FIC: Favor For Favor - 5

[graycardinal]

5 • As Long As It’s Vanilla Enough

Monique was already at the coffee bar when Kim walked in a few minutes later, and instantly jumped up to procure Kim’s hot chocolate – “grandé, light whip, sprinkles, no marshmallows” – before Kim could get in line. They settled at a tiny round table in a back corner of the shop, and Monique slid a white paper bag across the table along with the cup.

“Well?” Her friend’s expression couldn’t quite match the trademarked Possible Puppy-Dog Pout, but it came close.

With an effort, Kim withstood the creeping wistfulness. “We – need to talk,” she said, trying to sound carefully neutral.
Monique’s face went from puppy-dog to full-on, dismayed Eeyore. “It’s that bad? But – but –”

“No, no, the story’s great,” Kim said instantly, holding up a hand. “Mostly great. There’s just one or two—” She stopped, took a breath, gulped a swallow of hot chocolate, and tried to collect herself. “Not about the fic, about the ‘Kim is a beta goddess’ thing. It’s getting kind of out of hand.”

The Eeyore face faded to more of a Piglet-like nervousness. “I swear, I never meant to – it’s just that – well, you are a beta goddess. And I wanted to, well . . . “

“Gather worshippers to grovel at my feet?” Kim supplied, reaching over just in time to put a firm hand on her friend’s shoulder before Monique could drop to her knees in mock reverence. “Don’t even think. I get enough of that from Ron. Seriously, though – we may have a problem. Wade got a beta request through my Web site this morning.”

Monique, looking much more like herself, eyed Kim sharply. “The official KP site?” At Kim’s nod, she went on, “That’s – funky. I double-swear, I only ever posted about you in the Cauldron and on my LJ, and both of those would’ve been under your handles, not as, well, you.” She paused. “What’d they ask you to beta?”

“That’s – funky, too. It’s a Narbonic fic, and it’s really . . .” Kim frowned, searching for an appropriate word, “. . . potent slash. It melted Wade’s content filters.”

“Narbonic,” Monique said. “Well, mad science is more your speed than mine. Sounds hot, though – only, how do you melt software? Isn’t it all, like, intangible?”

Kim laughed and described Wade’s before-and-after illustration. “I’ve got the file,” she admitted, “but I haven’t looked at it. Yet.”

“You going to?” asked Monique. “What kind of favor did they offer?”

“Blank check,” Kim said. “And that’s the thing – I don’t know. It’s – tempting. We don’t get a lot of those.”

“Tempting,” echoed Monique. “Well, that’s one way to put it. If it’s hot enough to melt a CD, it could sure do a number on a girl’s hormones.” She shivered, but not with cold. “Probably safer than hanging at Cape Foggyweather with certain members of the football team, though. And a blank-check favor . . . .”

“Tempting,” Kim said again, a little dreamily. “Way, way tempting.” One couldn’t travel for long in fanfic circles without interacting to some degree with slash and slash-writers, but Kim had managed to confine most of her reading to material that was mildly R-rated at most. And she was too innately curious – on both literary and hormonal levels – not to speculate on what might lie farther along the scale. “I suppose I could just—”

The Kimmunicator beeped before she had it halfway out of her pack, and she nearly dropped it in surprise. “Wade?”

“Got an ID on the mysterious Lady Noir,” he said, “and you wouldn’t believe who she is.”

Kim automatically picked the least likely name she could think of. “Bonnie Rockwaller?”

Wade blinked. “No – Shego! She did a pretty good job covering her trail, but I managed to peek inside one of the mainframes she hacked. No doubt about it – The Bad, the Worse, and the Fuzzy is her handiwork.”

Both Monique and Kim stared into the Kimmunicator screen. “Shego writes fanfic?” Monique said. “Who’d have thought?”

“Weirder than that,” said Kim slowly. “Shego writes Narbonic slash-fic, and she’s offered me a blank-check favor to beta it for her.”

