The Stubborn Beast Flesh

“Ready for test-six… test-six ready to commence.”

“Affirmative to commence test-six. Clear the floor!”

John Possible was a simple man; he had been taught at an early age that to get ahead and be prosperous in life you must first learn to work hard. He was raised in a stable family environment and, because his own father claimed to be a prosperous man, John had always wanted for himself the sort of family that he’d grown up in. Becoming a good student and excelling in his classes, a natural aptitude for math and science dictated the path that he would follow in life.

“The test subject will please take his position.” A single figure, suited in protective armor like a 21^st Century knight, walked to the center of the immense test chamber, the largest testing chamber of this Global Justice facility or any other. A final warning bell sounded and the lone figure stood waiting; the name ‘DU’ was stenciled on his suit.

John had met a girl in college, a wonderful girl, a girl that he’d fallen deeply in love with at first sight and quickly learned that she felt the same about him. They wanted a family and a home together, and after they had graduated they had built a world for themselves as man and wife. Careers were established and children followed, not without stress or tribulation to be certain, but their family was a good one and he could ask for nothing better.

“Hey, Johnny! The boys and me are clear! Seriously! You can fire it up any time!”

Off to the side and well out of the testing area, another man looked up to the control booth and signaled the project supervisor with a wave of his arms. He was a large man with a shaggy mullet and both he and his team of engineers knew that, with five failures under their belts, they were running out of precious time.

Up in the control room and gazing down upon his project partner and the test subject, John Possible wondered how he might trade in his perfect life to save that of his baby girl. For the man who believed that ‘anything is possible for a Possible’, John sighed and admitted that it just wasn’t that easy. He reached for the microphone on the console before him.

“Test-six commencing… now.” He reached out and flipped a switch that set events in motion.

Flashes of light brought illumination to regions of the immense chamber; parts of the room were so vast that even a hover sled could move freely in three dimensions and not risk hitting anything. Every white-suited tech looked off into the distance where the distinctive whine of a hover sled could be heard, almost as if it were awakening in some forgotten corner because of the bright light.

One of the machines, a newly constructed sled that was based on the upgraded design of Dr. Drakken’s older models, sped towards the center of the chamber and the waiting test subject. Identical to the basic model in most respects, the electrodynamic suspension system was far stronger to the original and they’d already tested that successfully. The force field from one sled could restrain a bull elephant if necessary.

The other modification was about to become apparent.

As the sled reached the suited man, a pair of metallic arms extruded from the undercarriage and flexed down to him. Constructed of interlocking coils that were thicker than a telephone pole and terminating in clawed pincers, the arms clicked and twanged from friction as they grappled with the armored figure and lifted him bodily from the spotless floor. These arms had also been thoroughly tested and found to be satisfactory; the true purpose of this sixth test was waiting just a few yards away.

Another switch was through and yet more electronic life blossomed.

In a corner of the chamber stood a massive flower; at least, it looked like a flower that might have evolved in a world where life grew from metal and plastic. The ‘stalk’ was a pylon of titanium that housed within it a power plant capable of generating raw energy in quantities that frightened the ‘GJ’ engineers. Atop the pylon were several ‘petals’ of advanced thermo-polymers and focusing plates made from the smoothest blend of neodymium, iron and boron that ‘GJ’ could obtain in so short a time. These ‘petals’ flared outwards from the top of the pylon and created an open cup that was large enough to hold an object many times that of a man.

This latest test was to see if it could hold a single teenaged girl.

“Ok, drop him.” The soft and measured tones of Dr. Mr. Possible could be heard throughout the chamber.

The pilot of the hover sled acknowledged the order with a wave of a gloved hand and manipulated the mechanical arms using the hover sleds keypad; they lazily held the suited figure up over the bloom and dropped Special Agent Will Du inside. Armored for his own protection, Will felt his stomach flutter as he dropped down into the containment unit, the focusing plates creating an inverted Halbach array that would duplicate the suspension field of Drakken’s hover sleds, but this time for a different purpose.

Will never struck the bottom of the metal ‘bloom’; he slowed and bounced as if he had landed on something soft and resilient, though the area within the focusing plates was empty. Dr. Mr. John Possible watched all of this as carefully as he had during the previous five failures and again reached for his microphone.

“Ok, Agent Du, try to escape.”

Will kicked and punched at the plates but he could not make contact, the array always keeping him positioned at the center. He was tethered to nothing, attached to nothing and every piece of the suspension array was well out of his reach. Every time he moved, the focusing plates repelled his body and the rest compensated; he was trapped floating by an invisible force that prevented him from coming into contact with anything. There was nothing that he could reach either for leverage or to damage the device, and the more he struggled the more the machine repositioned him in helpless suspension.

John watched as the Special Agent struggled wildly against thin air and his tired features relaxed. The damn thing finally worked.

“WHOOOO, YEAH! SERIOUSLY!” Down on the testing floor, his partner celebrated with a little air guitar. “aaaYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

The rest of the white-suited techs knew that was the signal for celebration; the current crisis was far from over, but they were so much closer to their goal for the success they’d achieved here tonight. To a man, they whooped and applauded themselves and the two geniuses that had made the magic happen.

For the past several hours, the rocket scientist, the renegade mechanic and a staff of ‘GJ’ technicians had been attempting to perfect the calibrations of the focusing plates. The machine itself had been ‘simple’ enough to build, but the calibrations had to be exact. In each of the five previous tests the plates had been ever so slightly misaligned, causing them to work against each other. Will Du had almost broken his arms when, during test two, the plates had forced his body to rebound within the metallic bloom as if he were within a pinball machine. After that it was decided that the armor was a necessity. If the plates could not be aligned, the device would be useless as a containment unit.

John allowed himself a grin of victory and reached for the microphone again.

“Go ahead and take him out” This was directed at the pilot of the hover sled. “Eddie, please have the techs power down the containment unit. We can go over the telemetry in a few minutes.” The rocket scientist ran his hands through his graying hair. “I need a little time to talk with my wife, Ok?”

“S’Ok, Johnny! You go wrangle Big Red; the boys an’ me’ll handle everything down here ‘til you get back!” Motor Ed gave a salute towards the observation booth high on the wall.

John returned the salute with gratitude and left the observation deck without another word. When he closed the door behind him, John Possible stood alone in a stark white corridor. Observing the directional arrows and guide signs stenciled on the opposite wall, he walked quickly in the direction of the medical wing.

Back on the testing floor, the metallic arms of the hover sled had just lifted Agent Du out of the containment unit and gently set him down amid the eager techs. The pilot of the hover sled manipulate the tentacle arms as if it were second nature and they quickly began to retract beneath the hull of the flying machine. Will was given only a cursory examination before the techs returned to their task of deactivating the power unit and rendering the bloom’ dormant; the settings would be carefully recorded so that the machine could be reactivated with only a few minutes notice, which was probably all the warning they would get.

Du removed his helmet and moved out of the way to stand beside Edward Lipsky, more to clear landing space for the hover sled than out of a feeling of solidarity for this criminal. He was disgusted that Global Justice saw the need to join forces with the likes of Motor Ed, not to mention his more dangerous cousin Drakken, but would never dare to voice that opinion… a second time… to his superior. His ears still rang from the first time.

With its arms fully retracted and the suspension field deactivated, the hover sled settled on a convenient landing cradle, the high-pitched signature whine of the motor slowing and eventually fading away completely. Only then did Dr. Betty Director climb out of the pilot’s harness and remove her own helmet, running her gloved hand through her auburn hair and brushing it away from her face.

“Special Agent Du, please see to the complete lock-down and security of this testing bay as soon as the techs are finished with their work.” She wadded her gloves into the helmet and lobbed the thing in Du’s direction.

“Yes, Ma’am!” Du was quick to follow his orders as Dr. Director walked to the door, grabbing a clipboard from a nearby workstation and using a stylus to tick off the various results of this sixth, and apparently completely successful, test.

The battle-hardened woman sensed a presence in the hallway behind her and spun around, bringing up the clipboard as an ersatz buckler and brandishing the sharp stylus in her hand. She saw scruffy work trousers, a short-sleeved flannel button-down shirt and a large man wearing them.

“Whoa! Babe! Seriously! You know that the ones with the orange handles are decaf, right?” Motor Ed kept his distance but hadn’t moved to defend himself. He was several feet behind her and had apparently followed her out into the hall; she had been too wrapped up in her report to hear him.

“Then you had best be warned, Mr. Lipsky… the handles of the carafes holding decaffeinated coffee here at Global Justice are green.” Betty relaxed and lowered her ‘weapon’.

“Oh, ok. Seriously…” He shrugged and looked down at his feet. She sighed and turned back in the direction she’d been heading, but a double echo to her footsteps made her turn to face him again; he was still following her.

“Mr. Lipsky, what…”

“Hey, now first of all, the last person that ever called me ‘Mr. Lipsky’, seriously, was my eighth-grade school teacher.” Grinning and moving closer, he held out his hand to her. “Call me Motor Ed, or Motorman, or Eddie. Seriously.”

“Edward… what do you want?”

“Well, with the test being over, and all… seriously…and being a howling success, I, um… thought that we… might…”

“That we might what?”

“That we might, well, talk for a minute.” His mustache lifted at the ends in what looked like a hopeful smile. She appraised him with bemusement.

“Seriously?”

Something changed in his expression, going from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ in the blink of an eye and he took a deep breath before making a half turn towards the opposite direction of the corridor.

“Hey, babe, the Motorman is the butt of no one’s joke. Seri… I got work to do.”

Confused, she watched him turn on his heel and walk away before she realized what she had said. Dr. Betty Director actually took one single step away from her original destination.

“Mr. Lipsky, wait.”

“Babe, if you don’t want me around, I’m happy to oblige!” He didn’t slow down as he called back to her over his broad shoulder. “Motor Ed can take the hint … seriously!”

“Mr. Lipsky… Edward… wait a moment.” She forced the word out. “Please”.

The large man huffed and glared back at her silently.

“I assure you that I was not mocking you. I was reasonably doubtful of your veracity due to your history with Global Justice and, well, can you blame me, sir?” She watched as he stood there, arms crossed and obviously torn in his assessment of the situation. Why in the world would he want to associate with her?

“No, guess not.” He turned all the way back around. “So?”

“So… what?”

“Can we shoot the breeze for a bit?” He ambled back to her. “Seriously?”

“Certainly.” Why should they not? “My office is just down this corridor and up two levels; you my accompany me if you wish.” His grin returned and became wider with each word she spoke. “I do have a report to complete, as you have surmised.”

“Great! Seriously!” He kept an even pace with her, staying just a half step behind so that she would not see him smooth back his mullet.

“I do realize, by the way, that I have yet to thank you personally for the time and effort which you have invested in this project.” She busied herself with the report on the clipboard, ether looking down at it or straight ahead.

“Hey, babe, time I got plenty of when I’m not being tracked down by you guys, and effort ain’t effort when you love what you do!” This sentiment was punctuated with a prodigious cracking of knuckles. “And ‘sides… you guys got some really great toys!”

“We certainly should, considering how many components and parts that your cousin had me requisition from the Quartermaster… but, still, considering what you have accomplished in so little time…” They continued to move down the hallway.

“Hey, Johnny and I make a smok’n team, seriously. An’ no matter what’cha say ‘bout Drew, he’s a whiz at dreaming up stuff like that. Why, just last year…”

“Mr. Lipsky… Edward.” She stopped and turned to him, looking right at him with a single gaze that, though a matter of a hard lesson taught, had to perform double duty. It was enough to mesmerize Motor Ed.

“To point out that the world wants to see Kimberly Possible hale and hearty again would not only be cliché but also inaccurate; so far Global Justice has done a miraculous job of keeping the world ignorant of what has occurred to her. And it would be appropriate to say that to not make our best efforts to cure her of this nightmarish affliction would be a sin.” Betty recalled a discussion with Kim just a few days prior, the two of them standing in a corridor exactly like this one, with Betty thinking of Kim as a surrogate daughter in a life void of familial love.

“For most people, to know her is to love her.”

“Hey, I… I said that I’d a never wanted nothing like this…”

“I know, Edward. You have proven yourself to her family and me through your willingness to work with us so diligently. You have given us hope.”

The huge man blushed.

“Don’t write off Johnny! He’s a sharp cookie. Seriously! Man, the jobs I could pull with him on my crew…” He could feel her monocular stare. “Kidding! Seriously!”

Betty rolled her eye away from him, feeling the need to lighten the moment.

“So, Edward, what do you think of our little test facility?”

“S’ amazing! Seriously! Never seen anything like it; you could really whip up a fine, sweet ride with all the stuff you got here.”

By the time they had reached the elevators, he had given a suitable description of what would constitute his ‘dream ride’. It was quite impressive that one man could give so much thought into the development of the perfect vehicle, even if he did prefer eight-track to compact disc. To hear the man speak, grammar aside, she was shocked at how intelligent he was in all aspects of the engineering field. She was reminded of the credentials he’d presented the other day when Teams Lipsky had been introduced to the rest of the teams.

“Edward, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Shoot, babe.”

Did he just call her ‘babe’ again?

“I was wondering… why, with all of the education you’ve received, did you turn to a life of crime?”

“Hell, babe, I never wanted a life of crime. Seriously.” He smiled as if at some private joke. “All I wanted was a chance to design something faster and more powerful than anyone else ever had before.” He shrugged. “And personal freedom.”

“Freedom?”

“Yeah! See, the Motorman hit the ground running with a head full of dreams. I knew what I wanted, seriously, and was lucky enough to have a few marbles rolling around upstairs. Folks told me that my skills would bring me money and fame, but only if I stopping building my dreams and started building theirs. That’s what first made me take off on my own. Seriously.” He smiled and shook his head. “As for fame, geez, you can’t bank that. It’s dough that still makes the world go ‘round.”

“And that is why you began to take parts and components that did not belong to you?”

“Hey, I ain’t blaming nobody but me for all the eight and a half by elevens of my kisser plastered on the walls of every local post office. Seriously! I took the risks and paid the price… when you were fast enough to catch me.” He held out his open hand. “No hard feelings, right? Pax?”

Dr. Director shocked herself by actually taking it, and without conscious thought, either. His hand was enormous and totally engulfed hers. She imagined that she could actually feel the empathy of the man through his hands, which was likely what made him such a great mechanical genius, even if misguided.

“Agreed. Pax. But… it was rarely Global Justice.” She quickened her pace to the elevator and her back drew up tight and rigid. Eddie furrowed his brows in confusion before he understood her reaction; he charged through the closing doors before the elevator started to rise.

“No, um, I guess it wasn’t. Sorry. Wasn’t thinking about ‘Little Red’ for a second, seriously.” The large man was subdued. “Listen, I know that I said this the other day, but… uh, seriously, I’m really sorry to hear about Little Red. Seriously. I know that Drew has, like, a total mad-on for her but I’m not like him.”

“I admit that I was not sure what to expect from another member of the Lipsky family, but I do believe you, Edward.” Betty still felt sick at the prognosis for young Kimberly and could not raise her head. “I meant what I said a minute ago; you and Dr. Possible have achieved great things in the engineering labs these past few days.”

