Kim waited until Shego’s quiet, steady boot steps had faded into a tense silence before turning back and focusing all of her attention on the pale blue scientist in front of her – the pale blue, trembling, paralyzed-with-terror scientist in front of her.
“Now,” her voice was pure sweetness, and her smile hid nothing of her dark, enraged, vengeful desires of the moment. “Where were we?”
Drakken gave a pitiful whimper of fright and collapsed to the floor, curling his knees up into a fetal position and jamming his thumb so far down his own throat that Kim thought he was going to choke on it. For a single, wild instant, some deep, dark, hidden, and undeniably hateful part of her sincerely wished he would. “Shego!” He howled plaintively as he climbed carefully – desperately – to his knees, “The deal’s off! I-I’ll remove the chip. I’ll let you beat me to your heart’s content – I’ll triple your salary – quadruple – no! Please, Shego!” He tried again to make a break for the door, but Kim halted his mad dash once more, only this time, she didn’t do anything fancy.
Lunging forward with cold, calculating, and supremely efficient swiftness and a brutal intensity, Kim’s left hand lashed out to capture Dr Drakken around the throat. Whirling, she tightened her grip on the fleeing man’s neck and threw him into the nearest wall, pinning him in place with one hand even as her right knee rose without warning to drive straight up and into his belly.
The effect might have been hilarious if Kim hadn’t been so caught up in her own incendiary rage. Her steel grip around Drakken’s larynx brought forth a wet gurgle of protest from his constricted throat, but it died just as suddenly as it was born when Kim’s cheerleading-trained and martial arts hardened knee imbedded itself in the spineless scientist’s unbelievably soft abdomen – it was as if the man hadn’t performed a single sit-up in his entire pitiful life.
The force of the impact completely immobilized Drakken with pain as the strength of Kim’s overpowering thrust was transferred into almost every one of his internal organs, causing every nerve in his body to burst into flames of searing agony. A split-second passed and then Dr Drakken’s stomach convulsed angrily, spewing a large portion of its contents out from his mouth to fly over Kim’s shoulder and land somewhere in the middle of the room.
On the mental side, Kim was highly amused to see that her sudden attack had completely frozen the little man’s ability to think. For the moment at least, Drakken’s mind was on hold because of the amount of pain he was in and the intensity of his agony. We’re sorry, the lines are currently overloaded. Please, hang up and try your call again.
Satisfied that her captive – the very object of her undying rage – wouldn’t be going anywhere for a good long while, Kim abruptly released her hold on the man’s throat and let him collapse once more to the cold concrete floor with a sharp thump.
“And just where did you think you were going?” Kim knew she wouldn’t get an answer – not for a few minutes at the very least. If it had taken Shego a few seconds to regain her breath in their earlier sparring duel, how much longer would it take for a worm like Drakken to recover? If Dr Drakken’s entire body wasn’t shuddering spasmodically with the effort to regain the power to breathe, then surely he’d be far too petrified with sheer terror to form words. Losing to Kim Possible obviously wasn’t anything new for the insane blue man, but he had never seen this side of her before. Hell, even Shego had never been bad enough to have seen Kim like this.
Back during the Li’l Diablo incident, when everything blew up, Kim had only really been pissed off because Drakken and Shego had gotten to her through her personal life. She may have said a lot of things that she now regretted, but the very fact that she could regret them must mean that she hadn’t really been as deeply affected as it had seemed at the time, right? No one had been hurt – at least, not anybody that Kim had truly cared about as anything closer than a friend. Sure, Erik had been an exciting guy, rubbing Kim in all the right ways and portraying such a perfect boyfriend, and Kim could admit that she’d cared about him while she’d thought he was a real guy – but then again, she cared about everyone, didn’t she? Why else would she get into the globe-trotting heroine gig?
Now, four years later, four years wiser, and four years more experienced – with the life of someone she loved hanging in the balance no less – Kim Possible’s rage and fury could know no limits. Fighting for her own life, Kim could be ruthless and merciless at worst, but for the life of a loved one…the very hounds of Hell would flee before her as she stormed the gates of Satan himself.
Seeing Drakken curled up on the floor hacking and choking to regain his breath was horrifically satisfying in a way, but by that same token it made Kim feel…
Nothing.
Seeking desperately to find some form of relief from the pain the delusional megalomaniac had put her through, Kim bent down over the prone body and set to work. She started things off with a hammer blow to the blue man’s left shoulder, pouring so much power into the attack that she actually came within a few Newtons of dislocating his limb completely. She followed up with a quick, sharp stab of her fingers to the soft, unprotected bundle of nerves just between Drakken’s neck and shoulder, robbing the coward of all feeling in his right arm.
“No – Possible!” Drakken wailed in protest, “stop, please – I beg you! I’ll give you anything you want -!” He threw his good arm up to protect his face as Kim lunged in again. The movement strained his already half-dislocated shoulder and he gasped in agony, drawing in a ragged, shuddering breath and flopping on the floor wildly, putting even more pressure on his blazing injury. “No, please – mercy!”
Kim’s lunge for her prey’s face turned out to be a feint when her fist found itself connecting with his middle chest. She was smart enough to know that attacking the face, while incredibly damaging to her target, was also not very unlike punching a brick wall. No matter how soft the man might be, Drakken’s bones were just as hard as anyone else’s and Kim wasn’t overly fond of the idea of banging up her knuckles on Drakken’s face. Besides, the spineless little ferret’s unprotected torso was a much more appealing target, especially his jelly-soft abdomen.
Did he have any muscles there?
“What’s that?” She finally acknowledged her punching bag’s cries and backed off for a minute, barely even breathing hard from the effort. “Mercy?” Did you give any to Shego?” She spun in a roundhouse kick that struck Drakken in the elbow, effortlessly tossing him across the room as his arm gave way under the assault, his elbow snapping gruesomely. “You sick, twisted, and delusional excuse for life…” She approached her whimpering prisoner and bent down to latch onto his ankle with one hand. “Did you honestly think you could cut a deal with me after what you’ve done to me – after what you’ve done to Shego?”
Drakken stared at Kim in disbelief. “Shego? Why on Earth would you defend that treacherous, freakish waste of flesh and money?”
A threatening growl was his only warning as her free hand curled into a fist and her knee found itself lodged deep in the man’s crotch with all the merciful pressure of a cruise missile. Then, the incendiary expression upon her face grew a thousand degrees hotter even as her entire body turned to ice. “That’s someone I love that you’re bad-mouthing, Drew, so I’d choose my words very carefully if I were you.” She grinned with feral glee and began tightening her grip on Drakken’s ankle, realizing somewhat distractedly that she’d managed to entrap him by his yet-uninjured leg – the one that wasn’t causing his inconvenient limp. Funny, she mused, he’ll be lucky if he can even walk at all after this. “You know what’s great about being an elemental, Drew?” She continued without waiting – blue boy was too preoccupied with groaning in pain and staring at Kim’s crystal clear hand with a mixture of wonder and horror. “When I change forms, my body can defy some of the most basic laws that normal humans like you have to live by. Take this one for example:”
It only took a second of concentration, but Kim’s left arm started to bulge and swell, her right arm withering in response. Seconds later, Dr Drakken began to feel the effects of Kim’s muscular transformation as the pressure of her grip on his leg increased far beyond what her left arm alone would have been capable of. Within a handful of heartbeats, the sheer power being used to crush Drakken’s ankle had doubled, and the crushing force continued to climb even higher as Kim began to siphon strength away from her legs little by little.
