CONNER'S BUILDING, Upperton
Shego seemed to melt and fade, then get sucked into the machine. With a bright flash, she was shot into the TV screen which then shut off. Rufus, who had covered his eyes during this, looked up at Ron Stoppable and chattered.
“You're right, Rufus. You should have gone with her.”
“It was dangerous enough to send Shego back alone,” Drakken said with a tired tone. “Sending two living bodies back at the same time could have unforeseen effects. They both could have died…or worse,” he added with a slight shudder.
“You don't know?”
“I was about to run the first of many tests when I was so rudely interrupted!” Dr Drakken snapped.
“Oh, sorry.” Ron said, shoulders slumping. “How long will they be in the past?”
“Who knows?” Drakken answered. “Time travel is all theory, most of what we know about it comes from science fiction.”
“But you gotta know something,” The blond boy demanded.
Drakken/Lipsky almost told him to shut up, but knew that Ron was feeling the same anxiety he was experiencing. Ron, himself, Shego and Rufus were the only survivors of the world they knew and that was what had forced them together in this gamble. They were castaways, refugees who just wanted to go home. But now Shego was gone on a desperate mission and they didn't even know if it had a snowball's chance in Hell to succeed, or even if Shego could come back, with or without Kim!
“Shego and Possible are traveling in time,” Dr D said, gathering his thoughts. “Theoretically that gives them literally ‘all the time in the world’. They could spend ten years in the past and return five minutes after they left, or come back a year from now after spending a day in the past. However, the Quantum Reverser is attuned to the time machine, so they should return after we sent Shego back. We just have to wait.”
There was a hiss and a ‘hole’ opened up to one side of the machine. Kim Possible, limping slightly and supported by Shego, stepped through. The hole closed and the women were startled by a cry from behind them. They turned just in time to be embraced by their partners.
“KP! Kim I thought I'd never see you again!”
“So not the drama Ron, you know I always make a comeback. Hey Rufus, miss me? I missed you!”
“You're back!” Cried Drew. “Shego, you're back and you're safe! Oh I'm so happy, you could hit me and I wouldn't mind!”
“Yeah, it's great to be home and all that,” Shego said flatly, prying his arms off her. “Now let go or I'll take you up on that offer!”
“Kim, what happened back there? What was it like?”
“Hold it! Before we get lost in this sentimental reunion, isn't there something we're forgetting?” Shego reminded them.
“Yes, we must make certain that history is back on course,” the blue man said, logging on to the Internet.
Ron Stoppable opened the door and went out into the hall.
“All clear outside,” he reported, returning after a few seconds of checking the deserted offices.
“Ah, there are no listings for the Lipsky Ice Cream company.” Drakken reported after running a search. “Hmm, hm. Let's see… And it says here that Mimsie Possible was accused of stealing an invention from the fair and left town.”
“Try the Middleton high school cheerleaders’ web page,” Shego suggested.
“Why? All right. OK, it's loading. There it is.”
Shego clicked the mouse on the “pictures” icon then clicked on a thumbnail. Kim, standing beside of the villianess, watched a certain picture appear. It was the one Shego had showed her in the past: Kim and Bonnie were both down on one knee, half-turned to the camera. They held pom-poms, one fist on their hips, the other raised in the air. Standing on their upper legs was Tara, pom-poms raised high. Kim smiled when she saw that the “Kim Possible” in the picture was her mirror image once again!
“There's one more site I want to check,” Kim announced. “Excuse me, please?” She said politely to Drakken, who moved to let Kim type in an address.
Ron had joined them and held his breath when he saw the web address. This was the final test and it seemed like it was taking a long time to load the page! Finaly, it came up.
“Beep! Beep! Beep-beep!”
Ron's breath came out in a loud sigh of relief. On the screen was a cartoon picture of Kim (Drawn by a Disney artist during her Florida vacation) and the legend: “She Can Do Anything!”
“Eh, well I suppose we have to take the bad news with the good,” Drakken grumbled, earning a scowl from Ron and Kim.
“Yeah, and that reminds me,” Kim announced, stepping back. She went into a fighting pose, putting her weight on her uninjured ankle. “We're collecting Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducers! You got any?”
“Do you always have to be the hero?” Shego demanded.
“Do you always have to be the pain?” Kim retorted.
“Look, I'm not in the mood to deal with this right now!” The dark-haired thief announced, stepping over to the laser cannon. “HERE! Just take the thing and GO, all right?”
“Uh, OK?” Kim said, taking the Vortex Inducer. “Thanks…I guess.”
“Shego! What are you doing?” Drakken shrieked.
“Dr D, what have we learned?” Shego asked with a certain tone.
“That time travel is bad news,” Drakken sighed.
They had returned to their old ways; Drakken would come up with the ideas and Shego would put them in a realistic perspective. This was the balance that made their partnership work.
