Kim had to take being scolded six different times and those did not even include Shego, who was waiting patiently for her turn; it was enough to scare the crap out of Kim. Her parents, her brothers, Ron, and Doctor Director reprimanded her for going out into the epic battle between the WEE agents and the GJ agents, even though it was clear that she was not totally healthy yet. Shego was going to chew her up and spit her out, though. Well, at least they won the battle, she thought.
The battle itself was very weird. There were hundreds of dragon-users in the WEE ranks thanks to DNAmy copying Kim’s dragon. The thing was that DNAmy had not done the best job. The dragon-users were not accustomed to their new powers and burned out easily. Also, their dragons just were not that strong. Currently, everyone was also finding out that the synthetic dragons did not last; many of them had already faded from the users and were totally gone. DNAmy herself had been caught miles away from the battle by some GJ agents assigned to capturing her; she had several outstanding warrants on her and was in prison at the moment right with every single person that she created a dragon for.
Monkey Fist had been with DNAmy, so he was caught too; they had been talking about the future of WEE. There did not seem to be any future for WEE as Gemini was locked up again in an even more secure and isolated cell than before. With all of the WEE plotters in custody, GJ was allowed to do interrogations and GJ had ways of making people talking, mostly through telepaths and hard-working truth serums.
The weirdest thing about the battle was not the fighting itself, but the person that showed up to save all of the GJ agents, who had been getting handled quite well by all of the WEE dragon-users. The savior of the day was someone that should not have even been alive, but was quite well and good. The original dragon-user, Mim Possible.
Mim had also surrendered herself rather peacefully to GJ when everything was said and done. She was currently waiting to be interrogated and possibly charged for crimes that she had allegedly committed a hundred years ago. She wished that they would let her talk with her family before hand, but the boss did not want her interacting with any of the agents, especially Kim.
The door to the room opened and Mim was not surprised to see Doctor Director walk in. The boss did not seem to pay Mim too much attention at first, but when she sat down, she easily looked the redhead in the eye. Mim was rather impressed with that because not too many people had ever been able to look right at her; there was just something about her that intimidated people and they never could figure out what it was. The leader of GJ knew what it was, though; it was that look of ultimate confidence, like Mim could take on gods and walk away laughing. It was a look that she was used to because of Kim, who happened to have the same look in her eyes most of the time.
“So, Mim, I can assume you know why you’re here,” Doctor Director said in a very professional tone.
“Probably interfering directly in GJ affairs,” Mim answered rather nonchalantly. She knew there was more to her little “visit” than that, though. She just preferred not to think about the other reason that she might be there and why she had been arrested.
“That and what happened a hundred years ago,” Doctor Director stated what the redhead did not wish to hear.
Mim could not help it; she glanced away, betraying the rule of never letting the enemy see her flinch immediately with that action. She hated even thinking about back then and what happened. The misery was still coiling around her insides like a constricting serpent, forever tightening and just waiting for break her into a trillion pieces. It was not that she wanted to forget what happened, but that it never happened at all. If only her powers could change the past, she often wished.
“Now, you can fill me on your side of the story and then you can fill me on why you’re still alive and if I believe you, we’ll see about how much prison time you’ll be getting,” Doctor Director commented coolly. She noted the blatant look away, but chose to ignore it for the moment.
Mim laughed a bit. “You remind me a lot of the director of GJ when I was here. He was a force to be reckoned with too. Didn’t take any guff from his agents and always seemed to be in control.”
“This isn’t the time to reminisce,” the brown-haired woman said, still sounding rather professional and not in the mood for any nonsense.
“Yet you want me to tell you a story of something that happened a hundred years ago,” the redhead pointed out. Apparently, she was a smart-aleck.
“Now would be a good time to start,” Doctor Director said seriously.
