So be it.
Then she closed her eyes, inhaled the fragrance of Kim's three-week-old sweat – and her heart finally burst.
Silently, Shego cried.
Over the course of the next month, things settled down into routine again – Shego with her chores, Kim with her studies. In the evenings, unless Kim was on another “roll”, they'd watch movies, read, or play games against each other. In addition to the necklace and ring that Kim had retrieved from the barn, Shego now wore a black choker to cover the scar on her neck – for which Kim was grateful. Kim had wanted to suggest such a thing, but didn't feel right bringing it up. Even seeing the choker sometimes brought a lump to her throat. Seeing the scar had been… awful, and Shego could see Kim suffering.
For communication, Shego developed the habit of carrying around a spiral-bound little notebook and pen. Kim had also set up a laptop computer, projector, and wireless keyboard in the living room, and they could “converse” that way in the evening – Kim speaking, Shego typing.
They adjusted. Gym equipment in what had been Shego's bedroom replaced running and sparring, and they never went anywhere without FRS radios joining the pistols they carried. If Shego needed Kim, she was to press the “Call” button on the radio. They worked out a yes/no code using it as well. And perhaps needless to say, they never went any where without telling the other, not that they were ever more than two miles apart at any given time anyway, no matter what.
Of course, things weren't always sunshine and roses, and early the next spring, they had their first serious argument.
“Doc, I think we should fix the barn back up. I miss the fighting. I think I can still fight with my ankle this way…” Kim said day as they were walking out to the Humvee to go “shopping” in town.
Shego shot her a look.
“I know… but… it wouldn't be that hard, right? It's just that one beam, and-”
Shego wasn't looking at her anymore as the walked.
“Shego… I know… uh… I mean…” Kim stopped and pulled Shego around to face her. She did not look pleased.
“We can't just build a new barn, Shego. And I hate working out indoors…”
Shego stared at her unblinking.
“I'll help! Just tell me what to do!” Kim shouted. Shego's stubbornness was getting her upset.
Shego glanced toward the house, then turned away, heading for the truck again. Kim followed behind her exasperated.
“Dammit Doc! I can spare the time, okay! The equations are getting me down anyway, to tell the truth. Freakin' infinity signs everywhere, and it just sucks! I'll help with the chores! We'll work on it together! Shego! Please!”
They had reached the truck now, and Shego was opening her door. While doing so, she gave a short but glaring look at Kim on the other side, combined with an audible exhalation through her nose. Then she got in, and Kim did too.
“Jesus… Okay. So what do we need in order to do it?” Kim asked rhetorically.
Yes, they would fix the barn – but Shego would have her revenge for losing the argument.
To replace the foot-thick timber – since “timber framing” was a thing of the past – Shego decided to make her own by bolting twelve, 12x1's together. Kim's task was to do the bolting, while Shego set up temporary supports and jacks to push the roof back into alignment. After a couple of hours, Shego came back out to see how Kim was doing.
Kim had stacked the boards and was in the process of drilling her fourth hole when Shego tapped her on the shoulder, then immediately turned her back and began walking to the far end of the stack.
“What?” Kim asked, following her.
Upon reaching the end, Shego just stood there, looking at the ends of the planks. One stuck out three inches, while two others were an inch or two short of lining up.
“Oh” Kim said.
Shego turned back to the barn to continue her work there, leaving Kim feeling foolish.
Kim shouted at her back, “Okay! So I'm an idiot! At least I'm trying to help, aren't I!”
A smirk played on Shego's lips as she went back into the barn.
A couple of days later, and the new beam was hoisted into place. All that was left was to dowel it into the old vertical timbers again. Shego could have done it herself, one at a time, but… since Kim had said she'd help…
“D-Doc? I… uh… I don't know if I can stay up here long enough to do this…” Climbing the ladder was hell on her crippled ankle, and trying to support the weight of the beam while lining up the dowel holes was starting to bring tears to her eyes. This was just something she couldn't do. She began to carefully, slowly, climb down, but every time she put her weight on that leg, the pain would assert itself with renewed intensity. She missed the last rung at the bottom – too anxious to be off the ladder – and fell onto her back in the dirt. Shego ran over to her from where she was adjusting one of the temporary jacks.