“See?” Part of Kim’s mind was curious – could her captive even hear her through the obscuring haze of agony that had enveloped his mind? “When I change form, I can move my muscles around because – as a water elemental – my body is, well – fluid.”
As Drakken’s panicked groans and incoherent mumblings grew steadily louder, Kim felt her vengeful rage crumbling before a tremendous fist of horror seized hold of her heart. The icy vice tightened with every second that she tightened her own subzero hand’s grip on her prey’s protesting ankle. This wasn’t helping her! Punishing Drakken for what he’d done – past and present – wasn’t making it any better; Shego was still cursed with her Plasma and trapped in her own head, and Kim was still dying inside. And because Kim was focused on making Drakken pay, Shego was probably locked in her room…alone.
No, this wasn’t helping; this was only serving to fuel her rage, pouring oil on the fires of her pain and furor. And the last time Kim had locked herself into a cycle of rage, she’d ended up throwing the woman she loved into a heavily electrified tower.
Maybe Kim hadn’t known anything about her feelings back then, but that accident could have been a whole lot worse. If that shock had been fatal, Kim never would have gotten to this point in her life – so close to achieving fulfillment with the woman who added to her to make her complete at last – and she would have died a shell of herself.
No different than Bonnie Rockwaller.
Just as Kim was coming to a decision about how she could make her pain go away more effectively, she felt more than heard the grinding together of all the bones that comprised Drakken’s weak ankle. Before she could even think to let up the pressure and release the straining joint, there was a short series of dull crunching sounds and pops; Drakken’s ankle had just done something extremely unnatural – probably shattered under the pressing crush – and Kim was willing to bet that it was also tremendously painful.
She didn’t need to be the daughter of two geniuses to know that.
Lying prone on the concrete, Dr Drakken’s unceasing groans instantly escalated to a shrill howl that would have curdled the blood of a banshee. His shrieking subsided soon after it had started flowing from his surprisingly expansive lungs, but not because the pain had lessened at all – and not through any sudden miraculous tolerance that he might have developed. No, he had simply stripped his vocal chords bare with the force of his single outburst of Hell-born suffering, leaving him with nothing more than a hoarse whisper with which to voice his…discomfort.
“Aw,” Kim’s tone was mockingly sympathetic as she hauled the trembling man up by the front of his jumpsuit, abruptly shifting back to her normal form after rearranging her body to the way it was supposed to be – back to flesh and blood. “At a loss for words, Drew?”
Kim reared back with one hand and finally pulverized Drakken’s face with the left cross that he’d been begging for ever since she and Shego stepped into the room together, connecting with the blue boy’s nose – the only part of anyone’s face that wasn’t reinforced with bone, and thus, the only place that Kim would allow herself to hit. Because there’s no way in this life or any other that I’ll break my hand on a worm like Drakken.
There was a wet crunch as the cartilage in the short weasel’s nose gave way under Kim’s brutal, relentless attack.
“No…” he protested weakly – silently almost – to which Kim only responded with a second clasped-fisted hammer blow to his already throbbing shoulder, completing the job she’d begun earlier and separating the ball joint from it’s socket.
As Drakken wheezed in pain, his nose already bleeding profusely and consumed in the pain of half-a-dozen severe injuries, Kim stood up and stretched, making her decision. “Okay, Drew – we’re finished here.”
Her mutilated punching dummy gave an incoherent whimper of gratitude and began crawling away, dragging one leg sluggishly and one arm hanging uselessly at his side as his agonized, wheezing mewls persisted. Just as he was passing Kim, however, she brought the heel of her boot down on his knee, snapping the joint in a very unnatural direction. “Oh, did you think we were actually finished? I’m sorry, Drew,” she clearly wasn’t as she bent down over him and grabbed onto his chin, violently forcing his beady black eyes to meet her penetrating emerald gaze. “No – we’re far from finished; I’m just going to take our discussion to some place more…private.”
Kim narrowed her eyes and grabbed hold of Drakken’s mind with iron talons that she conjured from deep within her own, keeping the once arrogant, confident mad scientist in place as she extended tendrils of thought into his head, penetrating deeper and deeper into the blue man’s consciousness.
Drakken froze mid-scream as Kim smashed her way into his head. There was probably a gentler way to do it, but she’d never done anything like this before and subtlety came with experience. Besides, who gave a damn about Drakken’s comfort?
Alright Drakken, Kim closed her eyes and concentrated, throwing wide the gates to her prey’s mind with an ease that could only be born of pure, focused, and intense rage. Let’s take a look at that simple, twisted little mind of yours.
VISION
Kim opened her eyes and discovered herself standing in a dimply lit laboratory with no windows in sight and only a single door. Lying face up on a medical bed in the middle of the large, cluttered room was a girl with long, flowing ebony hair and a fair, lightly tanned complexion. She was unconscious, her eyes closed as though in sleep, but Kim knew a drugged victim when she saw one.
“Shego!” Kim called out the name, but there came no response from the prone form.
And before Kim could rush forward to embrace the villainess – now mysteriously transformed back to her pre-Plasma self – there was a sudden burst of muffled footsteps and the door behind her flew open, admitting the blue-clad, broad form of Dr Drakken. The scientist swept into the room and approached the motionless heroine with purpose. He strode straight through Kim’s body as if she wasn’t even there; in fact, the uncharacteristically serious scientist didn’t even acknowledge her presence in his lab. That in itself was weird because there had never been a time when Kim and Drakken weren’t pitted against each other over some lame, imaginative take-over-the-world scheme. It took a moment for the answer to come to Kim, and when it did, she suddenly felt the reality of how little she really did know about her powers.
He couldn’t see her.
“Ah – there you are, my dear Shego.” He stopped by her bedside and reached out to grasp her hand in an almost fatherly manner, as if he was making a valiant effort to provide some form of comfort in the worst display of acting Kim had ever seen. “So, you’ve finally met Kim Possible, have you? And what do you think about her? I’m afraid you’re about to learn more than you’d like to, and for that, I am truly sorry,“ he clearly wasn’t, “But you must know the truth.”
Kim realized somewhat belatedly that she was standing in the heart of a memory in Drakken’s mind. Oops, guess I don’t know quite as much as I thought about my telepathy.Kim glanced back at the scene playing out before her bright, inquisitive eyes. Still, this might be a nice place to start looking for that cure…
“Oh, you don’t have to say a word, Shego,” Drakken released the still girl’s hand and reached over to a nearby table for a gleaming metal injector. “I know exactly how you feel about Ms Possible.” With one hand still carefully cradling the injector, the smirking scientist reached into his jumpsuit to withdraw a small glass vial filled with an ugly, ominous, acid-green liquid. “You’re frustrated by her,” he mused quietly, snapping the vial into place on the butt end of the device in his hand. “You are infuriated by her,” he gazed at the loaded implement for a long moment.
