"Stones in the Force"

by Eoraptor

T for Teen

All characters Prpery of the Walt Disney Company / LucasFilm. This is a not-for-profit fan work under fare use.

Kim shifted a bit uncomfortably in her flight-suit as she sat amidst her escorts. The suit was all black, save for some piping and places where rank insignia would go on an enlisted… person's uniform. From what she could tell, it wasn't a service… person's uniform, so much as a generic flight suit. The fact that it was black and epilates and a military cut just seemed to be the fashion of the universe she had found herself plunked down in.

The reason it made her uncomfortable, though, was not the militaristic fashion; but that when she looked at herself she couldn't help but notice how it clung to her pale redheaded complexion… and made her look a lot like her nemesis. Shaking her head, and trying to distract herself from the impression of Shego'ness, she looked along the military transport she found herself in.

Soldiers, in white body armor. Most of them carried large blasters, not quite as big as rifles, but definitely not as small as the blaster pistols she was familiar with either. And while their armor was uniform and featureless, the helmets were riotously decorated, reminding her of the Top Shot movie Ron and Felix loved so much, of fighter pilot's decorated helms.

The really scary thing, though, was that Kim noted that the few who had their helmets off looked… alike. Sure, they had different haircuts, and a few had scars, and one even had a brilliant blue artificial eye… but they all had the same face.

Kim had to keep using the "person" pronoun for everyone she met, because aside from these frighteningly identical troopers; she'd met several beings in the past few hours who were not entirely, or in two cases, even remotely, human.

She'd wished she'd never made that darned wish a bunch of times in the past few months of universal roulette, but this time, she was cursing the very fates. She'd appeared in the middle of a pitched battle, in this black flight suit, armed with a smaller version of the blasters the troopers were carrying, and nothing else. Most importantly, not even a clue.

The white troops had been battling a massive force of androids, and the only thing Kim could think to describe the scene was all-out war. There were weird walking tanks, planes which were entirely the wrong shape to be allowed to fly yet somehow did, and even troopers mounted on great beasts like two and four legged dinosaurs.

All-in-all, the redhead felt Ron would feel right at home here; it reminded her of one of his movies that much.

Kim sighed, and banged her head against the back wall of the transport, trying not to look out into the black space beyond, as she was carried skyward towards their command ship in orbit of whatever not-Earth planet the war had been raging on.

Never one to use guns unless absolutely necessary, Kim had immediately holstered the blaster she had found in her hand, and then grabbed up a handy staff made of some kind of metal strut laying nearby.

Fighting these Androids was surprisingly easy. When deprived of their blaster weapons, they proved to be stiff and unwieldy, positively toy-like compared to Drakken's Bebes and Synthos and Doombots. She had cut a swath through them rapidly, and found a wall of the white troopers forming up behind her as she did so. She was a little surprised at what happened next.

"Commander… uh… I'm sorry, I don't know who you are, but I think you dropped this." came the mechanically attenuated voice of one of the lead troopers during a lull in the fighting.

He handed her an odd sort of flashlight. Kim flicked the button on it several times, but it failed to do anything. Shrugging, she had slipped it into one of the pockets on her flight suit and then resumed hacking and batting her way through the droids with her makeshift stave. She had to duck a few close blaster shots from droids, including one from a cannon mounted on a hovering… well it looked like a tank… but a few well timed flips had her inside of the tank, and the tightly packed in android soldiers proved even less capable.

She turned over command of the commandeered hover-tank to the one who had handed her the flashlight, and then was finally forced to utilize her blaster pistol, lancing a bolt of blue energy through the head of an android who had climbed up onto the tank and was about to do something evil to its controls.

"Wow, never seen a Jedi use a blaster before, Ma'am," came the faintly accented voice as she sighed and re-holstered the pistol.

Kim had learned in her travels thus far not to let on that she didn't belong in a place, so rather than asking what a Jedi was, she simply shrugged. "Well, go with what's handy I suppose Commander…"

"Rex, Ma'am. And you are?"

"Kim Possible." Kim hoped her name didn't sound too foreign; as it had the morning she had woken up in a dessert city in some place that seemed like the Middle East with a very intelligent monkey at her side.

"Right. Well, it looks like we have them almost routed, Ma'am. We should get you back to your division."

Kim was about to point out that she had no idea what division she was supposedly with, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Turning, she tried not to boggle at the sight which met her. Two women, well, they had breasts and long feminine bodies, so they should be women right? Two women with thick fleshy tentacles growing out of the tops of their heads. They also had colorful skin, and whitish markings all over them.

"I believe you have something that belongs to me." The taller, blue-skinned one held out her hand imperiously.

Kim was a bit confused at first, but on looking herself over, she remembered the flashlight she had been given by mistake. Fishing it out, and blushing a bit sheepishly, she handed it over; smiling what she hopped was a winning smile to this alien.

"Sorry about that, Commander Rex here was a bit confused."

"So I see…" The tall blue-skinned woman favoured her with an arched brow as she took the flashlight.

Kim yelped when the flashlight suddenly lanced out with a solid purple beam and emitted a low hum. She hopped back in reflex when the blue woman spun it back and forth experimentally before apparently switching it off again, and strapping it to her belt.

Giving her another, much more probative look, the blue woman narrowed her eyes dangerously. Then she turned towards Rex and nodded. "I was deprived of my light saber in combat with a CR-7. Thank you for finding it Commander."

Turning back to Kim, she stared hard at her again, causing Kim to shift nervously from foot to foot. "And who do we have here?"

"She calls herself Kim Possible, ma'am." Rex reported, removing his hemlet. "She moved through the troops and we formed up behind her. I must say ma'am, you Knights make the best Paladins. We'd never have punched through that wave of droids without her, and she did it all without a lightsaber."

He was smirking, but the tentacle-headed woman looked distinctly displeased. Beside her, her shorter, orange skinned companion was peering at Kim, her eyes getting wider with each passing moment. "It's like… like the force avoids her…"

"This woman is no Jedi." The taller of the two reported, frowning. "I do not know who, or indeed what, she is, however."

Kim swallowed at that because it didn't sound promising. She shifted from foot to foot, and blushed again, trying to make herself look as harmless as possible despite her tousled hair and the staff still in her hand.

"What shall we do with her then, Master?" the orange girl looked up to her taller partner. "I've never sensed anything like her."

"Nor have I, young Padawan. Perhaps the council will know something of this. We were already on our way to Coruscant." The blue skinned woman favoured the orange one with the first smile Kim had seen out of her, and then nodded curtly.

"I trust since you fought at our side, that you will not offer us any trouble?" She eyed Kim again, an uncertain gaze on her face.

"I'll be no trouble at all!" Kim yelped and held up her hands, dropping her stave with a clang.

That was how Kim had found herself riding a smaller spaceship on her way up to a larger one. She didn't like overhearing the blue skinned woman whispering to her orange partner, "I've never encountered anyone like her Ahsoka. I could read absolutely nothing of her intent. Even Toydarian's present some ripples in the force."

"What was with the way her face kept turning red, Master? She looks human, but perhaps she is not?"

"Some humans have an emotional response that causes their facial blood supply to change. She apparently has some sort of circulatory defect that causes it in extreme amounts."

Kim made herself stand still as she stood in the center of a large room on this new planet. For the start, the view out the window beyond gave her both pause and reticence. She had heard someone call this "The City Planet," and she certainly could see nothing but buildings and traffic from horizon to horizon… yet what made her stomach churn was that she had the feeling she was on something like the five-hundredth floor of this particular building. Even for someone who occasionally threw herself off skyscrapers; that was one very long drop.

More imposing though was the group of people seated before her. Two were human, a bald black man, and a bearded white man, but they sat to sides of the semi-circle of the assembled "council." There was a bizarrely stretched out being who seemed to be male, another of the tentacle-headed people like Ahsoka and her "Master," and at the center, a short squat green creature with tufts of white hair.