“I know the file says I’m a traitor and that I killed Jonathon Stoppable, but the file is very mistaken. I would never do such a thing. I couldn’t do such a thing. I loved that man with all my heart and my soul and that’s why what happened happened. When the fog covered our team, I could still see what was going on, but I didn’t react fast enough to save him. He was cut down by a mutant, we called them then. I don’t know what you call them now. You know, the folks that can change into animals. When I saw him fall, I lost all the control I tried to maintain over the years to keep the dragon inside of me from going insane, but this was too much for me. I don’t even know what happened after that, but I found out when GJ came hunting for me. I ran. I was scared. I was grief-stricken. I thought for a while that everything they said was true, that I had killed Jonathon because I couldn’t remember and they always told me that the thing inside of me was evil, was a demon. I went into seclusion after that and spent years cursing this thing inside of me, which didn’t do me much good,” Mim explained in a low voice.
The redhead did not look at Doctor Director as she spoke. She focused mostly to her left, gazing slightly at the speckled, tiled floor. There was an unmistakable sorrow in her eyes and in her voice as she spoke, especially when she mentioned Jonathon Stoppable. Oh, she missed that man. She spent so many nights damning herself for not being fast enough to save him. What good were all her powers if she could not save the man that she loved? She had always felt rather worthless since that day, useless to all the world since she had been useless to him.
“So, what you’re saying is that the enemies ambushed you with super-powered agents? I thought back then GJ was the only organization with such people,” Doctor Director commented, sounding as professional as ever more from habit than anything else. The tone was to keep prisoners from figuring out what was going through her mind, but it was a near impossible thing to do with Mim considering her powers.
“No one’s got a monopoly on people,” the redhead pointed out.
“Let’s suppose you’re telling the truth. I’m guessing you think you did your penance when you disappeared and never resurfaced.”
“Director, I could’ve saved the man I love, but I wasn’t fast enough. Do you think I’ll ever feel like I’ve done penance for that? Not to mention, I don’t even know how many lives I extinguished that day when I let the dragon rule over me and it leveled a forest along with a building full of people in it. Do you really think any amount of running away is going to make me feel any better?” Mim inquired, now looking at the boss with those same unnerving eyes that Kim had, eyes that were always gathering more information than anyone could ever imagine. But her eyes had something that Kim’s lacked; her eyes held regret, pain, and eternal sadness. There was nothing that she could ever do that would feel like she had atoned for her sins that day.
Doctor Director did not seem affected by the question. “All right. You ran away. And did what, found the secret to eternal youth?” she asked.
“My appearance and the fact that I’m still alive are due to the dragon energy that flows through me. I don’t use my powers at all for the most part, so they have to do something to ebb out of my system and run their course like any other power or body function. So, they mostly keep me alive and young, although after today, I’m feeling a little closer to my age than ever before,” Mim remarked with a bit of a laugh. She was used to making light of her dragon powers from when she used to talk about them, even though that had been very long ago. She was also trying to use humor to feel more comfortable with her whole situation now and to not have to think about that accursed night.
“Why did you come out today?” Doctor Director inquired.
“I could practically smell all of the new dragons in the air. I was more than bit curious as to what was going on with such a surge in what I know is a rare ability and then I saw what they were doing and figured I’d lend a helping hand. No thanks required,” the redhead teased with a smirk.
“You weren’t going to get any anyway. What have you been doing these hundred years?”
“Learning more about my dragon powers and nothing more. It’s been a long and lonely hundred years,” Mim commented, appearing sullen once again. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me visit with my family while I’m here,” she requested. Maybe she would be able to make some connections to the world again or at least find out that she was not totally hated by the people she was closest to as far as blood went. She hoped that they did not believe that she was a traitor.
“We’ll see,” Doctor Director answered, which got a smile out of the redhead. The boss tried not to contemplate the reaction to her indirect response. She wondered what reaction she had given to those eyes that made Mim smile, though.
“Anything else I can do for you?” Mim inquired.
“Tell me everything you can about the dragon.”
“This is going to be a long conversation then,” Mim remarked while leaning back in her chair.
