A feminine figure laid down on the roof of an empty building, dressed in a black body suit complete with a black cape and hood. Green eyes, hidden behind a pair of multi-frequency lenses, scanned the exterior of the building several feet away. Her long, pale-green arms cradled a multi-function sniper rifle lovingly as she positioned it. Standing on the ledge, next to her, was a small pink figure wearing a pair of goggles and a black harness. The woman’s lips moved slightly, sub-vocalized words being transmitted through the ultra-sensitive microphone currently nestled against the hollow of her throat.
“S1 ready. Phase one, go.”
On the other side of the building, four guards marched. Dressed in matching heavy jackets against the cold, they were black-mirrored sunglasses and helmets that masked any sign of individuality. Each carried an assault rifle slung on his back.
“Hello, boys…”
The four guards turned, startled. They saw a young, teenaged woman standing in a casual, seductive pose. She had dark red hair, set above a pale skinned face. A pair of what appeared to be ordinary sunglasses were pushed up on her head, revealing a pair of bright green eyes. She was clad in a thin, bright green jumpsuit that hugged her body curves tightly, revealing an athletic form that would do any cheerleader proud.
She was standing on her left leg, right leg slightly bent, with her right hand held behind her back. She smiled, mischievously and seductively, and brought her left hand up to her lips. She kissed her gloved fingertips and then held the hand out, palm out. Looking at the largest guard, she blew across the palm, blowing a kiss.
The guard just had time to notice the young girl’s hand was glowing green before a bolt of plasma-energy flew across the distance between them, knocking him unconscious. The girl’s right hand whipped forward, revealing a sleek black plastic pistol in her hand. The woman fired, finger moving with trained skill against the trigger. The second and third guard slumped as the pistol found their mark.
The fourth guard pulled his rifle from behind his back. The woman, seeing she wouldn’t have time to aim the pistol a third time, hit the ground and rolled toward the man. As he attempted to point the rifle down, she lashed out with one foot, sending the man flying back against the wall of the building. The man slumped to the ground, unconscious.
The third guard had managed to push an alarm transmitter on his belt before getting shot. Bright lights turned on, as an alarm began to sound.
The woman glanced at the fourth guard, the one she had to kick to knock out. “I wish I had mother’s figure.” she muttered.
The sniper/observer heard, her sister’s words transmitted by a matching throat-microphone to the earphones built into her sunglasses’ ear pieces. “Mom’s or Mommy’s?” she asked. She aimed the rifle carefully and pulled the trigger, taking out one of the spotlights. She began moving to target the next spotlight.
On the ground, the red-haired woman was throwing plasma balls at the spotlights in front, alternating hands. “Either, really.” she said. “If I did, that fourth guard would have still been staring long enough for me to have shot him, too.”
“Show off.” The sniper’s voice held no trace of rebuke, merely a calm statement of fact.
The red haired woman smiled as she saw some new guards charging from the front door. “Show time, you mean.” she said and leapt back. Her right hand once more clutched the black pistol, while her left hand threw a large blast of green energy. The guards ducked down to dodge the energy blast, allowing the woman to snap off several shots even as she sought cover. “Phase two, go.”
The black haired woman, on the roof, stood up. One hand gently picked up the small, pink figure and set it in her pocket. “Ready, Rina?”
“Ready!” squeaked the goggles-wearing mole rat.
The woman spread her arms wide, clutching the material of her cape. Electrical energy surged into the cape alone special fibers, causing the cape to stiffen, forming a hang-glider like configuration. The woman leapt from the building, trusting her sister to keep the guards to busy to spot a patch of black night flying through the sky.
The red-haired woman sheltered behind an upraise in the ground, one of the points she had used originally to sneak up on the four guards. Now, it offered protection from their reinforcements. She had managed to take two more out with pistol fire, but they were now returning fire too fast for the woman to risk taking time to aim her shots. Instead, she poked the pistol out from the edge of the sheltering upraise and pulled the trigger, firing at random.
The black haired woman flew straight at the back wall of the building. At the last second, she tilted her cape-wing up, catching an updraft from the edge of the building. Inertia, lift, and gravity combined to bring the woman’s body right against the rough surface of the building. Her black gloves and boots pressed against the side of the building, adhering as if magnetized. Thousands of tiny, electrically activated hairs in the gloves and boots allowed her to stick to the side of the building like a human fly. The electrical charge in the cape, meanwhile, stopped flowing. The cape returned to its limp, flowing form. The woman climbed, quickly but silently, up to a window. Once there, a quick scan confirmed there were no electronic sensors focused on the glass.
“Need a hand, Rina…” the woman said, softly. Her pet mole rat obediently climbed out of its pocket and crawled across the woman’s torso and arm, up to the window. In its hands, it was carrying a small suction cup. The mole rat licked the cup and then pressed it up against the glass, holding the cup in place. The woman reached out with one hand to the window, just using one hand and her boots to hold her affixed in defiance to gravity. She carefully ran a fingertip in a circle around the suction cup the mole rat was holding. A synthetic diamond claw, built into the glove’s finger tip, cut through the window glass. With a small squeak of pleasure, the mole rat tugged gently on the suction cup, pulling the round piece of cut-out glass, and sat it in the black-clad woman’s hand. The mole rat then scampered in through the window.
