“Look, dude, this is so totally wrong,” Ron yelled.
The police officer just gave him a helpless shrug. “Mr. Stoppable, it’s really out of my hands.”
Ron sighed deeply, knowing that it wasn’t the officer’s fault. It was nobody’s fault, really. Not that it mattered to Kim. He knew exactly how his friend was feeling right now. Well, probably not, but he did his best.
Looking over to the far side of the room, he saw Kim sitting behind steel bars. She’d been sitting there for the last three hours, not moving, her hands tightly clenched under her knees. Her eyes were closed, but he had little doubt that she kept seeing the same thing over and over again. Her slim body shivered and it was not because of the room temperature.
“This is so not cool,” he muttered.
“No-no! So not,” Rufus chattered from where he sat on his shoulder. The naked mole rat was every bit as distraught as his master.
What with Kim still being a minor, the police had called her parents but moments after her arrest. Ron sighed in relief when Dr. and Dr. Possible finally came into the police station. Kim’s mother had a panicked look on her face, her husband only slightly calmer.
“Kimmie? Where is my daughter?”
She was quickly led toward the cell and let inside, where she hugged her daughter for all it was worth. Kim only responded by hugging her mother in turn, tears in the corners of her eyes, but she said nothing.
“It’s going to be okay, Kimmie-cub,” her mother whispered, stroking her hair. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
James Possible quietly joined Ron, leaving mother and daughter to themselves for the moment. “Anything on that man?” he whispered.
Ron shook his head. “Nothing yet. He’s still in surgery.”
Kim’s father looked down, wringing his hands in impotent fury. He knew as well as anyone that what had happened had not been his daughter’s fault, but he also knew that his daughter wouldn’t see it that way. And he wasn’t sure about the many, many people who had watched the evening news today, either.
“Shego? SHEGO!”
The woman in question came into the lair’s control room, the usual bored look on her face as she approached her employer.
“Yeah, yeah! What is it this time?”
She almost stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted the blue-skinned scientist, though. Dr. Drakken was, at the best of times, a coward. The few times she’d gotten really mad at him, he’d usually ended up in some corner, curled into a fetal position, sucking his thumb.
Right now, though, Dr. Drakken looked positively terrified. His blue skin had faded almost to white, his eyes were wide, his small hands shaking.
“Dr. D, what is it?” she asked, almost feeling concerned for her boss. Almost.
“Didn’t you see? DIDN’T YOU SEE?” he yelled at her.
“Let’s pretend I didn’t.”
With a speed that surprised her Drakken zipped over to the monitor bank and flipped a few switches. The large screen flickered to life, showing a news broadcast.
“We repeat our top story of the evening,” the female announcer said. “Just a few hours ago a bank robbery in Go City turned into a tragedy which involved both Go City’s heroes, Team Go, as well as the renowned teenage heroine Kim Possible.”
Shego grew very interested just from these few words. Her favourite sparring partner and her idiotic brothers? What were they up to this time? Did Hego and his bunch need rescuing from Aviarius again?
“The following footage was taken after the robbery was already believed solved and the police had arrived on the scene.”
The picture showed the outside of the Go City Bank -a place Shego remembered very well from her days as a costumed crime fighter- and there were a crowd of people near the entrance. The camera zoomed in, revealing the people to be Team Go, Kim Possible and her buffoon sidekick, plus some cops who were busy putting the cuffs on some prone guys in black.
“Team Go and Kim Possible had taken care of the robbers in record time,” the announcer’s voice said from outside the picture. “But one of the criminals refused to accept defeat.”
There were some outcries and the camera swivelled to show one of the robbers, who had gotten back to his feet and somehow got his hands on a gun. A gun he was shooting at the assembled group of heroes.
A moment later the criminal was bathed in white light and began to scream. The camera swivelled again, showing the light to originate from… Kim’s hands? Shego blinked, but the picture remained the same.
The camera showed panicked people running around, screams of fear were heard, and Shego was pretty sure one of them belonged to Kimmie. The white light faded after a few seconds and the robber collapsed to the ground, his body a bloody mess. Paramedics were rushing to the scene; cops were looking around in impotence.
“It is yet unknown what kind of weapon teenage heroine Kim Possible used against the unfortunate robber,” the announcer said. “By all accounts it seemed as if she did not expect the effects to be quite so severe and immediately surrendered herself to the police afterwards, who have taken her into custody pending investigation of this tragic incident.”
“Wow,” Shego muttered, hardly able to believe what she had just seen. That couldn’t have been… could it?
“You see? YOU SEE?” Drakken yelled.
“What?” Shego turned to look at him, quite fed up with his yelling. “What’s your problem this time?”
“Kim Possible is KILLING bad guys now. Didn’t you see it? I always knew that goody two-shoe thing was just a façade hiding some lurking, unspeakable evil generated from repressed impulses in her little teenage mind, but I never expected to be right at the cost of my LIFE!”