"Strange this is." The short one nodded as he beheld Kim with a gaze which was simultaneously soft and piercing. "No presence in the force she has."

He tapped his short staff on the floor for emphasis and looked amongst his fellow council members.

"It is as if she is a stone in a river," The bearded human began, examining her and stroking his chin. "The force seems to flow in all directions around and past her, but she stands unaffected by it."

"She saved my life at least twice, Sirs," Commander Rex stood to one side and slightly behind Kim, his helmet in his hands. "That much I can vouch for. And she cut through the droids just like a Jedi."

"Or a Sith operative," came a gruff assessment from the other human in the room, the bald man.

"Master Windu speaks a concern of us all," the tall lanky creature nodded slowly, looking over Kim. "We have all witnessed followers of the Sith obscure the force and still fight as we do."

"No clouding of the force do I sense," the short green creature held up his three-fingered hand. "Master Kenobi, what found you with your investigations?"

"The most curious thing, master Yoda." The bearded man sat forward, looking to the apparent leader, "Her body utterly lacks a colony of midi-chlorians. Even the bacteria crawling her skin and her clothes show abnormally low readings."

"How is that even possible?" again the darker human spoke up, looking from Kim to the bearded Kenobi. "Even the smallest particle of life has at least one midi-chlorian. Even some inanimate objects."

This seemed to spark a restrained but passionate discussion amongst the assembled beings, until the one identified as Yoda finally held up its hands for quiet. "Whatever cause this aberration has, no malice within or surrounding this Kim Possible sense I."

Kim tried to follow the backwards speak, and nodded in agreement when she had figured it out. "No, I am so one of the good guys, seriously!"

"If that is true," Master Windu addressed her, "Then how did you find yourself in the middle of a pitched battle? And how did you know how to best disable the battle droids?"

"Those things?" Kim rolled her eyes and laughed before catching herself in the arrogant display, "They're so not the drama. Take away their guns and they're like tinker toys. Seriously, a spinning top of doom could take them out. Heck, I'll bet even Doctor Drakken could beat one, without his vines!"

There seemed to be some nods amongst the Masters, but Windu still looked on Kim with distrust. "This is true. What planet do you come from, Miss Possible, that you know how to fight Trade Federation droids."

Kim chewed her lip softly, and wondered which answer wouldn't get her arrested, or worse, made a messiah like on that Galactica ship, "Um… Earth?"

Again there was a flurry of conversation, and then, between Kim and the masters, a holographic display appeared. Some kind of cursor moved rapidly all across it, before turning red.

"No such planet, there is." Yoda shook its small head, "Not the first time seen this, have we. Yet tales of a planet absent the force a legend vast would be."

"Perhaps the Force has guided this oddity to us," Kenobi began after a long moment of consideration.

"How could the Force guide something which is immune to its effects?" Windu challenged.

"A test, I propose." Yoda held up its hand, heading off another debate. "To see how immune to the force is she."

"Yes, of course, but who to test her?" Kenobi immediately posited.

"Myself."

Without further preamble, the diminutive master hopped down from its chair and moved across the floor, looking up at Kim.

Kim swallowed. She really didn't feel comfortable with a test, especially by a creature that looked and sounded like Kermit the Frog after a trip through a blender. Still, she held silent pending any instructions.

Yoda held up its hand to Kim, and frowned at her. Its frown grew in intensity, and then its eyes widened in apparent surprise. It made a shove motion at Kim in frustration, and then a lifting gesture.

Kim couldn't help but take a step back; afraid the little creature would bump into her, or worse, was summoning guards to take her away. She looked towards Rex for help, but his face was an uncertain expression of concern and helplessness in the face of these apparent leaders.

"Unable to move or coerce her, I am." Yoda rubbed its chin softly, and looked towards the trooper, "yet say she moved as a Jedi, did you."

"Aye. She leapt and flipped and bounced like the lot of you do." He nodded.

"Hmmmm, a demonstration perhaps?" Yoda turned its small form and tapped its walking staff on the ground, "Master Windu. If you please?"

Nodding, the black man rose from his seat, sweeping his robes aside. Kim swallowed, because he moved with a lot of confidence, the same way that Master Sensei and Yori did. "Ah… is this really necessary?"

"I believe it is," Windu said. From his robes he pulled one of those flashlight swords.

Kim yelped, jumping back when it ignited, "Hey now!"

The larger man lashed out at her with the sword-thingy, causing Kim to leap and flip with ever increasing speed. She really didn't want to fight back, since these people seemed more concerned about some kind of infection she didn't have than actually being angry at her.

There was a particularly loud swish, and Kim smelled burning hair. She yelped as she came down on her feet, panting faintly, and grabbed at the back of her head. She gasped, realizing it was very warm, and a good three inches shorter than it had been. "Oh, that was so harsh! I just got that grown back!"

When Master Windu raised his hand and lashed out at her, not with a blow, but with some weird lightning, Kim gasped sharply, and rolled into a somersault, memories of wicked green fire driving her reflexive movements. She panted and sighed, trying not to think of her nemesis, or anything else from home at such an inopportune moment; beyond how to use the experience on the situation at hand.

Gritting her teeth, Kim decided if she wanted to pass this test, and keep her head, she was going to have to fight back. She dodged the next slash of the flashlight sword, and then drove in with the palm of her hand, the same way she had when Yori had attacked her on the roofs of Yamanouchi.

Apparently this caught Master Windu utterly by surprise, and he landed on his butt, his flashlight sword winking out. He rubbed his chest where Kim had slipped inside his block. "Where did you learn that move, girl?"

"Master Sensei. He told me that when someone attacks you with a katana, if you get inside half its length they can't turn it around on you."

"I know of no Master 'Sensei.' But I respect his knowledge of the Katsubata saber style." Wind nodded. Rising, he turned to face the other masters. "I was unable to drive her back by the force or sense her movements in advance. But she is not any faster than any other human, nor stronger."

Turning, and eyeing Kim, the faintest smirk gracing his lips, he shook his head, "However, she has remarkable stamina and an ability to adapt like I have never seen outside of Force Adepts."

"Seventeen forms of Kung Fu, plus Cheerleading," Kim tossed her shorn hair and giggled.

"Leave us, you should Miss Possible." Yoda nodded, stroking its chin, "Recall you we shall when a decision we have reached."

Kim blinked, wondering what that was all about. She turned, though, and followed Rex out of the open chamber, feeling at least a bit less nervous that she had passed whatever test that was.

"General Kenobi…"

"What is it Captain?"

"Sir… we've found another, right here on Coruscant."

"…another what?"

"Another like Possible, Sir… perhaps even more so."

Obiwan perked up at this, looking up from the antiquated paper tomes he had been researching. "Another stone in the force?"

"Aye sir." The bald clone nodded sternly, "A person, probably a human woman, down in the Down Below. She's been thieving her way through the entire district near the temple, but she can't be caught on any sensors, and the Knights and Padawan who looked into it report finding a lot of nothing."

"Then how do you know this is another like Possible?" Obiwan inclined his head to one side slightly, "It could easily be an organized band of thieves and brigands. It ~is~ the underbelly after all."

"I caught sight of her sir." The leader of the local clones nodded firmly and stiffened slightly. "It was as though she knew where every sensor and probe was located in the entire area, moved like a damned wraith."

"Ah, so quite the opposite of our young stone then?" Scratching his chin, the Master Jedi considered the implications. "Not that Possible can't sneak, she simply seems less inclined to."

"Sir, is there not a legend, about one who would bring balance to the force?"

"How in the world did you hear about that?"

"I spend my days around Jedi Masters, sir… hazard of the job I suppose"

The bearded Jedi chuckled and shook his head. "I suppose so."

