Shego sat in the the command center, feet up on the console in front of her, hand over her eyes in frustration.
Both Donovan and Theo perched nervously in chairs across the console from her, both fighting the urge to bolt. But Shego had insisted on “clarifying” the after action reports since Kim took over.
“Let me get this straight. You parachuted onto a moving train, at night, from less than five thousand feet, with twenty henchman. You then proceeded to disable the entire security contingent, bypass the security alarms and lockouts, take the enriched uranium containers, and leave. You did this without once tripping an alarm or otherwise alerting anyone else on the train to your presence…” she glared at them “…and all without a single injury?”
Donovan opened his mouth and shut it several times before settling for a nod and a sidelong glance at Theo, who grunted.
“Well, Davidson DID sprain his wrist climbing the rope ladder to the hovercraft.”
Shego rolled her eyes. Theo had just confirmed Kim's report. It was all there in black and white…with CHARTS for goodness sake. Every last damn one of them…resources invested, time, profit. Even BONUS recommendations.
And she wanted to throw the entire pile, and not a few henchmen to boot, out of the highest window she could find.
She tossed the folder onto her “finished” pile and picked up the next.
Dr. Kay watched as Shego worked herself up into a froth. When she saw green flames begin to curl around her arms, she waved for Shego's attention.
“Shego, I'd suggest a, um, slight change of pace before you fry both of us.”
Shego looked down at the flames beginning to curl around her fingers.
“Heh. Maybe you're right.”
“I've got some video footage that might go a long way to explaining some things.”
Shego harrumphed. “Really Doc, home movies? You KNOW what I did to Drakken when he mentioned home movies, right?”
Theo waved her hands hurriedly. “Nononono…these are some videos of Kim that I believe you need to see now, rather than get, uhm, surprised later.” She winked conspiratorially and twitched in Donovan's direction.
“Ooookay then. Meet me this afternoon in Dr. Kay's lab with the new organization proposals.”
After he left, Shego linked her arm with Theo's and leaned in close.
“This had better be worth my time doc. I need more time to plan and set up Kimmie's coming home surprise.”
Theo closed her eyes before she spoke.
“Oh, believe me, it's worth every minute of your time.”
Shego stared at the sill image on the screen in shock. The camera had managed to catch Kim's face as she executed, what looked like to Shego, a one handed cartwheel backflip tuck-and-roll maneuver. It was absolutely serene in the face of the surreal ease with which she seemed to weave and flow through the near deadly laser grid Kim had reprogrammed to be somewhere near, according to Theo's estimate, level twenty five.
Theo had hundreds of hours of tape on Kim working out in the various training rooms. Shego had been watching non-stop for the last day and a half, after Theo had shown her the tape of Kim's first use of her powers to literally destroy the long succession of security drones.
The absolute horror of what was she was seeing had slowly sunk in over the hours she spent watching Kim defy reality, physics, and (apparently) all natural order.
All thoughts of her planned reunion had fallen away, replaced with mounting alarm as Shego's brain began to work out the horrible uses to which Kim's powers could be put.
Between this, and old memories coming to the fore of her mind, she shook like a leaf in a windstorm.
Theo watched as Shego began to tremble, then fidget, then move into shaking so bad it was near-convulsive.
She had been napping through Shego's video “education”, waiting for the inevitable reaction to set in.
Now it was.
Shego folded her arms and hugged herself to try and stop the tremors after Theo had turned off the monitor.
When she had calmed down enough, she found a spot on the wall and started asking questions.
“Did I do this to her when I healed her after…”
Theo shook her head and then realized Shego wasn't looking at her.
“No. I don't think so. If you had done this I think her powers would be a shadowy form of yours.”
Shego nodded. “You said she was glowing white when we both came out of the chamber.” She rolled her head to crack an eye to see Theo's reaction.
Theo rolled her lips a few times before she answered, completely missing Shego's eyes slitting.
“Yes, but it was a greenish white. Nothing like that pure white or ghostly white she's exhibiting now.”
Shego could smell the half truth of her statement and stilled herself.
“Then how do you explain it Theo? Her DNA isn't twisted like mine, or the rest of my…” she snorted “…family. You showed me the test results yesterday.”
The pitch, and it's a curve. Does the batter see it and swing away?
Theo grimaced, so caught up in trying to deflect Shego from continuing the questioning she wasn't paying attention to Shego slowing moving closer.
