The pain woke her up.
Kim jolted upright from the sting, screaming in pain at the top of her lungs. She looked at her shoulder – the source of the pain – and screamed even louder upon seeing nothing but a hacked-off stump of arm, blood squirting from the tied-off arteries. “WHAT-WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?”
“Oh, shit – you’re not supposed to be awake yet, Kimmie.” Mrs. Dr. Possible turned around - holding the severed arm in her right hand.
“MOM?” Kim strained as she looked over at the figure on the other operating table. “WHAT’S SHEGO DOING HERE? WHAT ARE THE TWEEBS DOING HERE? AND RON AND DRAKKEN? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO US? WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?”
“Shh…” Mrs. Possible pushed Kim back down, and forced the mask onto her daughter’s face. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Kim tried to respond, but everything faded to black too fast.
“Ughh…” Kim groaned as she opened her eyes. “Jeezus, that was a really bad—”
She froze. Her fear grew as she looked at the pale-skinned hand in the green sleeve that she was scratching her head with. She cautiously looked to her other side.
Lying next to her was Shego – with her normal-skinned arm attached to her shoulder.
“-…n-nightmare?”
“Augh…” Shego grumbled, sitting up. “What the hell was th-”
She stopped. Looked at the right arm in a black sleeve. Its skin a normal hue of Caucasian flesh. She looked at Kim – then at Kim’s new right arm. “Oh. Swell. What fresh new torture is this?”
“Oh no,” Kim gasped as her hands searched her belt. “No Kimmunicator…”
Suddenly, the dark room seemed to light up like a beacon. Shego and Kim shielded her eyes.
“Kimmie – I’m sorry…”
“Mom?” Kim squinted. “Mom? Mom, was that you?”
“Look above you, hon.”
There was a failing TV screen above them, snow and static popping in randomly. Mrs. Possible was on it, standing nearly off-camera on its left side – looking down, seeming very unhappy.
“Mom? You did this? That wasn’t a nightmare? Please, tell me you didn’t do this!”
“I’m sorry, Kimmie – it was either I do this to you all and he-” KRRZZ! “-me, or he-” KKZZRRZZ! “-all of you. I had no choice. I couldn’t bear to see him do that to you.”
“Do what? OR HE WHAT? MOM, WHAT’S GOING ON?”
Mrs. Possible was silent.
“MOM! PLEASE! ANSWER ME!”
“I’m s-AGHK!”Mrs. Possible gasped as a chunk of her neck was ripped from her body by teeth. Kim screamed as her mother’s carotid artery spurted blood, and the woman fell silent offscreen.
“MOM! MOM!”
“Oooh,” Shego recoiled. “Oh, I did so not wanna see that.”
“Whoopsie. Sorry ‘bout that, Kimmie-Cub. Didn’t mean for that to be caught on camera.”
Kim’s eyes grew even wider with horror.
Shego’s ears perked up. “Waitaminute. I’ve heard that voice before.”
“DAD?” Kim shrieked. “YOU DID THIS?”
“Yeah, dream on, Kimmie. Your goody-two shoes dad would never do something this sick and-”
“Yes-a-rooney, Kimmie-Cub. I can never tell a lie!” said Mr. Possible, wiping blood off his lips as he stepped into view on the screen. “Mmmm. Just needs a dash of your uncle’s barbeque sauce.”
“-twisted…” Shego’s voice trailed off. “Ok, you know what? I don’t like where this is going.”
“Oh my god…Dad – WHY?” Kim was already near hysterics.
“Shh – not so loud, Kimmie-Cub. You don’t want to wake your brothers now, do you?”
“B-b-b-b-b-brothers?” Kim stammered.
“Uh…yeah. Brothers, Kimmie,” Shego responded, pointing to where she was looking - where Jim and Tim Possible were lying, their legs clearly switched around. “Looks like they’ve been having the same surgical fun we’ve been having.”
The sleeping Jim and Tim started to move.
“Uh-oh. Their anesthetic wasn’t supposed to wear off that early. Damn, better make a note of that for the next round of subjects…”
“Huh? WHOAH!” Tim bolted awake seeing Shego in front of him. “JIM, WAKE UP! WE’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY SHEGO!”
