Kim stood in the centre of Team Go’s training room and tried to concentrate on whatever it was that made her hands glow. The various members of the team had tried to explain to her how their powers worked, but the problem was that they all used them in very different ways.
Having had Hego’s powers once upon a time, Kim initially tried to use her Go Glow, wherever it had come from, the same way she’d used Hego’s. Only that didn’t work. Whatever was happening to her right now, it was something different. And the methods, mantras, and techniques Mego and the Wegos used didn’t work for her, either, it seemed.
Seeing as the glow had so far appeared only in the middle of combat situations (or when she was seriously ticked off), everyone decided that a trip to Team Go’s combat simulator might be in order. Ron, of course, found the idea of a combat simulator incredibly cool and was kind of bummed out at not being allowed inside for now.
“Ready?” a voice asked from the loudspeakers. Ron had joined the rest of Team Go in the control room and they were observing her through several cameras and scanners. One of them was the one Mego had used to measure her glow power output.
“Bring it on,” she said, looking forward to combat, even simulated. The last few days had been pretty frustrating and here was an opportunity to vent.
Slide panels opened on the far side of the room and three wheeled combat drones started rolling towards her, metal arms extended. Kim didn’t wait for them to bridge the distance, she ran to meet them. Leaping into the air, she cleared the reaching arms and landed on top of the middle one’s shoulders. Quickly twisting, she wrenched the metal head all the way around and to the side. A shower of sparks showed that she had successfully broken something.
The other two drones tried to grab her, but she was already on the move again. Her single greatest strength in combat was her speed, how she was able to bounce around a room so fast most people couldn’t keep track, and then attack from unforeseen angles. The drones tried to compensate for her speed, but got entangled with each other. Kim dropped to the floor and kicked one of them as hard as she could, toppling both over.
“Impressive,” Hego said across the speakers. “But no Go Glow so far.”
“You’re making it too easy,” Kim responded. “Give me something harder.”
The next few minutes went by in a blur as the training room went through different levels of attack, always becoming more and more challenging. Slow combat drones gave way to smaller, faster ones. Tentacles shot out form the walls, first sporting grappling arms, then buzz saws. Laser grids sprang into existence, trying to cut off her avenues of escape.
“This is so totally awesome,” Kim heard Ron over the speakers, but didn’t comment. Truth to tell, she was having a blast. Maybe she should get a training room like this, too.
Problem was, she was handling everything the room was throwing at her and she didn’t need superpowers for that. She was good enough without them. So the white glow on her hands remained conspicuously absent.
“This isn’t working,” she shouted. “It’s not… real enough.”
The room stopped a few seconds later, all the various death traps and gadgets retreating into the walls. Kim was about to ask what would come next, but then she saw. A panel set high into the wall opened, obviously leading to the control room, as the white and blue form of Hego emerged and jumped into the room.
“I will strive to make it real then,” he said, flexing his muscles as he approached her.
Kim nodded, maybe this would work. While Hego certainly wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, he was perhaps the strongest man in the world and a decent fighter, as far as she had seen. Maybe this was the kind of workout that would make a difference.
Hego moved surprisingly fast for someone with his bulk, but Kim was quicker. His huge fists crashed on the floor where she’d just been standing, leaving a deep dent in the metal plating. She quickly flipped over his head and turned to kick him in the back. She might as well have been kicking a brick wall, though.
“You won’t be stopping me with girlish kicks,” Hego said, doing his best to taunt her. His quips weren’t exactly up to Shego’s level, but he was trying. “Hit me harder!”
Kim was trying her best to do just that. Zipping this way and that to stay out of the strongman’s far longer reach, she peppered him with punches and kicks to the best of her abilities. Some of her blows made him move back a bit, but that was it. His body glowed blue as he accessed his super strength to ward off her attacks.
The teenage hero was faced with a unique situation. If this were a real battle, she wouldn’t be wasting time trying to match strength with Hego. She would be focusing on his weaknesses, his intellect, and try to outsmart him. This wasn’t a test of wits, though. No, this was supposed to somehow activate the strange powers she seemed to have acquired. And it seemed she needed to put herself into mortal danger for them to activate.
So, praying she wasn’t making a stupid mistake, Kim waited for Hego to throw a huge haymaker and then… stood still.
“Kim, no,” Ron yelled, seeing what she was doing. Hego saw, too, but it was too late for him to stop as he threw a punch with enough force to vaporize brick.
His punch met Kim’s hand, which started glowing a bright white, and the concussion wave from the impact almost knocked both combatants off their feet, but they both remained standing. Kim felt a shudder run up her arm, painful, but not the kind of pain one would have expected after being hit by the human equivalent of a sledge hammer. She was still standing and her arm was still intact. It hurt, but it was whole.
“That was…,” Hego began, searching for words.