"So what's to say that the prophecy was just about one? Doesn't balance usually at least require two? Of something?" Rex scratched the top of his head slightly, holding out his free hand in a gesture of confusion.

"Well…." Kenobi scratched his chin slightly, "It would not be the first time a prophecy was mistranslated, or misunderstood."

"Shall I fetch Possible, sir? She is just back from the scouting mission to Hoth. Seems she grew up in a mountainous, cold region herself. Though the stories she told about garbage pods and snow monsters gave me the willies."

Considering a long moment, Kenobi shook his head. "No. if this new woman is as dangerous as Possible can be, and as unpredictable, it's probably better not to bring them together in such an uncontrolled setting."

"You're thinking of going after this one yourself then Sir?" Rex snapped to attention reflexively, a deep seated impulse when orders were about to come.

"The thought had crossed my mind."

Within the hour Rex, Obiwan, and Anakin Skywalker were in the Down Below. The plan was to get the mystery stone via baiting his or her thieving proclivities.

"I'm not certain I like this plan, Master," Anakin bemoaned.

He was dressed in expensive robes, and his hair was slicked back in the young Republican style common amongst Coruscant's elite.

"It can't be helped, Anakin, they know my face here, and no one would for a moment suspect a trooper of having any money." Obiwan shrugged reflexively despite speaking over the audio com.

"And that's the third pick pocket I have evaded." The younger Jedi continued to complain as he sent another groundling scurrying along. "I've also been able to sense all of them. No mythical stone so far."

"And what would Miss Possible think of you calling her a myth, Ani?" Obiwan smirked wickedly, knowing the younger man had a certain weakness for young women that was distinctly un-Jedi. "More importantly, what would a certain young senator think of it?"

When no retort was forthcoming, Kenobi and Rex looked at each other. After a moment, a slightly sheepish reply came back, "Um… I think I've been picked clean."

A moment later, "My Light Saber! She took my light saber!"

"What do you mean 'she,' General Skywalker?" Rex inclined a brow at the indignant voice over the comm.

"Because 'she' is looking right at me, and grinning."

"Now Anakin," Obiwan already knew his warning was going to go unheeded, but felt compelled to voice it anyway as he tried to catch sight of his protégé, "Don't do anything rash… we want to follow her, not-,"

"Hey! You! Give that back!"

"Why do I even bother?" Obiwan exchanged a look with his clone commander and sighed, rising up from their hiding place.

They quickly caught up to the younger Knight, who was burdened by his disguise while giving chase, and saw a glimpse of who they were chasing.

"Hmmm, you're telling me you didn't notice that sooner?" Obiwan wryly indicated the silhouetted backside that disappeared around a corner. "You're slipping in your old age, Ani."

"Maybe he's been spending too much time around flat little Togruta girls, eh General?" Rex quipped as they gave chase to the thief. "Lost 'is taste for the real thing?"

"That's positively sick, Captain… but I do suspect you're right." The Jedi General returned the smirk, "else why would he be lately turning up his nose at all the younglings fawning over him at the Temple?"

Anakin did his best to ignore the jibes at his expense, knowing full well whom his apprentice fancied among the three of them. "There!"

The other two saw their thief, and she was vaulting into the air, and into visibility, rapidly ascending a row of store fronts as passers-by on the transit level pointed at the spectacle.

"Well, she certainly moves like Possible does," Anakin noted, leaping into the air himself, "That's a lot faster than any pickpocket I've ever seen, and yet I don't feel a thing from her in the force."

Obiwan quickly followed suit, as they began closing the distance on the cloaked figure, leaping from walk-way to ledge to catwalk.

"Right, I'll just bring up the rear, like always," Rex rolled his eyes and sighed with resignation. He started looking for an alternative way up in the absence of Jedi abilities or a grapple gun, finally spying an access stair a few dozen meters down the way.

"I think we've got her now, Master," The young knight grinned as he saw their thief had climbed herself into a joisted corner in the building, and the only way out was back the way she had come, right through them.

"I wouldn't be so certain," Kenobi shook his head as the hooded figure turned about on the narrow ledge to face them, her tattered black robes swaying in the breeze. "It may be that she has us."

"Just figure that out?" came the silky dark voice from beneath the hood. "Maybe you're not as dumb as the mullet makes you look?"

Anakin held his hand out, and the saber hidden in the thief's robes rocketed free, returning to him.

"Huh… neat trick, remind me to figure that one out the next time I lose the remote." The voice was momentarily taken by the display as she faced the two on the narrow ledge.

"Your overconfidence will be your undoing," Anakin brashly declared as he ignited his light saber and advanced.

"You're cute kid, but that line never worked for my brother, and he eats pretty boys like you for breakfast."

Anakin lashed out quickly, trying to slice the footing out from under the thief, only to find her evading the blade, leaping and coming to land on the hilt just above his fingers like some demented flea. The knight ducked and tried to draw his saber away, but the thief was even faster, vaulting off again, and coming to land behind Obiwan, whom she shoved at Anakin even as he was igniting his own blade.

"What was that about overconfidence, Anakin?" the elder Jedi muttered as the two of them hung by their fingers from the ledge.

Using the force to lift himself back onto the outcropping, Anakin snorted and started chasing their thief back down the store fronts and towards the nearest transit level.

The Master Jedi rolled his eyes and chose instead to drop down to the transit level, cutting off their troublesome thief, "No, don't mind me... not like I could have used the assistance or anything."

The cloaked figure, wearing some kind of two-colored jumpsuit beneath her tattered garment, groaned and came up short. She considered the Master for a moment before striking an unarmed martial stance. "Let's hope you're better than your eager young space cadet, old man."

"Old? We'll see about that, you rogue. En guarde." Kenobi countered her odd cat-like stance with an open offensive pose.

Redrawing his saber, Kenobi slashed out, hoping to feint his quarry into making a mistake rather than injuring or killing their only other link to the stones in the force. He was mildly impressed when the cloaked thief evaded the first few swipes, not even getting her wrap caught in the blade.

"You're quite good. If you give yourself up, you might learn from us how to become even better, you know…"

"Sorry buddy, I'm a little busy to be taking private fencing lessons from Dartanian and his plucky kid sidekick."

"I'm no one's sidekick, Thiefling." Anakin supplied as he finally closed from the other side.

"Oh, see," she smirked "Now it's finally getting interesting."

With a sudden whoosh, the thief's gloved hands were engulfed in whirling green flames, causing both Jedi to leap back in surprise.

"Sith Magic!" Anakin hissed, eyes narrowed.

"I know of no Sith magic like this…" Obiwan considered as he circled around the thief with his protégé on the narrow ledge, "Lightning yes, flames no; and I still sense absolutely nothing from her."

"You know, if there's one thing I cannot stand," the thief growled heatedly, eyeing each in turn from the shadows of her hood, "It's being talked about like I'm not here!"

The green flames suddenly flared as she half-screamed her frustration at them. Each Jedi lashed out at the newly dangerous mystery woman, and to their abject horror, saw both of their blades caught in her hands and stopped dead.

Hurling the crackling blades back, she grinned, "Nice try boys, but you just brought knives to a gun fight… really big knives, but knives nonetheless."

Bolts of the green fire blasted forth and set each Jedi on their heels, and also allowed the thief space to bowl towards the older one, slashing out with flaming claws, "Like I said, I'm on a mission, and I really don't have time to play."

Obiwan lashed out with his lightsaber, but every slash was countered by a green sheathed hand. And unlike his normal duels, the force was providing him absolutely no guidance on where to strike. He felt crippled, like a youngling lashing out blindly at training droids. Worse, the heat from her flaming hands was starting to become quite bothersome as she closed in on him.

Only her focus on him proved to be the saving grace for the flagging duelist. Anakin quickly stepped in behind the burning witch when the opportunity presented itself, and smashed the back of her head with the butt of his light saber and his mechanical hand, knocking her into unconsciousness.