“Rina’s in.” the woman muttered softly, just barely loud enough for the microphone around her neck to send it to her sister’s sunglasses/earphones.
The mole rat managed to short-circuit the simple alarm rigged to the window frame, then unlocked the window. Moving as silently as a cat, the black clad woman opened the window up and slipped into the room. “I’m in.” she said. “Phase three, go.”
The naked mole rat dashed over to the black-clad woman’s leg and began climbing fearlessly up it, to regain its customary pocket.
On the ground, the green-clad, red haired woman pulled a small, yellow-painted sphere from an ankle-pouch. The sphere was about the size of a ping-pong ball, with a black band around the middle. She sent a small surge of plasma-energy into the ball, activating it, and then threw the ball up into the air. Her sunglasses automatically blackened as she closed her eyes tightly.
The guards, totally unprepared, found themselves for a second staring into a light as bright as the sun. The woman lifted her head, seeing the guards groping around blindly. She smirked and ran for the main doors. “Understood.” she said, as she slipped inside. “Prepare for phase four.”
The two women moved through the building, almost completely unhindered. Two technicians, standing in the pathway of the black-haired woman, fell unconscious before even seeing the dart-pistol wielding ninja-girl. Several guards gave chase to the red haired woman, mistakenly dashing into a room they thought she had gone into. Instead, she had been hiding behind the door. She slammed it closed, and used one glowing hand to weld the door shut. Finally, the black haired woman found herself at the doorway to the building’s most secure area. Two very alert guards were standing in the only entrance way to the area.
“Phase four, go.” the black-haired woman whispered. “Got two guard dogs that need to be distracted.”
“Ready to distract.” the red-haired woman whispered back. She rubbed her green gloved hands together, smiling in anticipation, then rushed into the guards’ dining hall. Ten or twelve guards were in there, sitting and eating. Smirking, she threw a huge plasma ball at one table, blasting trays of food everywhere. “Food fight!” she yelled, scooping up a handful of mashed potatoes from an abandoned tray and throwing it at one of the startled guards. The guards’ weapons were stacked by the kitchen entrance way, so that the guards couldn’t try to shoot her.
A few guards actually grabbed food items to throw back at the apparently deranged woman. One guard, a little more clear headed, pulled out a handheld CB unit. “The intruder is in the dining hall! She’s got us pinned down… come at once!”
The two guards glanced down at the radios on their belts, then began moving toward the dining hall. They passed a black box as they dashed past, the box apparently some piece of equipment. As they thundered down the hall, the box shape slumped, revealing itself as a woman wrapped in a black cape. She stood up and calmly walked to the door the guards had abandoned. She pulled her left sleeve up, revealing a high-tech looking mini-computer strapped to her forearm. She took a cable from the computer and placed it against a keypad on the door the guards had been guarding.
The mini-computer hummed and beeped. The door slid open. “I’m in.” she whispered. She looked around. Her glasses revealed a net of moving laser beams, mixed in with motion sensors. Anything moving too fast, or triggering one of those beams, would set off an alarm. In addition, the beams were set too close together for a human to slip through.
Too close together for a human, yes. Mole rat, no. The black-clad figure knelt down and once again took her mole rat out of her pocket. “Ok, Rina, just like we practiced. Get the mini-CD, get back. Ok?”
“Aye aye!” squeaked the mole rat.
The woman smiled. “Good girl. Go.”
The hairless rodent moved into the room, slowly. The special lenses in its goggles, similar to the sunglasses its owner wore, allowed the mole rat to easily see the laser grid. It hopped, ducked, and wove her way through the grid, never moving fast enough to set off the motion sensors. It reached the other end of the room, where a mini-CD was set on a pedastel, and carefully picked it up in in its fore-paws.
The red haired woman, in the mess hall, was pinned down from two sides. She couldn’t move further into the mess hall without risking the guards there grabbing her or getting their weapons, and a squad of guards with weapons were gathered outside the mess hall. “Getting hot in here.” she said, even as she threw two more plasma balls. Her dart pistol was back in ithe hidden holster set in the hollow of her back…
“Can you extract, method one?” asked the black haired woman, watching as her pet held the mini-CD up in triumph.
“Negative.” admitted the red-haired woman. The guards outside were clustered around to the hall and stairs, and the mess hall had no convenient windows outside. “Down and windows all blocked.”
“Up it is.” said the woman. She took careful aim. “Rina! Yo-yo time!”.
A black cable claw shot from a launcher in the woman’s right sleeve, flying straight through the laser grid. The tip of the bacle struck at the center of the braced molerat's harness, affizing tightly. The cable reel automatically reversed, pulling fast enough to send the mole rat flying through the air. The mole rat held on firmly to the mini-CD, even as it’s body smacked into the woman’s gloved right hand. The alarms, triggered by the mole-rat’s flight through the air, begin to blare out.
The guards, startled, turned as they heard the new alarm go off. The red haired woman, expecting it, simply leapt straight up. Her gloved hands slapped against the ceiling, sticking as if glued, and she twisted her body further upwards. Her feet kicked up against an air-duct cover, sending the cover flying, and she vanished into the building’s air ducts before any of the guards could think to stop her.
