Seventeen years ago:
The few people in the know would later refer to this year only as the Year of the Comet. It was the year when a celestial body of unknown origin passed close to the Earth and changed the course of human history forever, even though no more than a handful of people realised it at the time.
The comet was huge and it passed so close to the Earth that its tail actually brushed the atmosphere. Gravitational stress caused a fragment of its main body to break off and fall down toward the planet below.
The fragment, what was left of it after blazing through the sky, finally crashed into Go City. To be more precise it crashed into a tree house, which was at the time occupied by five children. Four boys and one girl, siblings, all of whom received a heavy dose of the comet’s unique radiation. It should have killed them, but it didn’t.
Instead it changed them. All five of them received spectacular powers and they would go on to become Go City’s greatest heroes under the name of Team Go. That is, until one of them turned her back on the team and decided to work the other side of the law. That is another story, though.
What no one suspected for a long, long time was that it wasn’t just the five kids who found themselves forever changed by the radiation. Before the comet fragment crashed in Go City, it made its way across half of the United States. As it did so, small traces of it burned up and showered a well-sized portion of the American continent with radiation. The same sort of radiation that gave Team Go their powers.
One place the comet fragment passed on its way to Go City was the town of Middleton. And in Middleton hospital, a girl by the name of Kimberly Anne Possible was right in the middle of being born.
In fact, she took her first breath at the exact moment the comet fragment passed overhead and showered the city with its radiation.
Today:
Okay, she just had to approach this thing rationally, she figured. After all, she was Kim Possible, the girl who could do anything. Everyone said so. Okay, she herself had said so first, but she had pretty much managed to convince a very large portion of the world that it was, in fact, the truth. She could do anything she put her mind to. She had a pretty good, very flexible, and quite capable mind. After all, her parents were a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon. Her two brothers built rockets, particle accelerators, and jet packs in their spare time and they weren’t even into their teens yet. So, given all that, she had to be pretty smart, right? So she just had to approach this rationally.
Rationally, okay. The rational way was to start at the beginning. When had all this started? Yeah, during that hunt for Monkey Fist. Fist had made another attempt at Ron, something about sucking the mystical monkey power out of the undeserving upstart or something. Kim didn’t quite remember the details, but it had involved lots of little monkey ninjas, a temple in a jungle somewhere, and an elaborate death trap that was supposed to force Ron into using the monkey power so Fist could suck it out of him with some mystical gem or other. That’s when all this had started.
The mission itself had been pretty much business as usual. Monkey Fist messed up in that Ron never actually got the chance to use any monkey power, seeing as he was knocked out early by one of the monkey ninjas. This put Fist at such a loss that he had no clue what to do next, which left Kim enough time to smash his gem, mystical or not, and kick his butt but good. Ron came around in time to help her finish him off and everything should have been fine right then and there. Only things kind of took a turn for the strange right at the end there.
Three days ago:
“Booh-yaa,” Ron yelled, hitting Monkey Fist right in the face with a well-placed punch. His martial arts skills might not be the best in the world, but after running with Kim Possible for years and mixing it up with the worst in the world, even he couldn’t help but pick up a few things. And considering that Monkey Fist was already very much tired out after battling Kim for the last ten minutes, well, the odds were actually in his favour for once.
It also helped, of course, that Kim was still fighting against Fist as well. The black-clad monkey ninja was being boxed in and with most of his monkey flunkies unconscious or having fled, he was losing big time.
“Pretender,” Monkey Fist spat at Ron. “I will get the power that is rightfully mine and you will rue the day you…”
He was shut up quite forcefully when Kim hit him with an uppercut that lifted him right off his feet. He flew halfway across the room and hit the ground in a boneless heap, not moving anymore. The silence that followed was deafening.
“Wow, KP,” Ron finally said. “That was some punch there. You put on your super suit under there or what?”
Kim was quite astonished herself, actually. True, she was a lot stronger than her slight build suggested thanks to constant training, but Monkey Fist was a big, grown man. Even her best punch shouldn’t have sent him flying that way.
“I… I guess he was just about to jump or something,” she said, unable to think of a better explanation.
“Yeah, I guess,” Ron nodded, not quite convinced. Walking over to check on Monkey Fist, he found the villain to be quite thoroughly knocked out. Also, his jaw was most definitely broken.
“I guess we can forego the handcuffs, KP,” Ron said, shaking his head. “Monty here won’t wake up anytime soon.”