"Well," the slightly winded Master sighed, sheathing his saber and looking on the insensate thief, "That was different."

Nodding his agreement, the younger knight extinguished his saber and looked around, "Yes it was. The question now is… how do we restrain someone who can grab a light saber blade without blinking?"

"Miss Possible," Commander Rex stood stiffly at attention in the doorway to Kim's small quarters, watching the redhead human, who was reading from some info pad she had found. "I've been sent to bring you to the Council Chamber."

Kim looked up in mild consternation. She had just got back from that darned ice ball they called Hoth, and had been promised a little down time from her Jedi task masters. It wasn't that she didn't like helping out, nor that she had anything better to do, but these guys seemed all too willing to take advantage of her situation and her unique condition in this universe.

"I've already made my report, Commander, can't this wait? My darned eyebrows are still frosty!"

~that's not all that's frosted up~ the clone thought, trying not to notice the way her skin was paler than usual and her tight black flight suit displayed her more feminine bits reaction to the cold. Shaking his head, he sighed with understanding. "Sorry ma'am, but they want to see you, we found something interesting that directly concerns you."

Sighing and seeing she had little choice in the matter, Kim rose to her feet and stretched. "And what did I tell you about that Ma'am crud? You're practically old enough to be my father."

Kim actually knew she was older than the trooper, by virtue of his being grown in a test tube, but he certainly didn't 'look' twelve years old, nor act it. "Sorry ma-, mi-… My apologies, Kim, force of habit. "

A few minutes tube ride later found Kim back in the Council Chambers of the Jedi Masters. After two months here, she was starting to get a feel for the way things worked amongst these feudal guardians of the Republic. Today master Kenobi and his knight-squire Skywalker were in attendance, along with Grand Master Yoda, and the tall guy Something-or-other-Mundi. Master Windu and the blue tentacle woman Ayala were present via holograms, as were a few others she had never met.

"Welcome you, we do, Miss Possible." Yoda inclined its head to her and smiled that odd smile as its ears wiggled. "Please to be watching this, would you? Concerned we are that another of your kind found has been. Perhaps some light upon this you could shed?"

Kim was coming to be able to grasp the green creature's odd speech, since it was Yoda she met with most often, but still, it took her a moment to process. The notion of someone "like her" though, caught her attention immediately.

"Bring in the prisoner…" Master Kenobi gestured to Rex, who in turn nodded and relayed the instructions through a communicator on his collar.

The great doors to the chamber opened, and no less than eight armored troopers escorted a prisoner, draped in black, into the hall. They were all keeping a weary, respectful distance from the figure they surrounded, and the hair on the back of Kim's neck stood up immediately.

The figure was about shy of six feet tall, and wearing a bedraggled black cloak, the way so many travelers in this universe seemed to prefer. But it was what she caught sight of through the holes in the cloak that immediately riveted the redhead; a flash of brilliant green and deeper black.

A quick sniff of the air blown in with the open doors brought even more weary realization to the heroine and Jedi operative. Oranges, sage, and Ozone.

"We found her in the Down Below this morning," Obiwan began by way of introduction. "That's the term for the seedier lower levels of the city-world."

"Found nothing," spat the figure, "You chumps came looking for trouble and baited me in. Pretty well too."

"Shego…?" Kim began trepedaciously, the voice so perfectly familiar to her.

With a dramatic flick of her head, the figure threw the hood of her cloak back, revealing the smirking black lips of Kim's nemesis as she locked eyes with the heroine, "Hello Princess, long time no see. Shoulda figured getting busted by the popo would lead me to you faster than hunting around like a bloodhound with a head cold."

"So you two know each other?" the hologram of Mace Windu instantly surmised as he watched from his appointed seat.

"What-? How-? Where did-? Why are you-?" Kim's head was swimming, and she wished they had guest chairs in the council chambers as she tried to keep from outright swooning.

Shego, for her part, seemed to relish in Kim's sudden addled headedness. After a long moment, she shrugged and flipped her shoulders, revealing her new jewelry courtesy the Jedi. A set of spherical dark metal cups, joined by a rod, covered each hand; and then closed at the wrist, before extending as metallic cuffs half way to her elbows. Muttering at her constraints, she bided her time, simply watching Possible go all fish-eyed at her.

"Possible?" Anakin saw the unsteadiness of the young woman and moved to balance her. "I take it you know this witch?"

"Hey watch your tongue, pretty boy." Shego growled dangerously at him, and waved her clubbed hands threateningly in his direction. "Don't think just 'cause you locked up my fire power that I can't handle you."

The response to this was the eight troopers, plus Commander Rex, raising and aiming their blasters squarely at her head. Shego gave the display only a little heed, lowering her bound hands, but not heeling her tongue in the least. "Yeah, laugh it up boys. Don't think for a minute I won't remember all your faces when I'm free."

This took Kim by surprise and she gave a bark of laughter. Obviously Shego had no idea the white armored troopers all had the same face beneath their helmets. Shaking her head, she brushed Skywalker's hands away once she had found her feet and marched right up to Shego.

"You could say we know each other. This is Shego, of Earth. She was my nemesis for quite some time."

"Nemesis…" Shego arched a brow, and whistled appreciatively, "Pretty big word there Princess… not sure Drewbie would like hearing you call me that, he's the one who considers you his arch foe."

"Eh, it's this place" Kim waved her hands around dismissively, "They like big words and big ideas."

Turning, but stepping to one side so that Shego was never out of her vision, Kim bowed slightly as she addressed the council. "You see, Shego is from my home… world."

The pause was lost on neither Shego nor the assembled Jedi Masters. Kim, however, continued to believe that they merely thought she was from a mythical planet and not an entirely separate universe. So she continued her story.

"Before the invasion of the Lorwardians, she was a master criminal and a…" Kim shot the green skinned mercenary a loaded look, grinning before continuing, "Padawan to one of the more wicked mad scientists there. But she was always the more dangerous one."

Shego knew she had just been insulted, even if she didn't know the word used, but she bit her tongue for the moment, content to steam and bide her time.

"Ah, so she serves the dark side then?" Kenobi nodded, stroking his chin as he studied the bound woman. "She certainly fits the definition of a master thief if nothing else."

"And don't you forget it, Mullet head." Shego snorted arrogantly, "But I am so much more."

"…I…" Kim hedged, chewing her lip, knowing how these guys felt about their mythical dark side. She tried to come up with a less loaded term for the villainess, "wouldn't say she serves the dark side, so much as she's a mercenary."

"Then how is it she wields magic dark side abilities?" Anakin growled at the woman who had brazenly stolen his saber and waggled it at him like some carrot.

"Oh god, Emo-pants, chill! So I took your toy…" Shego rolled her eyes and groaned, shrugging her shoulders against the weight of her bindings.

"Um…. She doesn't have 'dark side' abilities," Kim air quoted, a gesture which was lost on her audience, "She and her brothers were struck by a meteor and given strange super powers. They're actually good guys."

"Said a Padawan and villainess she was, not she is," Yoda asked as he looked from the human to the not-so-human stones in the force. "Changed, what did?"

"Observant little troll, isn't he?" Shego snarked as she eyed the Grand Master Jedi.

"Shego!" Kim scolded, "Respect master Yoda, he's over six hundred years old!"

"Respect?" the merc scoffed and rolled her eyes, "Just who do you think you're talking to again, Cupcake?"

"Right, silly me for forgetting." Kim grumbled and clenched her fists. "Just chill out, okay?"

After a moment exchanging dirty looks, Kim sighed and resumed her explanation of who and what Shego was, "She was key in stopping the Lorwardians from invading our home world, and so she and her Master were pardoned for their crimes."

"Master? Drakken?" Shego barely contained the urge to explode with disbelieving laughter. "Oh god Kimmie, just what do you think goes on in the lair anyways? Here I thought you were so vanillia they put you in ice cream! God what an imagination!"