“Yeah, thanks. That Johnny’s a king-sized square but he’d make a first class grease monkey!”

Betty was surprised to discover that she didn’t mind having the man around. When had been the last time that she had talked with a male who was neither a superior nor a subordinate? She could not recall. Thoughts unbidden of further conversations appeared in her mind and vanished just as quickly. What was she thinking? After the final outcome of this project, be it for better or worse, the tenuous partnership between Global Justice and its guest criminal element would cease; she would likely never see Edward Lipsky again outside of a courtroom.

“So the tests are an unqualified success, then?” Maybe she could just hang around with the man for a while today.

“Well, sh’yaw! Seriously! Johnny and I and the white jump-suited dudes got the unit powered and rigged to fire up with less than ten minutes notice. The focusing plates will keep whatever’s in them as snug as a bug in a rug!” The man suddenly leapt forward and turned around to face her.

“aaa-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Dr. Betty Director dropped her clipboard and drew her sidearm when Motor Ed thrust out his right arm and began to whirl his left around and around, also dropping to one knee and arching his back. He seemed to be having a fit and the unearthly howl scared the willies out of her.

“What in the bloody HELL was that?” She calculated how fast she could bring assistance here if she needed it. Eddie stopped howling and gaped around before staring right at her, and looking severely puzzled.

“Babe! I did believe that a little celebratory air guitar was in order! Seriously!”

“…air guitar…?”

Eddie straightened up, appraising her stance and nodding in satisfaction.

“I dig a babe that can scrap! Seriously!” He eyed her weapon. “Whoa! Kicking roscoe! Sonic stunner? Cool…”

“Edward, I’ll ask that you never give rise to an unbridled ‘air guitar’ in my presence again without fair warning in advance.” She shook her head and looked around. “My office is just there.” He moved aside as she opened the door with her access code. The office was tiny and Spartan; Dr. Director preferred to eschew all personal attachments when working and there was little room for more than a desk, two chairs, a computer terminal, a cold cup of ‘GJ’ coffee and one thoroughly dead houseplant.

“Uh… nice digs.” Eddie made a crowd in the cramped space. Professional courtesy urged Betty to clear a chair for him but every other surface was piled with reports and facsimiles and files. Every square inch of desk space was littered with flotsam of a similar order. “You spend your whole day in here?”

“Hardly my whole day, no.” She admitted to herself that it certainly felt like it most of the time. “Forgive me for the lack of personal space; I don’t entertain much.”

He nodded and looked embarrassed, one large hand moving up to the door handle.

“Hey, I know that you’re busy, seriously. You probably got to finish and sign off on that progress report.” He pointed to the clipboard that she had brought with her and had almost forgotten. Betty looked around and sighed; she did have so much bloody work that she was responsible for. Good Lord, she forced herself to admit, I am so tired.

“Please, do have a seat.” She reallocated a stack of files from a chair to a corner of the floor. “May I make another personal inquiry of you?”

“Shoot, Secret Agent Babe!” Eddie found the plain-deal chair not to his liking and it was all that he could do to avoid setting his work boots up on her desk. Betty watched him shift and squirm in a desperate attempt to get comfortable. She was about to make him even more uncomfortable.

“Which begs the question… why do you insist on referring to me as ‘babe’? I am more than pleased to entertain a friendly conversation, but if you are attempting to provoke me it will not work.” She wanted to keep her tone light so as not to give the man the satisfaction of goading her but, truth be told, the teasing was starting to wear thin.

“Wha‘cha mean?” His expression was blank.

“The ‘babe’ appellation.”

“Well…” He looked a little embarrassed. “You kind’a are. Seriously.”

“Oh” Dr. Director felt a chill of anger when she first thought that he was teasing her, then a flush of apprehension when she realized that he was not. “Well.”

“It’s more of a ‘Ladies of SH.I.E.L.D’ photo spread thing than a ‘Snap-On Tools’ calendar thing.”

“Ok, Mr. Lipsky, I get the point!” She was thunderstruck by this revelation so the topic of conversation had to change… now! “To return to my initial question, sir.”

“Sure! What’s on your mind?” He still looked embarrassed.

“What might you be doing with yourself should you decide to eschew a live of criminal activities?”

“If I go legit? Whoa, let’s not talk crazy, here!” He held his hands out as if in defense. “The Motorman don’t work no nine to five job!”

“Seriously… oh, stop that.” She reached for the cold cup of coffee and scowled at him a little when he pretended to rankle at her use of the word. “What I mean is, if you could do anything else with your life, what would it be?” She sniffed at the coffee and poured in onto the dead houseplant, all under his observant eyes.

“That answers that question…” He rubbed his hands and ruminated. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“I dunno… teach, maybe.”

“Really?” She leaned back in her own chair, pondering his answer.

“Hey, have you eaten yet?”

“Hm?” She looked up to see him watching her; she had apparently been woolgathering longer than she’d realized.

“When’s the last time you’d eaten? Seriously?”

“Oh, well… I believe that I was just nibbling on something before we initiated today’s series of tests.”

“Babe, that was, what… nine, ten hours ago!”

“Nonsense! All Global Justice agents are disciplined in maintaining the recommended caloric intake. There should be some of it left around here… somewhere.” Of this she was confident. The Chief Executive of Global Justice routed around her desk, lifting papers until she found her quarry.

“You see? Food. Right here.” She held the tray out for his inspection.

“Lemon squares?” He looked closer at the recognizable pattern in the tray and how dried-out the remaining confections were. “Babe! No way! Seriously! These are, like, leftovers from the confab we had, like two days ago! Seriously!”

“They aren’t so bad!” Why was she feeling that she had to defend herself before this man, a villain of all people? “Why, just a few bites this morning and they’ve kept me going all day long without the slightest pang of hunger!” There was a rumbling and they both glanced down at the source. For once in her life Dr. Betty Director wished for a second eye patch to hide from the rest of the world.

“Right… You should really eat something, seriously. I don’t believe that a fine woman like you would ever touch that junk, especially anything whipped up by that DNAmy chick!” He whirled his finger around the side of his head. “She’s nuts and they probably ain’t safe! Seriously!”

The man was absolutely correct; she had to admit that. With more than a little regret, Betty knocked the crumbs down into the waste paper basket beside her desk and laid the empty tray in her outgoing dispatch bin.

“Do you know how many times these were run through our toxin and contaminant sensors before they would give me the tray? Fourteen times, though the security team still missed the most dangerous factor.”

“Huh? Uh, what’s that?”

“They will still make me fat.”

Displaying an unusual level of tact, Eddie said nothing but did allow his eyes to wander down the trim figure of the uniformed woman sitting at her desk. He was not blind to just how clean a line she cut in that uniform either.

“So, uh, I guess that you’re not hungry then, right?”

“Why do you ask, sir?” She listened to the huge man stammer and kick his heels underneath his chair for a few seconds before answering, running his strong hands back along his styled hair. “What is it that makes you so interested in my staying nourished?”

“I kind of thought that you might, you know, want to come up to the commissary for a hamburger… with me…seriously.”

She leaned back in surprise; was he asking her to join him in a social context? She evaluated the loads of paperwork that she was still responsible to complete.

“And where is Dr. Possible right now?”

“Johnny? He’s gone to look for Big Red… you know, Annie? Seriously.” Eddie thought about the little girl that he used to think of as a foe and realized just how stupid that had been, once upon a time. “He needs a break as much as anyone; they both do. Seriously. So. Uh, how about that burger?” He scuffed his feet like an overgrown schoolboy, caught truant and forced to appear before the headmaster.

What good will it do for me to remain in this office for one single hour and work on these reports? Will it create a miracle through paperwork?

“Actually, I’m a chili girl, myself.”

“…oh…”

“But I could use a strong cup of java, and some idle banter to distract me for a time.” For all of the stress that had filled her recent days, Betty Director would risk the chance to shrug off her mantle of authority, if only for a while. “And maybe even a bite to eat.”

“Oh… oh! Ok! Seriously! Hey, yeah, thanks, seriously!” He even held the door open for her.

---

Ron Stoppable could barely contain himself as he waited for his tiny cohort to return to the loading bay door. The lanky young man would not move from that spot until Rufus reappeared. Ron had reviewed the plan with Bonnie during the entire ride out here and even now she was in her assigned location, waiting for him to act.

The wind was growing stronger and he was glad for it; the fast-moving air should disperse his scent and the noise should mask any sounds that he might make. This Havok-enhanced Kim seemed to have the senses of an animal, a predator of the first rank and he couldn’t afford to have her detect his presence before he even got close enough.

All he had to do was get in, locate the children and get them to Bonnie. From that point on he had only two other tasks to perform; one would be to assist Shego, the other would be to send a message to Global Justice that Kim had been located. He dared not do that until the girls were safe, lest Kim lose all control and do something unexpected. Ron smirked, finding no humor in the irony. Kim’s whole life had slipped into the world of the unexpected days ago.

He felt an urgent tugging at the hem of his black mission jersey and looked down; Rufus had returned through the open bay door and was pointing into the darkness.

“m’redi!”

“I hear you, buddy. It’s show time.”

Ron took a deep breath and did his best to clear his mind; he could almost hear Shego snicker at the idea. Reaching into his mission satchel and then setting the pouch aside, he removed a long thin cloth, much like a sash, which he wound around his waist several times before tucking the end into his belt. Tonight he must be faster and stronger than he had ever been.

Rufus waited until his friend and master was away and then he left the building entirely, moving off to join Bonnie and wait with her as ordered.

Sticking to the shadows, Ron slipped through the door and began to work his way through a series of pipes and conduits; the machinery used for processing and moving the fuel oil has badly caked with grime and residue. The vast room was dark except for the open loading door behind him and the meager light that shone from distant street lamps.

“Mongrels…” The voice from the darkness made him pause.

“No, Kimmie, they’re our babies, yours and mine!” The voices of the women close enough to clearly discern. He gauged their distance and altered his course to weave a new pattern; his direction was the same but he must be sure to keep the pipes and machinery between the women and himself.

“Hybrids…”

“Baby, no!”

Ron let the voices flow around him, not quite sinking into his consciousness. He had no time to be distracted as he drew closer to the wall that separated the tiny cluster of offices from the rest of the fuel depot. It was disturbing that the voice that he should have recognized as being Kim’s was off, was wrong somehow. It was not the KP he had known since pre-kindergarten.

“Kimmie, please come over here and explain it to me.”

That voice as Shego’s, and even if he wasn’t fully listening his psyche accepted it as being normal. Ron scaled the negligible height of the ten-foot wall and carefully crawled across the filthy roof of the internal office. The building within a building was prefabricated but sturdy enough to bear his weight without making any unwanted noise.

“No, baby, it’s not your fault! I don’t blame you! You were damaged, your genetics are weak!”

“Excuse me?”

The paneled office roof was slanted, making the front wall of the interior building just a few inches higher than the rear wall. This worked to his advantage, keeping him up out of sight and well hidden in shadow. The flaming barrel also gave Ron an excellent point of reference in locating the exact position of the door, as the barrel was just a few feet in front of it.

“The comet! Your genetics were altered! It’s not your fault because my perfect body and functioning uterus should have compensated for your flaws!”

With Kim’s back towards him and Shego’s full attention on Kim, now was the time to move. As agile as any arboreal primate, Ron slid over the edge of the office roof and dropped towards the floor between the open doorway and the barrel. His feet never touched the concrete, however, as he reached out and gripped the doorjamb with one hand and swung into the office, stopping his downward motion and pulling his body to the side and immediately out of sight within the office.

“So it’s not your fault! We can try again, you and I. We can have Drakken recreate the method again and this time it will be right!”

Moving towards the desk, Ron made a quick inspection of the infants and saw that they appeared whole and intact and healthy. Having been around Ron Stoppable many times before, the tiny girls burbled and smiled at him, kicking their chubby legs in anticipation of playtime.

“Sssshhhh…” It hurt Ron to ignore the little girls and not give them the attention that they wanted, but he was there for their safety and play could come later. He did pause to give them each a tender kiss from their Uncle Ron. Unwrapping the sash from his waist, Ron lifted Sheki and wrapped the broad thin cloth around her body, then repeating the same maneuver with Kasy. They were bound tight, probably too tight for comfort but he could not risk dropping either of them or have them making any noise. With both girls swaddled together in this fashion, Ron looped the sash across his shoulder and prepared to exit the office.

“But we can’t let ourselves be held back by these two ill-formed, impure little abominations! Surely, you understand?” Kim was smiling as she turned towards the office and Ron was standing right there in the doorway.

“Ron?”

There was nothing that he could do and nowhere that he could go that would hide him fast enough to avoid being spotted. He watched as his best friend in the whole world turned away from Shego and when Kim’s face was lit from the flaming drum now before her, she looked like an image straight out of Dante.

“Ron?” From Kim’s tone and Shego’s expression over the redhead’s shoulder, it was obvious that his presence was a surprise to both of them; neither had been aware of his entry. He spoke not a word to either of them, but remained still and watched Kim.

“Ron! Where did you…?” Her voice was soft, no longer raving. Ron could not, would not answer her.

“Kimmie, it’s Ok.” Shego edged closer, lowering her defensive posture. Lord, the older woman thought, why does she have to be so beautiful, even now? The only sounds were the wind outside and the dull crackle of the flames in the burning drum until there came one soft whimper from within the folds of the sash he carried over his shoulder.

“What are you doing with the girls?” Eyes flashing, Kim frowned.

“Princess, Ron’s here to help us.” Shego moved up behind Kim, hands out to support, or restrain.

“What are you DOING with the GIRLS, Ron?” Her voice was harsh, a slight rasp as more air than was needed was used to expel the words. Kim brought her head forward aggressively and, while Shego could not see her wife’s lips purse, she could see Kim’s petite hands clench into fists.

Give me strength, Shego prayed, to do what I have to do now.

---

“Amy, why do you have so many naked mole rats?”

“Why, Karen! You of all people should understand that one simply can’t have too many naked mole rats!” The frumpy woman danced from one device to another, every word a singsong that was slowly getting on Anne Possible’s nerves. “Even the most brilliant of scientists can’t rely solely on a well-stocked lab! They must accessorize!”

The four brilliant physicians had been working in the primary medical research bay for more than twelve hours, and everybody’s nerves were frayed. The dozens of cages, each containing several of the particular hairless rodents, did nothing to help the situation.

“Couldn’t we have ‘GJ’ move these animals to another room?” Dr. Mark Hall ran his fingers through non-existent hair. “We’re still hours away from being able to test the modifications and those critters stink to high Heaven!”

DNAmy scowled at him and walked over to one of the cages, lifting out one of the ill-tempered creatures and nuzzling it. She was apparently immune to the rank stench of urine and feces that all naked mole rats carry. Living as they do in a hive society, being more like insects than mammals in that regard, mole rats slather their bodies with their own filth to attract the attention of their queen; it was their version of ‘Hi-Karate’.

“Don’t you listen to that big meanie!” Since the average Heterocephalus glaber was nothing like Rufus, the wrinkled creature shivered and blindly tried to bite her. She dropped it back in its cage where it squeaked out a warning against further attempts at affection.

“And why naked mole rats? Why use them for testing?” Karen was as baffled as her husband. DNAmy pouted at them all.