Kim was definitely in tears now. Shego had pushed it too far. She'd got her revenge and then some. Now she felt exactly like an ass.
Kim saw the new expression in her eyes, but didn't know what to make of it. “I'm okay, Doc. It's just… being on a ladder kinna hurts…”
Shego laid a finger on Kim's lips to silence her, and looked into her eyes trying to apologize. Then she helped Kim to her feet, and together they limped into the house. Before setting her in the recliner, Shego hugged Kim tightly. She was sorry she'd been so mean. She hadn't known it would hurt Kim that much.
Kim was still trying to figure it out. What was Shego sorry for?
After being laid in the recliner, Shego brought her a cold bottle of water and four Tylenol, then slunk guiltily back out to the barn to finish getting the beam into place by herself.
A lesson learned.
Before coming in for the night – and partly to avoid doing so – Shego covered the rusted-out nail-holes in the tin roof of the barn with tar. That was why timber had rotted, but she hadn't been able to see that until the old beam was out. The new one ought to last a long time, if it stayed dry. Then she went into the house, showered, and prepared to face the music from Kim after she explained that she hadn't really needed Kim on that ladder in the first place.
“You BITCH!” Kim yelled.
Then, a only a minute later, “God-DAMN it! You… FUCKING bitch!”
Another minute.
“You… Where?… Is that?… FUCK! I can't BELIEVE you did that AGAIN! BASTARD!”
Shego turned sideways and nuzzled Kim's neck as they sat next to each other on the couch, in front of the projector screen.
“Don't you try that now, Doc. SO not interested! You've fragged me five times in a fuckin' – I mean, 'freaking' – ROW right there, and I want to know where you're hiding, you fucking sneaky…”
Shego kissed her under the ear and turned Kim's laptop towards her. She maneuvered Kim's character until Kim could see Shego's character crouched under the stairway, firing her rocket-launcher through it, between the rungs.
“Sneaky bitch…” Kim said, “Tomorrow night, we're doing Duke Nukem again. I ain't playin' Quake with you no more… I guess that's what I get for marrying an evil villain.”
Shego replied, Tell me about it. MY wife used to be a CHEERLEADER, for God's sake… from her keyboard.
Kim chuckled as an idea occurred to her, “Hey! I should get my uniform from my 'rents house. I bet I can still fit into it…” Now 28 years old, there was some question about it.
Shego stared at her screen for a moment, thinking about it, then leered at Kim lecherously.
Year 14.
Shego looked up from her book (Kidney & Urinary Tract Case Studies) when Kim unexpectedly came in from her office. She'd been in there most of the time now for weeks, but Shego was making a point of not asking her about it. If something was up, Kim would let her know, eventually. Perhaps this was “eventually”.
As Kim passed up the recliner, Shego prepared herself by setting down here book, hiking herself up on the end of the sofa, and hanging one leg off, making a space for Kim to lean back against her. She could see that Kim wasn't happy.
Once snuggled in, Kim picked up the keyboard and put it in her lap in case Shego wanted to say something. This was a common position, and they both knew their parts.
A deep sigh from Kim started the conversation. Shego brushed some stray red hairs out of her face and waited.
“It's not looking good, Doc…”
Shego clasped her hands together around Kim's waist.
“Everywhere I go, it's 'infinity this' and 'infinity that'… and they never cancel out or reduce or anything! You know what infinity divided by infinity is? It's infinity! And I thought I was onto something for awhile with Gabriel's Horn – that's a funnel with infinite surface area but finite volume – but, no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to figure out if it's even possible to find the universe we want to get back to! So even if I were to make a Transporter Loop – and God knows how long that would take, given what we have – I just don't see how it would do us any good! It's infuriating!”
Kim felt a light squeeze on her belly.