“We both have time,” Doctor Director pointed out.
Mim did not argue that and invited the leader of GJ to butt-in with questions anytime that she felt necessary as the discussion got underway. Doctor Director had planned to do that anyway. Mim started to explain the basic principal of the dragon and it surprised Doctor Director to hear that it was actually more or less like every other power that a person possessed, on a very basic level though.
There were just a couple of things that set the dragon apart from other powers. The few things were rather complicated, like the fact that it fused with a person in a way that it seemed like the dragon-user did not have powers. It was just that the powers were ingrained in every bit of the person and it was also dispersed through the body, not clustered together in a region of the brain or in just certain cells for it to be easily found like other powers.
Another thing that set the dragon apart from other powers, aside for the number of abilities the dragon granted and the wild amount of raw power and energy that it offered, was that at an early stage in life the dragon connected with the whole brain of the person carrying the power and it was able to attached itself to a person’s consciousness. Through the connection, the dragon itself was able to develop its own consciousness to a certain degree and therefore become its own thinking entity, which was why it seemed to be separate being from the carrier when it was actually part of the carrier.
“Kim’s dragon claims to be a separate being,” Doctor Director said.
“So does mine. They don’t like to accept that they’re really just a part of us from what I can tell. Or maybe they just don’t believe it because they swear they can ‘think’ like the rest of us. Thank goodness mines sleeps most of the time now or it would have driven me mad a long time ago with this debate,” Mim commented with a little chuckle. She found the fact that her dragon could “think” and communicate was one of the few annoyances that came with the complex power.
“You talk about it as if it is a separate being, though,” the GJ leader noted.
“Well, it can think for itself, so to a certain extent it is a separate being. Typically though, all it does is offer up ways to use the dragon energy, which is the source of all of the dragon powers and sort of amplifies any normal human abilities. Other than that, it mostly remains quiet and dormant.”
“Tell me about this dragon energy. You said that’s what’s kept you alive all these years, right?”
“Yes. As I said, I don’t use my powers much, if any at all for the most part. Some things can’t be helped, like the dragon eyes are always going to a minimum extent. The aura tends to pop up instinctively if I’m about to suffer a minor injury, like from a trip or something. The unconscious things the energy does are there all the time. But, when I’m not using the powers, the energy is looking to run its course in some manner, so it’s slowly running its course by keeping my body functioning to the extent that you see.”
“If the dragon isn’t a separate being occupying your body, then how is it that it can take control of you?” Doctor Director inquired.
“It’s not that the dragon takes control. The problem for the most part is that the dragon is me. I get angry like any other person, which even when I didn’t know much about the powers wasn’t too much to concern yourself about. But, if I get too emotional, the dragon energy beams to life just like anything else in my body would. With me, my powers rage accordingly and as the file pointed out, it can be a horrible thing when that happens,” Mim answered.
“So, am I to believe that you have that problem totally under control?”
“For the most part, I should say so. It’s hard to compare it to anything as I have been living away from the world for the better part of a century. But, I’ve gotten angry every now and then as any person would, but the dragon doesn’t form. I don’t level cities. I just get angry, let it run its course, and then go about my day like a normal person would.”
“So, the dragon doesn’t form unless you want it to?” Doctor Director inquired, as it seemed that was what the redhead was implying.
“Only if I want it to now. It might have a consciousness, but its will is weak because it isn’t entirely a free-thinking being like you or me. Also because it gains its consciousness by latching onto my brain, it thinks like me for the most part, making it a smart-aleck much to my annoyance since I’m the only person it can talk to anyway. To me at this point, the dragon is like my hand. My hand only does what I want it to do. Sure, the hand doesn’t have sarcastic comments to go along with what I tell it to do, but it does it nonetheless. The dragon is the same,” Mim explained.
Doctor Director nodded. Mim seemed to be honest in everything that she was saying. The brown-haired woman leaned back in her seat and tried her best not move, lest she would give away her thoughts to Mim’s dragon eyes, although she was fairly certain that she had done that already. She had just been trying her best to betray very little to Mim’s delicate eyes.