“Because they don’t feel pain like other animals do and I don’t want the testing to hurt them! I don’t know if this altered process will be painful or not and I don’t want to take the chance!” In reality, Amy Hall had her own reasons for selecting naked mole rats as her ‘guinea pigs’, even at the risk of a mixed metaphor. Her experiences with Kim Possible and her affinity with creatures of all species had taught her well the resiliency of the naked mole rat. If she could just harness the Rufus Factor and impart it into a control group of laboratory-raised creatures, she could create an army of such beings!

And besides, who knew what a race of genetically enhanced naked mole rats might eventually accomplish?

Hearing DNAmy’s words but having no clue as to the motivation behind them, Anne felt grateful; the more people that remembered to think of her daughter’s welfare, the better. Amy just flashed her gap-toothed grin at everyone and began to measure the fluid mix of the chimerical slurry.

In addition to Motor Ed, the figurative spotlight was also shining on this other ‘guest’ of Global Justice. DNAmy and the amazing machines that she had either invented or assisted in the creation of were given cart-blanche down in the primary medical research bay. While her good humor would have been welcome at any other time and place, her antics were frustrating the healers in the group. Drs. Mr. and Mrs. Mark and Karen Hall were desperate to unravel DNAmy’s mysterious techniques and make certain that they could be applied to the plight of young Kim Possible, while the main thing on Anne’s mind was the life of her daughter and grandchildren.

Anne looked away from the prancing DNAmy and regarded the massive piece of equipment behind her. Constructed of a large central globe and two smaller globes on each side, the ‘Genetic Zipper’ dominated the room both by virtue of importance as well as shear size. While her years of training in medicine and its practical application did not specifically prepare her for this, Anne was able to understand the principle of the machine well enough.

During ‘normal’ use, two subjects with disparate genetic sequences would be placed into the smaller globes at the sides, one subject to a globe. The ‘Zipper’ would scan and record the full genetic map of each subject before breaking each one down into a form of ‘transient media’ that would be filtered through two ‘sorters’ before injection through the vat of ‘chimerical’ DNA slurry. This vat, supported directly above the ‘recombinant chamber’, was where the genetic sequence of both donors would be resorted and reorganized into a totally new creation, along with plenty of chimerical material to give it added mass. This material was also great for extrapolating any hither-to nonexistent anatomical merging between drastically different creatures, such as a dog being combined with a crab.

Then, through a method that exceeded her present understanding, the living matter would be retained within a bioelectric matrix while the gestalt genetics were resorted into a living, breathing amalgam of the two original subjects. It was a true miracle of technology.

Anne wondered if Dr. Amy Hall, no relation to Mark, had based her chimerical substance on Havok somehow. The two materials performed much the same function except that one material was no more alive than a crutch is when treating a broken leg. The chimerical matter, on the other hand, was comparable to using coral to replace missing bone fragments, with blood vessels eventually suffusing the coral and the body breaking it down for assimilation over time. The blood vessels carry the calcium needed to grow living bone that will replace the coral and, viola, new bone where before there were just missing pieces.

Knowing DNAmy, however, Anne would find it easier to believe that the rogue geneticist had developed Havok herself if the woman had been a few decades older. Why could such amazing science not be used for good? Anne shook her head in disgust and turned back to the other three. She had just finished uploading every scrap of medical data that existed for Kimberly Ann Possible onto a storage wafer for later use.

“Now the perfect scenario would be if we already had a fully grown Kim Possible clone from whence to lift piecemeal each and every replacement part that was needed for the original.” Mark was on a ladder so as to get a better look at the valve separating the recombinant chamber with the chimerical slurry. “That way we wouldn’t have to use his stuff.”

“I agree, dear.” His wife Karen was standing on the floor nearby, reviewing her notes on the subject. “That would be preferential but we don’t have that kind of time.”

“True, true!” Amy Hall was flicking a row of switches and recording the readouts from a set of corresponding gauges. “I’ve found that it takes me a good two weeks to grow a fully developed clone, albeit for harvesting purposes.” Her brows furrowed as she recalled the recent discussion on her inability to ‘create from scratch’ little more that a perfect corpse.

“And besides, Marky-Mark…” Dr. Mr. H refrained from cursing at the annoying woman. “That ‘stuff’ as you call it is just different enough from pure human tissue that Havok doesn’t like the taste; it won’t infect or replace it. And since we must be absolutely certain that little Kimmie-wimmie is entirely free of the Havok, she’d have to remain in the filter long enough to ensure total cleansing!”

“I just don’t see why we can’t…” While he was of average height and build, Mr. Dr. H took a step back as the short, frumpy woman skipped towards him. He cringed but held his ground as she raised her hands and pinched his cheeks. This time it was Mrs. Dr. H that glared from across the chamber and contemplated murder.

“Oh, look! He’s so sexy when he’s professionally jealous, isn’t he, Karen?” Amy’s expression hardened briefly in a glare of pure malice. “Listen up, ‘Wildfire-Boy’… that ‘stuff’ will save her life, so why don’t you just shut the Hell up and try not to trip on the tails of my lab coat, hm?” There was a muted and innocuous ‘ding’ from across the room; DNAmy ran over to a glass cabinet and removed a steaming tray, leaving Dr. Mark Hall glaring after her.

“Muffins?” She smelled the confections with delight the set the tray down. “Oh, and don’t forget… only through repeated scans by the filter will we be able to reorganize her structure enough to promote complete homeostasis. Mass transplants look great on paper but it risks the loss of perfect synchronization; the best way is to rebuild everything from the ground up.”

Dr. Mr. H curbed his temper and wandered back to continue working alongside his wife. Anne continued to remain silent, wishing that her husband could be with her. She looked up at the aforementioned filter and could only imagine the labors that John and Motor Ed were undergoing at the opposite end of the facility. The filter was the one single piece of equipment that was they were all counting on to work with one hundred percent efficiency; it was supposed to cure the baby girl of Anne and John Possible.

“Anne?” One of the doors to the laboratory had opened and John Possible was looking in at her. She ignored the sound of his voice calling to her because she thought it was just in her head, thinking that her yearning for him just then was making her mind play tricks. It was his touch on her arm when he reached her side that pulled her back into the world.

“Anne…?”

“Oh! John, I’m… sorry.” She shook her head to clear it.

“Anne? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing dear, nothing.” She took his hand. She smelled his cologne and found it more pleasing than a room full of chemicals and naked mole rats. There was a rustling of fabric and DNAmy sidled up to John from where she had been working.

“Why don’t you two lovebirds sneak away for a little while, hmm? Did you know that I once merged a female lovebird with a female Praying Mantis?” DNAmy brushed away a tear. “She pined away over all of the mates she’d killed and eaten. It was so sad!”

John was stunned and perplexed by the anecdote and his wife used his confusion to drag him away to a safe corner.

“So that’s the thing, eh?” He looked towards the ‘Zipper’ and gave a wave to the Drs. H who nodded back at him with empathy. “That’s the deus ex machina du jour?”

“Yep.”

“All of those years of medical school and the best I can get you to say is a ‘yep’?”

“Yep.” Anne let the gallows humor leach the stress from her bones.

“You know, I had this conversation with… with Shego once, almost two years ago now, where she lambasted me for daring to give her such a simple answer as ‘no’ to a question that she’d asked me.” He had caught himself in the act of tensing up when speaking the name of his daughter’s partner, and apparently this didn’t go unnoticed.

“Dear, we can’t stay angry at her. It isn’t fair; you know that.”

“I do know that, yes.” He raised a hand to massage a graying temple. Anne continued.

“I mean, everything she did was done out of love. Desperate, clumsy and half-cocked, but it was love nonetheless.”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call a jail break from the depths of Global Justice ‘clumsy’ or ‘half-cocked’ but you’ve made your point. Love is a very precious commodity in our little girl’s life” He sighed. “We both know that our Kimmie-cub is a special girl; she’d never have found happiness with just anyone, not even a nice boy like Ronald.”

“And we certainly know that Shego isn’t ‘just anyone’.”

“Nope.”

“Years of education in rocket science and propulsion and all I get is a ‘nope’?”

“Yep.” Something nagged at his mind. “Anne, do you really believe that all of this…” He swept an outstretched arm to encompass everything in the immense chamber. “That all this will cure our little girl? That there really is hope, regardless of what Drew said?”

“Yes, yes I do.” If she had been doubtful in the beginning, Anne had seen enough in the last few hours to change her mind. “There are still tests to run, but we have a hopeful solution here, yes.”

“But even if we can save her body…” He wasn’t sure that he had the right words for his next question.

“John, what’s bothering you?”

“Anne, how do we know that Kim will come through this as herself? How can we know that, even if her body is whole, that her mind will still be intact?” John looked around at the august body working in the medical lab and noticed an absence. “Dr. Mayers isn’t here?”

“He’s double-checking the strength of Drakken’s anti-psychotics. John, I’d love nothing more that to tell you that I trust this woman, but I can’t.” Anne looked across the chamber at DNAmy. “She claims that with her genomic re-sequencer bolstering and refining the power of the filter, she can use the Zipper’s improved scanning to isolate the hippocampus, the amygdalae, the mammillary bodies and the rest of the limbic system.”

Anne turned her husband completely away from the sights and sounds of the research lab. She pulled him behind her and led him back out through the door by which he had just entered minutes ago. The empty hallway was a cold place but at least it was private.

“What I can tell you is that this is not only DNAmy’s game, John. The Halls are one of the greatest medical teams I’ve ever witnessed in action, and they want Kim cured as much as we do. And I’ve just invested the last several hours in translating every piece of our baby’s physical makeup into a format that should allow that machine, if it’s able to perform a tenth as well as DNAmy claims it will, to bring Kim back to us.” They had each been given time to wallow in the specialized areas that they had trained for, science and medicine, and their psyches were refreshed. Now they were together and needed to remind themselves that the human factor was necessary.

“Not as a clone or a copy of our girl, but the real McCoy. I admit that this area of cognitive neuroscience baffles me, but unless these last thirty hours have been nothing but smoke and mirrors, you and I may have just confirmed your own maxim.”

“Hm? And what’s that?”

“That anything’s possible for a Possible.”

John held her close and forced a grin.

“So the hard part’s over? Great. I was beginning to worry.” He let the lauded brain surgeon pull herself to him and he gave her the support she wanted. He gazed down into her blue eyes.

“So now comes the easy part… we have to find her.”

---

Give me strength, Shego prayed, to do what I have to do now.

“Go, Ron!”

She lunged forward and threw her arms around Kim in a bear hug, grappling with her from behind as tight as she could. Shego immediately felt the impact and saw stars as Kim brought her head back and clocked Shego across the bridge of her nose, the red hair doing nothing to cushion the blow from the skull beneath. Ron saw none of this as he took full advantage of the warning, running for all he was worth into the darkness.

“Shego, he has our babies!” Kim’s forgotten that I’m the one holding her, Shego realized as the pain washed over her face. Another attack lent credence to this thought.

“OW!” Kim’s head reared back again, this time connecting with a pale green cheekbone. Shego had been anticipating the move this time, for whatever it was worth. “Kimmie, stop it!”

“Get off of me!” Kim pushed outwards, desperate to free her arms from the hold. “Shego, please make them let me go!”

“Kim! It’s me! Please…” Her words were cut off as her petite bride raised both feet from the ground. The sudden change in their combined center of gravity pulled Shego forward, and so as not to lose her footing or wrench her back, Shego leaned backward to compensate. Kim kicked her heels into the well-muscled shins beneath the green and black uniformed legs.

“OW! Damn it…” Shego’s grip around Kim’s arms and chest loosened just enough and the slender redhead thrust out her arms, spun around to face her wife and caught the attention of Shego’s startled eyes. Even in the dance of firelight and shadows, Kim looked angelic but Shego prepared to ward of a blow. No attack came.

“Baby, you’re bleeding!” A tiny hand was raised and the taller woman pulled back from it in confusion before she understood what had happened. Kim’s disability had again shifted her awareness of the sitch and had muddied her mental waters. Much like the time Kim had spent locked inside the medical cell deep within ‘GJ’, she was no longer fully cognizant of what was going on.

“You’re hurt!”

“I’m Ok, ba… Kimmie. I’m Ok.” Keep her distracted, nothing to remind her of the children. What was Ron’s plan? Was he clear of the danger? The former villain was eager to keep Kim with her as long as possible, letting Ron gain as much ground and time as he could and, if yet another facet of Kim’s condition was to be the distraction, so be it.

“Who did this to you? Oh, sweetheart!” Kim wiped at the blood that dripped from her wife’s nose. The touch was so tender and gentle and it sickened Shego to know that her baby was dying a piece at a time. Kim Possible was meant for better things than this.

“Um… it was an accident. You… we, uh, were sparing and…”

“I did this?” Kim looked incredulous, and then stated to cry. “Oh, Shego, I’m so sorry!” The smaller girl practically jumped at Shego and held her close. “I didn’t mean to do it…”

“I know, Princess, I know.” Had she given Ron enough time?

“… I … seem to be doing a lot of weird things, lately.” Not raving and not manic, a new tone had entered Kim’s voice. It was new by virtue of not having been heard in a few days. It was her own Kim, the real Kim, speaking to her now.

“Princess?” Shego cradled the small body against her; her wife’s tiny form was almost weightless.

“Oh, Shego, what is wrong with me?” Bleary eyes looked about in utter confusion. “Where are we? Why do I feel so sick?”

“Sick?” A quick inspection of just what she could see did not reveal any signs of pitch.

“Sick… dead, all numb inside…” The tears were still there, but seemed more natural now. “Why do I feel like this?”

“Kimmie, I’ll take you home. We’ll take care of you.”

“Are my Mom and Dad here?”

“No, but I’ll take you to them. They’ll…”

“I’m so tired… I just want to close my eyes for a minute…” Kim sagged and folded like an empty coat. “Just for a minute… please?”

“Rest, Princess.” Shego kept the younger woman from falling and gently lowered to the floor, still holding the redhead tight to her chest as they sat together. She watched the fire smoldering in the barrel and thought about Hell again.

---

Contrary to popular belief, Wade Load did sleep. The boy did little to exert himself physically and this was why he required so little rest. His mother would often use that point to argue that he also shouldn’t to eat much either but the young genius suspected that the dear woman’s logic was flawed, somehow. His mother would also have been angry to know he was till awake at this hour, but how could he sleep? It had been so long since the rapid calls back and forth between Ron Stoppable and himself while they searched for Kim and laid plans for her return.

To have said ‘capture’ was sick and wrong. And then there was the matter of Bonnie’s involvement. Of this, Wade was not entirely enthusiastic; he nearly choked on his soda when he realized that Ron had handed a Kimmunicator to Kim’s oldest rival from her school days. Again, sick and wrong!

Right now, every single one of his computer screens was glowing with information; there was a schematic of the ‘GJ’ facility to his right and a live feed from the satellite scan of Middleton to his left. Directly in front of him was all of the data that he’d compiled on Havok, scrolling in a perpetual slideshow, starting from what few documented facts there were to every myth, legend and allegory that could be surmised. Wade was desperate to learn all that he could and the one clear piece of data that was a certainty was that Havok was a true nightmare.

