Author's Foreword
Originally posted in response to a challenge on the KPSlashHaven forum. This has been cleaned up for flow and had some additions to it since then. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer
See author profile for disclaimer.
KP-KP-KP-KP
God, I'm freezing out here! Kim thought, trying not to laugh at her own morbid choice of words. The 'here' was the wind blasted, white nothingness of the Greenland Ice Sheet. She was over five hundred kilometers from the nearest airport... Or any other means of getting home.
She glanced over the expanse of blinding off white, blue and occasionally dirty gray, squinting against the brilliant sun and its myriad clones spearing her eyes from the icy facets all around her. It was at least a couple days into the second week of June, near as she could guess... She'd have known for certain, but Gemini had done something to her Kimmunicator. She wasn't sure what, or even how, but he had and whatever it was had forced it to boot into safe mode.
Unfortunately, that meant that Wade's proprietary and exceedingly secure quantum entanglement system was inaccessible, leaving her with just the standard radio and cellular functions of the device. Bereft of those, and considering her location, she couldn't get the current time and date, let alone call Wade, via cellular towers. And while she'd normally be able to contact, at the very least, a ham radio operator, but Gemini's plan was stifling even that. That signal dampener he set up is doing a fine job of blocking communications!
She sighed, not for the first time, and her hand twitched as if to reach for her Kimmunicator... But she held off. It wasn't time, the alarm she'd set for her next signal check at least a half hour off. At least the thermometer and GPS work... Well, the GPS only because of dead reckoning and knowing right where I was before I left... She tried to shake off the thoughts, especially the latter. At least I have some knowledge, though... And knowledge is power, especially for a Possible! As soon as the thought flashed across her mind she let out a self-deprecating snort of laughter. Oh, what a hollow comfort! she lambasted herself, All it can tell me is that I'm approximately at the vertical centerline of Greenland and that I'm walking through an air temp of fourteen below zero F! Earlier, out of curiosity, she'd entered her guess of the wind speed, something she was rather good at thanks to her world saving experience, and discovered that with the wind chill, the temperature of around forty-three degrees below zero. Gemini's outdone himself this time... she thought morosely. The location and his latest lair, his overall plan, everything had been thought out in minute detail!
Including his goons surprising me with knockout gas and managing to sneak me from the rear storeroom of Club Banana! That was merely one of the several aspects of the situation that had her in such a morose mood. Especially when he'd finally revealed his plans to her, as all good supervillains do...
She'd woken up, confused, groggy from the knockout gas, in a plexiglass box with holes along the top and bottom, tied up like some kind of dangerous animal. Other than the scurrying of Alpha and Beta agents, she hadn't seen much besides a huge viewscreen. Among other things, the viewscreen showed a three dimensional view of their location, which had been somewhere in the slightly south and west of Greenland's central area. There was a list of the closest outposts, and an oddly distorted, circular blob circle surrounding their location. All of the outposts seemed to be outside of the blob, which had struck her as odd, until she saw a realtime representation of a plane flying to one of the outposts, just a few hundred meters above the blob's vertical height.
She'd immediately concluded that it was a good place to put a lair, whatever his plan was. Almost no one would notice it in the middle of the massive island... And when she found out that the blob indicated a radio dead zone? It made perfect sense... And now, here she was, three days and nearly one hundred kilometers from the base; still in the blackout zone and suffering for her lack of foresight. She wanted to scream, to run and try and get a signal... But it would be next to impossible; as much as she wanted to, she dare not run, due to crevasses of the Greenland Ice Sheet, many of which were crusted over with a thin layer of ice and snow. And screaming? What was the point. It would burn up the valuable energy she'd need to reach someplace clear of the interference.
But the temptation was so strong... The lack of food, the cold, the blinding, days long trudge? It was almost too much! She had to get a signal out, no matter what! It was to save Ron, her Ron! And the jamming signal was making that next to impossible! Not only was it so damn broad, it appeared to go up to an altitude of about a quarter kilometer! This was a mistake... she thought morosely, almost believing the thought, almost giving in to her despair...
But she held firm in her resolve, even if by the barest of margins. When she'd escaped and set out, she figured it wouldn't take too long to reach the outer edge of the communications blocking device... After all, she knew she could move upwards of fifty kilometers in a day, and that was when she wasn't pushing herself! She just hadn't taken into account the terrain, the dangers...