“Come on KP, let's leave before they change their minds!” As Ron led Kim into the hall, he noticed her limp. “Kim, your leg!”
“No big, I turned my ankle fighting with Shego. I'll ask mom to look at it when I get home, but it doesn't hurt as much as it did when I was at the fair.”
“All right, if you think it's nothing. Let's check in with Wade,” he suggested, pulling out the kimunicator and handing it to the redhead.
“Hey Wade,” she said, clicking it on.
“Hey Kim, any progress?”
“Wade, it's great to have you back!” Ron almost shouted.
“Back? I didn't go anywhere, I've been in my room all the time. Uh Kim, why are you dressed like that?”
“I'll let Ron tell you about that, Wade.” Kim said with a smile. “We have the Vortex Inducer, can you hook us up with a ride back to the lab?”
“Already taken care of. The lab people sent a company van to pick you up, it should be in the parking lot now.”
“Please and thank you!.”
Back at Drakken's lab, Dr Drakken had the disk he had prepared for Shego in his hand, writing “Alternate Reality” on it. He then loaded it into his desk computer and began preparing to download the present reality's websites onto the disk so that the evidence could be properly compared and filed.
“Dr D if you don't need me for anything, I'm going to take a shower and a nap,” Shego stated, to which Drakken just grunted. “I had to fight two redheaded Possibles to get that Electro Static Illuminator and that's no picnic.”
“Electro Static Iluminator?” Drakken muttered, with a thoughtful look. “Why does that ring a bell? Can it be?”
“What?” Shego asked turning from the door.
“It would be an uncanny coincidence…”
“What?”
“If this is what I think it is…”
“WHAT?”
“It's a Lipsky family legend, I must possess it!”
“The thing is a hundred years old, why are you interested in it?”
“Because Shego, the Electro Static Illuminator is the reason I became a villain! Hahaha!”
“Dr D, I thought you became a villain because of the guys who teased you in nerd school.”
“Well thank you for harshing my mellow, Shego! Now quickly, to my mother's attic!”
“Ah-HEM!” Shego coughed.
“What now?” the scientist demanded, half way to the door.
Shego stood there in her out-dated suit, fists on her hips and an expectant look on her face. After the two had stared at each other for a few seconds, Shego threw her arms out from her sides, eyes wide with a “well?” look. Drakken got it then.
“Oh. Very well, you can shower and change your clothes first,” he grumbled.
As Dr Drakken searched through the boxes and packages, Shego looked around the Lipsky attic for something to keep her from getting bored. On a table she found a “Hot Wheels” (delux edition) track set up. A “Barbie” doll was tied the roof of a Mustang and a small sign near-by proclaimed it to be a “Ramp Of Doom”.Curious, Shego gave the model car a push and watched it roll rapidly down the track and through a loop. Drakken saw what she was doing and watched with glee as “Barbie” was sent sailing off the table and into a box where she was then zapped by two electric rods.
“I was quite the evil little dreamer,” He remarked, going back to his search.
Shego would have said something with the words “depraved” and “sick” in it, but reminded herself that she was a GUEST in the Lipsky home and kept silent.
“Milk and cookies!” Mrs Lipsky happily called, poping up through the trapdoor. “Did you find what you were looking for, Drewbie?”
“Yes mother, here it is!” ‘Drewbie’ replied, holding up a very old record and taking a cookie. “Ooo, thank you. Try one, Shego, they have no cal-or-ies.”
“Thanks. Listen, before blankie and nappie-nap,does anyone want to clue me in on why this is so important?” Shego asked, indicateing the disk.
“Grand pop-pop Lipsky bought that at the World's Fair as a souvenir,” Mrs Lipsky supplied. “People would make records and mail them to friends and family.”
“Drewbie” placed the record on an old “victrola”. (There was a sterio downstairs, but it's turntable wouldn't spin fast enough to play the old record) A few turns of the crank wound the spring enough to play a voice that Shego had heard just a few hours and a HUNDRED YEARS ago!
“And when the Electro Static Illuminator is mine, the whole World's Fair will bow before me! What is it? (gasp!) Testing, one two three.”
“Oh, I would listen to this for hours!” Drakken said happily. “I could never crack the mystery as a child, but it inspired me so! But now we have a fresh clue! Mother, Shego had an ancestor at the fair too and she knows about the recording!”
“Really? Do you know what grand pop-pop was talking about?”
Shego was quick to form a pretty little lie: “Bart Lipsky was talking to Miss Go about an invention. I think he wanted to buy it, but it was stolen by a woman reporter.”
“Oh so that's it, how interesting!” Mrs L said. “You know Drew, the Middleton Museum is hosting a special exibit about the fair right this very moment!”