Shego needed a moment to digest his sentence. “Oh, come on, Dr. D! You heard the news bitch. It was an accident. I’m sure the next time Kimmie ruins your secret plans she’ll just humiliate and beat you up as usual.”
Drakken gave her a hopeful look. “You really think so?”
“Doy! Besides, she just got herself arrested, right? So if there ever was a time to try out some new evil super plan, now would be it.”
Drakken thought that over for a moment, then gave her his best evil laugh. “You are right, of course! Kim Possible is behind bars. That means nothing can stop me! Nothing! NOTHING! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Shego just nodded along, her arms folded in front of her chest. She happened to know that Dr. D had absolutely nothing up his plate right now, so he would probably retreat to his chamber to do some heavy thinking. Which usually included clutching his teddy bear close to his chest and mumbling incoherent stuff, but who was she to judge as long as the cash kept coming in?
Her thoughts were occupied with other things once again. That white light from Kimmie’s hands… she was sure it had to have been some weapon or other, something designed by the nerd she employed, and it overloaded or malfunctioned. Still… it had looked an awful lot like…
Nah, couldn’t be. Just because her own powers seemed to be increasing didn’t mean that someone like the little princess suddenly… or maybe it did?
Maybe she should do some investigating while Drakken was busy plotting world domination. Just in case.
“I’m really not sure, Dr. Possible,” the police captain told Kim’s father. “That man did have a gun aimed at her and all, but… I’ve never seen anything like that. The guy was… it looks like someone pumped a dozen bullets into his chest, only there were no bullets.”
James Possible nodded. He had seen the news footage as well.
“So we are looking at excessive use of force?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you. It really depends on whether the guy makes it out of surgery or not and whether he or his family decide to press charges. I mean, granted, he was in the middle of a robbery and trying to shoot people, but I think just about any court in the world would say that shredding his chest into bloody bits was a bit over the top.”
Despite being scatterbrained at times, Dr. James Possible was one of the smartest men in the world and quite well-versed in the ways of the law, too. More than one of his experimental rockets had caused excessive property damage and he had been sued quite a few times already.
He was profoundly thankful that his daughter was still a minor, really. Kim didn’t know it, but several of her less-megalomanical villains had pressed charges against her after being beaten up and left for the cops. Her parents employed excellent lawyers, though, and that, coupled with her young age, had so far always sufficed to blow these things out of the water before they even got to Kim’s attention. Which was just as it should be, he figured. His daughter had enough on her plate already and if he could protect her from the backlash of her heroic deeds, that was just what he would do.
He wasn’t sure it was going to be so easy this time. His little Kimmie had, by some means he didn’t yet know, nearly killed a man. Any lawyer worth his salt would argue that, being who she was, she could have found half a dozen means of disarming him that did not include using lethal force. And if the man died… he didn’t want to think about it. Manslaughter, no matter how accidental, was something being a minor didn’t offer that much protection from.
“Thank you, captain,” he just said, then walked over to the cell. Inside, his wife was still consoling his daughter, who seemed completely torn up over what had happened.
“I… I didn’t mean to…,” he heard her whisper. “It all happened so fast. He was shooting at us and… and I thought of how to stop him and… then it just happened.”
Nodding to the police officer by the cell, he was let inside and knelt beside his little girl.
“What happened, Kimmie?” he asked. “What was that white light?”
Sniffing, Kim explained to her parents what had happened over the course of the last three days and how she suspected that she had somehow acquired the same kind of powers as Team Go. How they seemed to be driven by adrenalin, out of her conscious control.
“This is a serious situation, Kim,” he told her. “Listen! I will make sure that you are released into our custody for the time being, okay? We’ll get the best minds in the world to work on what is happening to you, I promise. We’ll beat this, Kimmie. Anything’s possible for a Possible, remember?”
After consoling his daughter some more, James left to make a call to his lawyers. Which left Kim with her mother and Ron and Rufus watching from the other side of the room. The blonde-haired boy shared a look with his intelligent pet.
“You think Dr. P and his old college buddies can make sense of this?”
The naked mole rat shrugged with a helpless look on his small face.
“Yeah, what I figured.”
He had had a few words with Team Go about an hour ago, the four heroes equally torn up over what had happened, feeling somewhat responsible because they hadn’t been able to help Kim get a grip on what was happening to her.
Ron vividly remembered what Mego had told him. Their four powers, while different on the surface, were all similar in that they were physical in nature. Super strength, shrinking, duplication, all mass-related powers. Kim’s powers seemed to be energy-related, though. And, seeing that there was only one other with abilities like that, they should maybe think about approaching that person for help, no matter how unlikely it was that they would actually get it.
“She-go,” Rufus chirped.
Ron nodded. “Yeah, little buddy. I figured as much.”
Taking out his own Kimmunicator, Ron dialled up Wade.
”Wade, I need your help.”
“Anything!”
“I need you to help me… man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I need you to help me find Shego.”
TO BE CONTINUED