“I'm sorry, Doc. I just… I just don't know if it's worth-while for me to keep working on this… about all I can do now is try to prove whether it's possible or not. There was this one article I read, where some guy postulated building a 'm-brane scanner' that would show all the intersecting universes, but in the end he figured out that – even if he did build it – all it would show is a gray screen of infinitely small pixels. If only there was some way I could pick out where we need to go from all the rest. The probability that it exists is one, because I know it exists. But… how to find it…”
Shego let go of Kim and took the keyboard from her lap, setting it on her belly. She looked over Kim's shoulder as she typed – Think the GJ would look for you? I do…
“Yeah, probably. But they'd just run into the same problem I'm having. No help there.”
Too bad we can't just build a lighthouse to make our world stand out from the others.
Kim sighed. “Yeah. Like a really, really big neon-sign, that says 'We are here!'. Heh. And we could make it red and green so that-” Kim stopped mid-sentence. Shego noticed that she'd stopped breathing, as well.
Red? You okay?
She didn't answer, but held up a hand; wait…
So Shego waited. She turned to look at Kim's face – she staring out into space. Finally, Shego felt her breathe again.
Shortly after that, Kim spun around where she was reclining – the keyboard went flying – and hugged Shego hard, “DOC! I LOVE you!” she yelled almost directly into her ear, then lept off the couch and limped towards her office just as fast as she could go, shutting the door behind her.
Shego just stared at her back, then at the closed door, then at her wireless keyboard on the other side of the coffee-table, on the floor. She retrieved it and resumed her previous position on the couch, typing in a single word, for her own sake, before going back to her book.
Scientists…
Year 15. Mid-summer.
Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Kim had been holed up in there all the previous day, all night long, and now – the next morning – she was still in there! Furthermore, the door was still closed, too. Even when she'd come out to use the bathroom, Kim was rushing as if something in her office might spoil or disappear while she was gone. This just wasn't healthy…
“Doc! Breakfast!” Kim yelled through the closed door.
A few minutes later, Shego pulled the door open – just enough to get her arm through – tossed in a box of Grape-Nuts, and slammed it shut again. Then she went back to the kitchen to await a response while she made her own breakfast.
She found it incredible that she was still waiting even after the dishes were done, when finally, she heard Kim's office door open, and her tell-tale limping gait heading toward the kitchen.
“Doc! I'm starving in there!” Kim said, heading toward the fridge and pulling out one each apple, pear, and pomegranate. She also grabbed the roll of paper-towels and put it under her arm. “It looks like it might work, Doc! It might be something we can build – it might not even be that hard! I still have to check some stuff… and I have no idea where we're gonna get the power it'll need, but it might work!”
Shego stared at her from where she was leaning against the counter. Kim hadn't even glanced at her so far.
“I just got a few more hours to go, Doc, then I'll know if we can do it or not” Kim said facing her as she passed, oblivious to the glare in Shego's eyes, “It's so exciting! I'm FINALLY getting somewhere! And all thanks to you and your lighthouse idea, Doc! I should be done before lunch. Maybe dinner. We might get back, Doc! Things are looking good!” And with that, she was on her way out of the kitchen again.
Shego sighed, and looked around to see if anyone was laughing at her, because she felt as if she must be in a sitcom. “The Oddest Couple”, perhaps.
Early that afternoon, an exhausted Kim Possible finally left her office and went to tell her wife the good news: yes, it could be done. It probably wouldn't be easy – they weren't just going to go down to the store and buy a reality m-brane phase signature beacon off the shelf… but it could be done. Power would be another problem – they might have to scavenge generator trucks for hundreds of miles around to produce the million watts they'd need, or perhaps they could just take the Beacon to a bigger power-source, once they found it, but no matter: it could be done. That was the important part.
Shego just let her ramble. M-branes? Phase? Quantum signatures? She didn't understand any of it, but one question remained. She wrote it down on her pad while Kim went on with her spiel.
Finally, as Kim paused to gather her thoughts before continuing with here one-sided discussion of Gravitational Theory, Shego held out the notepad.