A boot crashing down on Shego's foot shut her up, save for a string of curse words aimed at Kim as she hopped around and tried not to overbalance with the heavy manacles.

Straightening herself up, Kim brushed a hand through her hair, which had once again just about grown back to its full length. "So that's Shego. Why she's here and how she came to find me I have no idea."

"Anyway, now I have a question… how did you… stop her fire?" the redhead boggled, because Shego should easily have been able to evade the clones who had escorted her in here.

"Mandelorian Iron. One of the few metals in existence that can resist the blade of a light saber." Master Kenobi supplied, gesturing at the once-more stilled thief. He called up a surveillance video showing the earlier fight, "Did you know that she, too, can resist a light saber?"

"…resist a…" Kim pondered this. She had seen the fanciful weapons cut through everything they encountered, so the news that Shego could man-handle one was more than a little surprising. "N- no, I had no idea."

"Score one for the visiting team," Shego grinned at her apparently unique and powerful talent.

"God Shego, can you behave for five minutes?"

"I don't know, can you get them to take these fancy mittens off me for five minutes?"

This gave Kim pause. She hadn't seen Shego, or anyone else from home, for at least a year. If they caged Shego, the thief was certain to escape into the night, right? It was her way. So maybe a little bit of a magnanimous display might let Kim keep her around long enough to find out why and how Shego had come to her.

"Actually… that might be a good idea, Masters…" the redhead turned back to the powerful men, women, and assorted holograms. "I can handle Shego, like I always have…"

She shot Shego a loaded look before continuing, "And she's a bit less likely to be flighty if we give her a nice, long leash…"

Shego narrowed her eyes as Possible got in another dig at her, but decided that the chance to get her hands free was worth holding her tongue. She simply nodded and held her manacles up.

The Master Jedi conversed amongst themselves for several moments.

"I don't think we can trust her. I agree with Skywalker, she has a dark magic about her, and she is far less trustworthy than Possible, by their own admissions." The hologram of Windu began.

"I agree, it took two Jedi to subdue her, what good is one human girl going to do if she decides to run again?" Master Kenobi nodded in agreement with the uncertainty.

"And yet," Mundi presaged, steepling his hands, "Possible seems to verbally keep her in check. I for one trust the young one with my life. If she can do as she says, as she has done before, why not trust her now?"

After chewing his lip for a moment, Anakin nodded, "I agree with Master Ki-Adi-Mundi. I trust Kim, as much as I doubt this new stone in the force."

As the discussions continued, Shego leaned over, muttering at the redhead, "So, you seem to know a lot about this place, they always this officious?"

Kim bristled at Shego's very presence, but after a moment, she exhaled and nodded. "Yeah, they're also big on debate around here."

"So, they're you're 'Masters,' huh?" Shego smirked as she continued to whisper to Kim, "Kinky, I had no idea you were into that stuff, Pumpkin."

The redhead suppressed a growl and whispered back, "It's not like that, pervert. The Jedi are like a religious order, Padawans, Knights, and Masters."

"Mmmhm, well you referred to them as Master there, Princess… so what does that make you?"

"It makes me a boarder, they're giving me room and board, and a little spending money, here in the Temple, and in return, I help them out when I'm asked."

"Hmmm, Kimmie the journeyman… who woulda figured."

"Shut up Shego."

Amongst the assembled Masters, consensus was reached finally. "But who will escort and monitor them?"

"I will, Masters," Anakin submitted.

Shego, overhearing this with the ears of a thief, rapidly shook her head. "Oh no… what happens when Kimmie and I need to powder our noses?"

"…your… noses?" Obiwan inclined his head, not grasping the term.

"When we have to take a piss, Bucko."

"A…"

Kim groaned and shook her head, "Much as I am loathed to admit it, and no offense to you Anakin, Shego is right, if you're going to assign us an escort, we need someone who can follow us into the bathroom?"

The Master Jedi all nodded in agreement, and quickly went back into discussion.

"Wierdos," Shego rolled her eyes.

"Shego, they take vows of chastity, celibacy, and so on…" Kim sighed, feeling exceedingly tired of all this already and rethinking her petition for the mercenary's liberty. "They don't care about that stuff.

"Yeah, that's why the Emo Knight over there was staring at my ass the whole way back here," Shego snorted, disbelieving the claim instantly.

"wellllll…. Anakin's kind of an odd case." Kim supplied.

"I know," the aforementioned Jedi Knight suddenly brightened, "Snips can do it."

The Master Jedi sitting on the dias looked amongst one another for a long moment. Finally Yoda signaled its acceptance, "Yes… Young Ahsoka a good fit will be. Observant she is, as well as energetic."

"Then it is agreed," Master Windu rose, in holographic form, "Ahsoka Tano will escort the Criminal Shego and Miss Possible for the time being."

"…the Crimin-," Shego glared, eyes narrowed and even faintly glowing, "Now wait just a minute, I don't know how they do it on this grimy little bit of urban blight you call a planet, but where I come from, I'm innocent until ~proven~ guilty."

"Shego… they have you on video stealing from and assaulting two Jedi. Do you want out of the manacles or not?"

"…I'm thinking about it…"

"God this is going to be a long day."

An hour later, Kim and Shego were in the ceremonial armory of the Jedi Temple, and Kim was a little surprised by the Manacles. "Gosh, they didn't mess around did they?"

Shego muttered something under her breath and glared at the redhead, and then at the woman who was currently using some kind of device to cut the manacles away. "Yeah, well my little light show seems to have spooked them. When I woke up from being brained, I had six of those pop guns pointed right at my head, and they were welding these beasts on."

"Yeah, well grabbing ahold of a light saber is enough to spook anyone I bet." Kim merely shrugged, still a bit surprised at that.

"Yeah, what's so fancy schmancy about that any way, Princess?" the mercenary looked up to her quarry, trying to ignore how dangerously close to her hands the cutters were getting. "I've grabbed more dangerous things before you know."

"No, you haven't." she answered quickly, "The Light Sabers are cohesive energy. They can cut through virtually anything in the universe. I once saw one punch through a three foot thick section of starship hull in about two minutes, with only a Jedi's bare hand guiding it. When was the last time you did something like that?"

Shego was about to deliver a quip about her being no slouch, until she realized who she was talking to. "Well shit. Guess I got a nice ace up my sleeve then don't I? Though to be fair, the last time I did cut through the leg of a quadropod."

Glaring at the other occupant of the room, she growled, "Could you hurry this along? I'd like the use of my arms back before they start to gather moss. I'm green enough as it is."

The curator of the armory, Master Tek'ana, gave a put-upon sigh and shook her head, long tentacles swaying against her shoulders, "There are few items in the universe which can cut through these manacles. Were it my decision, they would remain in place permanently."

"Yeah, one more cop who wants every criminal locked up forever…" Shego rolled her eyes and gave a snort.

"I thought you were innocent until proven guilty?" Kim gave a wry grin as she cocked her head to the side, watching Master Tek'ana change out the third blade in her cutter.

"Stuff it, Pumpkin," the green woman huffed hotly, "I can see why you and these goons get on so well."

"And why is that?" Kim tilted her nose up.

"You've both got your lightsabers shoved three feet up your asses."

On that note the manacles dropped to the floor with a heavy thunk, punctuating Shego's assessment.

"…'bout damned time…"

"Shego! Your hands!"

Looking down, the mercenary gave an unconcerned shrug, rubbing her wrists. "Yeah, figured that was gonna happen."

"But!" Kim actually pushed in close and took Shego's hands in hers.

Indeed, the supervillainess's hands were no longer their usual pale gray-green. Instead they were stained a sort of lavender color, darker around the high points. As the redhead held them, she gasped, because she realized that the palms were also blistered.

"Leggo!" Shego yanked her hands free and huffed, "act like you never seen second degree burns before."