It was the ‘boogeyman’ of biotech science gone wrong, but at the same time it was like Bigfoot; too many reputable sources claimed to ‘know things’ about it but no one could provide more than a shred of actual proof. Using all of his skills, he had cadged a scant few bits of arcane lore from cyberspace, but none of it overtly helpful. It did give a reason why Kim’s subcutaneous tracking implant wasn’t functioning properly, however. Turning to the slideshow, Wade paused the presentation and brought forward the relevant data for yet another review.

Havok apparently had trouble dealing with inorganic implants; being able to copy the form and function of living tissue left the black tar high and dry against something like a pacemaker or artificial hip. It would try… and fail… to infiltrate the implant and, ultimately, treat it like a wound or invading bacteria; Kim’s implant was likely being coated by layers and layers of thick, viscous pitch, interfering with the strength of the transmitter’s signal and keeping them from tracking her easily.

Now he was studying and waiting for an update of the sitch. For the first time in his young life, Wade didn’t feel as if his world-spanning technology was powerful enough. A flash of lightning from his bedroom window through the trees outside signaled the onset of a coming storm and a chubby little boy sat alone in his room.

---

Bonnie Rockwaller waited at the base of a chain link fence; she had been sitting there for almost an hour and was starting to get worried. The fencing was to serve as a barricade against anyone who might want to break in. Stretching from the floor where it had been anchored into the concrete with lag bolts, all the way up to where it was welded to the solid metal walls above the door, it was a perfect way to keep people out.

Fortunately, it would also serve to keep people in while allowing egress for anything as small as an infant. Bonnie had used the wheel jack from Ron’s car to raise a good eight inches of fence up from the floor between the lag bolts in a gap that was also about eight inches wide. It would hopefully be enough to allow two small toddlers to squeeze through.

She wasn’t alone, however. No sooner had she positioned herself to wait for Ron to bring his precious bundle to her, when Rufus scampered out of the shadows. The young man had parked his car and guided her to this spot after a few minutes of careful inspection, apparently finding the barricaded bay suitable for their purposes. He and his rodent partner had disappeared but Rufus had returned.

“Is he in there?” The former cheerleader and one-time alpha-female of the Middleton High School food chain hadn’t even hesitated to pose her question to the lower mammal.

“a’yuh”

“How’s he doing?” She set her hand down on the dirty foundation and the tiny creature climbed on, still catching his breath from his run around the outside of the depot to this other door. He could take no chances that Kim might hear or smell him after leaving Ron and returning to Bonnie.

“fyv bi fyv” Rufus let the young woman warm him in the folds of her jacket. They remained like that, lost in their own thoughts for a time.

“Psst…”

She jumped up from the cold floor at the sound of the harsh whisper and even Rufus had been caught unawares. A figure appeared from the darkness, skidding to a halt just short of running into the fence; it was Ron. He had been moving at speed but with a grace that had masked any sound.

“Hey, there, Bon-Bon…” He got right to business. “You’d better take them.”

The lanky young man kept his voice down and his movements economical; there was little about his nature to alert Kim of their presence here in this dark corner of the depot. He gingerly unwrapped the sash from around his shoulder and chest, jostling the infants as little as possible. Motherly instincts never having faded since the death of her son, Bonnie removed Rufus from her jacket while she lay down on the floor beside the gap she had made under the fencing.

Ron gently pulled one child from the woven fabric; it was Kasy and she was rubbing at her eyes with her tiny hands, having just been woken from sleep. Passing the child through the gap, Rufus carefully guided the infant around the jagged links and rusty debris and into the eager hands of Bonnie. Kasy was quickly settled into a clean blanket and a light scarf was wrapped around her head, as much to keep her quiet as it was for protection from the cold wind outside.

Rufus had to untangle Sheki from the chain links as she was being passed through; her clothing had snagged and she had started to fuss. Bonnie lifted the little girl on the safe side and quickly swaddled her in another scarf and blanket. Her first mission was going well so far.

“Rufus, you go out there and start the car… but do not try to drive it this time!” The little beast had sidled up to his friend and master, watching him closely. The animal might never fully understand what was wrong with his ‘beloved KP’ but he had all the faith in the world that the lanky young man could set things right. The naked mole rat had more faith than all of the humans in the entire building combined.

“You take care of them, boy. All three of them.” Ron’s muttered command was firm and Rufus gave a quick salute before scampering away. Bonnie settled the squirming infants beside her on the dirty concrete and looked through the fencing.

“What’ll you do now?”

“Huh? Well, first I’ll send a signal on a wavelength that’s constantly monitored by both Wade and ‘GJ’ and then I’ll do my best to help Shego ‘til the cavalry arrives.” Ron shrugged. “Pretty simple, really.”

She had been appraising the blond youth in a new light ever since yesterday. The few intervening years since high school hadn’t changed him much; still thin for his age, Ron had managed to add a few inches to his frame, giving him a height that signaled the end of his boyhood. That, and his greater control of whatever mystical energies he carried within him, had given him a controlled grace when he moved. Bonnie acknowledged bitterly that no, she never would have given Ron Stoppable a chance with her in school, but then she wasn’t that stupid girl anymore.

“Can you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Can you really fight her?”

“I… don’t know.” His eyes were a million miles away. “Maybe I’ll just keep them from killing each other until ‘GJ’ gets here.” They looked into each other’s faces for a few seconds and saw the same fears. Ron roused himself first.

“You’d better get going.”

“Ron, I…” She brought her hands up to the fencing and silently gripped the links.

“Take the girls and drive to… no, you’d better pick the safest place you can think of and go there. Think family, security, stuff like that.” He grinned without humor.

“What’s the joke?” Bonnie didn’t want to leave him alone.

“I was thinking that it’s better if I didn’t know where you were going, you know, in case she, um… in case… she makes me tell her.”

“Ron…” She swallowed hard. No more innocent deaths. “When this is over…” She stopped when his hands touched her clenched fingers from the other side. There was just no time to even form the words for all of the thoughts in her head.

“You know what?” There was humor in the smile this time. “Let’s have a nice quiet sit down at Bueno Nacho when this is over, Ok? All of us.” His fingers were just as cold as hers through the fencing but the contact made her feel warmer. “But Team Rockwaller has a mission to finish and some important parcels to deliver first.”

“Good luck.” She grinned at his determination, even under these dire circumstances.

“Who needs luck when you have the power of imagination?” Bonnie started to argue with that logic but then he winked at her and brandished his Kimmunicator. “But it also helps to have one of these.”

He thumbed the switch.

---

From deep within the vaulted foundations of the Global Justice facility and clear up to it’s storefront façade, all Hell was breaking loose.

“Great day in the morning!” John bounced almost a foot off the floor when the klaxons sounded. “What the devil…?”

“Oh, John! Do you think…?” Anne’s question was cut short as dozens of ‘GJ’ agents and operatives began to enter the hallway from various doors and side passages, forcing the Possibles to press tightly against the wall lest they be run down. “It’s just like the running of the bulls at Pamplona!”

“Quite so.” One of the uniformed figures broke away from the mass, stopping and moving to the wall. Dr. Betty Director seemed flushed and Anne Possible noticed the smell of chili on the executive agent’s breath. “I have often made that observation myself.”

“Yo, Johnny! S’game time! Seriously!” Bereft of any uniform, Motor Ed had little trouble standing out in the crowd. “You and me got to get to mission control, like now! Seriously!” He glanced at Anne and gave her a quick nod. “Hey, Big Red!” The man was standing beside Dr. Director with deference and she in turn was acknowledging his presence in a way that was not evident that first time they’d all met around the conference table.

“Anne, John… this is the moment that we have been waiting for. Your daughter has been located, and…”

“Shego’s contacted you?”

“No, we believe the signal to have come from a Kimmunicator, which suggests that Ron is on the scene.”

“And the children?”

“Nothing on them either, sir.” She cleared her throat and straightened. “John, please accompany Edward and me to Central Command to oversee the rescue operation from there.” Dr. Director turned to Anne. “You’ll want to return to the medical bay and remain on stand-by with DNAmy and the Drs. H.”

“Anne, I…”

“Scoot, dear.” The redhead gave him a tender shove. “You heard the man; it’s game time.” With firm resolve and a final kiss, the couple parted and moved off to play their separate roles in the drama that was unfolding. John gave her a smile as he let Motor Ed drag him down the corridor.

---

“That’s it, then…”

They stood and moved away from the chain link. Ron bent back down to lift the fencing a little to take the pressure off the jack; Bonnie lowered the gap she had made and quietly set the jack aside.

“That was your signal to Global Justice?”

“Yep.” Sighing, Ron returned the device to his pocket. “It probably sounds like Las Vegas at ‘GJ’ right now. You’d better get going.” He seemed to deflate a little. “It’s going to get awful busy around here.”

She gave him a resolute nod and moved away without another word. Ron watched her collect the infants in their blankets and quietly walk towards the open bay door. He knew that just beyond was his vehicle, its engine idling, ready for Bonnie to drive it away and take her and the little girls to safety.

As the brunette stepped outside, she was struck by the harsh wind; the invisible element seemed to have grown stronger over the past hour. She wondered if a storm was brewing and this prompted her to move to the car with greater speed. It was just a few years away from the door, and she could just barely see the top of Rufus’ head from where he as standing on the dashboard, waiting for her.

Keeping both bundles held securely to her chest, Bonnie was briefly forced to shift the two children to open the car door. One corner of a blanket slipped back and the cold wind stung little Kasy’s nose. Startled into wakefulness, she looked around in the noisy darkness and saw a shape that might have been her Mommy.

“… mama…”

---

On a quiet street in a nondescript area of residential Middleton, Wade Load feverishly accessed every system that he could to monitor the progress of ‘GJ’. The same signal that had set the cherries ringing at Global Justice had jarred him from his continuous review of data and forced the boy back into the here and now.

Opening the cyber-dams, he sent out inquiries to see who and what was out there in the form of ‘GJ’ reconnaissance or operative forces; he had even hacked into a small part of their Central Command. All thoughts of sleep gone from his mind, he sat back and watched as a truly impressive infrastructure grew before him, outlining the complete plan to collect Kim and return to the ‘GJ’ facility for containment and, hopefully, a restorative cure. There was little for him to do now but watch and wait to see how the drama played out. Outside, the storm was growing in strength.

---

“… mama…”

Emerald eyes snapped open. Right on the edge of sleep and across the vast expanse of the abandoned fuel depot, she heard it. Not that Kim would have been permitted sleep, it had been denied her for over a week now but at last she had felt the urge to stop, to slow down and rest. Here in this mysterious place with more questions floating around in her addled mind than there were answers, Shego was there to protect her, to let her close her eyes.

But there would be no sleep for Kim Possible. The little voice called out and what responded were images and impressions from a deep layer of Kim’s mind.

Life, life within her, two lives, moving, kicking, making her sick, making her tired, making her happier than she had ever been in her own blessed life. Being coddled by her love just as she was coddling the two lives within her belly. They were daughters, girls, little twin miracles that were perfect and green and the ultimate result of her love with Shego.

Shego…

“Shego?”

“Mm? What?” The tall thief had been using Kim’s meager weight in her arms as a counter-balance to rest against on the floor of the cold, empty depot. Kim had been silent for several minutes and Shego had prayed that the redhead had been asleep; Shego might have dropped into a doze herself if she hadn’t been eagerly waiting for whatever else Ron Stoppable might have planned. “Kimmie? Please, Princess, go to sleep.”

“I can’t, sweetheart… not while our babies are out there somewhere.”

Shego’s blood ran cold. Shit.

“Where are they, Shego?”

“Kim… they’re safe. Please sleep if you can and we’ll …”

“But they’re here, baby, I heard them!” Kim pushed herself up and looked around them into the darkness. Her chest hurt and she had a pain building in her head and in her lower back but her heart was beating faster and her breathing was stronger.

“You heard them? I didn’t hear anything.”

“It was… Kasy’s voice, I think.”

That meant that Ron was still in the depot, or at least hadn’t left immediately when he’d run off. Shego had heard nothing but she was fully aware of Kim’s newfound capabilities, even if they were gained at the cost of her life. The older woman was startled when Kim drew away from her and stood up on her own shaky legs.

“We should go and find them.” Weak, obviously, and exhausted beyond all human limitations, and infested throughout with a biological nightmare, the ‘girl who could do anything’ would not stop.

“Kimmie, they’re safe.” Please let that be true and please let Kim believe that it’s true no matter what. “That’s all that matters!”

“Shego, we really should… ow!” The pain in her head made her wince. “We need them to be with us. I… I want them!”

“Kim, what wrong?”

“Nothing, it’s just my…” The pain again, in the back of her head, making bright lights flash and pop in her eyes. “I have a headache, that’s all.”

“Princess, listen to me.” Headache? It was possible, but it was also possible that it was something happening in Kim’s brain. “What we really need to do right now is…”

Shego never got the chance to finish as Kim’s head reared up and she thrust out her tiny hand to keep Shego away. Kim had caught a scent.

“Was Ron here?”

“N… Yes, yes he was. He was here to help us.” Anything to kill time, anything to keep her wife calm. “You trust Ron; he’s your best friend, right?”

“Right. Yeah, right!” Kim smiled around the pain in her head. She lifted her hand to rub behind her ear. The pain in her lower back also made itself known again. “I do wish you’d leave Ron alone… he does try his best!”

“That’s right, he does, doesn’t he.”

“He was here, and the girls were here… does he have the girls?”

“Yes, he does.” It was time to take a chance. “He loves our girls, you know? They couldn’t be anywhere safer than with him, right?” Please, please God; make something happen, Shego prayed.

“You’re right, of course. Good old Ron! He’s my best friend, you know?” Kim breathed easier; the pain in her back was still there but the one in her head had subsided. She shook the lethargy from her limbs and looked past her anxious partner into the shadows. Why in the world had they come here, of all places?

The huge depot was dirty and smelled of a thousand odors, hardly any of them pleasant. She took another breath, this time smelling the musk of Shego’s fear. Her wife really should relax more. Another intake of air and through the rank stench of old fuel oil was the smell she knew so well from years of missions; the only man that she would ever share her innermost secrets with. Ron was too close to her, so much like a brother to her that it took the sting of a failed romance between them to bring her enlightenment.

Well, she would always love Ron and her girls could be nowhere safer. She coughed to clear her throat and took another breath. There was another scent on the air.

“Bonnie was here?”

“What? Who?” Had Ron involved Bonnie Rockwaller in this? “Um, Kimmie, I don’t…”

“You gave our girls to Ron and then Bonnie was here?” Kim coughed. “Why was Bonnie here?”

“She wasn’t, I…”

“Why was Bonnie here, Shego?” The pain was totally gone from her head but her ear still itched. Kim stared at Shego and raised her hand to brush the sensation away and her fingers came away wet.

“Oh, Kim, you’re bleeding!”

Kim never even looked to the redness on her fingertips; it was not important. There was no pain, so there was no drama. All that Shego could think of was how the Havok might take advantage of a cerebral hemorrhage. Dear Lord, if it’s in her brain, what’s left for us to save?