Kim took it, but before she even looked at it, something occurred to her: “Oh, and you're probably wondering how they're going to know that they need to look for us in the first place, back in The World. That's the beauty part, see? That's what I've been checking out, and then double-checking out, and double-double-checking… It's always the same answer, Doc! It doesn't matter when they look for us! If they ever look, the Beacon will show up! And here's what's even weirder: the fact that we build a Beacon guarantees that they'll look for it! I know it doesn't sound reasonable – quantum mechanics is like that, believe me – but that's how it works out! Once we fire the Beacon, they'll have to see it! And then they can use a Loop at their end to create a portal on our end, using the signature of the beacon to modulate the Loop's phase and… Shego! We'll go home!” Kim hugged Shego in her excitement, lifting her off her feet for a moment. “Now, what did you want to say?”
Before Kim could read the page, Shego grabbed it out of her hands and just smiled. Kim's mind-reading act was getting more amazing all the time. And as far as going back… well, it sounded like there was still a lot of work to do. A secret part of her was glad for that. For one thing, it would give her time to set up for Kim's 30th birthday. A special meal, a cake, scented candles… a fresh green-and-black cat suit, a freshly-laundered and ironed Middleton High cheerleader uniform - the right size, this time…
But that wasn't all Shego was worried about. If they were to go back to The World… a lot of things would be different. There would be problems, for both of them. Oh well, it would be years before she'd have to worry about it.
Kim spent the rest of that year, and all of the next one, working out details for the construction of the Beacon. The idea was to “pollute” the quantum signature of their universe with a over-laid waveform representative of The World from which they had come. It wasn't hard to find material from The World – they had their original clothes still, a few trinkets from Kim's utility belt and Shego's leg pouch, all of those thing would still carry the signature of the universe they wanted to communicate with. The problem would be, getting that signature from them. That was going to take some serious power.
“See, we'll have to strip the electrons off the atoms. That takes heat – serious heat. Magnetic-bottle type heat. And big lasers… or maybe a proton beam. If it weren't for that, we could run this thing of household 110 volts. What we need is a plas… ma…”
Shego was grinning at her.
“Oooookay… right. How silly of me.”
Construction soon began. It went slowly. They took two months just to figure out how to make a thin steel rod out of a thick by turning it on a lathe. Apparently, grinding the bits was a something of an art, and Kim found that she had a talent for it. So Kim ground while Shego turned. It worked out well. That talent did not crossover into drilling holes, though, and after Kim burned through her third belt on the drill-press, Shego took over that job permanently. They were both at a loss with the milling machine, and the first groove they needed cut took an entire month to get right. And so it went.
Little emergencies sometimes punctuated their lives: a wildfire threatened the house in year 18, and they both stood on the roof with garden-hoses for sixteen hours straight. In the winter of that year, the water-pipes froze solid. They each blamed the other, and conditions became uncomfortable - and perhaps a bit unsanitary as well - until the following spring.
That summer, they headed back to Boston – there were some exotic materials and components Kim thought they might find there, and cut several years off the time it would take to manufacture them on their own. The going was easy, since the road was already cleared, and they went by the Illinois route rather than the St. Louis one. It only took a month to get there.
They parked Tube Two – their new trailer - at Lexington as usual, and Kim went off in search of things immediately – Shego trailing along right behind her, now.
“See, this is where they do the nano-tube stuff” Kim said as they passed another lab door at Argonne National Laboratory. Between Fermilab and Argonne, there was certainly a lot of interesting research. “What they do is, they take Bucky Balls – that's a stable crystal form of pure carbon, looks like a soccer-ball – and open the ends of it, and then…”
Shego leaned on the door-fame with her arms crossed. Usually, she didn't miss having a voice all that much, but there were times… She knocked on the door to get Kim's attention.
“Huh?” Kim read her body language immediately, “Okay, okay, so I got side-tracked. The niobium spheres we're looking for should be just a little further on, in the Neutrino Detector Lab.” Shego continued to glare at her as Kim came back out into the hallway. “We're going! We're going! Geez…”
By fall, it was time to head further in to the M.I.T. Labs downtown. They just needed a few things there, and Kim had a pretty good idea where they were. It was just a day-trip.
Until they passed the cathedral.
Shego stopped the Humvee and cut off the engine. Kim looked at her, then at the cathedral, and got out.
It was close to 10 years ago they'd married here. Though neither of them had thought about it since then, now they recognized the turning point in their lives. Kim didn't say anything as they walked inside.