“Really mother? I've been so busy that I haven't kept up with the news. We should pay the museum a visit tomorrow, Shego.”
THE NEXT DAY Middleton High School
“So you see, these pictures proove that Mim had been fighting the REAL thief,” Kim told the class. “And didn'tsteal the Illuminator at all!”
“Digitaly enhanced, eh?” Barkin observed. “Well, this is quite convinceing, Possible and on behalf of my grandfather, I appoligise for the mistake he made in accuseing your great-great aunt.”
“No big, things turned out all right in the end,” Kim answered, thinking of the alternate reality Shego had showed her.
“Well it's almost time for class to be dismissed, so after school why don't you take those photos to the museum? I thnk they will be glad to get them.” Steve Barkin suggested.
“I'll do that, Mr Barkin.” Kim said.
The bell then rang and the students hurried out the door. Bonnie sauntered over to Kim as the latter collected her things.
“Well ‘K', I suppose I should appoligise too,” Bonnie said not-too-kindly. “Oh, but it wasn't ME who had made a false accusation, so I guess I DON'T have to! Try not to be late for tomorrow's game against Riverdale, OK?”
“Can you believe her?” Kim huffed, watching Bonnie walk away.
“Yeah, I know,” Ron agreed. “She's so Bonnie!But she almostadmitted she was wrong.”
“Yeah,” Kim smiled. “And for Bonnie, that's something. Let's go Ron, we can make a quick trip to the museum before heading home.”
LATER…
“So what are we supposed to do with the pictures Wade gave you?” Ron was asking Kim.
“I guess we should just drop the off at the museum director's office with a note,” Kim suggested, glanceing at the model of the fair they were passing. “If anyone has any questions, they can call us.”
When they passed, two people who wore make-up to hide their true skin color looked after the teens.
“What's Kim Possible doing here?” Demanded the man, who was dressed in a “touristy” outfit consisting of a polo shirt, khaki pants, Panama hat and a cheep camera hung around his neck. “They know something!”
The woman, in a plaid skirt and green British army sweater, snorted.
“Yeah, it's not like Kim Possible is a high school studentand would have to do research on a report or anything.”
“Words hurt too, Shego. Now go over it again; tell me what happened durring the robbery.”
Produceing a laser pointer, Shego highlighted certain places on the model.
“I climbed to the top of this building and ran along the rooftops and jumped to the window of the Hall Of Electricity, here. Your great-grandfather had gone to the Aviation Display and took control of the army balloon as a diversion and secondary excape route. When I had the illuminator, I went out this door and was over-taken by the two Possibles. Oh and there was a black kid who took a picture, but since I wasn't going to stick around, that doesn't matter.
“I got on the Ferris Wheel and Kimmie's look-alike followed me, I guess it runs in the family,” she smiled, feeling a twinge of admiration. “Bart had the timeing figured out perfectly and the balloon arrived at the Ferris Wheel at just the right moment. But while I was fighting Mimsie, the device fell off the the top of the car and I had to make my get away, dropping onto a sideshow tent and meeting Kim Possible later. And so I took her back to our time,” she concluded.
Drakken looked at the model, humming in thought. He pulled out a monocular like golfers often use to calculate range and turned it on the Ferris Wheel. Crunching some numbers in a pocket calculator, he went over to a display featureing some “sterioptican” cards. The display had been fitted with a computerized microfilm viewer and the Doctor called up some views of the area around the Ferris Wheel. More numbers went into the calculator as he walked back to the model. Takeing the pointer from Shego, Dr D held his pencil to the model wheel and muttered “Um hm! Ummm hum!”
“Eureka, at last it's mine!”
“You're kidding, right? It's been a hundred years, somebody has to have found it by now.”
“Not nessisarily. You see, these buildings were designed to be taken apart in sections so that they could be quickly reconstructed for other fairs. By my calculations, the Elcetro Static Illuminator fell into one of these refreshment stands and that it must be the hamburger standnear the Ferris Wheel!”
Shego looked at the tiny building where the laser dot had been placed and shook her head.
“Uh uh, it's a taco stand.”
“Shego, don't contradict me. It clearly says ‘hamburgers'!”
“I can read, Dr D. But on the night of the robbery the place sold TACOS. I should know, becauseI was there.”
“Shego, Shego, Shego,” he chuckled as if talking to a stubbron child. “Obviously the trip through time has tampered with your memory. As a scientist, I must believe the evidence of my own eyes.”
Shego spun around and walked off to speak to a museum official. She soon came back with the man following.
“I hope you can settle the bet my friend and I have,” she told him, indicating the model. “Wasn't there a taco stand near the Ferris Wheel?”
“Why yes there was,” he told them. “Very few people know that. You see, this model was made durring the SECOND month of the fair. The tacos didn't sell very well and it was replaced with a hamburger stand. In fact, the origonal taco stand was set up this morning, it's in the East wing, you can't miss it.”
