Comet impact T minus 1 day, 6 hours, 5 minutes:
Despite her young age, Kim Possible, the girl who could do anything, had already seen more than her share of wonders. She had been all over the world, experienced both the wonders of nature and those of technology. She had seen the best of men and the worst. None of her experiences could have prepared her for what she was seeing now, though.
The rest of the crew of the flying saucer was struck speechless as well. Quite a few of them were seasoned veterans, people who had seen it all and not been impressed the first time, but never anything like this.
The comet filled the entire universe ahead of them as far as the eye could see. Its glowing mantle had turned into a solid wall they were flying towards (or away from, rather, as they were in the process of matching velocities) and only the tinted view screen saved their eyes from being blinded by the intense light it reflected.
It was gargantuan. Its size boggled the human mind. It blew all frames of reference. The mere thought that they were to fight something like this… it wasn’t an enemy one could punch. It didn’t have any malicious thoughts. It was an unstoppable force of nature, made all the more terrible by its complete and utter indifference to the lives it would destroy.
“Tell me again how we can do this, pumpkin,” Shego whispered. “Tell me we’ll make it!”
She tried, but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. This was too big, too powerful, too mind-numbingly vast to stop. It had all sounded so simple when the comet was nothing more than a big dot on a computer screen. But now…
“Kim, Shego, suit up,” Dr. Director barked at them, the spymaster noticing that the two young women were rapidly losing their confidence. “Time to blast this thing to smithereens.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shego muttered under her breath, but began suiting up regardless.
Kim followed suite, trying her best to keep her mind blank. No thinking about how big that thing really was! No thinking about all the lives that depended on them! Just go out and do it! You can do anything! Nothing to it!
Shego and her shared a look, then started walking towards the airlock.
Sixteen hours earlier:
Kim and Shego looked at each other as they stood out on the tarmac. Within minutes they’d have to board the saucer and take off for their date with destiny. These last few minutes, though, belonged to them.
Neither said anything at first.
“Come to a decision?” Kim finally asked, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
A decision, Shego mused. Here they were, less than two days away from the end of the world, and Kimmie wanted to know whether she’d made a decision.
For more than ten days she’d done her best to ignore what had happened between them. Had kept telling herself over and over again that there was nothing to it except some teenage hormones and the overwhelming feelings brought about by their meshing of energies. Shego had never had a gay thought in her life and certainly wasn’t in love with Kimmie Possible.
Then again, why was she finding it so hard to say so?
“What do you want me to say?” Shego asked, playing for time.
“Something? Anything?” Kimmie answered, giving her an imploring look.
“I’m not good at this,” Shego muttered.
“Usually you’re one of the most straight-forward people I know,” Kim told her. “You never had any trouble speaking your mind.”
“Yeah, well, usually I haven’t got any trouble making up my mind.”
Both women fell silent for a moment.
“I still mean it,” Kim finally said. “It’s not teenage hormones. And believe me, considering our past history, I, well…”
“You’re trying to say that if you’d had a choice you’d rather have fallen for anyone else but me, princess. Flattering, really. You do know how to charm a gal.”
Kim gave her a pout. “That is so not what I was going to say.”
“So what were you going to say?”
“I… hey, we are not talking about me here. I already spoke my piece. Now it’s your turn. We’re off to save the world in a minute and just in case we don’t make it I’d like an answer.”
Shego gave her a long look, letting all her confusion show in her eyes.
“Will you… I mean, would you maybe settle for a promise to talk about it afterwards? I won’t take off or anything.”
Kim gave her an exasperated look, followed by a small smile.
“Admit it, right now part of you is hoping we won’t succeed, just so you can weasel out of this.”
Shego smiled back. “A very small part, maybe.”
Kim sighed. “Okay, I guess that’s all I’m going to get right now. But I’ll hold you to that promise, Shego. No taking off afterwards. We will have this out.”
“I promise. We will.”
Kim and Shego stood on the outer hull of the flying saucer, magnetic boots making sure they didn’t drift off, space suits protecting them from the cold, hard vacuum. Shego could already feel her cells charging up at a vastly accelerated rate from the unfiltered sunlight hitting her.
“We might as well get this show on the road,” she muttered.
Kim just nodded, squatting down to put her palm on the saucer’s hull. “Okay, Will. Fire up the engines, I’m gonna soak up some energy.”
The saucer started to vibrate as Will Dhu put the engines at full burn. Normally this would have caused the saucer to shoot far ahead of the comet, but Kim was stealing the kinetic energy from it as fast as the engines could put it out. She had to be careful to keep it under control, otherwise she might steal too much and the saucer would come to a stop. With a comet travelling right behind them at fifty kilometres per second, that would be quit bad.
Kim started to glow a bright white. Shego, in turn, was starting to glow green. Both women were soaking up power as fast as they could, pushing themselves to their max, aiming to create a blast more powerful than anything they had ever done before.
“Stand ready,” Shego told the Wego twins. They were the most logical choice to aid them here outside the ship. The twins’ original bodies were still safely tucked away inside the saucer, but half a dozen dupes were out here with them, ready to pull them inside the moment they were done. If the worst happened and everyone outside the saucer perished, at least the twins would survive.
“Okay, I think I’m maxed out,” Kim finally said, glowing so brightly her shape blurred. The transparent space suit was holding so far, but there was no telling what would happen once they unleashed their joint blast.
“Hold on for a few seconds more, princess,” Shego told her. “I’m still soaking up some more rays.”
Holding that much energy inside her body was proving to be a very painful experience. The human organism was not meant to be used as a battery and the comet fragments in Kim’s blood were radiating with enough power to smash a mountain range to powder. She was holding it in, barely, trying not to think about what she might be doing to herself in the process.
Seconds passed into minutes and Kim was starting to fear she’d black out when Shego finally put her hand in his and brought with it the promise of sweet release.
“Okay, princess. Let’s do this!”
“Let’s!”
Hands joined, energies mingled, power intensified to near unimaginable levels. The saucer’s hull, built to withstand the rigors of space and atmospheric re-entry, barely managed to hold up against the building strain. Kim actually considered herself lucky that the comet was so big, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hit a small target right now. Her vision was blurry.
“Put everything into it, Kimmie,” Kim heard her mother’s voice over the com. “You, too, Shego! We all depend on you.”
“Smash that evil thing to pieces, little sister,” Hego chimed in.
“You can do it, Kim,” Ron insisted. “You can do anything.”
Neither was sure which of them started screaming first. Space ahead of them was nothing but light, the glow of the comet, the radiance of their powers, everything mixing together. The power in their bodies built, soaking up not only their respective sources of energy, but the power of the comet itself as it came closer.
To Kim and Shego it seemed as if their entire lives had been but a prelude to this moment of ultimate agony, ultimate ecstasy, the instant in which they were more powerful than anyone else had ever been or would be.
Then the power was finally released and a blazing beam of pure energy bridged the distance towards the comet in a heartbeat and speared it like the angry gaze of god itself.
Space itself seemed to vanish in a titanic explosion.
TO BE CONTINUED