“Damn it Shego!” The pain in her back moved lower and created fullness in her bladder. This discomfort fueled her growing fury as she advanced on her spouse. “I’ve always trusted you but now you’ve given our children to Bonnie? Is she the one you want watching over them?”

“Kim, it’s not like that, it isn’t!”

“Is it she what you want?” She felt the ridiculous urge to urinate; she ignored the feeling. “Watching over them? Or laying under you?”

“What? No!”

“You want her, that she-bitch? You want her rutting for you? TAKE her! If she’s your ideal woman, FINE!” She coughed, retching deeply. “You can NOT have my babies!” The slender redhead coughed again, a burning in her throat to match the burning in her lower abdomen. “Give them back to me, Shego!”

“I can’t.” No more lies, Shego forced the thought across her mind. I’m just not good enough at it anymore, at least not with her. “I won’t.”

“Give them BACK!” Kim’s entire body seemed to ripple and, without seeming to make any overt motions, was suddenly in a fighting stance. “There’s no way in Hell that you’ll keep my babies from me! I’ll find them!” The itch was back at her ear; Kim broke her stance to wipe it away again. Shego saw what came away in Kim’s fingers this time; her pale green skin blanched a shade or two paler. “I’ll hunt them down and save them from her and then get rid of them and we can be together!”

“Stop it, Kim… please, just… stop it!” The sounds of Kim’s madness cut Shego deeper than any blade and the tarry discharge on Kim’s hand glistened in the red glow from the barrel. “Please let us… let me help you!”

With no further intent to make the pain in her bladder go away, Kim released herself where she stood. The relief was instantaneous but, from Shego’s horrified expression, the former villain had witnessed nothing so simple as an embarrassing biological function.

Oh, Lord, Shego thought as she stared down at the greasy pool of tar in the dust at Kim’s feet. It’s black. Shego watch in horror as Havok started to flow from everywhere.

“One last time… give me my children or get the Hell out of my way!” Disgusted at her wife for having such utter disregard for their life together, the petite redhead was prepared to make further demands, but a sour taste in her mouth replaced any words that she might have spoken. She spit, and the black flecks that filled the air had a far greater effect on her wife than any possible taunt or curse.

“Their lives are MINE.”

“They are our children, Kim.” Shego imagined a wall forming around the love she felt for her valiant little hero and slowly raised her arms to mirror Kim’s stance. “And you wouldn’t want me to do that.”

Kim leapt. Shego moved to block and realized that if she ever decided to make a prayer again she would have to be much more specific.

---

Dr. Mayers ran into the testing chamber with his patient in tow. He was supposed to be on stand-by with the other members of ‘Team Possible’ camped out in the primary medical research bay and, having finished his current business with his patient, needed to get over there immediately and be prepared for anything. The entire ‘GJ’ engagement team had been called into action; every agent that was trained as a field operative had reported to the bay and scrambled aboard their assigned hover sleds to follow the signal to its source.

“You, there!” Mayers saw that a junior agent was still in the act of securing the empty hover sled cradles. “I need someone to supervise Dr. Lipsky and escort him back to his quarters after he’s finished here.” The young agent looked puzzled.

“What is the patient to be doing here, sir?” The young man, just recently assigned to the research and development branch of Global Justice’s technical division, looked over Dr. Mayer’s shoulder at a blue man wearing a day-glow yellow jumpsuit and shackled with wrist and ankle restraints. “Shouldn’t Dr. Drakken be restricted from this area?”

The elderly physician shook his head.

“Drew Lipsky has been assisting us in the preparations necessary to locate and return Ms. Possible for several days now.” The man gestured at the empty chamber; there were signs everywhere of projects and machinery abandoned in light of the recent alert. “It’s his genius that allowed us to build the new hover sleds, among other things.”

“Yes, sir. And what do I do with him, sir?” Drakken stood a few paces behind and never moved or made a sound, clutching at a battered leather portfolio with both hands.

“You can let him inspect the work that’s being done but under no circumstances is he to be allowed access to a computer terminal or to have his bindings removed.” Mayers was impatient to be going. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good, very good.” Without a backward glance, Mayers hurried away.

The agent was a good man and well trained, so to say that Dr. Drakken gave him the ‘creeps’ might sound juvenile, but it was true. The blue man’s presence bothered everyone, from the security teams to the cleaning staff. Whatever treatment Drakken had been given to restore his sanity had apparently stripped him of any resemblance to being human. He was more like an autistic or catatonic unless he could be encouraged to speak, and when he spoke, or worse, looked you directly in the eyes, it was like being with a zombie. Whatever motivated the man was buried so deep that almost nothing made it out to the surface.

The agent watched Drakken loiter around the nearest workstation and paused in his previous task to ensure that all nearby computers were set to emergency lockout. Noting that the shackles would not allow the man free range of motion for a physical attack, the agent resumed his duties. Within a few short minutes the last cradle was secured and the agent swept his gaze across the vast chamber.

“How is the work coming along?”

The young man almost jumped right out of his skin. With his right hand lifted to his holster and fingering his stunner, he swung around to see Drakken standing directly behind him. The black hair was clean and glossy, the blue skin a little fuller from several days of proper nutrition but the eyes were dead. They were like the eyes of a squid, always seeing but unexpressive.

“Um… fine… sir.” Lord, the man was weird. “Just fine.”

Drakken nodded absently and leaned away, glancing down as if to inspect the tops of his ‘GJ’ issue footwear. As the agent watched him for any more interjections, Drakken slowly craned his neck and looked straight up.

“I don’t see everything.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“It’s not all here. Didn’t they build everything?”

The agent looked upwards, following the blue man’s gaze and the two of them stared at the vaulted ceiling for a few seconds before the agent realized that Drakken wasn’t actually looking at anything. He sighed and regarded the patient.

“Sir, what do you mean?” He wasn’t really expecting an answer but he soon got one.

“There were several enhancements integrated into the basic design of both your equipment and my own. Most of them seem to have utilized. Some of them have not.”

“I see, sir.” The agent did not see.

“Unless my designs are followed to the letter and all of the proper equipment made ready, there will be no hope whatsoever for saving your precious Kim Possible.”

“Sir, I’m certain that Dr. Possible and Mr. Lipsky have done all that they were assigned to do.” The agent had rankled at the word ‘precious’ and didn’t care for the man’s tone. The young man started back when Drakken actually turned and looked at him.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure that they did, but… you see, John can be so pedantic at times and Eddie, well, Eddie does try his best, but…” The sentence tapered off with a sad shaking of Drakken’s head.

“Sir, when the team returns, I can discuss this with them…” The man paused when Drakken’s head began to shake again, this time in earnest.

“No, no. They’ll be much too busy, even if they are successful. And if they’ve failed to capture the girl, well, what will they think if they start looking for the rest of the equipment… and don’t find it?” Drakken’s gaze never wavered. “Because it wasn’t considered important enough, because someone assumed that everything was already completed, because someone didn’t take the initiative!”

“Now hold on, sir! I never said that…”

“Young man, I’m not accusing you of anything. I just know how these brainy types think.” Drakken looked at the agent with sympathy. “They only accept the rewards of success and never the rot of failure; they tend to blame others.” He became silent and continued to stare at the agent. The uniformed man felt a cold sweat on the back of his neck.

“… sir, maybe if you could specify what incomplete projects you’re referring to, I can reassign a detail of technicians to oversee them when a stand-down is announced.”

“Good lad!” Since his retrained arms were barely able to open and close the clasps of his portfolio, Drakken pointed to the nearby workstation with his chin. “I believe that Cousin Eddie usually keeps his schematics in a red folder.”

The agent looked and, indeed, there was the edge of a bright red folder, ever so faintly visible peeking out from under a random stack of other documents and blueprints.

“It’s really quite simple, quite simple!” Drakken’s body never moved as he spoke, never shifted or turned to give emphasis or empathy for his words. The agent felt that it was like conversing with a mannequin. “It’s little more than a consolidation of projects that are already completed; just a simple merging of hardware!”

“Do you mean this, sir?” The agent pulled a particular schematic from the red folder and held it up dubiously.

“Exactly! Clever man! You’ll go far with this organization!” The agent could see that Drakken was right about it being a ‘simple merging of hardware’; it risked being a redundant allocation of resources, but here it was with the other important documents. Surely he could find a few men to take care of this without any fuss.

“I’ll get right on it, sir.”

There was no reply.

“Sir?”

Drakken had leaned away and was propped against the worktable, his eyes glazed and his lips parted. The uniformed agent hoped that the patient didn’t start to drool as he moved away. The young man reassessed his appraisal of Drakken, however. The man wasn’t like a mannequin; he was more like a scarecrow. The agent returned to his duties.

Back at the worktable, a certain ‘scarecrow’ was dreaming of escape.

---

Geez, thought Ron, the more things change the more they stay the same. He had left Bonnie and slow made his way back towards the center of the fuel depot. There were enough pipes and conduits to keep his return secretive as he slipped around the defunct refining machinery, and he eventually saw the flickering red glow of the fire in the empty fuel drum. As he drew closer, he also heard something so familiar that it gave him pause. With the red glow illuminating the scene, Ron peered from around a pipe.

Kim’s initial leap had been sudden and unplanned; Shego dodged to one side and the redhead landed on her own feet, still a little shaky but recovering quickly. Kim spun and kicked, her foot targeting a green and black stomach. Lowering her hand to block, the tall warrior pushed the foot aside and found that she had to repeat her defending action when the foot withdrew and kicked out a second time.

Balanced evenly, the younger fighter continued to kick faster and faster. Shego blocked every strike, feeling the strength of each blow growing more and more forceful than the last. Her gauntleted hands had to move more quickly with each kick and she just had enough time to wonder why Kim wasn’t changing her attack when that’s exactly what happened. Coming at her from a new direction, Shego half-turned to meet the threat and reassessed her strategy.

The kicking foot swung upwards this time, not out, and the redhead flipped back. The foot upon which she had been balancing came up and knocked aside the defense; with toes extended, Kim caught Shego on the chin as the younger woman competed her flip. Shego knew that her chimes had been rung and quickly took a half step back. The strike had stung but she had fared far worse in the old days at the hands, or feet, of her former nemesis. The pain was momentary and it served to remind Shego that this was no sparing match between marital partners. This was timely because Kim was back on terra firma and was already charging. Using only her martial arts training and not daring to risk her plasma against her mate, Shego braced herself for the next round.

Ron remained in the wings, resolve shaken. He watched as the petite redhead moved and fought with s much skill and determination as he had ever seen. This was the little girl who had befriended him in the schoolyard, the girl that had shared his awkward life with him while growing up, and the young woman that would always love him even after they both discovered that their lives could not merge beyond a certain point. He held on to the pipe that hid him and watched as if observing a nightmare.

Kim was as fast as ever and timing would be counted in milliseconds. For all of the internal trauma that her bodily systems had suffered, the Havok substance was certainly doing what it had been designed to do; Kim was fast, indomitable, immune to pain and totally focused on bringing down her ‘enemy’. Shego waited until the slender girl was almost upon her before feinting to the left, not a normal move from the repertoire of the former thief, and strafing Kim’s legs with her own right leg as the taller woman pulled herself down.

The ruse worked in as far as contact was made. Kim was successfully tripped and she was moving too fast to bring her stumbling feet back underneath her. Shego pushed aside the errant thought that, when they were still enemies, he would have chosen this moment for a snarky comment. There was no time for that even if she had been so inclined; Kim had barely skidded to a stop before she was climbing to her feet.

Kim stood and paused to wipe pitch from her face before turning back to her opponent. The dust and filth had caked in her eyes and mouth as she had slid across the cold floor. When finished, she simply walked towards Shego in a measured pace, not running blindly or charging in a way that would let the other woman use Kim’s speed against her. Pitch ringed her eyes, making them appear sunken and her upper face look skull-like, and the inky blackness made her mouth a void as it coated her teeth.

Shego shuddered as the ghastly visage walked right up to her and let fly with a simple jab. The punch was followed by another kick; both blocked with no room for error. Yet another kick, then a roundhouse punch and then two more jabs, then two kicks in quick succession that came so fast at Shego that one slipped through her defenses and struck her upper arm. Her fingers tingled briefly and she thought about possible nerve damage.

“Careful, baby… don’t let your guard down!” Kim’s voice shrieked between greasy black teeth. “You’re not getting old, are you?”

Her mate had not planned to reply, but the same thought had crossed her mind. With an audible snarl, Kim resumed her attack. More punches than the redhead normally threw in a week of battles were getting to within bare inches of the pale green face before being blocked or dodged. In the back of her mind, the analytical side of Shego’s intellect guessed that, if Kim was no longer able to feel pain anymore, she petite girl could have punched at a brick wall all night and never felt a thing.

It was a punch that slipped through this time, hitting the same general area of Shego’s upper right arm that already had a fine bruise forming under her outfit. The taller, stronger woman had just deflected a potentially debilitating kick to her solar plexus when she felt the follow-through blow. If that arm took too many more hits, she wouldn’t be able to lift it as high or as quickly, accelerated healing or not.

“Ooh, sorry about the ‘old’ barb! I guess that was just a little to close to the mark, huh?” Kim didn’t even slow down her attacks. “Don’t worry… I won’t say anything about you getting fat!” Emerald eyes glinted through tears of pitch and a wad of tar ran down from the corner of her feral grin “That would just be rude!”

Another punch thrust outward and Shego was shocked to realize that it had become a talon when Kim opened her bare hand and clawed at the pale woman’s own green eyes. Her standard defense broken, Shego raised her left arm to ward off the small hand as jagged nails attempted to blind her. The move prevented her from being blinded but Kim made due by clamping her grip around a uniformed forearm and shredding through the weave to draw blood from the pale green flesh beneath. With the strength of both arms compromised, the former villain was forced to take a few steps back before she resumed her stance.

Kim inspected her hand, sniffing at her spouse’s blood and even extending the pink tip of her tongue to sample on drop. She frowned and spit out the blood, along with yet another mouthful of the black tarry pitch.

“It never tastes as good as you’d think.”

Several yards away, Ron awoke to the sitch; Kim had never draw blood like that before. She hardly ever drew blood at all except for the occasional nosebleed and in her entire life she had sure as Hell never… Ron shook himself in disgust; at a level that lay deep below the surface, his psyche began to accept that this was not the girl he knew and loved. He released his death grip on the greasy pipe and took one step forward.

Kim grinned wider. She gathered herself and started to run right at Shego before she jumped and flipped over the head of the startled woman.

A dervish of motion, Kim’s petite form didn’t stay on the concrete floor for more than a second or two at a time; she leapt and flipped and practically flew over her opponent. There were no attacks, neither fist nor foot struck out or down at Shego, but the girl had taken her scope of battle to a third dimension.

“Speaking of fat…”

In an effort to follow the incredible motions of her mate, Shego has lost all pretense of fighting. It was all that she could do to simply keep the slender redhead in view. Truth be told, only Kim was fighting; Shego was just trying to stay alive.

“Bonnie’s fat… have you seen her?” Kim landed nimbly and paused, letting Shego turn and focus on her before moving again. “A real porker!”