Kim walked over and looked at the man she’d just put down. It shouldn’t have been a knockout blow even, much less something like this. Something strange was going on here, that much was for sure.
The beeping of her Kimmunicator tore her out of her revery. “What’s the sitch, Wade?”
The young computer genius appeared on the small screen, sipping from a soft drink.
“Just wanted to let you know that a GJ prison transport will be at your location soon. I assume Monkey Fist has gone down?”
“Gone down and down hard,” Ron enthused. “KP really knocked him for a loop this time. She broke his jaw.”
“Uh, congratulations?” Wade said, not quite sure what to say. Kim wasn’t normally one to hurt her opponents more than absolutely necessary.
“Not on purpose,” Kim replied indignantly. “It was an accident. He was about to jump just when I hit his chin and…”
“Uh, KP,” Ron interrupted her.
“What? I told you, I don’t know why he flew through the room this way, okay? I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.”
“KP,” Ron started again.
“It’s not like I like breaking people’s jaws, okay? I mean, yeah, Monkey Fist seriously got it coming, but still…”
“KP,” Ron yelled, startling her.
“What?” she asked.
“Uh, why are your hands glowing?”
Kim looked down at her gloved hands and, just as Ron said, there was something very strange happening to them. A slight, barely perceptible glow was surrounding both her fists. If not for the semi-darkness of the temple, she probably wouldn’t have noticed, but it was there.
A moment later the glow was gone.
“Was I seeing things?” Ron asked, blinking his eyes.
Kim flexed her hands in front of her face, looking them over from all sides. Nothing to it, just a perfectly normal pair of hands in her perfectly normal pair of gloves. No glow. Most definitely no glow.
“Must have been a trick of the light,” Kim mumbled, not really convinced.
“Yeah,” Ron agreed, though his voice put shame to the word. “Must have.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Kim said. “This place is giving me the creeps.”
“And the glow,” Ron added, following her.
“It was a trick of the light,” she restated, glaring at him.
“Uh… yeah, sure!”
Today:
Unfortunately a trick of the light it hadn’t been, she knew that now. One day after the fight with Monkey Fist she’d had cheerleader practice and, after a particularly nasty spat with Bonnie, she’d punched her locker door in frustration. The punch had left a sizeable dent in the door and, once again, her hand had glowed. Not for long, the glow had vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, but it had been there nonetheless.
And then, yesterday, she’d gone after Duff Killigan, who wanted to blow up the world-famous Sandwich golf course in England for denying him membership once again. Dodging exploding golf balls, she’d almost reached the kilted villain when she’d slipped and fallen on her butt. Moments later an armed golf ball had come speeding right toward her face, no time to evade it.
She remembered the adrenalin rush, the sharp jolt of fear that she might have messed up bad this time, remembered her hand shooting up to deflect the projectile as best she could…
…remembered the ball exploding against her glowing palm, leaving nothing but a scorched glove and a perfectly healthy and undamaged hand behind.
Killigan had been so astonished that Ron managed to sneak up behind him and knock him out without much fuss. Rufus was by her side in an instant, the naked mole rat concerned that she was injured. Ron was only a few steps behind him. They were both rather surprised to see her without a scratch on her.
And rather weary at seeing her hand glow again. Brighter than the first times, too.
“Okay, KP,” she remembered Ron saying. “That is most definitely not a trick of the light.”
He was right, of course. Something very strange was going on. Kim wasn’t an idiot, it was just that sometimes she didn’t really want to see things that were right in front of her face. Such as glowing hands. Anyway, she couldn’t deny it any longer. She had serious glowing hand issues. Issues that needed to be dealt with before her glowing hands did nastier stuff than breaking villain jaws and deflecting exploding golf balls.
Coming back to the whole rational thinking thing, though, left her with a very uncomfortable conclusion to her glowing hand issues. She had, after all, seen glowing hands of this sort before. Sure, the glowing hands she had seen in the past had glowed a different colour than hers -which appeared to glow white- but did colour really matter?
No, what mattered was that something was very wrong with her and she needed to figure this out. She was the girl who could do anything and anything most certainly included stopping her hands from glowing. At least she hoped it did.
Figuring she needed an expert on glowing and knowing but two possible sources for said expertise, she immediately decided upon the more preferable of said sources.
“Wade, I need a ride to Go City.”
TO BE CONTINUED