“But most of all,” he brought the injector gun to Shego’s wrist and just held it there to savour the moment – the last moments of Shego’s Plasma-free days – the last seconds of Freedom for the fiery-spirited woman. “Most of all,” he jabbed the needle of the injector gun into Shego’s wrist and pulled the trigger. After I’ve explained what I’ve – what she’sdone to you,” He gazed down upon the tool still pressed into his henchwoman’s skin as the vial swiftly emptied its entire contents into Shego’s body. “You will hate her with all your blackened soul.”
“Not really,” Kim mused, watching calmly as Dr Drakken withdrew a second vial from within the confines of his jumpsuit. He snapped the dark jade fluid into the injector after ejecting the spent first vial. “Her soul never hated me, thankfully – only the part that everyone saw ever hated me, and even then, it had only lasted for so long.” Kim walked up to the younger, happier Dr Drakken. “Looks like your plan failed, Drew.”
“I was shocked, to say the least,” Drakken continued casually, moving around the table and moving the injector into position beside his henchwoman’s other wrist. “I was astonished to see that she actually held her own quite well against you.” He pulled the trigger with the gleaming injector firmly pressed into his sidekick’s right wrist, sending a second dose of his mutagenic cocktail flooding into Shego’s circulatory system. “I mean, from all indications, she should be about as athletically adept as a pocket protector. Daughter of a brain surgeon and a rocket scientist? A Cheerleader – please!” Drakken tossed the empty vial into a nearby trash bin. “According to my sources in WEE, she knows seventeen forms of martial arts, but your resume said that you know over thirty, not to mention two dozen styles of armed fighting. Logically, she shouldn’t have stood a chance against you.”
Drakken grumbled a little more as he pulled a third vial from his pocket, this one filled with a horrid, mustard yellow fluid. “Ah, final step.” He snapped the vial into the injector and brought his device up to Shego’s neck. “When this protein hits your bloodstream, my mutagenic formula will activate and begin rewriting your DNA. I’m certain you’ll thank me for this someday, Shego – but for now…”
“This mighthurt.”
Drakken jabbed his injector into the soft tissue at the base of Shego’s neck, administering the third and final dose into his sidekick’s body with a sharp hiss of compressed gases. Then, with a satisfied smile, the blue-skinned man sat back to watch as his supposed Anti-Kim Possible weapon was born, tossing the entire injector into the trash bin as he looked upon the unmoving form of his right-hand woman.
It only took a moment for Shego’s third injection to take hold, creating a chain reaction across her entire body like a star going nova. One moment, Shego was lying peacefully on the poorly-cushioned bed with a clear and normal complexion – which actually looked really strange to Kim because she’d gotten so used to the Shego she knew – and then an ugly pastel green splotch of discoloration appeared around the puncture mark on the ebony-haired girl’s neck. From there, the spot of colour spread out as the young woman transformed before Kim’s eyes.
As the metamorphosis spread down Shego’s arms like a spreading stain on her skin, red and bloody lesions suddenly opened all across her palms, fingers, and every other surface below her wrists. The fresh wounds released an intense green glow from deep within the woman’s flesh that was all-too-familiar to Kim, and she felt her heart breaking at the thought of the difficulties and hardships that lay ahead for this younger Shego. The angry scarlet lacerations in Shego’s hands grew both in size and number, the glow becoming ever more intense with every second that her metamorphosis continued.
And then came the seizure.
Shego shuddered sharply once, still unconscious, and then she began to shake and tremble uncontrollably, jerking and rattling the rails of the gurney. A quiet groan escaped from between Shego’s lips and her thrashing worsened all the more. Every time her hands came too close to the bed rails, there was a sharp, drawn out hiss like oil on a hot pan, and the metal bars began to give way, melting under the growing heat of Shego’s constantly mutating hands.
Finally, a minute or two after it had begun, Shego’s violent reaction eased and her conversion was complete. But before Kim could even think about what she’d just seen, the memory ground to a halt and the world froze completely around her.
“It was so perfect…”
She turned away from the frozen memory to find Dr Drakken standing behind her. He was staring at the scene that lay before him with a tiny, nostalgic smile plastered across his face and didn’t seem to have noticed Kim’s presence in his mind. “To think I’d planned it all so carefully, so perfectly.”
Kim stepped in Drakken’s direction calmly, not really surprised that the injuries she’d inflicted only minutes ago were no longer present – that had all been the scientist’s physical body. This, however, was not, “Haven’t you learned by now? None of your plans have ever worked out in the end, so what makes you think this one would have been any different? Even your Bueno Nacho scheme got foiled.”
Drakken barely acknowledged her. “No…this was different…” He trailed off as he turned to meet Kim’s gaze at last, clearly only living halfway in the present. “It took me years to develop that mutagenic toxin and months more to find a candidate to use it on, but my scheme was perfect in its simplicity – so elegant…and it worked. For three years, I had the greatest thief in the world at my disposal and she despised your very existence. So much time and work spent on maintaining an illusion so flawless, so perfect…only for it all to be undone in a matter of days.”
Kim crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Like I said…”
“How did you do it?” Drakken interrupted; he was suddenly desperate. “How did you undo years of planning and careful manipulation when my Shego so clearly hated you – when I was the only one she would trust?”
Kim rolled her eyes once more, “Here’s an idea, Drew: did you ever think for an instant that maybe she was never your Shego to begin with – that maybe she’d never actually trusted you? That maybe she had simply been using you as a means to an end, namely her revenge on me? Did it ever occur to your little mind for even a second that she would rely more on her own eyes and brain than your insanity and wild stories? I mean come on, you may have painted me as the most diabolical creature on the planet, but even you had to realize that Shego would never have seen any of the tell-tale manic behaviour because we both know it would never have been there since it was all a lie.”
Drakken just sighed frustratedly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter now.” He straightened and cast a withering glare at Kim. If it was meant to intimidate her, it was currently failing miserably; maybe because the glare was coming from a man with blue skin. “Now, if you would kindly remove your presence from my mind? I have some revenge schemes to plot.”
Excuse me?
Kim stared at him in disbelief. “You’re not going anywhere, Drew – weren’t you listening earlier? You’ve failed your last scheme.”
“Oh, I beg to differ; it would seem that our situation has changed, thanks largely to your own blundering.” Dr Drakken snapped his fingers and the frozen memory around them was swept away in a swirl of dust to be replaced and transformed into a high cliff overlooking a heart-stopping drop straight down into a frothing, turbulent lake of molten rock, casting a faint red-orange glow all the way back up to Kim and Drakken. Kim felt her footing slip ever-so-slightly, causing her to stumble as the concrete under her boots abruptly transformed into the very edge of the precipice, leaving her heels hanging over the dangerously hot space.
“Whoa!” Kim stumbled forward to avoid tumbling into the abyss and inferno. She managed to regain some kind of footing and took a moment to regain her senses before rounding on Drakken, sending him a glare more heated and intense than the entirety of the lava flow below them and gathering herself for the coming fight. “Okay,” she blew an errant lock of hair out her eyes, “This just got a little more frustrating.”
“Oh, bring it!” Drakken cackled madly, taking a step back from Kim as the scrap of rock she was standing on separated itself of its own accord from the rest of the cliff face to move away and hang suspended over the burning fields of liquid rock. “This is mymind, Kim Possible – I have the home field advantage here. Now, be a good little cheerleader and return my Shego to me.” He narrowed his eyes warningly, not bothering to voice a threat that he used to take so much childish pleasure in uttering back in the day.
