Kim limped into Middleton while wondering what she should do. Should she return to her mentor or go home? Either way she was going to be in trouble considering how she looked. She had just been in a difficult fight with a green-skinned woman whose name she did not catch, but she had almost caught a lot of plasma that the woman was using. She had minor burns and she knew that she was going to have some bruises from the places that she had been hit with fierce blows. But, she had given it much worse than she had gotten it, which she thought was good.
The redhead decided to go home. It would delay her punishment that was sure to come. Her mother might be there to offer up some medical attention, which she needed. She guessed that if her mother was not there then she would handle things herself. As long as she got her injuries looked at before the yelling started, she supposed that would work. She entered the house and three voices called her name as soon as she stepped in. Damn it.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Kim replied. Great, she was going to get busted by her parents and her tutor all at the same time. That was just great.
“Where have you been?” Doctor Director demanded to know as she and the doctors Possible came out to scold Kim in a team.
“What happened to you?” Kim’s mother inquired in a tone of confusion mixed with disbelief as soon as she caught sight of her daughter. The last time that it was obvious that Kim got into a fight was when the girl was seven.
“Funny story that,” the teen replied with an uncomfortable smile that let everyone know that the story was far from funny.
“Perhaps you’d like to fill us in after you get those wounds looked at,” Doctor Director stated.
Kim did not argue; there was no reason for her to do so. Her mother walked off and got the first-aid kit. The Possible family first-aid kit was a little bigger and better equipped than other first-aid kits considering that Kim was training to be a field agent and the twins, well, they just liked to blow stuff up. The kids of the house did not get regular, little injuries.
Missus Possible worked on Kim while making note of the wounds on her daughter. It looked like she had claw marks on her along with minor burns. She wondered what Kim had gotten into because she never came home with so many claw and burn marks. There was the occasion when she got hit in her training room or Bonnie got in a lucky hit, but not to the extent that she was seeing.
“Kimmie, what happened?” the elder redhead inquired.
“I had fun,” Kim answered as if she was amazed.
The teen was not used to getting so banged up in a fight anymore. Sure, when she was little, she used to get her butt handed to her on a daily basis, but that hardly occurred anymore. When she fought people, they were able to hit her a few times, if any at all. Shego had landed a lot more than a few hits and her plasma had caused problems, even though it had not touched the redhead. Just being near that plasma had given her the burns that she had.
Once Kim was bandaged, she and her mother went to the living room where Doctor Director was waiting with Mister Possible. Everyone sat down. The Possible doctors took the sofa, the one-eyed leader took the loveseat, and Kim said on the ottoman of the armchair.
“Kim, Doctor Director tells us you disappeared from training this afternoon,” James Possible commented in a firm voice to let his daughter know that she was in trouble, as she suspected.
“I did,” the teen admitted.
“Where’d you go? You weren’t off meeting some boy, were you?” her father inquired.
“No, Dad, no definitely not,” Kim replied. No boy would be able to match the fun that she had with the organization’s sworn enemy. Well, James was appeased with that answer and really did not need to know anymore. He did stick around because it would look bad if he left in the middle of reprimanding the teen.
“Then where’d you go?” Doctor Director asked.
“I went to Middleton Forest,” the young redhead confessed in a mumble, hoping that they would mistake her words for something else. Forget the fact that they would ask her again if they did not understand what she said.
“You went where?!” the two older females hollered. James seemed totally fine now that he knew that his daughter was not out with some boy and she could almost say anything and he would not react as wildly as the two ladies in his company.
“Middleton Forest,” Kim muttered again.
“What have I told you about that place?” Doctor Director demanded to know.
“I shouldn’t go in there for any reason because if something happens to me nobody would be able to do anything about it,” the teen replied in a grumbling tone. She felt like she was seven again because that was when she was told not to go into Middleton Forest by her tutor.
“That’s right. That area is open to anything. If you were killed there, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about,” the brunette woman stated. That place was a lawless piece of property just working as a border between their organization and WEE’s headquarters. It was like being in international waters.
