"Drewbie!"

A door was slammed, breaking the strangely tense silence.

"Dreeeeewbie!"

Pleasant smells danced in the air. Maple, bacon, a bit of cinnamon, and coffee for the adults.

A heavy knock rapped against the slightly ajar door of his room. "Drewbie, you'd better wakey-wakey. Don't want to miss the bus to schooo~oool."

School. What a pain, in several senses of the word. He hated it.

"I…I'm not feeling so well!" he gave a strangled-sounding cry. "I think it was the soda pop I had last night."

"Again?" she said in a disapproving tone. "I swear, all that junk you eat…the fake colors and the added sugar…it can't be good for you."

"I guess not," he agreed.

"Are you gonna stop being a lazy ass and wake up?"

"What?" Drew stirred himself from his semi-slumber, the shock at having heard his mother use language like that too much to keep himself blind to the world. Opening his eyes and turning towards the door to his room, he got a big surprise.

"Hello there," Jade Flame said, an amused smirk gracing her face.

Naturally, he reacted in a logical manner.

"GAH!" Drew quickly began to backpedal. To his surprise, he was not in his childhood bed like he had thought. He tumbled to the ground and landed in an ungraceful tangle of bedsheets, limbs, and semi-grown vines that twisted around him protectively.

"Whoa, Junior!" Jade watched the swarm of vines surrounding him. She was suddenly reminded of the state of her jet and why exactly she wasn't going to try killing him…at least for today. "Put away the artillery. I just came to check on you."

"What?" The blue man was busy extracting himself from the mess, his vines hurting the process more than helping. "Check on me…?"

"You kinda hurt yourself doing that mission I sent you on," she replied, seeming to examine her nails without much care. "You know, the one you completely and utterly failed at. The one that I told you I was completely depending on you to finish so I could get other plans rolling. Remember?"

"Oh." Yeah, he was remembering now. He managed to tear the sheets off and, to his eternal embarrassment, found himself clad in a modern-day hospital gown. "Who…?"

"I did," the evil genius said. Her smirk did nothing to reassure. He nearly died when she added "So you're Jewish, eh?"

Blushing furiously, Drew tried to continue processing everything that happened…whenever ago and block out the now. They took over the Eiffel Tower. The police had come. He had fought Kim. His partner. And she…she really had tried to…

He shook, unable to truly process that tidbit.

"Here," Jade said as she tossed something at the younger man. Drew winced and held his arms up to brace for what he figured would be a painful and gruesome death. The only thing that kept the green woman's trinket from falling to the ground was a vine that whipped itself around to catch it.

The ex-agent was shaking, his nerves getting the best of him. He opened an eye experimentally and looked up at his employer to see if she was laughing in glee at his apparent demise. It would be appropriate since he'd failed so spectacularly, after all. To his surprise, she was staring at him in obvious disbelief. Her face twisted into a sneer.

"Glad you trust me too," she almost grunted as she turned away.

Drew blinked in confusion before looking at what his flowered vine had caught. Delicately held in its leafy grasp was what looked to be a tiara of some sort. It was made of a metallic green alloy that was marbled with wisps of black. It twisted around itself in a way resembling his own vines and met at a thin strip in what he assumed was the back. The front had a gold sigil that both sides of the headpiece twined around before meeting in the middle and forming what looked like a leafy S.

"Why are you giving me women's clothing?" the young man said incredulously.

His boss visibly flinched. As she turned, Drew realized that maybe, just maybe angering the green dragon by questioning her was not a good idea.

"Do you ever think?" she growled as she tried to control her temper. "I give that sorta thing to all my lieutenants."

The blue man blinked several times in surprise. From all the files that he had read, she didn't usually hesitate to kill the underlings that annoyed her like this.

"Why haven't you killed me?" he asked, unable to keep the question to himself.

"Are you deaf? Doy!" Jade walked over and gave him a dope slap, something he was intimately familiar with. "I just said I promoted you." The tiara ended up pulled out of his grasp as the green woman violently snatched it from his grasp. As she poked him in the face with the headpiece, Jade emphasized what she said in rhythm. "This. Is. A sign. To show. That. You. Are. My. Lieutenant!"