Kim crossed her arms and stared the little man down from her tiny square of stone. “And if I say no?” Oh, I’ve just got to hear this one…
Drakken waved a hand and a whirlwind of stones and dust rose up from his feet, forming a large, ominous, two-metre tall laser cannon that was pointed straight at Kim’s chest across the distance between them.
“Well now,” Drakken reached up to pat the smooth metal of the death ray’s long, tapered barrel gently, almost lovingly. “Let’s not do anything hasty; we might regret it later.” Drakken snapped his fingers and lights began to flare into existence all along the length of the tall weapon’s housing, accompanied by a foreboding, rising whine of energy. “So, Possible,” Drakken grinned victoriously, “will you surrender to me?”
Kim sighed and rolled her eyes. Again. “You just never learn, do you?”
“I do too,” he retorted childishly, reinforcing Kim’s complete and utter disgust for the little blue man. “I’ve learned enough to know that within the confines of my own mind,” he snapped his fingers and a massive pillar of fire rose up behind Kim from the fiery lake beneath her, “I am God.” He gestured and another column ascended from the depths on Kim’s left side, “Here – in this place, Imake the rules.” Closing his gloved hand into a fist, Drakken tightened the noose even further, summoning a third pillar of spinning, searing flames on Kim’s right side and leaving her stranded on a tiny scrap of a boulder with nowhere left to run. “Goodbye, Kim Possible!”
Okay, I’ve so had enough of this…
Kim waved one hand just as the death ray fired with a roar like an artillery cannon and Drakken watched with rapidly deflating excitement as the red ball of destructive energy just…vanished before it could hit its target. “What?” He spluttered, as was the norm when Kim or Ron managed to foil his plans. “How? But – the death ray – and the – what – but – now – aw…snap…”
Kim made no reply as the three pillars of fire around her spontaneously burned themselves out, the flames thinning down to nothing and extinguishing themselves without the slightest resistance from Drakken’s mind. The redhead chose instead to simply take one step forward and into the open space over the churning lake of molten rock, her feet landing securely on a surface that only existed because she had willed it to be so. To Drakken, she might as well have been walking in mid-air. “Here’s a newsflash, Drew; telepath trumps home team. You’re always so late to catch on, aren’t you?” Kim mimicked Drakken’s fist-closing gesture and the blue man was suddenly being drawn towards the edge of the cliff – helpless to stop the invisible force that was dragging at him.
“You crossed the line this time, Drakken.” She smiled darkly, “And I’m afraid this one’s going to cost you a whole lot more than a little time in a prison cell.” She pulled suddenly on the air in her fist and Dr Drakken was sent catapulting into the air over Kim’s head to land in a heap on the lonely, pitiful little stepping stone behind her. Then, without waiting for him to recover, she raised her other hand to point at him, clenching it into a fist so tight she felt her fingernails biting into her palms.
Just as Drakken launched himself away from Kim, taking off from the stone platform in a desperate, definite flight response, a thick, cold iron collar appeared around blue boy’s neck, attached by a short chain to a stake in the tiny stone behind him. Drakken’s flight was brought to an abrupt halt and he was dragged choking and gagging to the ground. As he slowly climbed back up to his feet, Kim’s hold over his mind deepened even further and more chains appeared from the farthest reaches of this mind, attached to shackles around Drakken’s ankles and wrists. The restraints pulled at their captive until he hung spread eagled over open space. Then, just like that, with Drakken watching every move she made and the landscape all around him, Kim banished the fiery pit around them to oblivion, blowing the cliff, the suspended stepping-stone, and the volcano into nothingness as swiftly and effortlessly as dust in the wind.
Drakken let out a strangled yelp as his mind’s appearance was so quickly transformed into a borderless, featureless expanse of open black space. His primal terror permeated the area like a nauseating nails-on-chalkboard kind of sensation, its emotional vibrations making Kim shudder with absolute revulsion. I can’t imagine what it must smell like to Shego – but it can’t possibly be good; never in a thousand years.
Kim glanced around at the utterly blank landscape she’d created in Drakken’s mind. “Not much to look at – is it, Dr Dee?” She was surprised to find how easily Shego’s nickname rolled off her tongue, but she promptly shoved that realization aside for later. It wasn’t important right now.
Driving this lesson home on the other hand? Top Priority.
“What do you want?” Drakken managed to squeeze the words out through the pressure of the choking ring around his neck. “What are you going to do to me?”
Kim didn’t even skip a beat before replying, “Nothing you wouldn’t have done to Shego.” At Drakken’s horrified expression, like Kim had just decapitated his dog, Kim’s satisfied smile only grew. “It’s killing you, isn’t it?” Yes, psychological torture was so much better than beating him bloody. She felt no small satisfaction in wrenching Drakken’s mind around in painful agony – much more than when she’d been pulverizing his body. “The knowledge that you had so many plans for her, and now they can all be turned back on you – it’s not a nice feeling, is it, Drew – knowing that you had so many ideas, and now they’re all clear as crystal to me?” Kim paused for a second, closing her eyes as some of Drakken’s thoughts filtered through her block. “I can see them all, you know – all your precious torture schemes; I can see all the ways you planned to humiliate her while she was trapped in her own body. They’re all up here,” she tapped her forehead lightly to emphasize her point.
Drakken shrank away from Kim as much as his restraints would allow, which wasn’t very much at all. “No – you can’t! You’re the hero – you can’t do this!”
At his terrified but nonetheless arrogant outburst, Kim surged forward like a wave breaking on shore and delivered a left cross that would have destroyed the sad, sad little man’s jaw if they’d been fighting in the physical world. Instead, here inside Drakken’s mind, the blow simply threw his body around and left him with a sensation like blood rushing from his body. This in turn left him drained and weak – too far gone to really see or understand much of anything that was going on around him.
“Who the Hell asked you?” Kim spat the words like they disgusted her with their very existence – like their taste in her mouth as she enunciated them was utterly offensive and repulsive to her. “Since when did you and your friendshave a monopoly on violence?” She buried her fist into Drakken’s ribs, driving the blow straight up through his soft, unprotected abdomen. “On anger?” She grabbed onto Drakken’s wrist and pulled, allowing her chains to loosen briefly as she threw him straight into a solid cinderblock wall that hadn’t been there a second earlier and which disappeared promptly after Drakken’s back and head crashed into it. “Who ever said that this was only for insane little maniacs like you?”
Kim lodged her right fist into her prisoner’s gut again, drawing out a shrill howl of torturous agony as her attack dealt more damage and penetrated deeper than it ever could have in the outer world. She could sense how much devastatingly painful her strikes had become here in Drakken’s mind. She could feel that her relentless assault was making Drakken feel as though Kim was coming at him with fishhooks and then tearing them right back out again.
“No,” he gasped weakly. Unable to ward off Kim’s vengeful claws with any part of his body, he settled on a quick, desperate shaking of his head to go along with his wheezed protest.
She spun and caught him across the face with the back of her hand, snapping his head around on his shoulders like a top. “Who said that assholes like you,” she punched him again, “and MonkeyFist,” and again, “and Killigan,” and again, “and Gemini…” She grabbed him by his shoulders and brought her knee up into his crotch. “Who said you idiots were the only ones who are allowed to fight for what you want – for what you love?”