“Hey! I haven’t kidnapped-”
“What? AHH!” Jim was on his feet in a second. “WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH US?”
“No, you idiots! I-”
“THEY HAVEN’T KIDNAPPED YOU, TWEEBS!” Kim screeched.
“K-Kim?”
“Get over here, you guys. I don’t know where we are, but what I do know is that Dad’s gone completely insane. He’s got us trapped in this place – and we just watched him kill Mom!”
Shego rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. That’s a real nice ‘Good morning’ for an 11-year old…”
“DAD DID WHAT?” the twins screamed simultaneously.
“Damn,” muttered Shego. “Even scared shitless, they’re a single entity.”
Kim glared. “You know, you’re not helping much here, Shego.”
“Why should I be help much? Your psycho-Dad’s grafted my arm onto you, your arm onto me, and he’s switched their legs around, too – though honestly I don’t know if that really made any sense, considering they look exactly the same…Why the hell should I make them feel better?”
“Huh?” The twins looked down at their grafted legs. “What the-?”
“That’s right, boys. I switched your left legs around.”
“WHAT?”
“Why?” asked Tim.
“Hmm…Nope, can’t tell you yet, boys.”
“Kim – what’s going on?” Jim asked, terrified. “You’re gonna get us out of here, right?”
“I hope I can, Jim…I hope I can.”
Suddenly, dim lights flickered on, revealing a short hallway in front of them.
“If you want, boys, there’s two saws and a suture kit at the end of that hallway. If you can handle the pain, you could slice those grafted limbs off and reattach ‘em to your rightful bodies.”
Jim and Tim looked at each other – and promptly bolted down the hallway.
Kim lunged forward. “NO! TWEEBS! WAIT!”
“Princess, STOP!” Shego grabbed the teenage heroine, holding the struggling red-haired woman back. She looked over her shoulder. “They’re on their own now.” She sighed. “Unfortunately.”
“Here, Tim, cut off my leg first!”
“JIM!”
“OW! Don’t try to saw it off! That’s gonna make it hurt more! Just hack it off!”
“TIM!”
“OW! OW!”
“TWEEBS!”
BOOM!The explosion came out of nowhere. It rocked the whole room and hallway, knocking Kim and her adversary down on their faces with its powerfully close shockwave.
“Oh, sorry about that – heh. Forgot to mention there’s an explosive device in your grafted limbs. Only the special devices at the center of this place can let you switch 'em back without setting them off. Kind of funny, actually - Ronald and Drakken figured that out in a heartbeat.”
Shego recoiled upon noticing the brain matter on her jumpsuit, frantically brushing it off. She backed up ‘till she was beside Kim. “Okay,” she whispered to Kim. “He’s got me scared now.”
All Kim could do was stare ahead in horror as the smoke cleared, and the blood splatter where her brothers had been standing seconds ago was slowly revealed. “Oh god…What’s going on?”
“Oh, just a little experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“Yep – nothing more than a little science experiment.”
“Uh - yeah, Mr. FrankenPossible,” Shego snapped. “Considering this is more twisted than anything Dr. D’s come up with, mind explaining it to us – unless, of course, you don’t want to?”
“Oh, nonononono - I’m more than willing to tell you the story. …Not exactly sure on every detail, but - I’d say this is because of that man-eating piranha DNA I must’ve merged with.”
“M-M…Man…eating…piranha?” Kim managed to sputter from the shock she was still in.
“Yep. Man-eating piranha, Kimberly. You see, we were running an experiment on transportation at the Space Center, using that device of Dr. Dementor’s as our starting basis. Thing was, his device required a landline to work, which interfered with some of our other research. So, we rigged up a wireless transportation device. We tested it by sending some spare DNA strands through. Sadly, only two DNA strands were able to make it through unscathed – Human DNA, and man-eating piranha DNA. Why? We don’t know - and we pretty much didn’t care by then.”
“Does this story end? OW!” winced Shego as Kim elbowed her to shut up.