“May I see my family now?” Mim inquired politely. “It’ll give you time to think on what you want to do without my staring at you, after all,” she added.
Doctor Director frowned; all she needed was another smart-aleck, she thought sarcastically. She dismissed Mim into the custody of Shego, who was still waiting to be debriefed much to her annoyance. Shego knew that Doctor Director intentionally kept her waiting longer than most agents, which was the case; it was revenge in Doctor Director’s opinion.
Mim was taken to the Possible residence to get to know her surviving family. She knew that they were curious about not only the fact that she was alive, but also if she was guilty of the crimes that circulated in whispers through generations. She really did not want to tell the story of what happened again, but she figured that if she could do it for Doctor Director, then she definitely could do it for fellow Possibles. Her family actually did not know if they should believe her or not until Kim spoke up.
“I hope you don’t run anymore. We Possibles should stick together. Best support group ever,” Kim remarked with a smile.
It seemed that Kim believed Mim and everyone present knew that it was fairly impossible to lie to Kim. She could just pick up any and all subtle hints to let her know that she was being told a lie. Shego did wonder if it was possible for one dragon-user to know how to fool another dragon-user, though; hey, she was a skeptical creature by birth.
“Kimmie’s right. You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want,” James offered Mim.
“Thank you very much. This is one of the few things that I really longed for over a hundred years,” Mim said. “I really missed having a family to turn to.”
“Don’t worry, in a couple of days, the tweebs’ll have you running back to the mountains,” Shego remarked. She knew that they got on her and Kimmie’s nerves whenever they were at the house.
“Hey!” Jim and Tim objected to that.
“I’m sure you two are fine,” Mim said to the boys with a warm smile. “Besides, I had brothers too. I know how they are.”
Everyone took time to get to know Mim while she was there. Kim occasionally glanced at Shego, who was glaring at her “roommate” most of the time. Kim gulped; she was probably going to be tied to the bed when they got home and forced to stay there until she was at a hundred percent and then she was still going to have to worry about Shego probably further punishing her in some unspeakable manner.
They were only together for a few hours before Mim was called back to GJ HQ. Shego had to escort her there; Shego knew that she was being given such orders to get on her nerves and it was working rather well. The pale woman glanced at Kim before leaving, which just caused Kim to gulp again; she was so dead.
“So, Shego, you and Kim seem rather close,” Mim commented, looking to make conversation as well as better understand the people around her without using her powers all of the time.
“Yeah, we’re going to be a lot closer later on because I’m going to put my foot up her ass,” Shego remarked. She was certainly going to teach Kim a thing or two about taking better care of herself, not to mention not worrying Shego to death by showing up to a battle of epic proportions when she not at full strength.
“You’re rather hostile toward her verbally, but your body language toward her is rather gentle,” Mim noted. She thought it was rather odd and she wondered why the green-skinned woman was like that.
“And this is your business how?” Shego inquired with a bit of an attitude. She did not want some stranger using crazy powers and discovering the full extent of her affections toward Kim. That was for Kim and for Kim alone to know in her opinion.
“I suppose it’s not. I’m just feeling out my environment and the people here. Are you and Kim…?” the redhead left the question open for her escort to fill in whatever she wanted.
“We’re roommates,” Shego answered.
Mim decided to accept that response. She did not know what to make of the answer, though. It was clear to her eyes that there was something much deeper there than roommates, so she was not sure why Shego would say such a thing, especially since Shego knew that Mim could not be fooled thanks to the dragon. She was aware that it was not shame or embarrassment that made Shego refer to her relationship with Kim as “roommates” and Shego was not offering up anything that explained her answer as far as body language with.
Mim never did get an explanation on the “roommates” answer. Shego was relieved of her duty of babysitting Mim when they got to the main building. Doctor Director took control of the redhead and Shego was dismissed for the day. She went right back to the Possible household to pick up Kim, who stalled in going home, but knew that it was inevitable.