"Not on you!" Kim shot back, equal parts concerned and irritated by the injuries and attitude.

"Well, this is what happens when I try to light up next to something that I can't burn through, it's called reflection." The mercenary explained as she rubbed at her wounded knuckles, "Here I thought you graduated Valedictory or some crap like that. Man, education really is slipping in America."

"Yeah, well the only time I ever saw you injured was when the microwave tower fell on you." Kim huffed and crossed her arms over her chest, "Forgive me for being surprised that handcuffs could hurt you."

Turning to Master Tek'ana, Kim frowned and chewed her lip, "Do you have anything that could help her burns?"

"I'm afraid this is the armory, Miss Possible," the Twi'lek explained as she put away her tools, "Not a clinic. You'll have to take this criminal to level three-forty-seven to have her issues attended to."

"Geeze, cell block F had better care than this, and that really was a prison," the mercenary scoffed as she stood up, "Don't worry about it, just give me a few minutes and I'll be right as rain. Not that you lot of robe wearing freaks could be bothered to care."

Bowing, Kim gave a weary smile to the Jedi and sighed, "I'm sorry Master. She's always in a foul mood. Thank you for your assistance."

"It is fine, Miss Possible. The briefing I was given explained her… abilities." Tek'ana explained as she stood, "Which is why I was not concerned about the state of her hands. Please, though, when you return, bring your prisoner with you. There is one thing I am curious about, but it will require more research before I can discuss it with you and she."

Shego merely groaned and turned to leave, not remotely interested in any questions the freak with the tentacles had for her. "Let's go Princess, I'm not here for my educational value."

"Princess?" Tek'ana arched a brow at the shorter human, "Are you of royalty on your homeworld?"

"Yeah, she's a royal pain in my ass," the mercenary supplied by reflex. "Has been for years."

"Uh… no… Shego just likes to try to verbally unbalance people, and with me, that means various nicknames, it seems." Kim blushed a bit and shook her head, "Thank you again Master Tek'ana… I will keep your request in mind."

"Yeah, thanks Tent-head… I'll remember to leave you for last on my next rampage."

"Shego!"

"What?!"

Kim grabbed the thief by the elbow and bodily yanked her out of the Armory and into the hallway beyond, waiting for the door to close, "Tent-head?! How would you like it if I called you a… a…."

"A bitch?"

"A greedy kike!" Kim growled angrily, pushed into the slur by her irritation, "I would have thought that you, of all people on Earth, wouldn't throw such ugly words around."

Shego was a bit taken aback by the vehemence in the redhead's speech, but she was not about to be cowed by the self-righteous heroine, "If you hadn't noticed, Pumpkin, you're a dumb mik, and we're not exactly on Earth, are we?"

Kim growled like a wet cat and eyed her nemesis, again questioning her own judgment in having her freed. "I Don't Care. These people are my friends, and I won't have you insulting them. There's enough hatred in this particular universe without you adding to it."

"…fine." The mercenary finally supplied, "I didn't know it was an ugly word anyway. But your right, I don't like being called names either; so I'll not do it again if it will keep you from harping on me."

"…thank you." Kim sighed, letting go of some of her heat. She was about to continue her instructions to Shego on decorum when she heard a joyful squeal.

"Kim! It is so good to be working with you again!"

Turning, the human smiled at the approaching Padawan, "Ahsoka. Nice to see you again."

Within an hour, the flaw in Kim's plan became apparent.

While the redhead was perfectly comfortable to be in the company of the orange alien with the short head tentacles, Shego was grinding her teeth hard enough to throw off little green sparks.

The teen heroine attempted to mollify them both with retail therapy, but it did not work so well. Ahsoka was not a particularly retail sort, just like every other Jedi she had met… And Shego was far more content to scope out the shops' security setups and try to filch things under Kim's nose.

Faced with the options of enlisting the togruta in stopping Shego's thieving, or getting Shego out of Ahsoka's presence, Kim eventually decided that the latter was marginally more preferable. Since otherwise Ahsoka could report back to the Jedi Council on Shego's further larcenous ways while under her care.

Unfortunately, when Kim simply asked the orange skinned girl to give them a few minutes alone; she politely refused, citing her mandate to escort them wherever they went. So she was forced to turn to her villainous charge on the matter.

"Alright Shego, why don't you like Ahsoka?" she probed when she was out of the Padawan's earshot for a moment.

"I don't do well with kids." She supplied brusquely. "Kids and I have an understanding… They don't like me, and I don't like them. It works well."

Kim sighed with frustration and rolled her eyes. Casting a furtive glance over her shoulder and ensuring that Ahsoka was still occupied with the strange fabric she seemed to have taken a fancy to in the current shop, the redhead, moved closer to Shego.

"We need to talk, out of earshot of Ahsoka." She supplied tersely.

Shego looked up at the unaccustomed tone, and then glanced from her human babysitter to her orange-skinned one. "Well, how do you propose we evade her?"

Kim considered for a moment. Of all the options she had at her disposal, the simplest one seemed the best. After a moment she nodded to herself. "You go left, I'll go right. Meet me in fifteen minutes right back here."

"Why here?" Shego challenged, immediately thinking she was doomed if her liberty depended on plans like this.

"Simple. Ahsoka will assume we're trying to lose her. The last place she is likely to look is the place we started in. After all, if you wanted to get away from me, the last place I'd probably look for you is in the gift shop of the museum I just chased you out of."

The mercenary was about to balk, but held her tongue. There was a certain twisted logic to that. She'd have to keep it in mind in the future. "Alright… on three…"

"Three!"

…and before Shego could start counting, the teen was gone. Muttering, she moved as quickly as she could. She grabbed the shop keep and demanded a back exit, knowing the orange 'puddlewrong' thing would have looked up immediately at Kim's raised voice.

The frightened gray alien struggled but then pointed the way. The mercenary dropped him and wiped off some fluffy grey fur-like material from him on her cloak. Given how it clung to her gloves even after that, she made mental note not to touch her face till she washed her hands. God forbid it was poisonous or she turned out to be allergic to furry grey aliens.

Outside she arbitrarily went right. She heard a racket behind her, and of course it was the carroty babysitter. She had already assumed that she would be the one who would be followed, being the untrusted criminal, so she moved quickly.

The first thing she did was to transfer anything in the pockets of her cloak into the pockets of her catsuit. Once she was running, she tried to use her long legs to her advantage. Normally she would have little difficulty outrunning someone like Ahsoka, who was substantially shorter. Unfortunately, the rubber-headed alien was leaping through the crowd, and it actually seemed to part for her in places, both must be examples of the magical force that the other Jedi had used to chase her over the last few weeks.

Abandoning an all-out flight, Shego moved on to plan B. Sweeping around a corner, she eyeballed a humanoid alien. Her claws quickly separated the man from his light tan cloak, and herself from her own. She then tied her own black cloak on him in a whirl, and then sent him plummeting down the stairs. She in turn moved as calmly as she could into the nearest shop, which turned out to be a restaurant.

She used the reflection in the door of the shop to see that her maneuver had bought her a few seconds. The orange alien followed the black cloak down the stairs to the main "street" level in the area. Shego moved through the restaurant, through the kitchen while generating as little fuss as she could, and out the back of this building as well. She moved into a third shop, grabbed some coppery-looking tokens Kim had given her out of her anklet pouch, and purchased a new dark brown cloak and some manner of triangular hat. The vendor did not seem interested in haggling when she dropped three of the tokens into what passed for a hand, and gave her some neon pink feather for the hat as he sent her on her way with what the green woman hoped was a smile.

She disposed of her purloined cloak, put on her new, slightly over-sized coverings, and walked smoothly back into the public area.

It all took less than two minutes.

And she walked right past the orange brat, who had discovered her ruse and was retracing her steps.