“Well, she, more than any other person outside of you and your, ah, family, has been exposed to the comet radiation. She fought you on nearly a weekly basis, plus the months you've been sharing the same bed.”
Shego stopped and grinned ferally. Foul-tip. Time for the heat.
“So you're sure that it's from exposure to comet radiation then? Then how do you explain the power and precision control she has over her powers? It took us years to develop that fine tuned control.” Pitch on the way.
Theo began to sweat. Shego was leading her somewhere she really didn't want to go.
“Well, she did handle that rock your brother sent…and she is Kim Possible. She can do anything she sets her mind to doing.” Swing and a miss.
Shego smirked and finished her stalk behind Theo's chair, while Theo herself held her head in her hands, staring at the top of her desk.
“Before you go on, there's something you should know.”
Theo jumped when Shego hissed into her ear. She knew she was on thin ice.
“W-What's that, Shego.”
“That the comet exploded on impact. The piece you saw Kim handle was one of the only green glowing pieces we could find. We picked them all up and each of us had our own collection of pieces for our power colors. Green for me, purple for Mego, red for Wego…you get the idea.”
Theo was visibly sweating now. She started to shake in her seat.
“You don't say? Well, I'm glad Team Go kept your pieces then.”
Shego gripped Theo by the shoulders and squeezed.
“You're missing the point…Doctor.” Theo tried to jump and bolt, but Shego held her down as she continued. “I said we collected ALL the glowing pieces we could find. We found blue, red, purple, and green of course.”
Theo twitched, held, but quipped “Of course.” She winced as Shego squeezed harder.
“But I bet you didn't realize we had found other colors.” Theo tried to bolt again and this time Shego picked her up bodily and slammed her onto her back on the top of her desk and shoved her face close to Theo's.
“We found yellow and orange. We also found a black pulsating piece that made all of us dizzy.” Theo winced as Shego punctuated each color with a squeeze and a jerk.
“We found one other small chunk…we had to get the barbecue tongs after Hego touched it and we watched him be blown backwards into the neighbor's garage with such force that it was leveled and left Hego unconscious. Care to guess…” Theo gasped as Shego's hands lit.
“…which…” Flare. Scream.
“…color…” Flare. Scream.
“…it…” Flare. Scream.
“…was?” Flare. Scream.
“I c-c-can't.” Theo sobbed.
Shego threw her to the floor before taking up her seat again.
“Let me guess, GJ has the other comet debris, right?”
Theo looked up at the bottoms of Shego's feet and nodded.
Shego leaned over and asked “How old was she?”
Theo looked away, hoping to avoid answering. A rough nudge from Shego's boot made her answer.
“Nine. She was nine.”
“Keep talking.”
“You never wondered why GJ never interfered? Why they always watched?”
Shego snorted again. “I've known you worked for GJ since you picked me up in that bar and we went back to your place together. Spill.” The “or else” was implicit.
“It was called Project Hemera. GJ had seen what the comet did for you and your brothers and had watched you slowly go evil. They needed to counter you once they learned that your brothers were too terrified to ever act to stop you. Project Hemera was born.”
Shego's raised hands burst into flame, cutting her off.
“GJ did this to Kim?”
Theo waved her arms. “No! You have to let me finish. You see, GJ quickly figured out that the comet fragmented. Most of it's mass was consumed on impact, turning to radiated energy that made you and your brothers the way you are today. As you said, you only found the barest of leftover chunks of your own colors and precious little else. The OTHER large fragment landed in the middle of a man-made lake in Wisconsin and was INTACT. GJ salvaged it at the same time you were being treated.”
Shego motioned for her to continue.
“Top scientists worked for years to figure it all out. Remember the rolling blackouts? That happened because they finally got a reaction from the black chunk. Energy sink. Orange turned out to be matter transportation, but it was never powerful enough for anything useful. The scientists reasoned that you had to be caught in an energy burst to get the full effect.”
Shego grunted and poked her again with her foot. “Yellow?”
“Yellow turned out to be pyrokenetic. Again, nothing more than the barest of ability.”
“And white?”
Theo closed her eyes.
“White. Best we could come up with was causality. It had a Heisenberg effect on all our instruments. We could see it, but detect nothing, or our equipment overloaded and we couldn't localize where the problem was coming from. We never could figure out what the effect truly was. You ever read comic books?”
Shego stopped short of reaching for Theo at the total non sequitor. “I had four brothers, what do you think?”
