fades from gold to silver. Then bronze. Then copper. Then iron, the two figures now holding hands - the great Dr. Drakken helping the undervalued Drew Lipsky to his feet. Drakken clears his throat, which seems to have been filled with maple syrup, and says, "No. I have a better idea."

The air remains smooth, empty of the groans and gripes that always used to follow that announcement. Drakken takes a moment to inhale it, the way he will bury his nose in his own flower petals when he has to clean out a reeking refrigerator. "Is there a kid in your class who wears really big thick glasses?" he says. "Who keeps to himself at recess because he comes in last place at everything he's ever tried to play? Who no one ever wants to pick for their gym team?"

Rather than spiraling, Drakken's voice ascends to a level that not even all infomercial spokespeople reach - only the ones who are there to share their own personal testimony, the ones who would be there regardless of whether or not they were being paid. He would pride himself on those moments of vocal control as a villain, using them to buffer his ego, and he knows he probably will again as a hero, too. At this moment, though, they are little gold medals, dangling in front of him, that Drakken can hardly believe belong to him.

All three of the boys duck their heads to study their respective shoelaces, which Drakken takes as an affirmative. Answering a yes-or-no question with a head-duck, Drakken has learned, is basically confessing to whichever answer is more embarrassing.

"You want to do something to honor me?" Even though there isn't enough room for him to pace with these kids in front of his booth, Drakken rises from the squishy comfort of the seat and arranges his arms in a clever fold (after only two tries, to boot). "Pick that kid."

Three heads tilt.

"You heard me," Drakken says, and he'd sound like a drill sergeant if not for the hot caramel working its way out, touches of warm and sweet. "Next time you have gym and one of you is team leader - pick that kid."

The boys nod. Drakken probably could have told them to dip themselves in honey and jump into a leaf pile, and they would have done it. The idea dances around between bits of leftover dastardliness, but Drakken shoos it away.

Even if whatever Official English Language Committee is in charge of the dictionary - even if they added twenty-seven more letters to "happiness," the word wouldn't be long enough or wide enough to describe what wraps him now.

Drakken stuffs his empty milk carton through the swinging door of the trash can and he grins at the kids who have given him something this afternoon that he never won for himself in decades of villainy. Grins until he can barely see them. Grins until he nearly blinds himself with his own marvelous oral hygiene.

Grins and says, "But if you do know someone in the statue-making industry, have them give me a call, 'kay?"