So she'd set out to the west, despite the damage to the suit she wore. It had made sense, though! Climbing higher, towards the ice shelf's summit, would have driven her into even colder temperatures, and the risks of injury were greater! Granted, there would have been people at the Summit Camp at the highest point of the ice shelf proper, and communications... But it was further than her chosen path,
Now... Now she wondered if she should have risked climbing higher onto the ice shelf. No time for regrets or second guessing, Possible! she thought to herself, almost laughing as she realized the voice in her head so much like that of Shego, her best female friend next to Monique, Suck up your decision, you're further from that summit than the edge of the communications blackout! She wished Ron and Shego were here, though... She'd been gone for... Three, four days now? No, at least four... she thought, though she was uncertain how long she'd been unconscious on the way to Gemini's lair, or how long, exactly, she'd been imprisoned. Four and a half days for sure, if she had to guess... That meant it was only a day or three until her twenty-fourth birthday, and Ron had promised her an early birthday present... One she was pretty sure she'd figured out, and was all but salivating over. She knew, under most circumstances, Ron, Wade, their roommate Shego... Probably even Drew or Global Justice and others should be out looking for her... But this time, she knew that wasn't to be.
She shivered as a particularly strong gust of wind blew across her body as if admonishing her, which shouldn't have come close to being as threatening as it was... However, she felt the slight chill as the cutting wind pulled heat away from her body, the heavy arctic survival suit she wore far from intact... Thanks to the damage it'd taken while escaping Gemini's latest lair, and that she'd tried to avoid exacerbating since escaping.
That was far easier said than done, though; she'd slept through the nonexistent nights - having to use the Kimmunicator's countdown function thanks to the so-called midnight sun - by finding and diving into a soft section of snowpack. It was something she'd learned years ago, that sled dogs and wolves of the arctic tended to do. That very concept had been reiterated in her Global Justice freelance agent training, as a last ditch survival technique... Though it was suggested that you should have intact arctic survival gear!
She laughed at the thought, shaking her head at her luck. Even though her gear was far from intact, it seemed that her temporary repairs had done their job. So, each 'morning' when the secondary counter went off, she'd gotten up and made west once again. She just wished she'd have had time to get more, or at least backup, gear from Gemini's base. That had not been an option, however. The madman had left her tied up in that box, all set up to die when the lair's fresh water supplies and incendiaries set up to melt hundreds of tons of the ice sheet flooded the lair. The resultant holes in the ice pack would have allowed the arctic air in, freezing the water, and presumably Kim, with the outside world being none the wiser.
Thinking back on it, she was still uncertain how she'd gotten out of the cage before the water had been unleashed. Hell, she wasn't sure how she'd managed to choose the right paths to take and make her way to the vehicle bay. The suit, close to her size, no less, she'd found on her way. In the vehicle bay proper, she'd found a tracked arctic vehicle, fully fueled and set up to do repair work. She'd snagged a few packs of British Army surplus MRE's and water, a couple extra suits far outside of her normal size and tools that she felt she could use out on the ice. She'd just finished stowing everything when the lair's self destruct was activated. The water and ice melt had reached the vehicle bay, but the room was high enough that there'd only been an inch or two of water.
She'd thought it odd that the arctic track had started right up, but hadn't looked a gift horse in the mouth. She was following the only route upwards, finally heading towards an opening in the ice sheet and freedom, the vehicle's systems had started beeping, buzzing and whooping at her. The presence of the machine, fully ready to go, finally made sense, and djr had to admit, it'd been a very clever thing for even Gemini to set up; the vehicle had been rigged to blow up if it strayed too far from its home base without proper authorization. The kilometer and a half long tunnel, and the lair's systems finally dying under the water, had apparently set off the vehicle's own self destruct system.
The explosion had caught her while still underground, the force channeled into her, as was some of the shrapnel. Luckily for her, none had pierced the suit outright, but the suit's damage when she'd finally stopped sliding had been... Horrible. The dual layer faceplate had been shattered, there'd been several holes torn into along the torso and legs, as well as a rent in the elbow and upper arm. The boots had been rendered nearly useless above the ankles, and she'd lost one of the mittens in her mad dash away from the vehicle...