Forcing herself to keep silent, Shego made a grab for Kim as she passed by and immediately regretted the action. Kim was taunting her, making her react emotionally instead of with logic and control. As ineffectual as the grab had been, it had been Shego’s first offensive move since the bear hug to keep her mate from chasing after Ron. It earned her a hard slap across the cheek when Kim flew by again.

“But that’s what you like, isn’t it?” Judging proximity from the sound of Kim’s voice, Shego ducked in time to avoid another blow. “A little more jiggle in the wiggle?”

A plan was forming in Shego’s mind. She continued to weave and dodge but kept her hands low and down at her sides. Kim just continued to dance and leap all around her, making a few idle connections but mostly keeping the pale green warrior disoriented.

“She gets knocked up, and then she blows up and then you come running to smother yourself in it…” Kim flipped and caught her wife behind the ear with her heel. “Sorry that I couldn’t accommodate you, baby, but Kim Possible is no one’s sow!”

The kick at her ear made Shego see stars; now was the time to act.

Feeling the familiar heat of her plasma fields building strength around her hands, she formed twin bubbles of energy that she kept hidden in each palm. The lifespan of each bubble was to be counted in seconds if she was to release them, but there in her hands they remained stable. While nowhere near as powerful as one of her blasts, one bubble could be used to create a dazzling lightshow that would usually distract of confuse an opponent. When two were used in conjunction, she was hoping for a more dramatic effect.

Shego risked holding still long enough to gauge Kim’s next move; this was rewarded by a very hard kick to her cheekbone that would definitely blacken her eye. The gamble paid off when Kim acted, allowing Shego to reach her arms upwards and slam her hands together right in front of Kim’s face. The green blaze flashed like a strobe, briefly illuminating the whole interior of the depot and making the redhead cry out in surprise.

No longer hiding behind the pipe, Ron covered his face against the sudden glare. He was much closer now and found himself ready to run to Kim’s side when she fell to the concrete floor, apparently stunned from the shockwave. The redhead had hit the floor hard enough to bounce, her current pounce interrupted mid-leap by the small explosion. Shego herself had been knocked to the floor by the concussion, speaking more towards her failing resources than the power of the plasma bubbles. The pale woman winced as she straightened her legs and rolled over to find her wife. She was sore and bleeding and knew that this was a pace that she could not maintain.

“KP?” Eyes wide, Shego whipped her head around to see Ron standing a few feet from away.

“Stoppable, get back!” She was still forcing her knees to bend and let her stand up. “If she’s even hurt, it won’t be for long.” Shego finally stood with difficulty. “You picked a fine time to show up… I could have used some help!”

“Shego, I… ” He looked at her but didn’t seem to know where he was, looking more like a lost boy than a young man. “It’s just that… it’s Kim.”

“No, Sto… Ron, no it’s not! Not in any way that counts!”

They heard a cough at their feet and they looked down to see tiny clouds of dust floating near Kim’s open mouth as she lay facedown in the filth. Except for the shallow movements of her chest she was otherwise motionless. Seeing that no more attacks were forthcoming at the moment, the tall woman returned her attention to the boy.

“Please tell me that you got our girls to safety!” This roused him and he turned to focus on her.

“Yeah, yeah we did.”

“So you did bring Bonnie here? She wasn’t hurt back at the Possible’s house?”

“Uh, yeah… I mean, no. No, she wasn’t hurt, at least not to badly. And yes, I did bring her here to help me with the girls.” He frowned. “How did you know?”

“I didn’t.” Shego pointed downwards. “She did. She… she acted like she could smell Bonnie in the building.” There was an enormous weight lifted from Shego’s heart; even though her Princess was still in dire straits, their girls were out of danger. “So she has them? The girls, I mean?” A faint moan from the prostrate body interrupted both their thoughts and she had to regain his attention. “Ron?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah.” The young blond man knelt down but kept well back. He was emotionally torn but far from stupid; he’d seen what his best friend… or this strange visage that looked like her… could do in close quarters. “They’re probably far from here by now.”

“So where’d you send them?” Shego groaned and bent down as she asked the question; she quickly searched her ankle pouch for lock-ties or anything that might bind Kim’s hands with. She found nothing and vowed to never be without restraints again.

“I left that up to her.” His eyes were fixed on Kim. She was still breathing but might have been asleep. The slender body was limp and resting partly on its side, Kim’s legs tangled from when she’d dropped to the floor after the plasma concussion and her one arm pinned underneath her stomach. The other hand was laying, fingers still and open, near a circular metal lid from a fuel drum; it might have been from the very drum that was giving them light. “I didn’t want to accidentally give their location away.”

Despite herself, Shego nodded at his judgment.

“Did you contact anyone, ‘GJ’ or the Possibles?”

“’GJ’… They should be here any minute.” Ron stood and backed away from his friend, shifting his gaze elsewhere for the first time in several moments to look up towards the distant ceiling. He might have been looking for imaginary helicopters.

“How are the ‘Tweebs’, Kim’s brothers?”

“Well, I only know what Bonnie could tell me on the way over here; Jim’s leg was in pretty bad shape but Tim was doing Ok.”

“How did Bonnie know this?”

“She stuck around the hospital to keep an eye on them after the doctors made sure she was alright.”

Shego felt her trust and affection for the brunette deepen. If… not if, but when…when they all got through this, she and Kim would have to make it clear to Bonnie how much they appreciated her. Just beside her, Ron was also making a reassessment of a certain female that had once been an enemy and was now his ally. He looked back at this tattered and filthy woman, bleeding from her temple and her arm and with crusted blood on her upper lip. With his best friend since forever lying unconscious at their feet, the sitch could not have been more reversed.

“Shego, I’m sorry.”

“Ron…”

“No, I mean it. I’m really sorry.” He gathered his wits. “I watched you two fighting and couldn’t move. She cut you and kicked you and I just couldn’t do anything.”

“Ron, this wasn’t any easier for me. Kimmie and I have fought or sparred for so long that it was easy to fall right into that pattern, but she was too much for me one on one.” Shego raised her palms and looked at them; she had extinguished the plasma fields immediately after creating the concussion blast but she could almost feel the familiar tingle. “I’ve used my plasma against her before. You’ve seen me.”

He could only nod.

“If I’d not used it just now, she’d have worn me down in no time. She’s too fast now, too hard to hit and… “ Shego felt her composure melting. “And I just can’t fight her like I used to… like we did that day at her evaluation.”

“What do you mean? Do did great. It’s just what KP needed, what she wanted you to do for her.”

“That’s just it…” Shego kept her eyes on her angel at all times; there was still no movement beyond shallow breathing. “I had to dig deep within myself for an entire day in advance in order to find that part of me still left over from the time before I loved her, from when I hated her, deeply and passionately hated her because of how she’d come to represent everything that I used to want to be… and had failed at.”

Down at their feet and as quiet as a mouse, Kim Possible listened. She had been fully awake and conscious within seconds of having struck the floor. Shego’s attack had been executed perfectly but it would take far more than that to take her out of commission. Kim feigned unconsciousness and bided her time.

“I gave it my all that day and she won. She won fair and square.”

“I don’t get you.” Ron brushed at his ear; he wasn’t certain if he was hearing something or if he were being watched. The feeling had all of the telltales of when his Mystical Monkey Powers would kick in and alert him of danger, but there was nothing going on at the moment. “What’s the problem this time? You sure looked like you were ‘giving it your all’.” The feeling came again and he attributed it to the whole sitch.

“Stoppable, do you have any idea of how much damage these plasma fields of mine can do to?”

“Sh’yah! KP and I have seen you blast holes through walls and… oh.” His eyes widened; why hadn’t he ever given it this much thought before?

Thank you for talking so much, Kim thought. It allowed her to gauge both distance and direction.

“I could have cut her in half the first day we met.” Shego grimaced and then smirked. “See? I can’t even think about it anymore. She’s too special to me.” The tall woman made a quarter turn to face the young man he’d so often thought of solely as ‘the buffoon’. “She’s my Kryptonite and my magic feather; she weakens me and gives me the strength to do anything, all at the same time.”

“Yeah, tell me about it…” Ron felt no pangs of jealousy or envy as he said this. He had come to terms with his love for Kim and its limits. Limits that were starting to become more bearable ever since he had become reacquainted with a certain brunette; it was odd that he didn’t feel the least bit bad about this, either. Shego was struck by his comment and had to remind herself of the years of history her angel shared with Ron.

She was about to say more to the boy when a scuff of fabric against concrete and a slight gasp for air reached her ears.

From her prone facedown position, Kim slowly wrapped her fingers around the edge of the metal lid and swept her arm out and forward, letting the lid take flight. It canted in midair but continued on a path straight and true. It was aimed directly at Shego’s head and the green and black clad woman was not going to be able to do anything to avoid the impact.

Not all boundless endurance and painlessness come from biological nightmares. Not all powers and abilities come from cosmic radiation leaking out of stray comets. Some feats of strength and energy come from ‘dumb skills’, the power of imagination and a healthy dose of Mystical Monkey Power.

“No!” Ron was in motion.

He had felt what Kim had done the moment that she had done it, and he could never have explained how in a million years. The lid weighed only a few pounds and would not be traveling far, but its speed and the rate of its rotation made it a deadly missile. Faster than Shego could move or even react he was between her and certain death, his leap bringing him up from the floor a few inches.

The flying metal lid struck Ron squarely in the chest and he fell back against Shego. The woman, shocked beyond words, caught him as the lid spun away into the darkness. She watched him suck desperately for the air that had been so horribly forced from his lungs and she felt the sting of tears as his eyes rolled back and he became limp in her arms.

“Ron!” Was he breathing? She couldn’t tell, her own body so numb that all external sensation was denied her. She sank to the floor from his weight against her. “Ron!”

Motion from the periphery caught Shego’s awareness like a fishhook. Kim was standing there, looking even worse than before, if that were possible, from the filth she had gained from her time on the floor. It caked against her secretions like glue.

“I guess that’s one for the Ron Factor, huh? He always was good for a distraction.”

“Kimmie… what have you done?” Shego felt as if she wanted to vomit until she turned inside out. She was already weak from her earlier bout and there was no way that she could defend herself for long. Now that she had the additional responsibility of seeing that Ron was taken to safety… if he would even survive, if he were even still alive now. Where the HELL was ‘GJ’?

“It’s just us, now, baby. We don’t need him.”

“He’s your best friend…”

“Some friend! He stinks of Bonnie Rockwaller!” Black tears ran down the sides of her face. “He’s just another dead end in my life that needs cleaning away!”

Kim had turned fully away and had taken several steps before Shego realized that no one was going anywhere; Kim had taken hold of the rim of the blazing drum and was dragging it back.

“Dead ends… dead friends… old dead life going to rise again…”

“Kim, what…” Her angel bent slightly at her tiny waist and was firmly clasping her hands to the metal sides of the drum. “Hey! That’s hot, you’ll…”

Burn yourself. Oh, my sweet Lord.

Kim was lifting blazing drum, picking it up from the floor and moving closer to where Shego cradled Ron’s body. Shego clearly heard the skin sizzling on those perfect little hands and was just glad that she wasn’t close enough to smell anything. There were tiny shreds of burning fabric floating in the air as the remnants of Kim’s mission gloves crisped and sloughed away. The skin beneath the burning gloves was clearly smoldering but was being replaced just as quickly by something that looked like skin.

“Kim, put it down!”

“First Bonnie and now Ron… what is this? You prefer my friends over me?” She took another step towards the fallen boy. Kim gagged, but nothing came from her mouth this time; gouts of blackness spilled from her nose and struck the concrete where the black settled into the filth and quickly turned gray. “I’m just trying to clean up the loose ends in our lives!”

“Put it down NOW!” Shego ignited her plasma fields. Ron’s face shone green from the glow.

“Your wish is my command, my bride!” Kim heaved the barrel at her intended target.

Thought making the plasma flare and arc, Shego managed to project a blast that dented the rusty metal as she knocked the drum from Kim’s hands, making it spin away and crash to the floor several yards beyond. Too damaged to rotate smoothly, the barrel limped as it rolled, illuminating the void, divesting itself of its burning contents, the rags and bits of old pallet wood creating tiny bonfires to mark its trail.

Shego’s breath caught and she forced herself to ignore her Princess for a moment; there were flames growing and spreading from several points now, the fire tasting the old grease and oil residue and finding it delicious. Shit, she wondered, how many more times can I screw up tonight?

“Kim… listen to me… we have to get out of here.”

“Why?” The redhead had been knocked back off her feet when the barrel was blasted away, but that had been a trifling. She was looking back at her lover now and the expression on Kim’s face was openly puzzled. “We have our freedom here. Why would we want to leave?” Flames licked up the sides of the pipe and conduits, climbing slowly but surely towards the ceiling.

“Kim… Kimmie, it’s not safe anymore, we…” Shego flinched as somewhere over their heads an old beam squealed as the heat from the flames started to buckle the structural supports of the depot. Hopefully nothing would come crashing down around them just yet. “We have to take Ron and get as far away from here as we can.”

“As far away as Bonnie?” There was no more puzzlement, just anger; Kim knew the sitch. Why did her wife not understand? Was Kim the only one to grasp the sitch? All must die and all would live and… and it made sense! Didn’t it?

“No, as far as getting help for you and Ron!”

“I’m fine and Ron’s dead! It’s you that wants to get away!” Kim advanced. “You want to get away from me and take her all for yourself!”

“You know that isn’t true!” Something exploded in the far reaches of the depot and crashed to the floor. “And Ron isn’t dead!” She wanted that to be true but there was no way to tell his condition with so much happening at once. Shego pulled herself out from underneath Ron as gently as she could and regained her feet, moving away from the fallen boy for his protection.

“’A friend we could share’, that was what she was… for both of us!” More of the depot was becoming visible over Kim’s shoulder as the flames grew and pushed back the darkness. “But you just had to have her all for yourself, you selfish green bitch!”

“No!”

“You just want to take her home, right?”

“Kim, stop it!” This is not my Kimmie.

“Your new whore!”

“She’s not that! She’s our friend!” This is not my Princess.

“Her skin slick and her flesh hot against you!”

“Stop it! Damn it, you stop saying those things!” Fire burned in her chest. “What I want… Kimmie, what I want is to fix you dinner… to watch some stupid comedy that you like or watch ‘Night Of The Living Dead’ for the millionth time and hold you when you scream… I want to sit in the tub with you and wash your back while you complain about being too skinny! I want us to be dancing or sparring or watching television or even sharing a mission together as Team Possible!” Shego wept openly. “God help me, I can’t take this anymore!”

This was not her Pumpkin.

“You don’t fool me for a second with those crocodile tears!” The slim form circled, drawing closer. “You just want our daughters in the hands of that buffoon while you let Bonnie wrap her legs around your head and you clamp your mouth around her…”

“STOP IT! YOU’RE NOT HER! YOU’RE NOT!” Shego had not even noticed her hand rising, nor did she properly aim her swing. She was not even remotely aware of the motion until she saw her own gloved hand come into view and strike Kim across her beloved angel’s perfect face, and felt the impact resonate up her arm.

Kim was rocked back on her feet and both of her hands flew to cover her face. It had not been a combative blow, it had been a simple roundhouse slap; Shego had not struck anyone in that manner since some boy pinched her on the ass way back in grade school.