The candles had burned away, but the colored light from the stained-glass window was the same, and the boom-box still stood in front of the alter. The church was absolutely silent.
They held hands. Kim felt the wedding-ring on her left hand – its presence oddly comforting. Shego reached into her jacket with her right hand and pulled out the matching ring on her necklace. Then she put the ring back and felt the choker around her neck.
A lot had happened in the last decade. Shego looked up at the stained-glass, and thought with words, because it seemed important, Okay. You were right, and I was wrong. Thank you. Whatever you are.
They left. But before the door closed behind them, Shego turned to look inside again, with a final thought: See ya later.
They made it back to the farmhouse before the depths of winter.
Year twenty was mostly spent in assembly and testing back in the warehouse where the original Transporter Loops had been. They stacked the burned-up equipment outside – amplifiers, power-supplies, 55-gallon-sized capacitors, transformers that they had to move with a forklift… Shego melted six niobium spheres before she found the right combination of heat and energy that would allow her “quantum signature” to be extracted without destroying the device performing the extraction.
By that winter, there was only one test left to do. Fire it up. They were both apprehensive.
“So, like I said, Doc – it'll either work right away, or not at all.” Kim tried to sound factual, but her hands were trembling. “Once you light up the sphere, all I'll have to is flip this switch, and they should see us. I figure the Loop should just appear to us right where the old one used to be. Once you charge the sphere, we've got about ten seconds to flip it before your plasma wears down too much to extract the signature.”
So this was it. Or rather, this might be it… they were either about to go “home” - or not. “Home” to things like doctors and hospitals. “Home” to supermarkets filled with stuff less than two weeks old.
“Home” to… the people they had left behind. If they were still there. Kim had made it clear that there was no way to tell how much time had passed there. Months? Years? Decades? And if it was “months”, then how was that going to work – they were 20 years older now than when they'd left. Kim might be older than her mother. Shego would be the “big sister” to Hego now, by far the senior sibling of the family.
And of course, Shego was still Wanted in Eleven Countries. How was that going to work out? What would they do? How would they live? And would they live… together?
That was the question that wore on Kim's mind most. How could she be with Shego back in The World? Kim had faced the question often enough now that she realized she had a problem. Try as she might, she just could not imagine what it would be like if everyone knew that she… slept… with another woman. People would never just leave it there. They'd imagine things. A lot of them would probably be true, too. It was so unfair! One didn't look at a heterosexual married couple and imagine the things they did in bed! That would just be weird… but a homosexual couple? Wow, that's different! I bet she puts her mouth on… gah! SO unfair! Why did people have to be like that?
Shego reached for Kim and hugged her tight for a long time. There were so many things she wanted to say… things that wouldn't fit on a pad of notebook paper. When she finally released Kim, Shego saw tears in her eyes. Shego just wanted to say It's just CHANGE, Red… It'll all be okay. We'll still be together, whatever happens. Things will change, but what we have won't. It'll be okay…
“Yeah, I'm just scared is all. The usual thing. Oh, I know it's stupid, Doc… but I just can't help it!”
Kim turned back to the switch on the console before her. “But I know it has to be done. Maybe they can fix your voice, and my ankle. And maybe we can get a pizza, huh?”
Shego punched her in the arm jokingly, trying to help her make light of the situation.
“Right. Let's just get it over with. Might not work anyway…” Kim said, trying to keep the hope out of her voice, “Okay Doc, charge it up.”
Shego laid a hand on the niobium sphere and lit. Her plasma was seemingly sucked onto it's surface – kept from the metal by an EM field only a fraction of a millimeter thick. She removed her hand and cut her plasma, watching the green glow continue to play across the surface of the black metallic ball.
Next to her, Kim put her hand on the knife-switch that would energize the transmitter. She had ten seconds to throw the switch.
And she couldn't do it. She couldn't risk going back because she couldn't imagine living there. And if she couldn't live there, as she lived here, then that would be The End, and Kim wasn't ready to accept that – not if she could stop it.