She'd repaired them with a roll of duct tape which, ironically enough, was one of the few things to have survived the explosion intact. Of the other two suit's she'd found, only a mismatched pair of boots and mittens, both of which had been sealed to the suit with that very same duct tape. She'd thought herself lucky to have survived, but when she found the boots and mittens, a pair of sunglasses, two of the MRE's and two clear workman's faceshields in the wreckage still intact, she'd almost broken down in tears.
She'd used the latter to improvise a couple layers of clear workman's faceshields to repair the front face of the enclosed helmet; she'd layered them together using a few pieces of plastic of similar size separating them to give a bit of an air buffer between the freezing air and her face. Then she'd, once again, used the duct tape to affect repairs, taping the clear plastic together and then to the remains of the suit's headpiece. She'd lost the UV protection offered to the entirety of her face, but she'd at least had sunglasses to save her eyes. All her preparations made, she set out, her final action pulling a four foot long steel rod from the wreckage to use as a probe for the snow ahead of her, she'd set out... For what it was worth.
I'm going to die, and everyone'll think I'm fine... she lamented to herself, And then Ronnie will die, because I failed... The maudlin thought came unbidden into her mind, but she couldn't deny it. Gemini had planned this, apparently, for years. Since her first encounter with him, he'd decided to use her to do it... Well, not her, exactly, but a clone that had all of her memories up until about two weeks ago. A clone based on Drew's old tech, but that she'd watched take a blast of soda to the face. One that had then stood stock still while Gemini's goons from his Iota squad had beat her to justify the 'loss' of two weeks of time from her memories. I hope someone realizes something's wrong... But at least the injuries would keep her in the hospital! That gives me time to try and get into contact with Wade...
She dropped her head slightly, attempting to stop the blasting light from damaging her eyes, which it could even with the sunglasses. Not only was she walking towards the late afternoon sunlight, it was reflected back at her from the snow and the polished surface of the ice shelf proper. She knew she was already suffering significant burns on her face. Her lips were the only thing spared, due to her lip balm having such a high SPF. She'd have used it for the rest of her face had it been a new tube, but she was almost out, and burning her lips was not a good idea. An infection from splitting skin was a very real possibility around the mouth, since the mouth was one of the dirtier parts of the body, and an infection in this environment...
She shook her head, not wanting to contemplate the possibility. So she continued her relentless slog forward, much as she had the prior two and a half days, hoping against hope to hear the telltale beep of the Kimmunicator getting a solid cell or radio signal. She shivered again, the wind now turned slightly and blasting her in the face with greater force. She glanced to her right, noticing something odd about some of the bits of ice that stuck up from the wind blasted surface around her. Despite the wind now coming somewhat from the west, the snow was collecting on the windward side of the ice chunks. That... Was familiar, somehow, to her survival courses, both from her younger years and from her GJ training. She was just about to stop and think on it, when the wind blew again, drawing another shiver from her and reminding her of what she was doing.
I've got to warn them... she thought yet again, shaking off the feeling that she was missing some important bit of information about the odd snow accumulation. Gemini's plan, as he had explained while she was his prisoner, was to use the loyal Kim clone to get back to Team Possible. Thanks to some writings of Monkey Fist, he'd discovered a toxin that could use Ron's Mystical Monkey Power against him... Use it, frankly, to kill him the first time Ron used it after they were intimate. Gemini justified that, if he took out Ron, that would leave Team Possible with 'only' Wade and Shego, as Kim would be too devastated to do anything. He was almost right, to be honest... Kim thought, a vicious expression crawling down over her face, I wouldn't be able to do anything if he succeeds... Except find him and destroy him utterly!
The expression, to anyone that knew her, would be terrible to say the least. Her eyes, had they not been covered, would have shown with a dark, hateful glint. Her lips, so expressive as they were, slowly curled into an expression that only bore passing resemblance to a smile. Her eyebrows drew together with the inside drooping slightly, making the expression, in a word, chilling. There had been only one person in the world that had seen that expression on Kim's face, and that had been Shego as she fell into a radio tower on the night of Kim's junior prom... And Shego, as opposed to Gemini, had the fortune of earning a second chance from Kim. Gemini, if he failed, would suffer Kim's wrath. If he succeeded, and her Ron died? Not even Kim wanted to think about that possibility...
