Kim ducked Shego's elbow flare and jumped into a double-spin, hoping to connect with the thief's shoulders on the second turn, but Shego pushed the other girl's leg up and over her head, turning the first half-spin into a backsault-suicide instead… but thereby putting Kim in position for a squatting leg-sweep while she re-balanced her weight on her left arm… and so forth and so on. This had been going on for twenty minutes; getting in a connecting hit worked soseldom for either of them… but when something did connect, it was just SO incredibly satisfying that neither of them could help trying. Their need for the satisfaction of hurting each other was an addiction, but it wasn't “hate”, really – neither girl would have used that word – so much as annoyance. Kim only wanted to hurt Shego enough to allow her to be captured and incarcerated. Shego, on the other hand, only wanted to do enough damage to Kim to get her the hell out of the way for awhile.
As Shego tried for a side scissor hold, Kim lifted both legs, forcing the other girl to accept her weight or else fall, and then pushed hard against a steel support beam in front of her. Shego could either accept the force and try to absorb it, or use it. She used it, back-flipping – Kim still in her arms – through Ring #1 of Dr. Drakken's still-energized Transporter Loop.
And exiting on the other side of Ring #1, rather than the other side of Ring #2 ten feet away. Which was odd, but Shego didn't have time to ponder about it. She landed on her feet still holding onto Kim, but the fight stopped - because they were both suddenly freezing cold. They wrapped their arms around themselves in a desperate attempt to get warm, each still glaring at the other and ready to start again at any hint of a break in the truce.
“Gah! What the heck was THAT?” Kim asked, “I'm freezing!”
“Yeah. Good job pushing us through it, Princess… we're lucky it worked” Shego replied, setting her hands faintly aglow to warm herself faster. If she could thaw herself a reasonable amount before Kim could, she could get some advantage from this situation. Maybe take the goody-two-shoes cheerleader down for good, finally. A swift knee to the spine ought to do it. Or maybe an elbow to the neck. She considered her options while she rubbed her arms. “Dr. D!” she yelled, “You take care of the buffoon yet?”
Dr. D didn't answer. Ron probably chased him off, Shego thought. Buffoon though he was, Ron could still kick Drakken's ass. Honestly, I don't know why I can't find a more respectable employer… well, heh, where I still won't have to do much actual work, I mean.
Kim didn't dare take her eyes of the pale green woman – that would be exactly the cue
Shego would need. “Ron! You there? You okay?”
Just as with Drakken, Ron wasn't answering.
Shego didn't dare look away from Kim, either. She knew better than that. However pathetic she thought Kim might be in other ways, her fighting skill was not to be under-estimated. Been there done that. Over and over.
“Doctor D!” she shouted loudly.
“Ron!” Kim added.
Nothing. Nothing but the oddly-whining sound of the Rings, which seemed to be growing louder by the second.
Shego backed away two steps, out of Kim's danger-zone, and glanced at the Rings. She didn't know how they worked, of course, but she had seen how gingerly her boss had handled the pieces while putting it together. She also remembered how – when he was finally ready to throw the switch to energize them – he had looked so nervous, like he was ready to dive behind the console at the first sign of trouble. So she knew there was something about those rings Drakken was afraid of, even if he did build them. And now they were making a funny noise… and odd flashes of orange light were crackling over their blue glow as well…
Time to go. Another invention was about to blow itself up. That would be the fourth this year.
Shego turned and ran for the back door and Kim, sensing the danger from her enemy's demeanor and action, ran for the front door.
That was odd… the hovercraft was still there. Maybe Ron had been able to capture Drakken after all. Shego sighed and climbed in – breaking her employer out of jail was another job she'd have to do, then. More work. She was beginning to wonder if working for Dr. D was really all that great, after all. Well, maybe she'd get a fat bonus out of it. She made a mental note to negotiate about it beforebreaking him out, this time. After the fact, Drakken wouldn't be so desperate. Maybe she should leave him in there a month or two… let him get the feel of prison. That ought to get her a new Learjet. Her old one was out of style, and she wanted one of the new Rutan-designed ones with the nose-canards.
On her way back to the lair, and while fantasizing about the new plane she would buy – custom paint, of course, green and black, as usual – she glanced over the side for landmarks. Shego preferred to ignore navigation systems if at all possible and fly by the “seat of her pants”. Only weenies used GPS. Real pilots used the sun as their compass, the real horizon instead of the artificial one, and landmarks for navigation. Her first landmark was an Interstate 40 cloverleaf; the exit that lead to Middleton.