Inside the vault room, the black hair woman turned and ran toward the closing doors. Seeing the doors were closing two fast, she dropped the mole rat onto the ground and stuck her hands between the closing doors. The woman grunted, sweat beading on her face. Her hands begin to glow, bright green, as she shoved against the two doors with all her strength. With a defeated hiss, the doors slumped back, partially melted. The woman and the mole rat crawled through the opening.
The black haired woman yanked an air-duct cover out and set Rina inside the duct. “Up and out.” she said. “If I don’t make it, you know who to give the disk to.”. The woman placed the disk on the back of the mole-rat’s harness, fastening some straps to hold the small disk in place.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” the mole rat said, then begin scrambling upwards. The woman climbed into the vent and followed, leaving a small black-and-red box on the cover below.
The red haired woman pushed her way out of one of the roof’s air-ducts and climbed out. She glanced arround.
“K!” squeeked the pink and black mole rat, rushing across the roof.
“Rina!” said the woman, bending down to pick it up. “Where’s S?” she asked.
“Right here.”. The black haired woman wriggled out of the air-duct the mole rat had exited. “Ready to go?”
“Ready.” the red haired woman said. She tapped a control on her pack. Two bright green metal wings slid out of the sides of the pack. She handed the mole rat back to her sister, with the disk, and then wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist. “Let’s go.”
“Go!” agreed the black haired woman. The red haired woman’s jet pack ignited, lifting the two sisters into the sky.
A hidden missile launcher, near the building, activated. It turned, spotting the heat-trail of the rocket pack, and took aim.
“Heat seaker!” yelled the red haired woman, as alert lights flashed on her glassed. She hid the release buckles, causing her rocket/wing pack to keep flying without her.
The black haired woman spread her arms out, the cape once more stiffening out to form a hang-glider like shape. Her sister perched carefully on her back, becoming just a rider.
The missile slammed into the flight pack, producing a brilliant red fireball that backlit the two female figures as they glided to a landing point.
Near the ground, the red haired woman leapt off. The black haired woman, pushed down by her sister’s leap, managed to land on her hands and knees. The cape turned limp, draping around her.
“Yahoo!” yelled the red-haired woman. “Chalk up a win for Team Possible 2.0!”
“Most impressive, girls.”
The red-haired woman turned, to face a much older woman wearing an eye patch. The black haired woman quickly got to her feet, standing by her sister.
“Must impressive.” went on Dr. Betty Director. “Extraction was a bit hasty, but you managed to get the disk. Of course, your parents might have been able to get the disk AND get out without setting off the alarms.”
The red-haired woman shrugged. “Hey… we’re the younger generation. We like it loud.”
The black-haired woman cleared her throat. “Actually, director, there were too many guards to risk a pure stealth approach. It was only by having Kasy serve as a distraction that I was able to sneak in and actually get the disk. Even then, I think we could have gotten out without setting off the vault alarms, except there were more guards there during our assault then our initial intelligence briefing indicated.”
“Never rely 100 on what someone else tells you.” said Dr. Director, reaching up to point at her eye patch. “I did once, and this is what I got.”. She paused for a moment. “Still, an excellent test. Consider yourselves in, assuming all the guards wake up from their plasma stuns and the knock-out darts you two used.”
“ALL RIGHT!” yelled Kasy excitedly. She turned, hands out. Sheki, for once grinning as widely as Kasy, eagerly slapped her own hands against Kasy’s.
“Boo-shaw!” said Sheki. Rina, in Sheki’s pocket, poked her head up and through the mini-CD, the target of the testing exercise, into the air.
Several feet away, listening in with a parabolic micraphone, Kim frowned. “Boo-shaw? They’ve been spending too much time with the tweebs.”
“Relax, Kim.” said Shego. “You’re just upset our little girls are going to join Global Justice.”
“Just as probationary agents!” said Kim quickly. “They’re still just fifteen.”
“And how young were you when we first met?” asked Shego. “Relax, Kim. We’ve trained them as well as we could, and we’ll keep watching them… unobtrusively. But we can’t hold them back.”
“I know.” sighed Kim, setting the microphone down.
“Tell you what.” said Shego. “Let’s head back to the office, and we can get started listing everything the twins did wrong for their debriefing.”
“I thought you said we trained them as well as possible?” said Kim.
Shego smirked. “Part of training is making sure you know that you’re not perfect.” she said. “Bet I can think of five things they did wrong before you can.”
“What’s the winner get?” said Kim.
“Well, the twins are probably going to want to go out to celebrate getting their GJ status.” said Shego. “You win, we have a nice, romantic evening, just the two of us. I win, we break out the green scarves.”
Kim grinned. “Either way, we both win. You’re on.”
Hope you enjoyed this glimpse of Sheki and Kasy as teenagers. Rina Molerat is one of Rufus’s off spring, and as such has Rufus’s intelligence and limited speech capability. Her name is homage to the great Kigo artist Rina Cat, who has done some great illustrations including one of Kasy and Sheki, age approximately five.