Kim sighed as she circled back to the shop. She had already turned off her communicator, fortunately before Ahsoka had thought to try to comm her. She felt bad about misleading the togruta, but there was no way that she and Shego could hash out their situation to one another with little ear-holes listening.

As she had thought, she had not seen hide nor hair of her orange friend from the instant she had ducked out of the shop. Obviously Ahsoka considered Shego the threat and went after her when she realized that they were not together. It was a tactical error she would have to point out later, because for all Ahsoka knew, Shego could have injured Kim herself and left her to bleed out, plus she had valuable insight onto Shego's patterns which Ahsoka lacked and should have been found first.

It took her a few minutes traveling, because she knew that running where other's walked was a sure way to attract attention. Still, her black jumpsuit was currently in-style, and so she blended in fairly well with the crowds. That, in fact, gave her pause.

Shego wore a jumpsuit in neon green. Even discounting her skin-tone, on this alien world, how had she evaded capture for so long in such notable clothes? In fact… even on earth, how well did she go unnoticed in that outfit like she did?!

Shaking her head, she looked around as she slid back into the shop. After a moment, she found Shego, with a long blaze-pink feather sat in a jaunty little hat perched atop her head. How the Togruta girl had missed a green woman with a pink feather like that was beyond her. Then again, Shego was a master thief; so evading people, including Kim, was her specialty.

This the redhead was forced to admit as she took in Shego's altered wardrobe. While she knew what to look for when it came to Shego, even she might have glanced right past just another green woman in a brown cloak here on Coruscant. Well, if she didn't automatically look for green women around every corner given their shared past.

"Alright Shego… I am going to hope that you did not steal those, since I know how much that hat costs…" she sighed as she caught her counterpart's attention, "But since no one ~else~ seems to be chasing you… I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

Walking with the taller woman to a bench along one side of the wall that gave a view of the window on the store front, Kim sat down and sighed. "How did you get Gorgax'ir not to call the police when you came back in?"

"Simple, everyone seems to really like these copper coins you gave me…" Shego indicated the grinning furry shop keep.

"Shego!" Kim yelped, and then took a deep breath, "Those things are like half a month's allowance for me! They're like two hundred bucks each or something!"

"Ah, so that's why I got a feather…" Shego smirked and ran her fingers delicately along the bright pink decoration. "Let that be a lesson to you Kimmie, always be a good tipper."

With a resigned groan, Kim shook her head and pursed her lips. "Fiiiiine. Now… why are you here?"

"You told me to meet you."

"Sheeeeegooooooo" the redhead gritted her teeth and clenched her hands.

"Oh, do you mean in the more meta sense? Well philosophers have been asking that for millennia, Princess. I mean… if you believe in the whole God scheme, then we were created by-,"

She paused when she saw how red Kim's face was becoming and smirked righteously. After a moment of letting her stew, she began again. "I was hired to find you. Not an easy task, I might add."

This brought the redhead up short, and she blinked, some of the color fading from her cheeks, "…hired to find me?"

"Well… believe me, if I'd have known how hard it would be, I'd have never taken the contract," Shego took her hat off and ran a hand through her hair. "But that idiot boyfriend of yours hired me when they couldn't locate you. If I'd had known he was still collecting that kind of money in BN royalties, I'd probably have hired him to run a restaurant for me… much easier money than this shit."

"That kind of money?" Clearly Kim was out of her depth now, because she had no idea how three sentences had brought them to a discussion of Ron's financial acumen.

"My services don't exactly come cheap, Pumpkin." The mercenary supplied as she considered the dramatically pink feather in the otherwise ugly hat. "I didn't feel like working for him in the first place, so I named a number I was sure he couldn't afford. Imagine my shock when he cut me a check… and imagine how shocked shitless I was when it cleared my bank."

"Wait wait wait…." Kim held up her hands to catch her mental breath, "Ron hired you?"

"Doy, isn't that what I just said?"

"But… Ron…. And you…? He can't look at you without wetting himself!"

"Yeah, well his hardon for you apparently outweighs his rightful fear of me."

"Ugh!"

"What? Boy would probably cross six miles of broken glass on his hands and knees for a chance to suck the dick of the last guy to put it in you…"

"Shego!"

Smirking and enjoying riling the redhead up, Shego hit pause on her game of 'taunt the hero' and shrugged, "Your friends care about you, Possible. A lot more than they should, but they do. When they figured out you were nowhere on Earth, they came to the one person they knew other than Drakken who had experience with dimensional travel."

"Ron traveled through the TV dimension with us too, you know…" Kim sighed when she finally was able to process that.

"Yeah, but without you to hold his leash, the buffoon wouldn't have a hope in hell of surviving the wider universe and we both know it." The mercenary supplied as she pulled the feather out of the hat. "Same goes for Drakken, even if he wasn't busy getting his brain-cock sucked by half the scientific community."

With another resigned sigh, Kim hung her head, "So that left you. You're right, Ron would have probably died in the desert chasing me through even the first dimension."

"Like I almost did?" Shego snorted irritably at the memory, "That was a real fun trip, Princess… first I nearly die of dehydration and chapped lips… then they try to burn me as a witch when I finally get to the local camel dealership. How I finally escaped is a mystery even to me, but it has something to do with the pictures in my wallet… apparently Naked Molerats are sacred animals in Agrabah…"

Kim gave a sharp bark of laughter at that thought, and took her chance to needle her counterpart, "Guess you owe Rufus a big one then."

"Anyway…" the mercenary quickly rerouted the topic, "Once your band of merry men figured out some magical source had transported you across life, the universe, and every fucking thing, they hired me to find you. Gave me this…"

Shego unfastened the middle of her catsuit, and indicated something Kim had never seen before. The skin above her navel was glowing a dull green. "Implanted quantum disentangle thingy… powered by my plasma, it locks on to whatever mystical mojo it is that has surrounded your freckled ass, and yanks me along for the ride."

Kim leaned forward and looked at the apparent implant for as long as was comfortable, perhaps a bit longer, and then sat back. "Powered by you?"

She snorted derisively and shrugged, rebuttoning her catsuit, "Nothing else they came up with was as particularly portable. Another reason why it was me and not your boy toy."

With a sigh, Kim hung her head. "So now that you've found me, you are going to try to take me back?"

"No."

"Well okay, I guess I have to-," Green eyes blinking, Kim looked up, "What do you mean no?"

"I told them no as well. Firstly, ~I~ wasn't even sure this trip you were on was voluntary, so there was no way in hell I was going to throw myself up against whatever God might be doing this to you." Shego ticked off a finger, "Secondly, if it WAS you who was in charge, I figured that Princess Level Headed had a damned good reason. I told them I would ~ask~ you to come home. Then I left before they could argue."

Rolling her eyes, Kim blew a breath through her bangs. "You would. So, what happens now?"

"Now…" Shego began, and then looked out the shop window, seeing a trio familiar to them both approaching, "It looks like you're about to get your leash tugged and I am going to be browbeaten for corrupting you."

Kim had never seen an angry Jedi before, but from the looks on Anakin and Obiwan's faces, she figured this was about as close as she was likely to get. It made her uncomfortable as they were "escorted" back to the Jedi temple, and then made to wait outside the council chamber doors. Asokah was ushered in, however, and the redhead felt conflicted.

On the one hand, Asokah was probably getting a tongue lashing for failing to keep her charges in line, but on the other hand, the girl had not taken any of the thinly veiled hints Kim had given her to give herself and Shego some space to talk in private either.

Kim had just about completely succeeded in depressing herself over the ordeal when the chamber doors opened and Rex motioned to them.

"They're ready for you now Miss Possible, Miss Shego." He said in his accented English. He looked about to offer more words to the pair, before a wooden staff, Yoda's, clacked on the floor resoundingly.