“But, I wasn’t killed,” Kim pointed out. In fact, she felt rather live out there, dodging those blazing hands bent on her destruction.
“You look close enough to it,” her mother chimed in.
“You think I look bad? You should see the loser,” Kim boasted. Hey, she was not modest more often than not. She was just selfless.
“The loser? Who did you fight?” Doctor Director asked curiously.
“I don’t know. She wasn’t wearing a nametag and it slipped my mind to ask with the way I was dodging her flaming fists and wondering why she could still stand up after I hit her with my century attack,” Kim explained. Her “century attack” was what she called her assault of a hundred hits in a minute.
“Flaming fists?” the one-eyed woman echoed.
“Yeah, she could ignite her hands. She did it all the way up to her elbows,” the teen redhead replied.
Betty had an idea of who it was that Kim faced in combat. She was stunned that the teen had won the fight. After all, the woman that she had gone against could take down teams of GJ agents and usually did until she just got bored with beating up those she considered “weaklings.” Some agents referred to her as “the fire beast,” but Betty knew that the name she went by was Shego. She was not even sure if that was the woman’s real name.
“Listen, Kim, you are to never go into those woods again and if you were see that woman, you run,” Doctor Director ordered.
“Why?” Kim asked in a curious tone. “I won,” she pointed out. She won, like always, but it was different from every other fight that she ever had. She felt a rush of excitement, which was what she always expected from a fight, but never got. She got that rush for the first time against her opponent earlier and she would love to get it again.
“Don’t press your luck,” Betty told the girl.
There were too many things that could go wrong with Kim battling against Shego. The first one being that Kim could end up critically injured. Shego did not have a habit of killing opponents, but she did make sure to change their lives forever. Kim was good, but it was a hard to believe that she would be able to best someone like Shego twice. The last thing they needed or wanted was for Kim to be crippled for life.
“Yes, ma’am,” Kim huffed.
“And now, let’s move on to your punishment for skipping practice, not telling anyone where you were going, and going into the forest,” her mother said.
Kim dropped her head in defeat, but she really did not care. That fight had been worth it. It fulfilled a craving that she had for a long time. It was well worth any punishment that she was going to have.
Shego hobbled back into Go City and hoped to Hell that no one important saw her in such a state. She had never looked so beaten up in all of her life. Her appearance did not even do the ass-kicking that she received justice. It was a good thing that she could take a lot of damage and that she healed quickly.
She returned to her home and inspected herself in a full body mirror that she usually used to check her form when she was practicing her fighting. She was bruised, mostly in those key areas that kid seemed to enjoy tagging. That kid was quick and precise. She had hit areas that would have brought most other people to their knees, but Shego was nothing like most other people.
She decided to go soak in a hot bath for a few hours to take the pain away. She could not believe that girl had bested her using plain kung-fu. She had not used any special power or even some special technique. It was all just her body as a weapon.
“I can’t believe I lost to a brat that didn’t even have to pull out her secret weapon,” the pale woman groaned as she sank into the hot water of her ground level, curricular bathtub.
She could not believe that she had run away like a coward. She just did not have any interest in dying and the way that kid fought, she could have seen that in the cards. Sure, the kid might have been one of those goody-goody Global Justice lackeys, but they were not all so wholesome. Some of them did have a touch of evil inside, which they tried to justify when they were caught being like the enemy.
Shego personally did not kill. She had some piece of a conscience left deep in her mind and would rather not compromise the few morals that she did have for a buck. She was not a whore, after all.
She winced as she settled into the tub. Everything was so sore and just throbbing. That pest had some fast hands that hit harder than they should have in her opinion. That kid could not be over a hundred pounds, yet her attacks felt like being hit with a speeding train. Some part of Shego was actually impressed with the kid.