Kim stepped back and took a deep breath, trying to regain control of herself. “Who the fuckare you to tell me what I can’t do?” She turned away from the dazed and gasping scientist that she’d now imprisoned within his own mind. “I’ll tell you what, though.” She turned back to face him, much more calm now that she’d taken a few seconds to pause in her thoroughly enjoyable but ultimately self-destructive thrashing of the pitiful excuse of a man. “I’m not like you – and your plans for Shego weren’t anything I’d wish on my worst enemy. Besides,” Kim crouched down to put herself level with Drakken since her shackles had dragged him down to a sort of half-kneeling position. “I really do have other things I’d rather be doing right now, and I can be very reasonable.”
Dr Drakken whimpered with relief but stared at his captor with wary eyes for a moment before closing his eyes and bowing his head in submission.
Kim leaned in close and grinned maliciously in anticipation of what she was about to say as she held five long, slender fingers before the man’s face. “Five years, Drakken.” She lowered her hand back to her lap as she crouched in her prisoner’s personal space. “I want the five years you would have stolen from Shego.”
A look of absolute horror filled Drakken’s features and he shook his head frantically, gasping protests that went completely ignored by his tormentor. Listening to his pitiful wailing and begging wasn’t making Kim feel any better, so why bother?
Kim stood back up and stared down at Drakken coolly. “Here’s the plan, Drew – I’m going to let you sit in this little, powerless corner of your head, I’m going to get your body to a nice hospital with a couple of guards who can keep you out of trouble, and then I’m going to go and live out my life with the woman I love. And, you know what, who knows?” She stepped back and straightened to her full height, drawing away from the chained scientist. She reached out for her own mind and prepared herself to return to it; she had nothing left to do here, “Maybe I’ll even remember to come by and let you out. How does that sound to you?”
Drakken’s head shook even more as his begging ascended, rising and swelling into an anguished, wordless howl of pained defeat, ending with one last word that would forever reside in Kim’s memory, complete in every minute fluctuation of tone and pitch.
“No!”
“Goodbye, Drew.” Kim turned and walked away, her body – or at least the psychic manifestation of her consciousness in Drakken’s mind – fading away to nothing before the chained man’s eyes as she released her grip on the little weasel’s mind.
END VISION
Shortly, Kim found herself standing once more in Drakken’s Lair.
She opened her eyes and breathed out the slightest sigh, looking down at the crumpled body on the floor with something approaching curiosity. Reaching out with the toe of one black boot, she nudged the mad scientist on the shoulder, nodding silently when she received no response at all. He’s gone.
“Well, Drew,” Kim straightened up and stretched out her arms, trying to relax her uncharacteristically tense muscles and feeling suddenly tired, a small but intensely painful headache pounding into existence in her head. Whoa, she almost felt herself swaying on her feet for a second before the world righted itself. Feel so drained. Maybe I should take a moment to…
Without finishing her thought, Kim found herself staggering into the bathroom that was attached to Drakken’s room, spinning the tap over the sink as far as it would go. She then proceeded to splash the chilling water into her face, not even minding the temperature. If anything, the cold seemed to help, numbing the headache a little as the water itself was absorbed in through her skin to refresh her, recharging her batteries as it were.
Then, coming back into the room in which she had just wrought a huge load of vengeance, Kim looked at Drakken’s crumpled body. “I guess I’ve finally managed to give you a prison Shego can’t break you out of, as if she was going to this time.” She grabbed him under the arms and pulled him up to his feet, moving easily, if unbalanced, under the weight and half-carrying him from the room.
“How about we get you to that hospital now?” Kim lugged her silent burden down the hall and continued her conversation with the decidedly catatonic man in her arms – as if he could actually hear her from the darkest, farthest flung corner of his mind. Hey, she corrected herself,who knows? Maybe he canhear me. She shifted just a little under the weight of the completely unresponsive blue man. Well, she slowly started up the stairs to the street that stood just outside the Lair’s more…surreptitious entrance and looked at Shego’s bike for a moment. It really was a beautiful machine, despite the odd, normal-ness of its appearance. At least he can’t talk back like this, she finished, glancing over her shoulder.
Kim pulled the keys her partner had given her out of her pocket and tossed them up in the air, catching them absently as she let Drakken’s broken and bleeding body crumple to the sidewalk – considering her next move. Then, coming to a decision, she glanced down at the body lying prone at her feet, smiling her satisfaction.
“This is a definite improvement for you, Drew.”
“So, Lara – where you headed?”
“Forget it, Kin,” the brunette tossed her reply behind her as she strode out the emergency room of the Lakeshore General Hospital and into the early morning darkness of the parking lot. “We’re off-duty now, but I’m going home to curl up with a tall glass of orange juice and a trashy romance novel, and then I’m going to turn in for the night. You can go to Clyde’s with the others, but I’m just too exhausted.” She started scanning the parked cars around them, searching for a familiar landmark with which to find her own.
“No way, Lara.” Kin Wing double-timed to catch up to his fleeing partner. “We’re paramedics, not corpses, so come on.” He reached for her shoulders to halt her swift retreat to her car. “Okay, I get that you don’t want to risk making a fool of yourself in front of everyone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come out with us and stick around for one drink, does it?”
Lara froze in her retreat and cast her gaze down to the pavement nervously. “I guess not,” she moved her eyes up to look at her older partner shyly, a tiny smile ghosting its way across her lips. “Well…” she drew the one word out, fidgeting under her partner’s encouraging brown-eyed expression. “I guess I could come out for one drink.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kin clapped his hand once on Lara’s shoulder and carefully resumed walking, turning them both around to make their way over to Kin’s car. “We’ll make it an ice-cold Guinness for me, an orange juice for you, and then-.”
“What’s that?” the shorter woman interrupted suddenly.
“Eh?” Kin wasn’t entirely sure if this was a joke or not, but he decided to go with it. “Well, orange juice is what you get when you take-.”
“Not that, you fool – that!” A small hand grabbed Kin’s face and turned his head to face the way Lara was looking, away from them. “What is that?”
Kin looked for a second and found himself equally mystified and unable to answer the question.
There was a long, snow-white streak of light running quickly along the road that surrounded the hospital and it took Kin a long few moments to realize that it was in fact a tightly-controlled mass of fog with a bright light shining from within. “I don’t know, but it sounds an awful lot like a motorcycle.” He ventured a guess as the dense cloud moved up to the parking lot entrance and paused, waiting dutifully for the gate to rise before taking off once more into the half-filled lot. Kin tilted his head as he listened to the clean, shifting whine-roar of the…thing. It was a clear, crisp sound – a well-kept and maintained machine certainly, but what was with the cloud? “Oh, yeah – that’s definitely a motorcycle. And a good one too.”
“You know motorcycles?” Lara looked up at him with wide eyes, bright with some kind of emotion, but not one that Kin could identify, not that he had ever considered himself an experienced people watcher.
“Mine’s parked at home,” Kin stated proudly. “I’ve had it for a while, but it works as well as the day I drove it off the lot.”
“But what’s with the fog?” Lara quickly – obviously – changed the subject, unwittingly voicing Kin’s very thoughts on the vehicle and stepping a little closer to her partner as the glowing fog swiftly navigated its way through the rows of cars, clearly aiming to collide with the pair of off-duty paramedics. “And why is it coming for us?”