And there it was. Good, right on course. She faced forward again, enjoying the wind in her copious, billowing hair. Wait a minute -
Something weird was going on down there. She looked back over the side.
Cars, trucks, semi's everywhere, mostly off the highway. And none of them moving. A few seemed to be on fire. An accident? Must be a pretty bad one, all scattered over the road like that. Well, none of her business. No use being morbid. Except, y'know, for fun. She flew down for a closer look.
Kim jumped into the Humvee fully expecting to find Ron already there with Dr. Drakken tied up beside him, but no. No Ron. No Dr. Drakken. And for that matter, no driver, either. Now where the heck did HE go! They're SUPPOSED to stay and wait for us! Geez, doesn't ANYone do what they're supposed to anymore?
Well, she wasn't leaving without her sidekick anyway, so it was kind of a moot point. The Press would never forgive her if she did that – heroes can't just leave their trusty sidekicks behind. Kim sighed. Dammit, Ron… where'd you go?
Hearing the familiar sound of Drakken's hovercraft, Kim looked up and saw Shego leaving. By herself. That was odd, too – there had only been the one hovercraft parked outside when she and Ron had reconnoitered the place, so where was Drakken, then? Well, no sweat, if Drakken was stupid enough to fight her alone, tough breaks for him. She put him out of her mind, concentrating on how best to go about looking for Ron.
Two hours later, she was back at the Humvee, having exhausted all other possibilities. No Ron, no Drakken, and no driver, either. Maybe Shego had them tied up on the floor of that hovercraft. Now I'll have to rescue them. Great. You're a cute boy, Ronnie, but you really do cramp my style, sometimes. She got in the driver's seat, Now. How do you work this thing…Like any typical American teen cheerleader (hero or not), she had absolutely no idea how to work a manual transmission. This one had fourteen gears… just in forward. Four more in reverse. Not to mention the four-wheel drive selector.
An hour later, she slowly crawled down the mountain road towards Middleton – in first gear all the way.
By six o'clock she was back in the suburbs, having taken all secondary roads to get there, avoiding the highways. She hadn't met another vehicle the entire time, although she'd passed several that had apparently run off the road. Probably kids, she thought with disdain – ignoring the fact that she was a 'kid' herself.
“Dad! Mom! I'm home!” she yelled, expecting them to have been wondering about her. Humph, no answer. Kim went into the kitchen to find herself something to eat.
An hour later it occurred to her that it was, in fact, an hour later. And still no Mom and Dad. No Tweebs, either, but they would be with Mom and Dad, of course. Still, it was odd there there were no notes or messages or anything. Something must be going on… maybe some kind of school function for her twin little brothers. She decided to give her best friend Monique a call.
“Pick up, Monique…” she said, hearing her typical generic answering-machine message. “Monique! Pick up!” she tried again. “C'mon, Mon… pick up the phone. Where is everyone? Mon… it's not funny! Pick up!”
Tara. Angelica. After some trepidation, Bonnie. No one home. EVERYbody knew about this except me? Okay… the school, then. Nope. Dad's work? Nada. The hospital – maybe Mom got called up for an emergency - no answer, just another damned machine.
No answer at a hospital?
The police. Machine. Ron's house: machine. GJ headquarters: machine. Kimmunicator: machine. What the… Okay, let's try THIS then: 911!
Machine.
She left the house and started knocking on doors - next door neighbors: not home. NONE of them! Not across the street, not down the alley… nowhere.
And worst of all, Kim found when she finally returned home: both her parent's cars were still in the garage.
Kim was not a girl to panic. There was an explanation for this. There was a logical, rational explanation, and she would feel silly once she found out what it was.
Then the power went out.
Kim parked her father's Camry next to Shego's hovercraft back at the warehouse. It was getting close to midnight now, and a full moon turned everything pale grey with it's light. Kim had never noticed before – absolutely everything was colorless and grey, because there was no other light to be seen, anywhere. Not for as far as the eye could see. The power had been out for four hours now – another new experience for her.
Let's get this over with… she thought, stepping in through the door, her flashlight scanning for the enemy.