Completely nonplussed, Drew did nothing but stare as she shoved the tiara back into his hands and began to walk away. "But…" he struggled to say exactly what his strangely jumbled thoughts were all rambling at once. "…why? Why haven't you killed me? I wrecked your plan, your jet—"

"Hell yeah you broke my jet," the villainess grumbled.

"—and I absolutely failed at every task you gave me," the blue man continued, his voice rising in volume as he spoke. "So why haven't you just gotten rid of me?"

'Very elegant questions' he grumbled to himself.

Strangely, she paused on her way out. The room became eerily quiet as Drew waited for his answer. It wasn't that hard of a question, was it? The appropriate response would have been just to take those claws and swipe them across his face.

For her part, Jade was thinking about his oddly pathetic question. It wasn't that she didn't want to kill him, far from it. It was more she put quite a bit of effort into securing this particular person from Princess and she didn't want to make Kim outright hate her. This kid had been her partner for a year or so. You can't spend that much time with someone and not get some attachment.

Unless, of course, they're just pieces in the game. Unfortunately, Kimmie didn't think like that yet. Somehow the spy managed to get out of manipulating people to get her missions done. How was anyone's guess. Jade would bet most of her empire that it was that old hack Betty's doing.

Thinking carefully on how to word her answer, she replied, "I think you can still be of use to me. Just have to teach you a few things beyond the simple training you were given before."

Drew looked gobsmacked. "You…you're willing to give me more training?"

Shrugging, the green woman said, "Well why not? You just need to figure out how to get your weird little tentacles under better control and not be such a moron when people taunt you. Seriously, do you ever think about what people are saying to you and wonder why they would be saying them at that very moment?"

Jade had never thought much about tossing around promotions; while they were a mark of doom for a lot of evil organizations, she felt that they go to those who deserve them or who could be threats to her plans if they were not appeased. However, the way the blue man in front of her reacted to being told he was worth spending time on gave her a strangely warm feeling in her chest, like she had done something to be proud of.

She thoroughly squashed it. Developing anything like pride for anyone besides herself could hamper her efforts later. It did make her wonder about things over at Global Justice. Didn't any of them put any effort into training their agents?

With a reverence that the villainess had only seen in her purple brother when he caught himself in a mirror, her new minion put the formerly protested tiara on his head like it was a grand prize. It gleamed a metallic green under the fluorescent lights of the private infirmary save for a small spot, nearly invisible in the twined S that glowed red for a few seconds before fading away.

"Make sure not to take that thing off, you hear?" Jade ordered sternly. "Those goody-goods at GJ would just love to get their hands on it." It was with both a feeling of deep satisfaction and a sense of wrongness that she realized her psychological profile on this kid had been accurate. Desperate for attention, he would go with whatever got him recognized the fastest.

Of course, while she was very good at mind games and mental puzzles, it always paid to have a bit of insurance if the Batman gambits failed. Which is why she always put some special-order mind control chips in the various tiaras she awarded her top-ranking minions. It just wouldn't do to have one of them get on a high horse and try to off her.

The boy looked up at her with a kind of strange joy that made her feel slightly sleazy in her practice. "O—Of course not!" He continued to give her a look like she was his childhood hero. A shudder went through her as she realized that was exactly what he reminded her of.

A sudden urge to swipe that smile off his face with a fistful of plasma filled her, tinting her vision a tad black. 'Think of Pumpkin' her inner voice commanded. 'This would no longer be a game to her if you were to kill her partner. NOTHING ever goes well for the villain that kills the partner.' With great patience and strength on her part, she turned her thoughts over to just what securing the tiara on his head meant.

Smiling at the thought of yet another superpowered punk that she could control with a phrase under her, she walked out of the room, making sure to tell the dunce guards outside the room to not let him leave until his guide came to get him. As she walked away, she activated the earpiece hidden in her hair to listen in on that particular room. It never hurt to cover all the bases.

A/N:

Takes place a few days after 'The Game Starts'. Drew was unconscious the entire time. And yes, Jade did actually take care of him in those days. Grunt work, true, but leaked info could be dangerous (especially if Kim were to hear it). Dumb guards who wouldn't know or care why she's doing this personally helps to keep the secret. Goodness knows Kim would be all over the place if she heard an inkling of where her ex-partner was.

Also, my bad. Totally put 'Begins' instead of 'Starts'. Dunno why I thought it was the other way around...anyway, fixed!