“I don’t know.” Kin felt a strange impulse come over him, a feeling that made him want to grab Lara and make a run for it, but something was holding him back and he remained firmly rooted to the spot. It was almost like his brain was working too slowly for his body to respond or to even allow much of anything but the most basic thoughts. Looking at Lara from the corner of his eye, he could see that she had stopped moving just like him.
Why can’t we move?
The streak of mist reached their row and turned, running straight at Kin and Lara without hesitating. Kin felt his heart beating in his throat as the cloud seemed to reach out to him, enveloping both of them in a thick, disorienting mass of blinding white that just glowed from deeper within its murky bowels.
Before Kin could even think about trying to scream, a jet black helmet came flying out of the featureless white void, attached presumably to a body and some form of mechanized transportation device. Kin couldn’t for the life of him figure out if that was the truth because the pair of blazing white eyes behind the helmet’s night-black faceplate already had complete hold of his awestruck attention. He didn’t really have the awareness to spare.
So it was that Kin Wing Tsui was completely unprepared for what happened next.
For a single heart-freezing instant, it felt like time itself had slowed to a complete stand-still and all Kin could do was stare in terrified wonderment at the star-eyed figure on the sleek bright-painted motorcycle. Whether the mysterious machine’s pilot was male or female – alive or dead, demon or angel – he couldn’t say for certain, but he knew one thing for sure.
Kin was scared to death.
And then the moment was past; the bike and its rider were behind him and he found his feet being swept out from under him, sending him tumbling over face-first into the pavement.
“Kin!”
Before Lara’s cry had really registered in his mind, Kin felt a long-forgotten memory rise up from the chaos of his childhood. He was in a room filled with people – a dining hall at a Christian youth camp. Every single mouth open wide to release a chorus shout:
“Kin!”
“Wing!”
“Tsui…!”
Lara’s panic and worry were plain to hear in her voice, but all Kin could do was groan something completely unintelligible as the white cloud lifted from his vision, retreating with the departing thunder of a very powerful machine.
What just happened?
With a dazed moan, Kin pushed himself up to an almost-upright position, feeling the whole world spinning around him as though rebelling against his quest for order and a more vertical position. He accepted the hand that his worried friend had offered, thanking her with a dazed nod as he regained his feet at last. “W-what was that?” He asked the question while looking around for the bike that had simply vanished.
“Damned if I know,” Lara replied as she stared down at the pavement, one hand still wrapped around Kin’s, her expression one of disbelief and no small taint of fright. “But I know what this is.”
Kin followed the young woman’s gaze downward to the object that had bowled him over, revealed now as a little red wagon with an unconscious man lashed to it quite securely.
A very infamous man.
“I know this guy,” Lara declared, pale blue eyes wide with excitement. “This is Doctor Drakken, Kin! Remember – he was behind that huge Great Lakes water theft a couple years back, wasn’t he – started a Hell of a storm over some random countryside, didn’t he?” She snapped her eyes back to the dark-haired Chinese immigrant. “Do you know what this means?”
“It means we’re going to be pulling another double-shift.” Feeling the sting in his shins fading, Kin had bent down to examine the world-famous evil madman once he realized that there was fresh blood running freely from the sky blue-skinned face. “He’s hurt pretty bad.” Kin moved his hands down the bruised and purpled torso, palpating with practiced ease and experienced hands as he probed for the extent of the injuries. “Damn – it looks like he picked a fight with a wrecking ball – and lost. Lara?” He looked up to find his partner staring down at him intently with wide eyes – not at the severely beaten celebrity criminal. “What?”
Whatever the weird expression was Lara had been wearing a second ago was gone – swept away so swiftly Kin couldn’t be sure it had ever actually been there at all. “Are you all right?”
“Huh?” Kin glanced down at his shins to see no visible traces of blood seeping through his uniform pants. “Yeah, I’m fine.” What was that look? He shook those thoughts away; he had a job to do. “Lara, look. We’ll worry about me later but first we’ve got to take care of the doctor here. I’ll make sure he’s stable – while you get a gurney for him, okay?”
For an instant, Lara just stared at him like he’d grown a third eyeball. Then, like a light switching on, she was back in paramedic mode. “Right.” She turned away.
“That’s my girl. Hurry.” Kin looked back down to his charge too fast to see his partner whirl around mid-retreat to fix him with a dazzling, tooth-filled smile. All he heard were her rapidly receding footsteps.
After ensuring that Doctor Drakken was in no immediate need of CPR or anything – and it didn’t seem as though his current injuries were life-threatening in any way, Kin took a moment’s pause and looked the way Lara had fled and he found himself thinking carefully. Something’s seemed a little bit…off about her tonight. I wonder what it could be.
‘She’s in love with you, you idiot.’ A tiny, unfamiliar voice spoke the words somewhere inside his head. ‘Now why don’t you do something about it?’
What?
Kin looked around himself at the deserted, car-filled parking lot, not quite certain what he was looking for. He’d just had the strangest feeling that those thoughts hadn’t been his. But if not his – then who’s? Kin shook that suspicion off as he thought about what the voice had said to him.
No, that couldn’t be right, could it? Lara wasn’t in love with him. No way – Hell, she avoided him like the plague unless they were working. In fact, getting the closed-off brunette to agree to come out for a drink with them was no small achievement; that was the result of five months of constant, patient, repeated requests from Kin. But even when they were working, his friend’s behaviour was a far cry from love struck. On the contrary, Lara’s dealings with him while they were on the clock could easily be described as rather short and brusque – or somewhat shy and awkward, depending on the day.
She couldn’t really be hiding a secret affection for Kin, could she? He was a nobody. There was no way someone like Lara would stoop down to his level, not for any reason that he could think of.
Then again…
Not too far away, Kim Possible rolled her eyes.
Whoever that paramedic was, he was by far the biggest idiot in the world when it came to knowing the people around him.
Kim had only spotted them a few seconds before they noticed her, but she’d seen enough to know that the woman was completely smitten. If that was an adequate sample of their normal, day-to-day interaction, then Kim could see that the brunette had totally fallen for the darker-haired man. It was obvious in the way her eyes glowed almost as brightly and fiercely as Kim’s when she was tapping into her weather-control abilities. Of course, clueless man likely never saw the affectionate fire smouldering in his friend’s eyes because she kept her eyes averted or narrowed and turned down whenever he was looking – just enough that she could keep her secret hidden behind a passive and aloof mask or a shy curtain, so the blame wasn’t all his. Her narrowed eyes hid her true emotions for the man, but it was her lips that gave her away. There was always the slightest, imperceptible upturn at the corners of her mouth, turning her passive expression into the shy, nervous smile that told Kim exactly how she felt about her friend: that she wouldn’t trade anything in the Universe to leave her partner’s side, regardless of the possibility that he may never even clue into her feelings for him.
But enough of that, Kim smiled – I’ve got other things to worry about.
So, with a last hope-encouraging thought for the potential couple, Kim returned her attention to the road ahead of her, her brightly glowing eyes reverting to their natural bright emerald colour as she released her control over the dense fog in which she’d been riding.