“Incredibly stupid,” Mego offered over the speakers. “Still, it seems your powers are finally making an appearance. And your energy output grew to 25 percent of our average.”
“The adrenalin spike,” Kim said, breathing hard from what had just happened. She felt as if she’d run a mile at full speed. “I think the shock of facing potentially lethal danger triggered it.”
“Hego hit you with a force equivalent to about 3,000 pounds, Kim. You are lucky your arm hasn’t been reduced to splinters.”
Kim finally retracted her palm from Hego’s fist, looking at it. Once again her glove had been shredded, either by the force of impact or the glow itself, but her palm was okay. A little red, almost as if she’d touched something hot for a second or so, but otherwise unharmed. The white glow was starting to fade.
“We might have a problem then,” Wade said over the Kimmunicator. “If your powers are actually triggered by adrenalin or stress, then you’ll have trouble controlling them.”
Kim had to agree, but didn’t see the drama. “Obviously they protect me when I’m in danger. That’s good, right? I mean, I can usually deal with just about everything without using super powers. It’s just… you know, a backup, Just in case.”
“We don’t know if that’s all they do,” Wade told her. “You said they flared when you were angry at Bonnie. That wasn’t a dangerous situation, was it?”
She sighed, seeing his point. “So you’re saying I might start glowing the next time Bonnie pisses me off? Yeah, that would be a problem.”
“Not as if Bonnie’s gonna stop just because Kim asks her nicely,” Ron added.
“Not to mention certain villains that try to get under your skin.”
Kim nodded again. She could think of one villain in particular that always managed to do just that. Someone with whom she now seemed to have more in common than ever before.
“So… any ideas?” she asked.
The members of Team Go, all of whom had now joined them from the control room, looked at each other.
“Well…,” Mego began. “I… am in the process of reconstructing Aviarius’ power siphon. I’m not there yet, but…”
“We decided to keep it as a last resort,” Hego proclaimed. “Just in case any of use ever became so dangerous to the world as to…”
“You mean like Shego already is?” Ron asked.
Again the four Go members flinched. Kim glared again. Ron shrugged. “Just saying, dudes.”
Further discussion was cut short when the alarms started blaring throughout the tower. Mego immediately hurried to the nearest computer console and typed some kind of command.
“Robbery in progress,” a computer voice announced. “Go City Bank, corner of Go Avenue and 15th.”
Hego pumped up his chest, leading Kim to wonder whether he might start beating it Tarzan-style any moment now.
“We are needed,” he proclaimed proudly. “Go, Team Go!”
All four superheroes stormed towards the nearest exit, leaving Ron, Rufus, and Kim behind. The two teens looked at each other.
“Want to go with them?” Ron asked. “I mean, you are sort of a member by default now, right?”
Kim wondered whether he might not grow tired of having her glare at him.
“Might as well,” she finally said. “I could do with a bit of a workout.”
Ron, looking around the somewhat wrecked training room, sighed deeply.
“KP, sometimes you scare me a bit.”
Kim and Ron arrived at the bank less than a minute after Team Go, mostly because Hego took the time to fly an extra loop in the Go Jet before touching down. There were six masked criminals inside the bank, all of them armed. Thankfully they hadn’t taken any hostages, at least not yet.
Reigning in her take-charge attitude, Kim let Team Go take the lead. It was their city, after all. Mego shrunk down to just over an inch and snuck inside to check the surroundings. When he called in, the Wegos duplicated until they had a small army at their disposal and surrounded all available exits of the bank. Finally, Hego took the lead, barrelling in through the front door.
“Surrender, villains,” he proclaimed. “Team Go is here.”
The battle as such was pretty short. Hego was impervious to gunfire and took down three of the criminals in short oder. Mego, his shrinking power allowing him to appear as if out of thin air, took down the fourth. One tried to make a run, but was quickly stopped by six Wegos, who dog-piled on him.
Which left just one for Kim, who went in after Hego. She took him down without much fuss, no sign of any white glow. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds.
“You guys are really cool,” Ron said, Rufus nodding on his shoulder.
“Thank you, Ronald,” Hego said. “But I fear this was not exactly a proper test of our mettle. I dare say Kim here would have had no trouble dealing with these villains by her own, with or without superpowers.”
Kim didn’t really know whether Hego had just complimented or offended her, so she simply nodded in response. The police were already present, busy putting cuffs on the criminals.
“We should return to Go Tower,” Mego said. “We still have the matter of Kim’s little enhancement to deal with.”
With nods all around the heroes prepared to leave. A commotion behind them drew their attention, though. One of the criminals had managed to get back up and struck down one of the cops, taking his gun. A gun he pointed directly at the heroes.
“You’re going down,” he yelled, firing.
And Kim Possible’s world exploded into blinding white light.
TO BE CONTINUED