How could she not be impressed? She had been beaten by the brat, after all. Well, not really beaten, but forced to retreat. Had the battle continued on and she got battered with a few more of those lightning fast attacks, she might have actually been beaten. That kid might have been able to leave her lying in the forest, suffering from internal injuries like never before even if the kid did not kill her outright.
A picture of the kid’s eyes flashed through her mind. She had never seen eyes quite like them before. They were little more than a dull green, but there seemed to be more. There was like a sparkle of gold in them and they seemed to declare that no one would or could defeat her. Even when she was hitting the girl, that look never vanished from her eyes. The kid did not seem to believe that she could have been the loser.
“I’ll show that kid a thing or two,” Shego silently vowed. She was not looking to take a loss to her record with a spoonful of sugar.
The fight had been amazing, though. She quietly admitted that she had gone out and found what she was looking for. She had been sick of tearing up robots, drones, and other WEE agents. It was a refreshing change to have an opponent that could land a hit. Of course, the fact that Kim landed over a hundred hits bothered her, though.
How could that kid possibly be that fast? She should have been able to get out of the way of many of those hits, but it seemed like by the time that she realized that she was being tagged, the brat was almost done with the attack. It was uncanny. Maybe speed was the girl’s secret weapon, but her speed did not seem unnatural. It was incredible, yes, but not to the point where that might have been her special power.
She sighed and rotated her shoulder. It was sore, but that was more her fault than that kid’s doing. She had ignited her arms for longer than she was used to. It was not often that she got to do something like that and she usually only did it in practice. Typically, her hands being covered in plasma was enough for her to take down any number of opponents, but for that brat, she had gone further. It was a pleasant change.
“She was different. What the hell was that kid’s deal?” Shego wondered.
The pale woman soaked in the tub for a couple of hours. When she got out, she went to her bookshelf to look for some reading material. She had files on GJ like any other WEE agent did. She wondered if that pipsqueak was in the book and she hoped that she could learn something about the kid.
(New day)
Kim was putting all of her practice to use and doing the one thing that she had never done before in her life, she was avoiding her mentor. She was supposed to be doing her “light” practices. She was still sporting her minor injuries from her fight with that WEE agent and Doctor Director claimed that she was trying not to push Kim too much, but the redhead was not really buying that considering yesterday she had been left to do pushups in a handstand position with weights tied to her legs. Light practice just meant that she would not be in her training room nearly getting killed by all of the traps.
At the moment, she was hoping to make it to the library in the main building without running into Doctor Director. She was curious about the woman that she fought the other day, the one that she had dared make her doubt that she might beat when they had been going at it. She might have been able to let it go, but the way her tutor had reacted when she described the woman that she fought made that next to impossible now. She had to know about that woman.
Doctor Director had made it seem as if she was the lucky one when her opponent escaped. She was certain that she won that battle because her opponent had run away, but it seemed that her tutor thought things should have gone differently. It seemed like she should have been the one running away with that woman hot on her heels, looking to do unspeakable things with that plasma of hers.
Kim slipped into the library unseen. She was going to have to look through the paper files because she knew that if she accessed a computer file, her mentor would find out about it within the minute. She did not want Doctor Director to know about what she was doing at all because she was contemplating maybe going back into that forest. She might want to fight with that woman again, even if it meant that she would be the one running the next time.
She was aware that she had a lot of files to go through if she wanted to find one WEE agent and she was not going to have a computer to narrow down the search for her. Going through paper files was best when one had a name to go by and unfortunately for her, her opponent had not been sporting a nametag or something to that effect. She began looking anyway.
The redhead did not make it far into her search as she heard people asking around for her because Doctor Director was looking for her. She returned to her mentor and her “light” exercises, but when she got the next spare moment, she was right back at the library. That persisted for a few days before she had to go to school and she had to put off her search for that day.
“Hey, K.P,” Ron greeted Kim as he saw her in the hallway. “You didn’t tell me you were coming to school today,” he commented.
“Oh… I forgot,” she answered. She had been so preoccupied thinking about that woman that she had not even called her friends to see if they would be in school.