She was concentrating so much on thoughts of potential vengeance, and trying to shove those thoughts as far down in her psyche as she could, that she lost track of where she was. The sun was just approaching the most dangerous point, the rays bouncing at such a low angle that, even with the sunglasses, Kim was forced to squint against the sun. Her vision was affected so much that she failed to realize the berm of snow she was traversing was actually the top of a meter and a half drop off, followed by a long, steep slope. She realized it an instant too late, as the steel rod she was using to find cervasses in front of her broke through the snow berm, throwing her balance completely off.
Her mind, so shocked by the turn of events, snapped back to the odd snow accumulation on the windward side of the ice chunks behind her. That's right, she told herself, wind coming from a cliff face will collect on the windward side of rocks and such... It was a weird bit of information, one she should have remembered, but considering her situation, she felt she could forgive herself that bit of forgetfulness.
The thoughts did nothing to help her at that moment, however. The steel rod went flying from her hand, her inertia pulling her over the edge of the short drop off. She tucked into a roll, keeping her precious faceplate intact before sliding down a long, nearly forty five degree slope of slick, wind polished ice. She cursed herself viciously as she scrabbled, trying to find some kind of purchase, any kind of purchase! Then, realizing she was already well into a high speed slide, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, in hopes of keeping her sleeves and pants legs reasonably intact. The material on her back and rear end was thicker, and should hold up to the slide... She hoped.
After almost a full minute of sliding, the sound of her suited body's sliding accompanied by the banging and ringing of the pipe, she saw the slope gentle out. Knowing she now had a chance, she flung her arms and legs out, allowing her to bring herself to a stop. Not a moment too soon, as the rod she'd been using demonstrated by disappearing and not making a sound for several seconds; there was another, steeper slope to her left, and it was angling towards the ice face that the slope she was on flowed into. At least it's blocking the wind! she thought with startling optimism.
Then, as clear and beautiful as any angelic choir, a simple, soft two note tone rang out from her Kimmunicator. She hurriedly pulled the tape around her right wrist off enough to reach the double zipper along it's top, carefully working her finger out of the mitten before working open the quadruple zipper of her suit's torso. Her hand was steaming in the cold air as she brought out the electronic device, carefully setting it aside in the slight snow buildup where she'd finally stopped and zipping her torso back up. She still felt the cold seeping into her, and realized she must have cut the back of her suit open, but that could wait! She had to make the call, had to save her fiancé!
She glanced at the face of the Kimmunicator, keeping the glove off in case she had to enter any numbers or commands. Her slightly sweaty hand no longer gave off steam, the sheen of sweat now a sheen of frost on her hand as opened the signals menu of the Kimmunicator. It wasn't a cell signal, but a very weak ham radio signal. Kim stood and moved around the small area of safety she had, hoping to amp the signal, moving the electronic device up and down, side to side, before finding an area that seemed to amp the signal... So long as she was braced against the ice wall. Well, at least it'll keep any damage to the back of the suit covered!She laughed lightly at the idea before shrugging, then slumping down onto her rump to begin the process of relaying herself to Wade. If she was right, she was at the very edge of Gemini's radio jamming shadow... And if Wade knew where she was, he might be able to focus a communications satellite feed, she could get full voice and video communication.
She couldn't help but smile again, though more faintly, as she began the process, startling an amateur radio operator in Nova Scotia. She felt that was somewhat odd, as there should be signals from other camps nearby, but... Again, as a few days earlier, she wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. The tenuous contact with the ham operator led quickly to contacting Wade, who began speaking without preamble when he came on, "This is BlackHaxxed, who the hell is this?"
"It's me, Wade..." Kim whispered, her voice hoarse, "Look, I know it's hard to believe, but it's a ferociously dire sitch, 'kay? Code is Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, Charlie, Lima, Oscar, Echo, Zero, One, Omega, Delta, got it?"
"Okay," Wade sighed, his voice distorted as voices always were over the old, but still popular radio spectrum, "You have our codes, I'll reserve judgement..." Kim could almost imagine the veritable mountain of a man Wade had become scowling at his computer screen. He'd grown up and up and up upon hitting puberty, and while he still had some bodyfat, most of that pudge had become solid slabs of muscle with a comforting bit of softness on the outside. Or so he liked to claim, anyway. The ladies he'd dated up until about a year ago hadn't complained, either... Now, though?
"I'm somewhere in southern Greenland," Kim said, shaking off her own thoughts to get down to business. Although her tone was understanding, it was quite strident and worried, something she didn't bother trying to hide, "If you can just get a communications satellite to focus on the area, you'll see it's me and my Kimmunicator..."