“I'll assume you read Captain America? THAT was Project Hemera. A carefully screened and trained GJ agent would be artificially bombarded with comet radiation, emerging as the final line of defense if ever Team Go turned as you did.”
Shego had her finger up in a gross parody of Marvin the Martian when things began to fall in place.
“Nana Possible. Nana Possible used to work for GJ, she used to be one of their top agents. Her retirement was never understood. She was to be the next Director, until another agent could accumulate enough field experience to take over…but Betty got the job early.”
Theo nodded.
“Nana Possible. Her family was visiting and she was giving her granddaughter a tour. Apparently, she got wind of the coup Betty was about to launch and made sure she inherited a broken command. By the time security was able to get down to the Hemera level, it was over. The remaining comet fragments had been consumed. Kim Possible became Project Hemera.”
Shego flopped back into her chair as Theo continued.
“They ran every test they could think of on little Kim, trying to elicit any sort of response. When one of the scientists got a bit, um, overeager, he managed to do something to Kim that made her lash out. He nearly died. That's when the cover up began. All traces of Project Hemera were hidden. The scientists were stationed in remote posts. And one former Director was retired after getting Kim to forget what had happened.”
“Ever since then, GJ has been watching and waiting. Did you know that they actually consider her a larger threat to humanity than you? The marine officer that carries the football? Nuclear attack plans aren't the only thing in that briefcase.”
“But Kim never showed one inkling of remembering, not one flare of power. Ever. Until she nearly died and you brought her back.”
Shego nodded to herself and asked “But?”
“But…the day little Kim Possible emerged from the Hemera chamber…”
Shego kicked Theo in the side, eliciting a groan. “What?”
“Green Shego. Her hands glowed green.”
Theo looked at where Kim had curled up on another cot, facing the wall. She had seen the play of emotions writhe across her face as she recounted the conversation with Shego about what had happened to her ten years ago.
As she was pondering where to pick the story up again, Kim started talking.
“I wasn't supposed to remember you know. Nana and all those people were so insistent that I shouldn't be able to remember. But I did. When I saw Shego light up for the first time it almost knocked the wind right out of me. I wanted to know more, to understand. But she was a villain, working for an idiot madman intent on taking over the world and I was the hero. There was no way it was ever going to happen that I would get to talk to her.”
“Then I got careless. I'll never forget that living hell that Shego pulled me from. But it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. I never would've found out who I was, who she was…things I never expected to feel. And now to hear this, that I'm an accident, an aberration. That my own government sees what I do, what I did, and thinks I'm the monster.”
“I don't know what to think or be or do any more.”
Kim uncurled and sat up, stretching her arms.
“So be it.”
Kim literally shook with suppressed rage as she stood in front of the hangar doors of the now-ruined lair, staring at the obscene display obviously put up for her benefit.
She and Theo had spent the better part of the last 18 hours digging through bloated piles of corpses, making their way to every room that would've withstood the nerve gas attack, searching for anyone left alive. The protective gear she wore only necessary to keep out the stench.
When they had reached Central Control, Kim had activated the biohazard beacon signal, warning future occupants to stay away.
They had found Marsten alive, but unconscious, inside an unused mutation lab. After Theo revived him, Kim sent him back to the nearest pickup point via the last intact escape vehicle. He carried with him the proof needed to get whoever did this barred from further support from the remainder of the villainous community. Whoever had done this had crossed the line with the nerve gas.
After finding no one else, both Kim and Theo retrieved what they could and made their way out to the hangar.
Kim had already set the self-destruct when they opened the doors and found this…this THING sitting in front of the base.
Theo briefly caught a glimpse of Kim's face as she turned away and began trudging the half mile or so to Shego's emergency escape hovercraft. The rage, anguish, and fury slammed into her like a blow to the sternum before she could look away. She had only ever seen that intensity in one other person, right before she had literally ripped a person limb from limb. She knew what Kim could do…had spent innumerable hours watching.
She wasn't much of a religious person, but she thanked God and whatever other deities were listening that she wasn't on the other end of that fury.
Kim snarled and turned towards the road.
“In or out?”
Theo never hesitated. “In.”
They both began walking, leaving the obscenity to be wiped away with the imminent destruction of the lair.
Until that happened, the sightless eyes sunken below the stylized triple-S brand on the rotting forehead of Dr. Drakken, sitting atop a metal rod driven into the ground would haunt her memory.
The tattered green and black jumpsuit that adorned the top of the display snapped wildly in the sudden wind.