Her white mist had been a necessary deception – not only because it was a cool effect that she’d been toying with for a while – in order to draw attention away from the bike Kim had been driving. She’d known that her glowing white eyes against the sharp black space of her helmet’s faceplate would pull her witnesses’ focus up and away from Shego’s motorcycle – so much so that they wouldn’t be able to name even the shape of her ride, much less the colour or model. And even if they were able to describe the bike, its rider’s glowing eyes and the cloud of fog would make any sane person sound the opposite – like the whole thing was probably a drunken hallucination.
And of course, the witnesses were needed because somebody had to be there to catch Dr Drakken when she slashed the line to the wagon she’d been towing since she left Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.
Kim had actually almost loaded her burden onto Shego’s Ghost for the ride to the hospital, but then she’d remembered her partner’s words. Over my dead body… So, Kim had gone looking for a solution to her problem of getting a severely injured body to the hospital without letting it touch her partner’s bike.
The sturdy little red wagon had been sitting on a driveway only a few dozen metres away, and another stroke of luck had found a tough length of rope lying coiled right beside it. Kim had easily liberated the two items from their previous owner, but not before leaving a nice twenty dollar bill under a rock for them to find the next day.
Of course, dragging the unresponsive scientist behind her like a fifth wheel had severely limited Kim’s choice of routes to the backstreets as opposed to the highway through town, but then – the hospital hadn’t been too far away. Sure, she could have taken the highway regardless, but the risks of injuring the man further – perhaps even killing him – were pretty high, and Kim wasn’t out for blood. Not anymore.
Now that she didn’t have Drakken to worry about, Kim could take her borrowed ride out and really push the beautiful machine’s engine. That is, right after she’d taken a minute at a pay phone to place an anonymous call to the police concerning the whereabouts of a certain Drew Lipsky, mad scientist and villain. The authorities could take care of getting in touch with the right people.
Hanging up the phone, Kim slid her helmet back over her vivid red-crowned head and slipped free of the public pay phone’s tight confines, climbing once more onto the sleek green sport bike that Shego had so easily lent her – had even half-declared it partly hers by giving her a set of keys . As she roard out of the parking lot she’d chosen arbitrarily for her anonymous call and aimed for the nearest highway access ramp, Kim knew only one thought.
I’m coming for you, Shego.
Oh, God – what am I going to say to her?
Kim swallowed around the lump in her throat, coughing uncomfortably at the unfamiliar tightness in her chest – like a ball of ice in her lungs. It wasn’t too hard to breathe around this feeling, but Kim hoped her body would adjust because the pain wasn’t likely to leave her anytime soon – not as long as she remembered this night; she’d feel this weight on her heart as long as she remembered how close they’d been to a cure for Shego only for it to have torn away forever. And no matter how much she punished the one responsible, no matter how deeply she cut into his body or how purple she made his bruises, nothing would change the fact that Shego was very much a prisoner in her own body, and in more ways than one.
If only I’d acted instead of listening to Drakken’s stupid monologue, maybe I could have grabbed that vial before he even thought to chip Shego…she wouldn’t be held captive in her own head, and she certainly wouldn’t be pissed to the Moon and back at me for taking control of her mind. Now, because Kim had refused to act, terrified that Drakken would crush the vial at the slightest movement from either superhuman – which he had done regardless – those scant few millilitres of precious fluid lay contaminated on the floor. But there was more to it than that…
Ever since the onset of her supernatural abilities, Kim had been so used to hiding them behind a veneer of the familiar Possible confidence, holding herself up as merely the overachieving daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon when there was far more to her character than that. In the past, Kim had always thought her reasoning sound – if she revealed the full truth about her abilities, those that sought to destroy her would quickly find a means to do so, whereas if she remained unknown, her powers a secret, and her life a half-truth, all those who would investigate her in an attempt to find her Achilles’ heel would find their probing fruitless. Her powers would never become a weakness for her. If she kept the malevolent powers of the world looking one way, her own abilities would never come back to bite her in the end. And her ploy had worked perfectly.
Until today.
So accustomed to holding herself back, to letting herself be captured when she could quite possibly just sweep straight through a Lair unopposed – unstoppable – Kim had actually refused to act when it mattered the most that she do something. She’d inadvertently allowed her new partner to be taken host by a technology that she wouldn’t have wished on her worst foe, and despite any thought to the contrary, Kim knew that was the truth. It was all her fault. Shego might hold some of the blame for plastering the chip to her own head, but it was because of Kim’s inaction that Shego had eventually fallen and accepted her old employer’s deal.
So much power at my fingertips… Kim looked down at her hands as she stood in the dark hallway of Drakken’s Montreal Lair. So much Power…and I chose to keep it a secret at the cost of someone else’s freedom. What am I going to do?
Kim looked back the way she came, thinking about that tiny puddle on Drakken’s floor. It would be a simple matter to collect every drop from the floor and separate out the impurities that had made their way into the precious chemical. Fragments of concrete dust and dirt that had flaked off from any number of boots were easy to detect and filter out for Kim, experienced as she was with this sort of thing.
But what of the cure itself?
Kim wasn’t well-versed in chemistry, but she knew enough to know that this miracle fluid wasn’t made up of one single chemical. That would have been too easy – and the Fates hated her just enough that they wouldn’t want anything this important to be that easy, a problem so vital to be so simple to fix. And, there was also the fact that Kim didn’t have the slightest idea about what Drakken’s cure had been. How was she to know which of the plethora of chemicals and molecules were supposed to be there and which were the result of Drakken spilling something on his bedroom floor? Heck – how was Kim supposed to know if the cure was even all there, and that some small, essential element hadn’t evaporated on contact with the air or reacted with something on the floor to transform the cure into something else entirely – perhaps even deadly?
Kim could inject the total unknown into Shego and hope, but she would not play roulette with her partner’s life. And now Kim was left with only that sick, heavy feeling high in her chest.
Failure.
If only…
No, Kim turned back to face the green-and-black painted door that led to Shego’s room. What’s done is done, and it’s time to face the music. She stepped up to the panel and pressed the clearly marked yellow button, taking a breath to prepare herself. It was, ultimately, very possible that Shego could be on her in a vengeful rage before Kim could use her control over her partner to protect herself. God, it disgusted her to even think about doing that to Shego.
Fortunately, the door slid aside to a quiet and seemingly empty suite of rooms.
“Shego?” Kim stepped into the dimly lit living room. “Where are you?”
Pausing on the threshold, Kim was surprised to hear soft music filtering into the main room, coming from an open doorway through which she could just see the very corner of a black-covered bed. Ah, the bedroom. Kim held herself back from rushing into the room, deciding instead to slowly, silently make her way around the other side of Shego’s living room, carefully looking over her partner’s belongings – or at least, the belongings that she’d left here before she had left Drakken’s employ in a blaze of anger and righteous fury.
The centre of the room was dominated by two couches – one an extra-long dark, dark green sofa and the other a midnight-black loveseat. It was almost the same setup as her own living room in her apartment, but the coffee table wasn’t anywhere close to anything Kim owned. It was a short, rectangular table, almost as long as the sofa, carved from mahogany and topped with a solid slab of black marble. On the other side of the table from the couch, pushed up against the wall, there was a pretty large shelving unit with different sized shelves for everything from an expensive stereo system to row after row of video tapes, DVDs and dozen electronic devices that Kim didn’t fee the need to investigate further. The shelf that would logically have held the impressive television set was vacant, containing instead an equally impressive dent in the steel-plated wall. That shelf’s former occupant – a Plasma TV, ironically – was lying face-down on the black-carpeted floor, a huge chunk missing from one side. Kim took one look at the half-a-TV that was resting in front of her and felt the tiniest hint of amusement stir inside her.