"Okay, give me a few..." Wade said, dissatisfied, but following her order. A moment later, the Kimmunicator chirped and reset itself, as if he'd found it and initiated a repair of whatever Gemini had done. When it came back, it wasn't the new, custom, slick interface she was used to, but the second, possibly first, generation of the KUI, or Kimmunicator User Interface. She blinked, realizing that she at least had satellite communication capability, and immediately called him. Wade's handsome face was hunched forward in worry, his blocky shoulders and neck menacing and tense as he stared out at Kim... Before his face, and indeed his whole body, seemed to fall in shock upon seeing her, "K-Kim?"
"Yeah, Wade..." Kim sighed, "Look, I know this is totally awkweird, but the Kim that made it back to you guys is something Gemini whipped up, a clone based off of a perfected version of Drew's old cloning tech, and with my memories up to about two weeks ago!"
"Kim, I..." Wade looked sick as he paused, his mouth open and staring, "I hope you understand, Kim, er... You, um... The Kim we found was pretty beat up, and your mom... Her... Dr. Possible said that could account for the memory loss... I... I have no way of knowing this is yo-..."
"Wade, this clo-..." Kim paused, wanting to respect Wade's concern, and changed her tack slightly, "The Kim you guys found... What day is it, by the way?"
"It's Wednesday," Wade said, and Kim shook her head, realizing that she had the date and time, both at her location and back in Middleton, in the upper right of her screen, "Your birthday is Saturday..."
"Yeah, should've checked, sorry..." She shook her head, as if trying to shake away cobwebs, "Sorry, Wade, I've been surviving on a pair of MRE's and melted snow since Sunday..." She paused and stared at him, "Wade... That Kim wouldn't know what you told me a week ago tomorrow, but the real Kim, if she was real, would, right?"
"Yeah..." Wade hedged, narrowing his eyes at her.
"Wade..." Kim smiled, the expression horrifying Wade as he realized how much exposure Kim had gone through, "I told you that, if you wanted to ask Jim out, and he said yes, I'd back the both of you when it came time to tell my mom and dad..."
"Oh, god, Kim... Shego's been saying something's off with you, even Ron was worried, but..." Wade's face paled, then flushed in self directed anger, "I should have figur-..."
"The clone's perfect..." Kim interrupted, "But that's not important! Is she still in the hospital?"
"No, she was released a half hour ago..." Wade called Ron's Roncom, as the blond had renamed what Wade and Kim had dubbed the Ronnunicator... And shook his head in dismay, "They were supposed to go home... Correction, they've been home about five minutes... That's weird, the Kimmunicator and Roncom are off..."
"They're home alrea-..." Kim's eyes flew wide in sudden horror, "They're off? Is Shego home?"
"She's..." Wade started, then sighed in relief, "She's home, probably getting ready to go out..."
"And her "Good!" Kim half shouted, "Call her, have her stop my clone before she can kill Ron!"
"Um, Kim..." Wade started in confusion. Kim could understand, because despite his Mystical Monkey Powers, Ron wouldn't be able to use them against her. Besides which, she was still a better fighter, even after six years of training from both her and Shego...
"Wade, listen," Kim snapped, "Gemini found something from a scroll Monkey Fist stole from Yamanouchi! She's got..." Wade blinked when Kim flushed deeply, and Kim grit her teeth in frustration, "She has a poison in her system, some mystical thing that one of Yamanouchi's rival clans used with geisha assassins... It only becomes active after sexual intercourse... Er, unprotected..." Kim huffed at Wade's almost incredulous look, "Look, Ron and I have always used protection, even though I'm on the pill... For my early birthday present, well... Ron and I were going to do it with none."
"O-okay?" Wade said in shock, his confusion still evident.
"Dammit, Wade, listen," Kim pushed on, "to quote the scroll Gemini read during his villainous rant, 'The poison of Maki-sama, the the unholy gift on the Yono, was granted to her and her followers to destroy the Chosen of the Lotus Blade and the Mystical Monkey Power. Her assassin's nectar must mix with the lustful seed of the Mystical Monkey Master as it spills forth within most sacred flower. When next the Master uses his hidden strength, the poison shall destroy his body utterly.' That scroll was written by Toshimiru's great-grandson, Wade! If my clone has sexual intercourse with Ron, it'll kill him the next time he uses it..."