“After we successfully tested transportation with the DNA, we decided to test transportation with humans. I volunteered – but when I raised my hand to do so, I accidentally knocked the test tube with the piranha’s DNA in it over, spilling it on my coat. Naturally, I took my coat off, but some of the DNA must’ve landed on my shirt. Well, it doesn’t take even a rocket scientist like me to realize what happened when I got in the transportation machine, now, does it?”
“So, somewhere in the Amazon, a fish is swimming around with your head, yelling “Help me! Help me!”?”
Mr. Possible chuckled. “No, Shego, afraid not. However, as you saw earlier, it’s starting to affect me. I’ve been craving human blood for quite a while now. It’s just recently that I haven’t been able to control it. I had to do something about it. My piranha side just wanted me to eat you all in one fell swoop. Naturally, my human side didn’t want that at all. So, after some mental wrangling, we came up with this: A science experiment on survival instincts. It’s really a win-win situation for us, Kimmie-cub: My human side gets valuable scientific information on survival instincts applicable to situations astronauts might face, and my piranha side gets to eat all of whom don’t survive. Though, honestly, to say that some of these situations are applicable to astronauts is a stretch – but hey, scientific results are scientific results. Your mother was the first subject. I gave her an ultimatum: I wouldn’t eat her until after she helped me prepare you and the others for this experiment – but if she didn’t, I’d just go gobble you and the twins up. I hypothesized that her maternal urge to protect you and your brothers would kick in, and indeed it did.”
Kim just looked at the screen, a mixture of anger, horror, grief, and despair all rolled into her eyes.
“Wait – what about Drakken and I? How did you decide to put us in your twisted Minotaur House?”
“Oh, the police were more than willing to hand over two criminals to us for en experiment like this.”
“Well, at least that’s being honest,” Shego huffed.
“And that’s where we come back to right here and right now, Kim. You’re part of my main batch of subjects. You get to decide a whole host of questions! Would two dominating personalities who hate each others’ guts, yet have worked together once for a short time, set aside their differences yet again to surive, once cut off from society? Would they willingly let the other person die, even if it meant sacrificing a part of themselves in the process? Would their personalities be so dominating they’d both work together to survive, only to prove they were better than the other? Would they genuinely work together to survive, or would they only work together to survive so they could get the part of themselves the other has back?They’re all very intriguing questions, Kimmie-cub.”
“Hate to admit, but he’s right. Those are intriguing questions.” Shego flared up the green energy in her left hand. “However, if you’re gonna do an experiment like this, you need uneducated test subjects.”
“I would silence those flames, Shego.”
“Why?” Shego snarled.
“These walls are coated with an experimental booster rocket fuel the Space Center’s working on, the fumes of which combust in any type of air – cold, hot warm, dry, humid - that’s been ionized to a certain point – that certain point which you’ll reach if you keep those green energy flames roiling for another….30 seconds or so.”
Her eyes fixed with anger, Shego glared at the screen.
“15 seconds.”
“SHEGO!” Kim yelled desperately, breaking her silence.
Shego relinquished the green energy flames. “You’re lucky I’m only evil and not demented, Pumpkin.”
“I-I’ll take anything remotely comforting right now,” Kim stuttered, still shell-shocked from everything.
“Your brothers cleared the first obstacle for you, Kimmie-cub – so, you two can go down that hallway just fine now. If you go fast, you just might be able to find Ronald and Dr. Drakken. But I’ll warn you now: Better watch out, Kimmie-cub – or, sufficient to say, there will be blood for my piranha side.”
Shego shrugged. “Do we really have any other choice, Kimmie?” She looked at Kim – who looked down, wiping a tear away as she shook her head. Shego sighed. “I guess I can live with you until this is over, Princess. Won’t be easy. Just…Let’s go already. I want my arm back on my body - in one piece.”
“Yeah,” nodded Kim. And with that, they started down the dingy hallway.
They hadn’t long passed the spot where the Tweebs now decorated the walls when Kim froze. “Oh no.”
“What now, Kimmie?” asked an exasperated Shego.
“Four subjects for an experiment on this grand a scale? That’s too small of a variable pool, Shego.”
Shego blinked. “Come again?”
“Four people’s too few to get truly variable data. Dad would never use only four subjects in any experiment.”
“So, you’re saying….?”
“I - I don’t think Ron and Drakken are the only other people in this place.”