Monique’s eyes went wide. “If Shego’s writing it, it’s probably nastier than hardcore Snape/Voldemort with Hagrid/Buckbeak thrown in. You can’t read it – it’ll probably curl your hair, melt your conscience, and leave grease stains all over your sense of justice. You’ve got to erase it!”

“There’s just got to be a catch,” agreed Wade. “I’d better run some more diagnostics on that file.” He didn’t look entirely pleased at the prospect, however.

“Hold on,” Kim said. “There’s a blank check from Shego riding on this.”

“Exactly,” Wade retorted. “If she thought there was even the tiniest chance she’d ever have to pay off that favor, she’d never have offered it.”

Monique frowned. “Right – but if Kim can somehow give her the beta anyway, she’d be stuck with honoring the deal.”

“And she would, too,” Kim put in. “Shego’s more slithery than a snakepit full of anacondas, but she’s a work-for-hire girl – if she makes a deal, she sticks to it.”

There was a brief silence, interrupted only by the sounds of hot chocolate being slurped, as the three young people tried to wrap their minds around the problem. Monique was the first to break it.

“You know, Kim,” she said, tentatively, “I bet I’ve read more slash than you have – more of the graphic stuff, at least. And this whole thing is probably sort of my fault anyway. Shego must have seen one of my posts and traced the handles back to us. Maybe I could –”

“Stop right there, girlfriend,” Kim said firmly, squeezing Monique’s hand. “Trust me, you do not want to go there. You don’t want to go within fifty miles of there – and I wouldn’t let you, anyway. I appreciate the offer – really I do – but if Shego’s slash is half as X-rated as you guys think it is, I can’t risk letting you anywhere near it.”

Monique sighed. “If it’s that toxic, why not just send it back, like you do all the please do my homework for me requests? If Shego sent it in under a fake ID, she can’t very well complain to your face next time you two are whaling on each other.”

“That’s what I—” Wade began, but stopped at Kim’s sudden, sharply indrawn breath. “You okay, Kim?”

“For now? Sure,” Kim said. “But I think I just figured out the other half of Shego’s plan.”

Monique’s face and Wade’s screen-image both looked blank. “Other half?” asked Monique.

“She will too rag on me in person if we send the story back. I can just hear it – I’m disappointed in you, Kimmy – what, too narrow-minded to enjoy a little slash? Guess you’ll have to change your Web slogan to ‘I can do anything as long as it’s vanilla enough.'” Kim’s imitation of Shego was pitch-perfect, right down to the whiny edge.

Wade frowned. “But the ID . . .”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Kim. “Maybe she expected you to crack it; if not, she could rag on you for not cracking it. But she can still zing me, whichever way the naco spills.”

“That’s . . . evil,” Monique said softly. “You read the fic, she corrupts you to the slimy side. You don’t read the fic, she plays the goody-two-shoes mind-game card. Talk about your classic dilemmas!”

Kim nodded tiredly. “No kidding. And the sad thing is, I can see it working. It shouldn’t – but it will. You practically wouldn’t need embarrassment ninjas to make me disappear.”

Monique stared at her friend in shock. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you saying Shego’s actually . . . won?”

Kim didn’t answer at once, instead looking glumly into the Kimmunicator’s video pickup. “Wade? Any ideas?”

The ten-year-old’s face was nearly as bleak. “This kind of thing – isn’t really my department. I can reformat hard drives and replace melted software, but I can’t wash your brain out with soap.”

For several seconds, there was dead silence around the little corner table. Then Kim slowly began to smile. “Wash your brain out with soap. Wade, you’re a genius!”

His expression suggested that he was a very puzzled genius. “Of course I am. But what did I – oh.”

“Oh?” Monique echoed. “Okay, I’m—” Then the light bulb went off. “You think your Mom can spin-dry Shego’s slash out of your memory once you’ve read it? Sounds risky to me, girl.”

“Probably,” Kim said. “But Mom’s the best brain surgeon there is, and I don’t see any other way around this one. Besides, Drakken’s done weirder things to my brain and it’s always worked out. Meanwhile,” she added, gulping the remains of her hot chocolate and carefully stuffing the bag of blueberry muffins into her pack, “we’ve got about four minutes to get to school.”