“Okay, Shego, before you flip out on me,” Kim started to say as soon as they entered their apartment.
“No, no, no,” Shego interjected. “Go take a shower, get into your pajamas, and get into bed. I don’t want to hear anything from you about what you did today.”
“But—”
“No. Shower, pajamas, bed, now,” the pale woman ordered.
The redhead sighed; it would seem that she was back to being an invalid. She followed the orders to the letter and ended up in bed. A half-hour later, Shego joined her. They did not have to worry about dinner; they ate at the Possible residence. Kim hesitantly moved closer to Shego, not sure if she was going to be scolded or not once she finally made contact. She smiled just a little bit when she settled onto the green-skinned woman and was not reprimanded in any way for anything at all.
“Do you think Mim is going to be all right?” Kim asked curiously.
“She’s been okay for a hundred years. I don’t see why that should change just because a pain in the ass like Betty is on the case,” Shego answered honestly. She was pretty sure that Mim could take care of herself since she had been doing it over a century.
“She’s telling the truth, you know,” Kim commented.
“I figured as much when you welcomed her with open arms,” the plasma-user replied, trying her best not to sound like she did not care, even though she really did not care. Mim was not her relative, after all. She was just responding to the questions because Kim was the one posing them.
“Well, she is. I hope Doctor Director knows it too. I mean, she shouldn’t have to run anymore when she really didn’t do anything wrong, except for get mad over something that I think she was justified in getting mad over. She made a mistake, but she regrets it.”
“I don’t doubt you on that, Princess.”
“Well, I just hope Doctor Director understand that,” Kim said.
“Hey, she might be a pain in the ass, but she’s not stupid,” Shego pointed out.
“I guess you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. I’m always right,” Shego remarked. “Oh, and don’t think you’re off the hook, cupcake.”
Kim groaned; damn it, she thought that everything was going to be all right. She decided to just go to sleep, considering that things might be better in the morning. She did hope that everything worked out with Mim.
(Next day)
There was a knock at the door and Kim tried her best to jump up from the bed. Shego barked at her the second that she moved, which caused her to pout and then lean back into the pillows. Shego went to answer the door once she was certain that Kim was not going anywhere.
“Oh, so the eye-patch wearing pain-in-the-ass actually let you go?” Shego commented when she saw who was at the door. It was Mim. She was not surprised that the redhead was released, but she was a bit curious as to why Mim was at their front door.
“Apparently, she has a use for me,” Mim answered with a bit of a half-smile.
“I’m going to guess Kimmie’s involved since you’re here,” the pale woman stated.
“You’re right,” Mim said.
“Well, Kimmie’s not allowed to come out and play until next week. So, why don’t you go out and look around town and everything? Go spend sometime with the family and everything,” Shego suggested in a rather friendly tone. She did think that Mim needed such things after being isolated for a century over something that she did not even mean to do.
Mim laughed a bit. “Just roommates you say, huh?” she asked with a teasing expression. They were odd roommates then.
“That’s all we are,” Shego replied with a half-smile.
Mim laughed some more, but she did not object because she knew that Shego was quite serious about Kim not going anywhere until next week. She did inform Doctor Director that she was not allowed to do anything with Kim until next week and Doctor Director told her the same thing as Shego had. So, she did go look around town, to see how it changed in the past hundred years. She also went to spend time with her family, who welcomed her presence, which made her quite happy.
(New day)
Kim and Mim were in Kim’s special training room in GJ HQ’s main building. It was Kim’s first day of freedom after more than a week of Shego’s tyrannical reign where she could not leave the apartment. She and Mim were about to start a new routine that had been ordered by Doctor Director; Mim was going to teach Kim about the dragon and how to use the power to the best of her ability. It was something that Kim had needed for a long time, but no one had really been able to provide. Mim was glad to be of assistance, especially since she was helping her niece.