“Wow, Doctor D must be working you really hard to make you forget about that,” he remarked.
“Not really,” Kim replied. She was still on “light” practices, even though she was not longer sporting her bruises or burns.
“Not really? It would be the first time. You should try my workout schedule,” he joked.
“The one that doesn’t exist?” she remarked.
“Exactly.”
Kim laughed and everything seemed normal. Then she heard Bonnie calling her name for their usual tussle. Maybe that was what she needed, Kim considered. Maybe one of her usual fights would make her see that her fight with that woman had not been so special, even though Doctor Director made it seem like a big deal.
Kim followed Bonnie to the gym as usual and Bonnie charged into her cat form. Kim got into her fight stance and Bonnie came at her like she always did. As Kim avoided the strikes, she realized that her opponent in the forest had been faster than Bonnie, even though Bonnie was built for feline-like speed. Her other opponents reaction time had been faster too. The other opponent knew how to guard better while being on the offensive too. If Kim wanted to, she could easily crush Bonnie’s insides with a move like her century attack.
Fighting with Bonnie after fighting that woman, it was like comparing a rock’s flight to an eagle soaring. It was actually boring. Kim felt like she was wasting her time on Bonnie and not like she usually felt about it either. It was something different, something that made her catch Bonnie’s hands to halt her slash attacks.
“I don’t feel like doing this anymore,” Kim told Bonnie and she flung the mutant girl away from her.
“What do you mean?” Bonnie demanded to know as she maintained her balance and stayed on her feet.
“Just what I said,” the redhead replied as she started to leave the gym.
“Hey, don’t walk away from me, Possible!” Bonnie ordered.
“Later, Bonnie,” Kim said, knowing that the girl would not attack her back, even though her feline instincts begged that she do just that.
Bonnie did not want to beat Kim because she had caught the redhead when her back was turned. People would talk about it not being a real victory and Bonnie wanted everyone to see that she was better than Kim was. She was going to be beat Kim face to face, so that there would be no doubt as to who was superior.
Kim exited the gym and the whole school for that matter. She had an itch that she needed scratched and she suspected that the only person who could do that for her had green skin and plasma. She needed to fight that woman again. Was it luck that prevailed or had she won soundly? She needed to know.
The redhead wandered back into Middleton Forest and seemed to go where she faced on with Shego automatically. She expected to just see signs of their battle, the forest baring the scars of their attacks. But, she was surprised.
“I figured you’d come back,” Shego commented. She was sitting on the fallen log that she had tried to shoot Kim off of days ago.
“You.” Kim actually smiled.
“Yeah, me. I figured you’d come back here sooner or later. It was a nice dance, after all,” the pale woman remarked.
“I guess,” the redhead agreed.
“You know and that’s why you came back. You want to dance again, don’t you?” Shego inquired.
“Well, I’m not opposed to the idea,” the petite redhead answered lightly. She even shrugged to try to downplay it all.
“You must not want to live a long life,” the emerald-eyed woman remarked with a smirk. It would seem that her confidence had not wavered, even though she had been forced to flee their last encounter.
“I’m not the one that ran away last time,” Kim pointed out.
“You surprised me, that’s all. Don’t get full of yourself, brat,” Shego replied.
“Just stating facts.”
“If that’s the case, how about you tell me your name,” the fire-starter requested. She had gone through all of the records that she could and found out nothing about Kim. It seemed that the kid either was not very important at GJ or was a well-hidden secret. She was leaning toward the latter because someone that could make her run off had to be important to her organization.
“I’m Kim. And you are?”
“They call me Shego.”
“They call you?” Kim echoed. It seemed like she was not getting a real name when the older woman put it that way.
“Yeah, that’s what they call me. So, what do you say we hop to it?” Shego suggested as she dropped down from the tree.
“Sounds like music to my ears,” Kim replied as she crouched down into her fighting stance.
“Then let’s dance already,” Shego replied.
Next time: the pair continue to back and forth with each other.