Nor did she have her powers way back then. She had just slapped Kim across the face with her hand fully encased in a full-strength plasma field.

The slender form, the source of Shego’s love and hopes for over two years and the source of her fear and horror for the past several days, fell back from the blow, Kim howled and brought her hands up defensively to cover her face. There was even a little residual glow from the plasma shining between Kim’s fingers as it dissipated away into the air.

“No… oh, no. No, no, no, Kimmie, I…” Shego moved forward.

The hands parted and the tall woman received a quick glimpse of Hell. A feral grin, a set of large emerald eyes staring out at her from an expression that many would have categorized as being bestial in nature, if not evil in its intent. There was no damage, at least nothing that the Havok hadn’t repaired within seconds. A blur of motion from the side barely registered across Shego’s visual cortex when Kim’s small fist lashed out and caught her wife on the chin with a horrific crunch.

“Gotcha.”

Shego knew that her jaw had just been broken.

---

Amy Hall reached out and switched off the centrifuge by touch alone, years of practice making sight unnecessary. DNAmy lifted out the crimson test tube and checked the cap to ensure that is was made fast; it wouldn’t pay to spill a drop.

‘What is the law? Not to spill blood, that is the law!’ She had to stifle a giggle at the quote from ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau’, her favorite movie and the initial inspiration for her life’s work. Sure the Cuddle-Buddies ™ were adorable, but hardly a suitable reason to devote her live to hard science and besides, that Burt Lancaster was such a cutie!

She finished tabulating the results of her latest tests and did lift her gaze to make sure that the Drs. H and Anne P. were nowhere close enough to read what she had written. They would have been very troubled if they could. Removing the top piece of paper and folding it, she secreted it away in her lab coat and also thought to crumple the sheet immediately under it just in case; her writing was often heavy and someone might be able to read the impressions left on the lower sheet of paper.

Rising from her chair, she casually sauntered across the medical research chamber and over to the several dozen cages, the ‘hobby’ that she had brought with her and was so annoying to Dr. Mark Hall, and inspected the wriggling shapes within. She patted the outer pocket of her coat and felt the weight and shape of the vial. The blood did not represent anything blatantly nefarious; it was hers and she had secretly drawn it when the others were taking a very short break. But it was what she had been successfully able to blend it with in a stabile cohesion that was making her cautious.

DNAmy, in just a few short hours and with the entire resources of Global Justice at her command, had found a way to imbue naked mole rats with the genetic traits of humans. Now she could give them the genetic potential for increased intelligence and maybe even the chance to achieve a slight increase in size. It would take many generations before the little mammals began to display any new characteristics in their nature, but she had time and they breed quickly.

One day she would have an army of the creatures to command!

---

Bonnie shut off her turn signal and parked right against the curb. The streets were totally deserted at this dead hour and she had driven back into Middleton proper in no time. ‘Think family, think security’, Ron had told her. She scowled to herself that she didn’t have anywhere special in mind yet. She would have readily taken the infants to her mother’s house except that the woman was just now willing to speak with Bonnie herself; if her ‘promiscuous’ daughter showed up in the middle of the night with a passel of strange children, Bonnie guessed that her visit home might be cut short.

“The Possibles might be home… I’ll call them.” Unaware that she was talking to herself out loud, Bonnie lifted her personal Kimmunicator from the seat next to her and used the telephone feature to access a personal number. She glanced into the back of the vehicle at the two safety seats that Ron had borrowed and installed before the start of the first ‘Team Rockwaller’ mission.

Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible were looking back at her and grinning, grasping in the brunette’s general direction with their pudgy hands and jabbering in their incomprehensible baby talk. There was one word that she could understand, however.

“…mamama…”

Rufus tried to look indignant as Kasy cuddled him with one little arm but he couldn’t maintain the posturing. The rodent wiped a bit of drool from his head and allowed the little redhead to kiss him again.

‘feh, peepul khuteez!’

Bonnie listened to the recorded voice of Dr. Possible explaining the several reasons why his family was not presently able to come to the phone. She could only imagine that they were out looking for Kim since no one else was aware of her presence at the fuel depot, or that they had gone to the hospital to look after their sons. With a bittersweet smile she reached back and stroked the pale green faces.

“Not even close, but I swear to do my best until both of your mothers can take over for me.” She blew them each a kiss before leaving her message. “Drs. P, this is Bonnie… Bonnie Rockwaller, and I have the girls with me. I repeat, I have the girls with me and I’m going to swing by Kim’s place to pick up some items before I head over to your house.” She steadied her nerves and took a breath. “They’re fine and Ron and I got them out with no trouble. I’ll be there as soon as I can… bye.”

There was nothing more to say. She prayed that Ron was all right back there with Shego; she even hoped that Shego would be Ok and they could somehow get Kim to listen to reason and return with them. The science of the nightmare they were all dealing with was beyond her, so if this was all she could do to help, she was proud to have done it.

Sheki wasn’t able to lean over far enough to slobber kisses on the naked mole rat because of the harness around her car seat, but she giggled and scratched him behind the ears. Rufus decided that maybe ‘people cooties’ weren’t always so bad after all. With one more look back to her innocent charges, Bonnie restarted the vehicle and pulled back onto the empty street.

---

“… ow…”

He couldn’t see and he didn’t have any concept of how long he had been lying there. There was heat all around him and it wasn’t until he tried to roll over that spears of agony lanced through his chest. His vision clearing, he discerned flames all around his body but none close enough to cause harm. With no other intent that to fulfill the basic instinct to survive, Ron Stoppable forced himself over onto his belly and began to drag his body in the direction from which he felt the least heat.

---

Shego turned and ran.

She ran for her life and for her sanity and because the cavalry was late. The fire in her lower face matched the flames that were building all around her and she was reminded of her broken jaw each and every time she took a running step. Somewhere behind her, and probably gaining, was her wife. The smoke and collapsing debris might protect Shego from Kim’s enhanced senses but the petite and irrational woman would never give up the chase.

I even abandoned Ron, she thought, refusing to allow herself the realization that in this burning depot, the boy would be safer as long as Kim followed her.

“Baby, wait up! The mighty Shego never runs… what’s that about?” The voice behind her in the greasy smoke would have sounded as sweet as ever had it not been punctuated with a hacking cough. There was no mystery as to what her Princess as just spit from her mouth into the filth.

Great, as if I needed proof, Shego thought. First it’s my improper use of prayer and now tempting Fate. Weak from loss of blood and in agony from her broken jaw, Shego kept her breathing steady and continued to run.

The fuel depot was an enormous place and most of the entrances and exits had been barricaded years ago. The smoke that protected her also foiled her attempts to escape to the open air where, hopefully, the forces of ‘GJ’ would soon be descending upon this place like flies on crap. Even in her exhaustion she wondered how Dr. Betty Director might like that analogy.

Coming upon yet another metal wall in her search for freedom, Shego skirted around it before she realized that the wall was curving away from her. In a gigantic building constructed like a box, any surface that was curved obviously meant something important. Eager for any detail that might lead her towards better terrain, she followed the wall around its circumference until she reached the rungs of a ladder. Muting her own cough to clear her lungs of the greasy soot, she looked up and up and saw that the ladder rose far over her head and that this ‘wall’ was more than she had first assumed it to be.

She had unwittingly found the elevated vertical stack once used to burn off waste gasses from the depot, long since defunct and now a monument to the place. Now it had become her escape route; Shego ceased to run and began to climb.

---

“Whoa! Seriously! I’d hate to see the bills to heat this place!” Motor Ed could not believe how huge Central Command was. He continually glanced away from his workstation to stare up at the ceiling far overhead. “They all must be claustrophobic or something! Seriously!”

Dr. John Possible paused in his own work and turned to his new partner and ally.

“You know, you’re right about that. Every room in this place is enormous.” He shrugged the distracting thought away but the mechanic beside him wasn’t so quick to refocus.

“Yeah, even the cans in this place are big. Seriously.” He ruminated on that for a moment. “Hey, come to think of it…”

“Attention, everyone!” Dr. Betty Director strode out into the center of the room and stepped up onto the central dais. “Everyone be quiet! We have an update…” The woman paused for breath in the muffled silence.

“… the only small room in this place is her office, serio…”

The comment carried through the crowded chamber like a tidal wave. The blush on Eddie’s face was partly hidden by his mustache but Dr. Director was forced to raise the printed update close to her face as if she was having some difficulty in reading it. The only faces not looking towards her in shock were turning to find Motor Ed sinking down deeper into his chair. Only John Possible was free to enjoy the ironic humor.

“Good one, Eddie. Remind me to tell you about what Anne said during our wedding reception. I swear that the whole hall heard it. Her parents still won’t talk to me.”

“IF… we can refocus our attention…” Betty lowered the paper from her face and she was all business once again. “We have received a transmission from the field squad and it seems that the signal was indeed from a Kimmunicator. The signal strength has given the operatives a course to follow and the enhanced hover sleds should be on the scene within minutes.” She watched as her agents digested this information with a mixture of relief and trepidation; their girl had been found but could they bring her in?

“That is all for now. Return to your posts and further updates will be disseminated as they come in.” She stepped down from the dais and work resumed around her.

Of the hundred or so operatives manning the Central Command, most were coordinating the actions of the agents in the field with the base of ‘GJ’ operations here. Each person was highly trained to perform multiple tasks but was solely responsible for one function when assigned to ‘CC’. The only non-agents here at this time were Eddie and John; each man had been given a workstations to monitor the telemetry of the newly enhanced hover sleds and route the field reports back to the relevant teams; all must be prepared if the mission was to be successful.

She threaded purposefully between the clusters of busy agents and stood next to Dr. P. Eddie noticed that the executive agent wasn’t going to give him any attention in front of her posse, but he’d expected no less. Embarrassing remarks aside, this was her turf and she had troops to command; no way was she going to be seen fraternizing with the enemy.

“We will locate her, sir.” She might have said more but providence was not to be tempted. John nodded in silent gratitude before bending back down over the monitor screen in front of him. He was mildly startled by a light punch to his shoulder.

“Dude, really, we’ll snag Little Red. Seriously. It’ll all be cool.” John could see that Ed was sincere and gave another grateful nod. Even Dr. Director shifted in reaction to the comment before she walked away to oversee more of the project. The two men returned to their work, their chosen fields of engineering and technology given them more confidence than they would have other wise felt.

---

There was little need to guess as to the whereabouts of Kim Possible; the pilots had spotted the flames from miles away and, matching the original direction of the Kimmunicator transmission to that heading, directed their hover sleds flew as fast as they could towards an abandoned fuel handling depot on the distant outskirts of Middleton.

Agents Benson and Hedges were in the lead vehicle and in constant contact with Central Command; this was more to relay data to the operatives back at ‘GJ’ rather than receive instructions themselves. They had been drilling and preparing for this moment for almost a week now, even before the Possibles and the other ‘guests’ had been brought into the project. Back before it started being referred to as a ‘rescue’ mission instead of a possible ‘seek and destroy’, shamed though they all were to admit it. Hedges ran his fingers along the instrument panel ruefully.

The hover sleds were truly a wonder; never having used the devices before, a handful of the best ‘GJ’ pilots had drilled and trained on the machines from the moment that Drakken first declared the enhanced machines to be complete. With more lift and speed than an MH 53-E Sea Dragon, the sleds were no louder than a golf cart and almost as simple to operate and control. Throw in the capacity for the retractable arm coils and they were more than suitable for the task at hand. For all of his instability, Drew Lipsky was a genius.

“Sir, we’ve got a reading!” Benson’s voice was loud in the hover sled.

“Another transmission?”

“Not this time, sir. It’s a transponder signal from a sub-dermal implant!”

“Where?” The canopy of the new sled was protecting the passengers from wind shear so the agent had no trouble reach forward and pointing to the sensor array on the instrument panel. Hedges saw where the finger was pointing and evaluated the location.

“Just beyond the periphery of the flames. We’re almost on top of that signal now!” He thumbed a control. “I’m taking us down!” Hedges directed the hover sled to ground level while Benson signaled the other vehicles to remain loft but remain in a holding pattern until otherwise instructed. Lights mounted in the undercarriage of the sled winked on and the hard-packed earth and cracked macadam lit up like high noon.

“There!” The sled lowered further and came to rest near a prone body. As soon as the vehicle touched down and the canopy was opened, Agent Benson jumped over the side and ran towards the still form. Being careful with the apparently wounded subject, he checked for life signs.

“Get a backboard over here!” It wasn’t necessary to yell into his personal communicator but he had recognized the face and felt the need for urgency. It was obvious from just a cursory inspection that medical help was going to be needed. The agent managed to control his tone before making a more concise report to the Field Commander. “Sir, it’s one of them! It’s a member of Team Possible!”

“Understood.” Hedges never seemed to let his emotions affect his actions. “Bring the subject on board as quickly as possible and I’ll send the other units on ahead.”

The unconscious body of Ron Stoppable was strapped to the backboard and gently loaded into the hover sled.

---

Shego had been in moving upwards for the last several minutes, climbing ever upward. Desperate to gain the high ground for her own safety, she had failed to elude the mad thing that wore the ragged mantle of her wife. She was sick from the pain in her face and exhausted from battle and the running had no more idea what she was going to do now than the man in the Moon. There was a wraith somewhere below her that looked like someone she loved, a girl that she respected and admired too deeply to describe.

Kim was desperate also; to catch her, beat her, love her, and rape her until someone’s heart stopped beating. It didn’t even matter whose heart. The heat below matched the heat behind her eyes and the fire within her chest. As if summoned by a voice unheard, Kim retched another mouthful of pitch onto herself, the black fluid drying in the heat and turning to ash almost instantly. The smoke and stench of burning fuel oil wrapped themselves around the two women.

Kim was excreting constantly now, every orifice visible or otherwise a fount of vile pitch. It streamed from her emerald eyes and made it difficult to see her quarry. The mixture of dead tissue, fatigue poisons and excess Havok material made for a sour taste in her mouth as she vomited it up from her guts every few minutes, staining the exterior of her remaining clothes almost as quickly as the fabric was being soiled from within. The occasional flash of pink skin was still to be found, even for all of the dirt and pitch and soot, but there were no wounds or cuts or lacerations any sort on her flesh; the unthinking, self-serving ministrations of the Havok saw to that. Falling apart she might be, replaced system by system until she reached the point of dissolution, but unnatural forces were holding her body together until then.

Through the billowing smoke her eyes caught a flash of green from above. Kim grinned and increased her speed up the ladder.

The rungs mounted to the side of the refining stack were not of a single piece; the stack was much too tall for that. Rising three hundred feet above the burning depot, the ladder was attached in sections that were ten feet in length, with wider sections at each connection to allow climbers to rest or bypass each other. Not daring to rest, Shego pumped her legs for all that she was worth. Her vision was also impaired, but she knew that her own despair was the cause more so than the heat wafting up at her.

Her pain was also a factor and Shego did force herself to stop momentarily as she probed her knee; it was sore and she suspected an overextended ligament. Her arm was still bleeding lightly but her nose wasn’t and the lower half of her face felt as if she were chewing on a hot coal. She had never had a broken jaw before and she didn’t care for the sensation much. Her preternatural healing abilities were taxed but functioning, and her biggest worry was making sure any broken bones would be properly set before they knitted.