“So, how did Doctor Director come up with this idea?” Kim asked curiously, not that she was complaining.
“Well, after hooking me up to a bunch of machines to find out if I was telling the truth or not, she concluded I was being earnest and then she proposed this because she said that you never had a proper teacher,” Mim explained.
“She was my teacher,” Kim pointed out, defending Doctor Director from her own words.
Mim nodded to that; she had figured that Doctor Director was the one that taught Kim. She would not say that the woman did a bad job, but she was very limited in what she could do. That was part of the reason that she was rather eager to find out if Mim was telling the truth.
Before hooking Mim up to several different machines to find out if she was being earnest in her account of things, Doctor Director had tried to use telepaths, even though Mim told her that would not work. The dragon automatically blocked any telepathic links, even if Mim tried to let them in. It was a lot of resisting and even though the dragon’s will was weak, it persisted to the point of annoyance and Mim did not want to bother with it. She did have to put up with a lot of gloating from the semi-conscious entity after it kept out the telepaths.
“She thinks she failed you, not that she said that. You can just tell, though. She cares a lot about you and wants to make sure you don’t end up doing something you regret with all of this power, which I can understand. So, I’m hoping to help you to the point where using the dragon will be like walking and that way you never have to worry about something negative happening with your power…unless you want that something to happen anyway,” Mim said.
“I don’t want anything negative to happen,” Kim insisted quite sincerely. She never wanted to use her powers for something wrong.
“Then, let’s get to the lessons.”
Kim nodded. “Can I ask you one question before we get started?”
“Fire away.”
“Well, I heard about how the dragon powers are what’s kept you alive and young for all this time. I was wondering…is that going to happen to me too?” Kim asked curiously.
Kim did not want to live as long as Mim had. She did not want to watch everyone around her grow old and die. She did not want to be alive decades after everyone that she loved was gone. She imagined that it would be quite the hollow existence, which Mim would testify to.
“It shouldn’t,” Mim answered without a pause between them.
“No?” Kim said with hope.
“As long as you use the power, you should age just like everyone else. Like I’ve said to the lady in charge, this happened with me because I haven’t used my powers almost at all in the past hundred years. Once I mastered it, I stopped doing anything with the dragon. There was nothing for me to use the powers for. The dragon is just really incredible energy and it needs to run its course somehow. This is it running its course in me,” Mim explained while holding up her youthful hand.
“How long do you think that’ll happen with you?” Kim asked.
“I hope not too much longer. Well, maybe just a little longer. I would like to get to know my nieces and nephews,” Mim replied. Not only did she have Kim’s immediate family to get to know, but there were other Possibles all over that she wanted to get to know and that she wanted them to know that she was not a criminal or a demon like they thought.
Kim smiled. “I hope you’re around a little longer too. Maybe you can help me get out of trouble,” she remarked.
“Shego is quite the roommate,” the elder redhead noted, laughing a bit as she spoke.
“You have no idea,” Kim replied with an amused look on her face.
“Well, if you want, you can tell me about her while we work,” Mim said.
Kim nodded and proceeded to tell Mim about her relationship with Shego while Mim started the tutoring session. The pair already knew that they were going to get along quite well and they were both happy to be with each other. It was odd, almost like finding a kindred spirit. A kindred spirit that was not going to help her get out of trouble, Kim mentally remarked. She had to remember to stop worrying Shego because the consequences were killer, to her anyway.
Mim and Kim worked out twice a week. Shego did not say anything, even though it cut into her sparring time with Kim. Shego thought the tutoring was a good thing and she was happy that her lover was finally getting the help that she needed. It was a good thing that Doctor Director was reasonable and pragmatic. But, they all did remain alert; after all, now they had two dragon-users among them and plenty of people now knew about dragons. They had to be careful, but Mim and Kim were no fools and they were the original dragon-users. If nothing else, they had shown that the original models were the best.
The end.