There she was, sitting at a console chair in the dark, facing the melted ruins of the Rings, glowering at her. Shego had been waiting three hours for Kim to return. She was a little amazed it had taken the teenager this long to figure out that something was wrong. At first, she thought about fighting Kim again there – wherever “there” was – but then she remembered Drakken going on and on about how the mass input exactly matched the mass output… He seemed proud of that. And if she had come through together with Kim, there was at least a chance that she'd have to go back through with her as well. Which put an end to her thought of just leaving Kim behind, when the rescue came. Well… it would have been a nice way to get rid of her arch-enemy, but she'd find other ways, back in the Real World.
“GET THAT FUCKING LIGHT OUT OF MY FACE!” Shego screamed at her.
Kim lowered the light, but kept the other girl within the edges of the beam. “What's going on, Shego? Where is everyone?”
Shego made no attempt to answer.
“Answer me! What's happened? Is… is it something we… something to do with those hoop things?”
Shego sighed heavily - Kim wasn't going to shut-up until she explained, obviously. “Good questions, Princess! But I don't have the answers. Those 'hoops' are the 'Rings' of Dr. D's 'Transporter'. You know – the one you pushed us into? So yeah. The question really isn't 'Where is everyone else?', but more like, 'Where are WE?' !”
“What… what do you mean 'where are we'? And what's a 'Transporter'? ” Kim asked, getting a bad feeling about things.
“First things first, Pumpkin. We're going to have to call a truce, you and me. Until we get back, I mean. Then we'll be business-as-usual. Got it?”
Kim agreed, and Shego tiredly told her as much as she knew.
The “Transporter” was Drakken's latest invention. As far as she could remember from pretending to listen to the mad-scientist's self-aggrandizing monologue, it created some sort of loop in space-time, from one universe, through other universes, and back to the original one. In between there was neither space nor time. He had tested it in her presence, throwing a clip-board through it. Then a Hostess Ding-Dong. And finally a cat. Each item appeared on the other side apparently unscathed, if rather cold to the touch. Drakken had been overjoyed, and nearly talked Shego to death about how brilliant he was.
“So where did everyone GO then, Shego?” Kim asked again, rather annoyed at having to ask her arch-enemy for answers.
“Doy! Don't you get it? We're not IN 'our' universe – were in some other one. The one where everyone disappeared right at the time when we entered it, it looks like.”
“Give me a break. What are the odds that we'd just happen to land in the universe where -”
“Infinitely small, I'm guessing” Shego cut her off, “But then, Dr. D said there was an infinite number of universes, too, one for each probability of everything that's ever happened. Look, math isn't really my thing, but I do know that 'infinite' is a whole friggin' lot, alright? Don't ask me details. I'm not the evil scientist or whatever.”
A universe where everyone else disappeared right when they'd entered it? Kim tried to grasp the concept. They were absolutely alone here? They certainly seemed to have Middleton and the surrounding area to themselves…
“Maybe it only goes for so far, Shego… maybe if you get far enough away-”
“UNIVERSE, Kim! It's a different UNIVERSE!” Shego shouted in exasperation, “Look: what we need to do is wait to be rescued. Dr. D will find a way to get us back into the real world. Our real world. Our original real world. So just shut-up and wait. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears.”
Kim didn't, and sat down – beyond Shego's arm-length, and still wary of her – trying to make herself comfortable. She could deal with this. Just another exciting anecdote in her life, that's all it was. If Drakken didn't rescue Shego, then the GJ would certainly rescue her. She was their prize recruit - or potential recruit anyway - after all. They couldn't get along with out her. And Ron would explain everything to them, she could depend on that. No sweat. She'd be back in her own bed my morning.
Good thing too, because even though it was summer, up here in the mountains it still got cold at night. She was already feeling chilly. But she could wait. No big. So not the drama.
New World + 3 days.
“It's your turn to go get the food, Shego” Kim said opening the last can of Vienna Sausages. They weren't so bad… if you were hungry enough. Their first day they had hooked up a generator “borrowed” from a hardware store. They had each blamed the other for not thinking to look for some kind of manual pump while at the store, and eventually Kim had gone back for one, and finally they were able to get gas for it.
So at least they had heat, light, and a refrigerator at the warehouse now. And in the fridge they had milk, ice-cream, strawberries, and as many hot-pockets and frozen pizzas as they could fit. But that diet was getting kind of old.