“Baby?”

Strike that, she thought, improperly knitted bones are my second biggest worry. Shego didn’t even look down for the source of the voice as she continued upwards.

“Baby, wait up!”

The strain of climbing so fast and for so long would have killed most people by now, but her altered body chemistry gave Shego a strength and endurance that made her far different than most people. Still, she was at the end of her resources and sucking for air from her exertions and her entire body was a symphony of pain. One minor detail of a beneficial nature was that she didn’t need to have her eyes open to climb, having memorized the spacing of the rungs; this allowed her to screw her eyes shut against the heat and stinging fumes.

Suddenly she felt an unexpected coolness around her body, replacing that of the heat that was rising from the flames throughout the depot. She risked opening her eyes for a moment and her ragged breath caught in her chest.

The entire depot was on fire, the flames having spread from the smoldering contents of that one fuel drum to acres of abandoned industrial complex. The red glow from the conflagration filled the sky around her but she had finally reached a height that brought up out of the greasy smoke. The night sky was black beyond the reach of the fire, that rich blackness that didn’t evolve horrors because it soon gave way to dawn. There was a gust of wind and even more of the smoke was blown away, revealing something else.

The terminus of the stack was less than ten feet above her head. She had run out of ladder.

“Shego…”

And time.

‘To love, comfort and keep.’

The former villain thrust her leaden hands one over the other to reach the pinnacle of the stack, dragging her legs after her to find what purchase they could. She could also taste the numbness in her brain and heart as she completed this final goal.

“Baby, please stop… there’s nowhere else to go. Please talk to me!”

There was the sound of the cold night wind whipping across tattered fabric and Shego looked down to see that her Princess had also cleared the smoke line, too. She’s right, Shego knew, there is nowhere else to go. Why did I do this?

“Shego?” Kim closed the gap, getting closer, and the look on her angel’s face unreadable with the bright flames below her and bordered in black. “Shego, stop!”

Shego did stop, having reached the very top pf the ladder and because she was dead inside. She hooked her arm around the top-most rung and brought her legs up beneath her, wedging her body in place against the force of the wind.

“Listen to me… you’re tired. You can’t run any more… just stay there and hang on…” Kim’s slender body navigated the final yards in no time and she joined her mate, her quarry, her prey. Shego was shivering, something that she hardly ever did, and her eyes were locked open and staring off into the void.

“Shego, look at me.”

‘Forsaking all others.’

The pale woman did look, thankful that the wind was strong enough to carry away the sour stench of the pitch that was smeared across Kim’s perfect face.

“Kimmie…” She could barely force the words through her despair and pain. She didn’t even know how wet her own face was from her tears or how filthy, either. She only knew that she was alone with her angel and that her angel was dying.

“It’s Ok, I’m here now.” Kim brought herself closer, extending her arms to her spouse. But you’re not, was the reply that Shego could not make. She did not want this terrible visage anywhere near her. When she felt the gradual pressure of Kim’s arms wrapping around her body, Shego cringed at the contact. She could smell the sourness now, feel the remaining fabric of her young wife’s clothing slide across the slick pitch beneath. The firm body next to her felt so warm and otherwise whole and healthy, it made her sick.

‘For richer or for poorer.’

“Kim, it’s over.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

What did she mean, that the chase was over? Did she mean that Kim’s life was over? She believed that now, all shred of hope gone from her heart.

“You’re right, Pumpkin. There’s nowhere else to go.” So final, her words; what was she trying to say to Kim, to say to herself?

“I know, love… look.” Kim released one arm from around her wife and pointed down into the flames. The air was so hot that if they had tried to climb back down it would have cooked their lungs at the first breath below the smoke line. Metal buckled and melted and concrete baked and split from the intensity of the fire, and the sound was a continuous roar that filled their ears like white noise.

“There’s no going back.”

“No… but we can go forward.” The voice of her Princess was so self-assured as always. “There never was a chance for us, you know that right?”

“What? No chance…?”

“Well, no chance for me, at least.” Kim snorted and wiped away the inky tar from her lips. “I know that you’ve been telling me that I’m sick. I’m starting to believe you.” She took her wife’s pale green chin between her thumb and index finger and gently pulled her gaze around to face her.

“Tell me that this is right!” She raised her fingers to her face. Shego didn’t even have the strength left to scream; Kim had just ripped a four-inch strip of flesh away from her cheek. It glistened red, then black and then it was gone, leaving perfectly pink skin in its place. Even if she didn’t feel it for more than a second, Kim certainly seemed horrified by it.

“TELL ME THAT THIS IS RIGHT!”

Shego did react to the screech, but only to draw herself into a tighter ball on the ladder. Kim still held the piece of skin in her dainty hand, a part of the original girl that was being whittled away all too quickly.

“Our life together, our life-style… we never had a chance in this world. You knew that, didn’t you?” Kim let go of the bloody tissue and brought her arm back up to brush some hair out of Shego’s eyes. The heat rising from below made their hair blow and twist. “That’s why you gave our girls to Ron and Bonnie, right? To give them a life, right?”

‘In sickness and in health.’

“Our girls are safe, Kimmie.” It wasn’t an answer, but it would make a good epitaph. Is that why I really came up here? Did I run, abandon Ron, just to die up here with her?

“Safe, yes. We can be safe, too, but it’s not going to be easy.” Kim looked down. “I know you’re tired but if you’ll just let go of the rung I’ll take care of the rest.”

To fall wouldn’t be so difficult right now, Shego thought. Hell, I can hardly keep from falling anyway. This wouldn’t even constitute as suicide, how could it? Kim was dying and I… I’m a has-been reprobate that can’t remember what it was like to be a hero, to always have the right solution to any challenge right at my fingertips. The girls are safe, they’ll have a family with the Possibles, and even Ron is better off if he died down there in the flames. There’s no one left that would need me, miss me…

It’ll be just like skydiving or bungee jumping, just enjoy the fall.

“Ok… Ok, Kimmie.” Rather than looking for strength, Shego allowed what little courage she had remaining to leach away. She felt that it would be easier that way. Maybe this is why I’ve always hated weakness. Maybe it was because I’ve been avoiding this for too long. Shego felt a violent shudder course through her body and she attributed it to the cold pre-dawn air.

‘As long as we both shall live.’

“I’ll go with you.”

“My brave girl…” Kim blinked back what might have been a real tear among the pitch. Kim felt a vibration beneath her feet; she had no way to know that Shego had felt it too and had mistaken it for the wind, but Kim knew something more than that. Her ears had detected the cracking of the baking metal, the popping of rivets and she felt the world tilt slightly as the vertical stack began to crumble at the base.

Without another word, Kim stood up and braced her feet against her rung, freeing her one hand from Shego but letting the taller woman claim the other hand as they held each other tight. If Shego pulled her hand free, Kim would have fallen. But Shego had made her decision and they would fly together.

‘Until death do us part.’

There was a flash in her eyes, blinding her. Was that the sun?

---

“Damn it, man, get them!” The updraft from the heat was making the air currents around the hover sled almost too powerful to navigate. The air car bucked and fought beneath them as Hedges gripped the steering levers.

“What the Hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Benson manned the controls for the arm coils. “Sir!” The red glare from the burning depot was brilliant in their eyes and it was next to impossible to do more than stay aloft, let alone manually grab a human body from the top of a stack. The structure was tilted, its base becoming powder from the heat and collapsing from it’s own weight.

“Can’t you hold this thing steady?” Benson didn’t realize that he was screaming at his superior officer.

“What the fu…” Hedges forced down his emotions. “I suggest urgency, but I’ll do what I can.” He did, using all of his training to make the sled ride the air currents instead of fight them. Maybe he could find a rhythm to the motions.

“That’s the ticket, sir!” Benson seemed to agree with that tactic. “Almost…” He jammed his face against the targeting display and slowed his breathing. The cross hairs joined over one of the two bodies. He pulled back on the control switch and an arm shot out.

Designed by Drakken for a number of uses, from heavy lifting to feats of dexterity that would have impressed a brain surgeon like Dr. Anne Possible, the arm coils could also be programmed to strike like a cobra, grasping a target when speed was more important than finesse. The interlocking segments writhed and extended like a thing alive and the pincers encircled the target twice to ensure a firm grip.

---

Kim kicked off from her perch at the same moment that Shego felt the breath driven from her body. Something had grabbed her around the waist and was holding her like a vice. She was dragged forward by the weight of Kim’s body, Shego desperately holding onto her Princess with both hands, causing her torso to rest painfully against the rim of the stack.

“Kim, wait… I can’t…”

“Shego, come on!” Kim looked up at her wife in confusion as she dangled in space, one tiny hand in Shego’s strong grip as her other hand gestured downwards at the maelstrom below. “There’s no other way!”

“Something has me!” She could feel the force pulling her back, tugging her away from her angel and the taking away from her the choice that they had made together. She looked down at herself and saw the gunmetal blue of the arm, not knowing what it was.

Whether it was an attempt to free her mate or to leave her behind was uncertain; Kim lifted her other hand to take hold of Shego’s wrists and then lifted her legs to plant her feet against the side of the vertical stack. Shego felt her pulling.

“Kim, don’t do this!” She had to get herself loose.

“It’s the only way.”

“Don’t leave me alone! I want to be with you!” If she could just free her hands, maybe even just one, she might be able to melt away the offending coils holding her back from oblivion, but Kim had Shego’s hands in a death grip. She looked back down at the younger girl and noticed that the remnants of Kim’s clothing were starting to burn from the ever-rising flames.

“Kim, please… please, baby… baby you’re on fire!”

“Goodbye, Shego.”

“No!”

Kim just smiled up at her and then she let go, dropping from sight and lost amid the fire and smoke.

“… not without me…”

Shego knew no more.

---

The stack began to rotate in a spiral as its foundation finally shattered and it started to corkscrew down to the earth, taking out several other smaller pieces of refinery equipment along with it. The place was mostly slag and would burn for days; no fire company would be able to tame that, not if they had a thousand pump engines. If not for the fact that the depot was so far out of Middleton proper that it stood alone on the property, it might have ignited all other buildings around it. As it was, it was the sole beacon to illuminate ‘GJ’s’ greatest failure.

“SHIT!” Chaos reigned inside the canopy of the hover sled.

“Agent Benson…”

“I couldn’t get her! That damn chimney was in the way… I couldn’t reach her!”

Hedges could have ordered the man restrained, or just told him to shut up or even attempted to console his subordinate; none of it would have been of any use. He postponed his report back to Central Command to take a look at the view screen to his left. Clearly visible from the camera mounted on the sled’s undercarriage was a woman, limp within the arm coil and apparently unconscious. Benson raved behind him as Hedges considered just releasing the coil and dropping the woman into the flames.

The thought served its purpose; it galvanized him into action.

“Agent Benson.”

“I couldn’t…”

“Agent Benson, you will shut the Hell up and retract the arm!” He pointed to the screen. “We have more wounded to tend to.” This earned him a scowl as the agent let his training take over and restore control.

“Yes, sir.”

As he activated the winch and slowly lifted Shego’s still form up towards the hover sled, Benson knew that his superior felt as badly as he did. He did not envy the other man his rank as Hedges slowly reached out and activated the communicator, opening a channel back to Central Command.

“Hedges to ‘GJ’, Hedges to ‘GJ’… come in ‘GJ’.”

“We’re reading you, agent.” It was Dr. Director herself. “Please report.”

“Ma’am…” He was distracted briefly as cold air hit the back of his neck. Benson was carefully guiding their new passenger into the sled and laying her down beside the bandaged form of Ron Stoppable. “Ma’am, my report is as follows…”

---

The river cut a meandering swath between Middleton and Upperton; it was much cleaner than it once was thanks to both the Environmental Protection Agency and to the civic-minded citizens of the tri-city area. Because of them, most of the industrial sites that lined its banks had either adjusted their production methods to abide by the current laws or they had closed. A raging fire marked the location of one of the latter; a fuel oil depot that had been unable to meet modern standards was burning to the ground.

Less that a quarter of a mile away along the pristine edge of the river, the recreation spot for fishermen and boaters alike, could still be found the only memorials to this dead symbol of a failed enterprise; rusted pipes that once drained waste products from the depot down to the water were now serving as nesting grounds for local bird life.

Tonight there was movement in one of the pipes and this unusual occurrence caused a nearby rat to freeze in its tracks. Movement could mean food for this denizen of the muddy riverbank and all of the local scavengers considered this spot to be excellent foraging ground. The rat, a black and filthy variety ubiquitous in the urban blight of this part of the city, listened and sniffed the air to see what telltales it could find for dinner this night.

The rat meandered right up to the pipe’s metal rim.

Grab, squeeze; a petite hand struck like a waiting cobra and made short work of the rodent, crushing the narrow skull into pulp within the bloody palm. Blood, dirt, and something black that glistened in the moonlight covered the otherwise unmarred flesh.

“… snackage…”

A slender form pulled itself from the pipe and examined the dead thing in her hand. Volumes of pitch were expelled in a retching torrent before she lifted the rat to her lips, and the uneaten portion was shoved into a tattered pocket on the scorched remains of a baggy pair of cargo pants. Giving no further thought to the fire raging behind her, Kim Possible sat along the edge of the river and gazed with furtive eyes across the shifting waters, the dawn breeze causing the patterns of the surface to ripple and scintillate.

Idly, she began to inspect her flesh. In addition to her own secretions she was covered from head to toe with the waste and filth of every beast that had made the pipe its home since the depot had been closed. Bits of broken glass and shards of metal were sticking into her like pins, many had been impacted quite deep from the explosions and she would eventually have to dig them out. No matter what damage had already been done to her body or what she now had to do to herself in removing the debris, no sooner did she remove an offending object when her skin would knit itself closed with black tendrils and then be whole again.

Her clothes were in a dire state and most of her hair was gone, bare scalp shining through matted red fuzz that was caked with mud and ash and melted together in an oily mass from the flames. There was no pain from her wounds, being that she no longer bore wounds for more than a few seconds, and this made the irritation along her right hip all the more puzzling to her.

Kim looked down at the red and swollen knot on her skin. Using what ragged nails as remained to her, Kim dug into the enflamed tissue and a black wad of pitch was expelled into her hand; the wound promptly sealed and the pain was gone. Something hard and inorganic was within the tarry substance, though she could not tell what it was. Pulling herself to her feet she staggered to the water’s edge, the meal of the rat helping to regain her strength, both in mind and body

She bent low and washed the pitch from the tiny object, exposing an encapsulated circuit and relay wires; she blinked in recognition of the device and a single name flashed across her ravaged mind.

“… Wade… the fat little puppet master…”

Kim finished the rat before loping away towards Middleton’s residential community.

To be continued…

---

Author’s Notes: On a technical note, I’ve incorporated scene dividers into this chapter; I hope that they make reading more comfortable. I have failed miserably at the recommendation that I ‘shorten the chapters and lengthen the story’. This chapter has taken the longest to write because the entire first draft had to be scrapped because it sucked big time. I feel strongly that the story has a full head of steam again and is back on track. As always, reviews and feedback are encouraged.