“Thank you, you've been most helpful,” Drakken grinned.
“That's what I'm here for. Feel free to ask for more help.”
The three parted company, Drakken and Shego pauseing to look at a display of photos untill the museum worker turned the corner. They then ran to the East wing.
“Told you,” Shego smirked.
“OK, so I'm wrong. But it was for all the RIGHT reasons. Now since you're the one who knows what it looks like, YOU can go in there and get it!”
With a little laugh, Shego glanced around to make sure that no one was around and looked the display over from all sides. A gleem of reflected light from the prop taco caught her eye and she made a great leap to the roof.
“It's in the taco,” she called to Dr Drakken. “I got it!”
“Well what do you know? The criminal returns to the scene of the crime!”
“What? Kim Possible!” Drakken gasped.
“AND Ron Stoppable,” said the boy beside her.
“I knew that! What are you two doing here?”
“Just doing the hero thing, we spotted your flying wing through a window. Give up the Illuminator that you stole, Shego! Er, that you stole again.”
“You want it, Kimmie? Come and get it!” The thief said with a certain sparkle in her eyes.
Jumping from a bench, Kim landed on the taco stand only to find that Shego had moved on. The cheerleader/heroine followed with a tumbling jump that placed her infront of her foe. Shego crouched on top of the Ferris Wheel car and suddenly got an odd look on her face. She looked from Kim to the Electro Static Illuminator to the car as if they were pieces to a puzzel.
“Wow, I just got hit with a major case of deja vu!” She told Kim.
“Shego, the timer!” Kim yelled.
“What timer?”
“THAT timer!” The redhead pointed. “It's been activated!”
“How could that happen? No one's touched it for…”
“Oh no!” They both said.
“What are you waiting for, Shego? Knock her down!” Drakken yelled up at her.
“Dr D, we got a situation! This thing's live and may have been soaking up static electricity for a HUNDRED YEARS!” Shego reported. “It must have been activated when I was fighting Kim's aunt!”
“Is that a bad thing?” Ron demanded. “Please tell me that it's not!”
“Ron, when professor D'Minz set the timer for one minute, the lightning bolt was huge!” Kim told him. “If it really has been set for a hundred years, the discharge could wipe out the whole city!”
“You could have LIED to me, Kim! I would have forgiven you!”
“How much time do we have?” Drakken called out.
“Less than four minutes,” Shego told him.
“Agghh, it's Las Vegas all over again!” her boss groaned.
“Wade, we found the Illuminator, but…WADE! Wade, can you hear me?”
“SSSSS! Kim? I ca SSSSS! what d SSSSSSSS!”
“There too much interference!”
“I can't find an off switch,” Shego told her. “And the only person who knows how to deal with this is dead!”
“But we're not!” Kim cried. “Ron! Open the fire excape!” Leaping to the floor, Kim turned with her arms out. “Shego, toss down the Illluminator and follow me!”
Not haveing any other options, Shego did as she was told and ran after Kim. They rushed outside and stopped by the small flying wing where Kim dropped the ESI into the passenger's seat.
“Can you program the auto pilot for a fast flight, Shego?”
“Sure can,” she responded, jumping into the pilot's seat. “Where to?”
“Straight up, as fast and far as it'll go!”
“Time's running out!” Ron yelled as he and Rufus looked at his watch.
“Yeah, yeah,” shego snarled, punching in the data. “Stand clear!”
The engines roared to life and the ship started to rise. Shego managed to jump out before the full thrust kicked in.
“Hurry!” Yelled Drakken from the doorway. “Get inside!”
They ran indoors and looked up through the tinted skylight at the rapidly receeding airplane. There was a sudden bright flash and seconds later, a loud thunder clap that cracked the glass in the cieling!
“Booyah! Once again we excaped the jaws of death!” Ron yelled.
“You…saved us,” Drakken said in disbelief. “We must never speak of this!”
“Just returning the favor,” Kim grinned. “Now that we're even, don't expect me to go easy on you the next time we fight.” She added, with a smile for Shego.
“I would be insulted if you held back,” Shego replied with a wink.
“Come Shego, we must get back to the lair and plan our next plot for world domination! Oh great, our ride was destroyed! That means that's we'll have to (shudder) take the BUS back! You'll pay for this indignaty, Kim Possible,” he vowed, shakeing his fist at her before storming out.
“Till next time, princess!”Shego added with a wave.
“So ends another caper,” Kim sighed.
“Kim, I gotta know. What was it like in the past? Did they have see-saws at the fair?”
Kim was about to begin the tale of her adventure in time when she noticed the picture of Mim and John.
“Ron, do yourself a favor. Don't evergrow a mustache!”
THE END