But what about Shego, Kim wondered. She was counting on this, wasn't she? Could she deny Shego… deny her the whole World just because she would be too embarrassed to live there? How pathetic was that? No, she couldn't do that. She had to throw the switch.
She had to.
Three more seconds ticked by.
She had to!
Shego put her hand onto Kim's, so they were both holding the handle of the switch. Kim wondered what to make of it… maybe it was just some kind of ceremonial thing – throwing it together. She waited for Shego to start pushing down – Kim wouldn't have to do it herself, and Shego wouldn't have to know.
Three more seconds.
What's she waiting for? Kim thought to herself, Time's almost… what?
Gently, slowly, Shego lifted Kim's hand off the switch.
The green glow of the sphere faded away.
Kim turned to look at her wife. “I… I'm sorry Doc… I-” But Shego just put her finger to Kim's lips again, and then - still holding onto her hand - led her out of the warehouse.
They went home.
The Beacon wasn't mentioned for two weeks. Life appeared to be normal.
Then they fought – their biggest argument to date. Shego had less reason to want to go back, but dammit, she missed things back in The World! And besides, her study of medicine had taught her that for most serious illnesses or injuries, there wasn't really much she could do. All the medicines had expired long ago. To even set up an X-ray machine would be a major undertaking, and probably require years more study. It just wasn't a good idea to stay in this world, if they had a chance to leave it!
And Kim – Kim had lots of reasons to go back… her family, her career – she was only 35 now, she still had time – and they could probably fix her ankle good as new in a few weeks! Kim was just going to have to get the fuck over this damned lesbian-phobia of hers!
But Shego didn't understand that phobia. Perhaps Shego had been a celebrity, of sorts, but Kim had been Miss All-American Good Girl: Apple-pie! Hot-dogs! Chevrolet! To go back and have everyone know, oh, by the way, I'm gay. This is my wife, Shego – she's okay once you get to know her. And she's REALLY good in bed… was just… unthinkable! And then there was Mom and Dad – whom she'd spent her childhood trying to live up to – what about them? They'd probably want to know what Shego had done to her… what weird kind of mind-control scheme Drakken was up to now. It would be infuriating and embarrassing and stupid and horrible! And she couldn't do it. Kim just could not do it!
At least, not yet.
Kim couldn't understand why Shego was so upset about it. Their life here wasn't so bad… what was the big deal? They could go back any time, assuming it actually worked. It never occurred to Kim how it might feel to Shego, knowing that the love of her life was too embarrassed to be seen with her in public.
In the end, there was nothing left to do but reach a truce: they would stay, for now. But this was not the end of the matter. And Shego, for her part, would just have to deal with Kim being Kim – as much as it galled her to think about it. She tried not to. It got easier as the months went on, but it never went away.
In the Summer of year 21, the four-wheel-drive lock-up solenoid on the Humvee gave out. Obviously, it had been waiting to happen, because when Shego took the transfer-case apart, the solenoid shaft was chewed up far beyond what could have possibly happened on that particular day, or even week.
She could replace it with a new one… but it was a rather odd part, and she'd probably have to go to another state to find an Army Parts depot that had it. On the other hand, the shaft was a fairly simple part. Seven inches long, threaded on one end, a notch in the other. She could just make one. She had the experience by now. No sweat.
She chose stainless-steel round-stock and chucked it up on the lathe. That kind of steel was relatively easy to work with, compared to high-carbon steel or steel alloyed with exotic additives like tungsten or molybdenum.
All she had to do was turn it to the proper diameter, cut threads, and grind the notch. No problem. Have it done in a few hours.
As Shego began to turn it, the steel strand cut by the bit spiraled up and away, eventually reaching the floor and coiling there. It never broke. Shego had never cut a piece of stainless this large before, and with other, harder steels, the strands always broke our burned apart every few inches. Not the stainless. It just kept coming off in a continuous, sharp-edged, flat wire. It was kind of neat to watch it.
Then, as Shego was cutting close to the chuck-end of the stock, the strand got caught by the spinning jaws, and began to wind around it, bringing the loose and scattered coil on the floor with it, and Shego, standing amongst the loops, was almost instantly tripped by the strand, bound by the strand, and sliced by the strand in seven places, down to the bone.