Kim looked up from her spy novel, “Shego! Your turn to go to the grocery store! Bring me some Sno-Balls, too.” Kim didn't think Shego would really bring her any Sno-Balls, of course, if only because she had specifically asked for them. Their un-easy truce was finally at least getting comfortable, but neither girl was going to go out of her way for the other's benefit. Still, it never hurt to try. Kim had picked up some strawberries – a favorite of Shego's – so Shego kind of owed her.
But Shego was thinking other things. Something had just occurred to her, and she wasn't liking it.
Nothing had happened for three days now, as they sat and watched the space where the rings had been for some sign of… of something. Nothing at all. She had been thinking that Drakken would have to rescue her, maybe she wasn't the greatest assistant – her inability to defeat Kim Possible was proof enough of that – but she had at least broken him out of jail on several occasions. so he had to get her back, right?
What had just occurred to her was that it was always Kim Possible whoput him in jail. And Kim was here. So he'd effectively gotten rid of Kim for once and for all – as long as he left her here.
Would he do that? Would he leave me here just to be rid of Kim?
Obviously, he was doing that! Bastard! She would be sitting here waiting forever! Well, not her. Fuck this… Just… fuck it all. In a way, her being left here was Kim's fault, although she'd have never put thought into words – because they she might realize how stupid a thought it really was. She stood up decisively, “I'm outta here, Princess.”
“What?” Kim couldn't believe it. Where would she go? What about the rescue? What did she mean?
“I'm going. Right now. There's never going to be any 'rescue'… Drakken's got you out of his way finally, I don't think he'll be interested in bringing you back.”
“But what about you?”
“I'm just along for the ride, as usual. Anyway, I'm going to find someplace that has running water and take a shower. That's my plan for the future. Don't wait up.”
Shego strode out to her hovercraft and flew off without a glance back.
Kim never got her Sno-Balls. Once Shego left, the situation really hit home for her. With Shego around, it had felt sort of like camping-out. Eat what you can find, spend your time as you see fit – like a vacation. Of course, it would have been better to have been stuck there with someone – anyone – but Shego… Ron, for instance. That might have been… fun. But now…
Could she be right? Was no one going to rescue them? Shego had certainly had a good point about Drakken having gotten Kim out of the way… would he do without Shego just for that? Didn't he need Shego to… to… to fight Team Possible off? Not anymore, she guessed. Well, then to steal things for him? Mind you, Drakken usually just bought the things he needed anyway… But who was going to break him out of prison?
Then again, with Kim out of the way, he'd probably never go to prison!
Never rescued? Was she going to spend the rest of her life… here… alone? She looked around the warehouse, her surroundings, as if everything had suddenly changed. This was her world. This was… ALL of her world… nothing else. No one else. This was it. Forever. She would die here.
No… no, by God, she would NOT die here! There must be something she could do! Some way to get back – assuming Shego was right about what had happened. For the first time, she studied the control console for the Rings. There were knobs and dials marked “Phase” and “iPhase”, “Quantum Bias”, “Loop Amps”, “rho-dP”, “phi-dP”, “dP/dr”… and a dozen others marked only by Greek letters and funny symbols. She would never figure this out without a manual… or instructions or…
Wait… She had manuals! Or maybe even better, she had access to all Drakken's notes! Everything was here! Or if not here, then at his not-so-secret Lair. She could probably find material-lists, construction notes… everything she'd need… nothing would be gone, nothing would be hidden, because Dr. Drakken wouldn't have been expecting her to look… YES!
The whole world was at her disposal! She could make another ring – she'd only need one, right? - and rescue herself!
It might take a little time to figure it all out, of course. Maybe… a year? At 16 years old, a year was forever to Kim, and surely that would be long enough. But she could be home in a year!
Filled with hope, Kim began opening drawers and stacking every piece of paper or electronic media she could find. She had a Plan. She would not despair. There was light at the end of the tunnel after all.
Shego did get her hot shower. In fact, she had all the comforts of home… central air, running water, lights, freezers fully-stocked, tons of food, a library, a video-theater, a barber-shop… a big red button with which to start World War III… but no windows. She'd holed up in Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.
Two thousand feet under the granite mountain, the base was a self-contained village. It had everything. And more importantly, everything worked! It's own generators, it's own water-supply, years worth of food, working toilets… for all that, she could do without the windows. There was nothing to see out there anyway. And no one to bother her in here.
She had it all, and all to herself. What could be better than that?