Someone got just a little frustrated, she mused, a thin smirk breaking her otherwise emotionless expression.
Kim moved further around the room, drawing nearer to the bedroom as she crossed in front of a double-wide bookshelf that was – surprisingly – filled from top to bottom. Hm… I never figured you for a bookish person, Shego. But there it was; all the well-known authors were there – Grisham, Crichton, Custler… and then there were some that Kim had never heard of – Jessica Rogers, Reichs, Jenkins… Shego even had a collection of poetry by Edgar Allan Poe. And, even more surprising were the three shelves devoted completely to Science Fiction and Fantasy. Star Trek, 2001, The View from the Mirror, Star Wars – Damn, Kim noted, she must have every Star Wars novel out there. She’s even got the whole Young Jedi Knights series. Kinda light reading for someone who’s got the Wheel of Time a shelf below, but they dolook a little more worn. Maybe Shego brought them over from her Go City days. Still, I can’t believe she would have read those.
Lucky girl.
Kim had always had a small interest in the Science Fiction genre – and Star Wars especially – ever since that whole Pan-Dimensional Vortex incident. Actually, it had mostly been a keen curiosity for her. She’d only started wondering about those books after she had learned that Wade was often immersing himself within those pages. Kim thought that someone with Wade’s intelligence wouldn’t even want to waste their time with things like reading Science Fiction. Honestly, why read about it when you can make it? Half of Wade’s gadgets and toys were cooler than any SciFi novel. Still, if Wade was so into it, Kim felt she should at least take a glance to see what the excitement was about – especially after that whole Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducer thing. She hadn’t understood a single thing that happened when she was stuck in that first TV show, but that experience had gotten her adrenaline pumping like nothing else. Not really better or worse, but – different. After all that, Kim had often thought that reading some science fiction might actually be kinda interesting.
Kim had never actually gotten around to doing it of course, being too busy saving the world, going to school, and now with the job she’d just quit. But now, looking at the bookshelf in front of her, she started to think. Maybe Shego will be nice enough to share her collection.
And speaking of Shego…
Kim continued past the impressive and widespread gathering of books and finally found herself standing in the doorway to a dimly-lit bedroom.
The first thing Kim noticed were the bright blue walls. The colour was a light shade, but it was a pretty solid blue, and what struck Kim was the fact that it was neither black nor green.
Actually, she looked a little more closely. The blue’s got a little bit of green in it – kind of similar to pale seawater. She guessed that this was a compromise Shego had forced herself to make in order to keep her bedroom far away from the antiseptic feel of green paint and to avoid the tight, closed-in sensation that came with the darker colours of the spectrum. A woman like Shego was unlikely to want her bedroom to feel as small as a prison cell.
Still, Kim couldn’t help but confess that she liked the colour that adorned her sleeping partner’s walls. It didn’t seem quite right for Shego, but she could easily picture repainting her own living room in this shade. A new couch cover would be simple to make.
But now certainly wasn’t the time for thoughts like that. Now was the time to assess the damage that had been done this night.
There was a body laid out on top of the pitch-black covers and Kim didn’t need to see the unmistakable combination of green and black to recognise Shego. She’d know those curves anywhere. She’d seen them move slick as silk far more than enough times over the past seven years to know that striking figure even if she was blindfolded.
Oh, who was she kidding? She’d know Shego anywhere. There was just a unique sense that followed the villainess everywhere, something almost like a shadow but still different. More…intimate. It flowed from the woman as naturally as her spent breath, marking her and displaying her to the world as beauty and freedom and power personified.
Kim silently entered the tranquil bedroom, doing her best to leave her partner undisturbed as she eagerly drank in the sight before her. Knowing how rare a scene this was – to see Shego so still and relaxed – she committed this moment to memory – this peaceful tableau of undeniable, unearthly beauty.
Drawing up to the occupied bed, Kim sat down and just stared at her companion, her other half. Her piercing forest green eyes were closed in sleep and her entire body was relaxed and virtually motionless for once, save for the slow rise and fall of her chest.
Wonder.
Awe.
Love.
Guilt.
Shame.
All these and so many more flitted through Kim’s heart in the silent minutes that ticked past without rest – without a single ounce of consideration for the redhead who now sat watching over someone who had come to mean so, so much more to her than anyone she had ever known before.
It was still so amazing to Kim how far they had come in less than two days. From casual enemies to almost-lovers…oh Hell, I might as well call us lovers. I’ve had more intimacy in the past two days than I have in twenty-two years. The fact that she can’t touch me doesn’t mean anything – we’ll find a way.
I know we will.
Coughing uncomfortably again, the sound no louder than a mumble, Kim shifted herself on the bed, lowering herself onto the warm, very comfortable duvet. Wow, this is amazing, she breathed a silent sigh of relief as the past two days finally caught up with her: cat-and-mouse with Shego downtown, an easy, laid-back one-on-one duel at Shego’s place, a museum break-in, another more trying duel with Shego, a no-contest fight with the world’s newest Kim Possible wannabe, a sever power drain from freeing herself of Drakken’s mind control chip, another more serious power drain from locking the insane little bastard in the deepest pit and shadows of his own monocellular brain, and now…here – finally lying down to give herself the rest she’d earned. She closed her emerald eyes lightly.
The rest she’d earned.
No, Kim’s mind rebelled. Not yet, She had earned no respite yet, not while she had one thing left to do.
Opening her eyes, Km rolled onto her side and looked into the face of her pale-skinned jewel. Shego may not be able to speak back, but experience had taught Kim that there was nothing stopping Kim from confessing and telling her lover the one thing that she needed right now, and even though it could never make everything right, it was a good step in the right direction.
“I’m sorry, Shego.”
I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough to stop Drakken. She reached up with one hand and brushed her slender fingers across the still and silent woman’s cheek. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to break free sooner. She turned her hand so that she could cup her villainess’ cheek in her hand, as though it were the most precious thing in the world that it was.
This was worth fighting for. Kim stared into Shego’s peaceful face, awe filling her heart with a light, powerful, and fearless feeling. This was what heroes fought and died for – for the people of the world around them to be able to live…and love.
I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough.
She felt the change come over Shego’s mind even as the slightest tremor swept through the green-skinned woman’s face, the barest of shudders rushed through the super-thief’s consciousness. Shego was waking up and Kim only had a few more seconds before she’d be forced to speak to her.
I’m sorry, but I’m going to make it right again.
I’m going to help you get through this, if you’ll let me.
I promise.
Dark, forest green eyes opened to stare lifelessly at Kim, sparking her Heroine’s protective instincts to full battle mode.
If I have to walk through the darkest depths of Hell…
I promise.
Author: Okay, there it was, friends. Give me some time and the next bit will be up now. I think the end of this chapter of my planned series is in sight. I’m hoping to have this part done by chapter 20. See you then.
Next Chapter: Aftermath. What more need I say?