In the house, at her desk, Kim heard the radio beep. This was the first time it had ever happened, and Kim tripped over her own feet three times trying to run to the barn.
She found Shego standing, hunched over the chuck of the lathe, bound there by a spaghetti-like chaos of shining metal wire. Blood spurted from her legs in three places, and from her arm in two more. She was also bleeding from her back and belly and hips where the wire disappeared into her flesh after having cut its way through her clothes.
“SHEGO!” Kim screamed, “What happened?” In her panic, she'd forgotten that Shego wouldn't be able to tell her.
Kim bent over to see her wife's face, was she even still alive? So much blood…
Kim Possible had no super-powers, unlike the other Heroes back in The World. Aside from her martial-arts skills, she had only one thing going for her: the ability to think fast under extreme pressure.
She thought fast.
The wires would have to be cut away, that much was obvious. The lathe was the root cause of the problem. It appeared to be off – in fact, it's breaker had finally tripped. Wire-cutters. There.
So many wires! The bleeding. If not stopped, it would have to be at least slowed. Leaving Shego bent over the lathe still, Kim went and found rope, and a knife to cut it with, and scrap pieces of wood and bar-stock with which to tighten it. Five minutes after she'd entered the barn, she had Shego cut free and four tourniquets around various parts of her body. Now to get her moved.
Moved to… the house? What would she do there? Kim wasn't trained to handle this, the way Shego was. What was she going to do in the house? What Shego needed was… a hospital.
And doctors.
“Can you hear me, Doc?” Kim asked gently, as she prepared to lift Shego off the lathe. Shego blinked her eyes in response. She felt so cold…
“We're going home, Doc. Back to the world. You've gotta stay with me, you've gotta light up the sphere. Okay Doc? Shego? Can you hold on?”
Shego blinked again. She'd try. Although she'd rather just go to sleep. Sleep would be so good, right now…
Kim had to drag Shego by the shoulders out to the Humvee, and trying to lift her into the backseat brought her ankle to new heights of pain, but she did it. Pain be damned. Time was short, and Kim knew it. She drove the truck to the warehouse.
Getting Shego out of the truck was as bad as getting her in, but finally, Kim was holding her up next to the niobium sphere.
“Shego? Shego, we're here. Shego?” She was breathing, but her eyes were closed. Oh shit!“SHEGO! SHEGO!” Kim screamed, shaking her to get her awake. Her eyes squinted open. “You gotta light up, Shego! You gotta do it like before – without melting the sphere… remember? Please, Shego… we're almost home… please light up…”
Light up? Gah… couldn't it wait? Couldn't it wait till… morning?
“SHEGO! Light the sphere! Like before! DO IT NOW, SHEGO!”
Oh, fuck, all right. Then can I go to bed? It would be so nice to be warm, and in bed…
Plasma began to flicker around the ball.
“Good! Keep going Doc! Keep feeding it! Stay AWAKE Doc! Please!”
In a few seconds, the sphere was aglow with plasma.
“Okay, cut it now Shego. Cut your plasma! Can you hear me? Cut it!”
Gladly. Now will you please leave me alone? I want to go to sleep…
Without a second's hesitation, Kim pulled the knife-switch down and energized the Beacon. And instantly, a glowing blue ring of light appeared in front of the console, just where the original Transporter Loop #2 had been, before they'd melted.
“Okay, come on Shego… we're going home. You can go to sleep when we get there, okay? Just… this way…” Kim stumbled toward the iridescent ring of light.
She didn't even look back as she fell into the Ring with Shego in her arms.
And exited on the other side of Ring #2. Shego 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?”
Instead of an answer, Shego and Kim heard applause. That was strange enough, that they dared look away from each other to see what the hell was going on.
The warehouse – which seemed to be considerably more brightly lit – was full of people. Not only Dr. Drakken, but Dr. Director, Will Du, Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Possible, Ron with Rufus on his shoulder, a dozen armed GJ agents, another dozen men and women in white lab-coats and carrying clip-boards – and everyone was looking at Kim and Shego, and clapping their hands.
“What the HELL…” Shego said.