"But couldn't he avoid using it until we get a cur-..." Wade started, but Kim's panicked half-shriek stopped him cold.
"There is no cure, Wade!" Kim's eyes were tearing up as she spoke, her face frozen in abject fear, "And he uses the MMP unconsciously at least once a day, sometimes four or five times!"
"Oh, God..." Wade said as he finally understood Kim's panic. He then hurriedly typed in the commands to reach out to Shego, "I'm on it, Kim!"
Kim nodded, carefully balancing the Kimmunicator on her belly. Her hands tensed on the superstrong composite case of her Kimmunicator, worried eyes watching the screen as Wade tried to call Shego. The screen split horizontally, showing a little graphic of a phone ringing below Wade's virtual visage. After a several tense seconds with no answer, Wade overrode the accept and decline functions, forcing it to answer... Only for him to screech and turn away from the screen as it showed Shego, dressed in a very attractive set pair of panties and matching bra, preparing to answer the call anyway. "What the flying Christ, Nerdlinger?"
"Sorry, emergenc-..." Wade started, only to wince when Shego's suddenly angry voice cut him off.
"Who the hell is this?" Shego snapped, "Kimmie's getting busy with Ronn-..."
"She's a clone of me and she's there to kill Ron, Shego!" Kim said urgently, half screaming in her panic, "Wade can vouch that I'm me and she's not!"
"Fuck!" Shego snapped when Wade nodded hurriedly, bolting from the room as she was, the Shego-dubbed Gocomm still in hand. She got to Kim and Ron's bedroom in a seeming instant, trying the doorknob only to find it locked, "Open up, Ron!"
"Shego, what the hell?" Kim heard Ron's voice call out in an embarrassed tone, "Kinda busy here!"
"Open the door before it's blasted down!" Shego roared, and Kim tensed as she heard her own voice snap out at Shego.
"Oh, what, you can't get any so we can't?" It was normally something used to tease, and Kim made sure to never say it like that to her friend.
It was enough for Ron to question Kim's clone with a hesitant, "KP?"
"Wade just confirmed that's a Kim clone!" Shego bellowed, and then the lower half of Kim's screen was enveloped in a brilliant flash of green, before the Gocom was sent flying, only to land against the end of the hallway. There was flashes of green, then blue light, yells, confusion and chaos for a several long seconds.
Don't do anything to Shego, Ron! Kim thought worriedly, not daring to speak and distract either of them. She knew that, if Ron or Shego heard her voice coming from the Gocom, it would only cause the tense situation to explode. To keep her mind at least somewhat occupied, she raised her legs and braced the Kimmunicator against them, then reached out and worked her now numb right hand - which she hoped was just frostbitten - back into the mitten. She had a bit of trouble zipping it up, but managed the feat before resealing the duct tape. She frowned slightly as it didn't stick as well as she'd like, but figured she'd let her hand warm up before reopening her suit's torso to get to the duct tape roll. After all, she knew that Shego would stop her clone, explain things to Ron and soon enough, Wade would have a rescue crew on their way to her...
She smiled as she heard a panicked, angry Ron asking for an explanation, and Shego trying to get him out in the hallway to speak to Wade. He'll be safe soon... she thought to herself with immense relief. Then she could get warm again... She could get the frostbite and sunburns taken care of...
She wouldn't have to freeze to death under a burning sun...
Author's Notes
There ya have it! Unbeta'd except by myself. I'm sure that, in some ways, this seems disjointed, perhaps even disoriented, especially when it comes to Kim's recollections and thoughts as she wandered forward through the snow and glare. This may seem sloppy, but it's mostly a an attempt at understanding and portraying what happens when someone with an active active mind - of which Kim Possible likely has in spades - is forced into the hours, even days, long drudgery that Kim was. Trapped in her own mind, a few layers of synthetic cloth and duct tape for protection from the elements, she would likely focus on the recent events, and her mission... Sometimes to her detriment. Fortunately for Kim, Lady Luck smiled upon her near the end, but it was, indeed, a close thing, non?
This fic is a one shot for now... If there's interest, I might be able to be convinced to continue, as I have a couple vague ideas, but any ideas wold be appreciated. Anyway, as I said above, I hope you enjoyed this work, and feel free to let me know what ya think!