"Stand on ceremony here, we do not, Miss Possible, Miss Shego." Yoda began perfunctorily. "Stand accused you do, of violating an order of the Jedi Council."

Shego snorted, either not knowing, or not caring, about any violations of any councils, laws, or popes. She examined her nails casually as Kim stood up even straighter.

"Yes, I did violate an order of the council, Masters. One I had agreed to in advance. I am prepared to accept any punishment you hand do-,"

"Ahbububub…" Shego held up a clawed finger, her hands once more restrained, though this time only with cuffs, not the full gauntlets she had worn before. "Before I let Pumpkin here throw herself on the saber, let's get some things straight."

She eyed the Jedi, who were apparently unaccustomed to being interrupted, and smirked at the power that surprise gave her, "Yeah you ordered Lady Carrot of Orange over there to tail us, and yes we ditched her. HOW EVER…"

And here she began to pace, Perry Mason-style, in front of the seven real and two holographic Jedi, "You should have known that Kimmie and I, having been from the same planet, and having not seen each other in some time, would like to speak privately with one another. And I know for a fact that Pumpkin here tried more than once to get the horn-head to back off and give us a bit of personal space. So the way I see it, the 'violation'," and she air-quoted, a gesture lost on the Masters, "is as much your fault as it is hers. For not providing your eager young space cadet with the latitude to give us a little bit of breathing room."

The Jedi Masters frowned as one, and after a moment, turned, beginning to talk to one another.

Shego returned to Kim's side, smirking like the cat who had eaten the canary.

"Wow Shego… I never knew you could be so…. Serious sounding." The redhead looked up at her taller, bound counterpart.

"Eh, I've spent time in enough court rooms to know how a trial works, as well as a kangaroo court." She waved off the praise as the Masters spoke to one another in concerned tones.

Kim flashed Ahsoka a concerned look, feeling sorry for the way Shego had more or less hung her out to dry as being too rigid. She looked up as the Masters stopped discussing.

The bald, dark skinned human Master, Mace Windu, spoke up; a frown of reluctant acceptance marring his aristocratic face, "The Dark Stone is correct. We should have anticipated the need for private conversation in our instructions and failed to do so."

"oooooh, Dark Stone, I like that." Shego whispered, which earned her an elbow from Kim.

"How Ever," he raised his voice like an irritated teacher at the whispering, "That does not exonerate Miss Possible. At any time she could have contacted one of us over the issue, rather than simply taking it upon herself to 'ditch' Ahsoka."

Apparently the darker Master had figured out the use of air quotes as he addressed the two women. "Miss Possible, we will withhold judgment on this as we are equally at fault, but know that you have damaged our trust over this matter."

Shego frowned. She knew that that was a stab directly at Kimmie, as the girl prided herself on her noble concepts like trust and respect, and as felonious as the villain might be, she did not particularly care to see people taken down who didn't deserve it. She was about to voice her irritation when the elongated alien Ki-adi-Mundi spoke up.

"There is also another, more important matter at hand, one which the council feels would be best addressed by your unique talents." He nodded slowly, steepling his long fingers beneath his equally long chin. "Our Bothan intelligence operatives have brought us evidence that both Count Dooku and General Grievous are currently barracked on the planet Cyanus B."

At this point, Obi-Wan, present as a hologram, continued, "Cyanus B is a droid foundary world key to the separatists forces along the outer rim. That alone would be enough for us to consider action. However, our Bothan friends hinted to us a disturbing new development. It appears that Grievous and Dooku are combining their forces to create a new type of droid, one which has the independence and flexibility of Grievous's MagnaGuard droids, with the arms and massed numbers of the Count's general purpose B series droid armies."

"Eh, a bucket of bolts is a bucket of bolts, why would our 'unique talents' be needed?" Shego shrugged her shoulders and resumed examining her claws.

Kim, however, had dealt with the droids enough over the past few months to know what the danger was, "An army of artificially intelligent troopers, all with heavy weapons, all able to think and act on their own… It would be like..."

"Like nothing we have thus far faced," The slender Mundi completed Kim's thoughts.

"Again… how do we fit in to this tin can war of yours?" Shego flippantly questioned.

"Miss Possible has proven herself to be a remarkable field commander, and incredibly resourceful in the time we have known her," The masked master Plo Kloon, also a hologram, responded.

"Likewise and conversely, shown herself to be remarkably evasive and stealthy, Miss Shego has."

"Darkstone." Shego interjected smugly.

The Masters looked confused and askance at her for a moment, and she clarified, "Shego Darkstone. If he gets to be a Skywalker, and that one over there is a Windu, then I want to have a cool name to."

Yoda took the declaration in stride and continued, "Diametrically opposed, your skills are. Give us our best chance of success they will."

Master Windu took up the briefing, being the generally recognized war chief of the Jedi, "Yes, your equal but opposite skills, as well as your total masking to the force, gives us a major tactical advantage here, where both Grievous and Dooku utilize the force or force weaponry."

"The assignment for you two then, will be in three parts. First, collect any intelligence you can on the hybrid droids. Secondly, damage or destroy the droid foundry; and thirdly, if at all possible, apprehend Dooku and/or Grievous. You will not go alone, we will send an elite group of commandos with you, though it will be only a small squad. Do you feel you could accomplish these objectives Miss Possible, Miss Sh- Erm Miss Darkstone?" the Master sat back and studied the, both closely.

Kim chewed her lip firmly, and watched the Masters who, as usual, gave very little away in their faces or body language. Finally, standing proudly forward, she nodded, "Yes Masters, I can do it. We can do it."

"Whoa… hold your horses there, Misters," Shego instantly interjected, "She's volunteered for this little adventure… Why should I be dragged along?"

"Consider this, Miss Darkstone," Obi-wan countered pointedly, "You have, in the three weeks for which we have been aware of your existence, committed numerous acts of theft. In the past two days alone, you assaulted two lawful officers of the Republic, assaulted and committed theft against a civilian, and committed theft against two lawful officers of the Republic. For those charges last few charges alone, we could imprison you for ten years. With your mysterious abilities, we could, in fact, hold you indefinitely as a threat to the Republic and to the Jedi Order."

"Ah, so it's extortion." Shego grinned, "Fine… Kimmie's getting paid. And she volunteered for this crap. I'm being coerced into it. I want an even sweeter deal. Otherwise, you won't get no help from Shego. And I'll just do my time until I inevitably escape."

A couple of the Jedi Masters looked to Kim, who simply nodded that yes, Shego would be exactly that stubborn. Frowning, the Council again closed ranks and spoke among themselves.

"Darkstone? Really?"

"Hey, you get to be this special operative of this republic thing… and I don't really even like my name. I'll take what I can get."

The two young women looked up again as the Council broke ranks. Obi-wan spoke, the look of distaste evident on his face, "Very Well. We shall extend to you the same arrangement we have with Miss Possible. An apartment here within the walls of the Temple, a modest allowance, access to our libraries, and meals, in exchange for your assistance."

"…And…?" Shego probed, smelling more there for the asking.

With a sigh, the caucasian Knight continued, his hand forced, "And we will also allow you the use of a vehicle from out motorcade at your leisure. Will that suffice?"

"No… I also want a deal on the assaulting and stealing from an officer things." Shego challenged, the smirk still on her lips.

Beside her, Kim quietly groaned into the palm of her hand. Clearly, Shego would have made an excellent lawyer, albeit the bad kind.

The Council again looked to one another, and finally Yoda spoke up, "Arranged with the Office of the Chancellor, that must be, but lobby for you we will."

Shego nodded her acceptance of the terms. Even if he was the high mucky muck of the place, as they seemed to hint; if he refused to pardon her, she'd just pop in and beat the ever-living shit out of him later. What was a politician and a few bodyguards to her? Hell everyone here had giant windows she could just smash in and out of if she was willing to risk the five-hundred story fall, not exactly high security.

"Twenty-four hours to prepare, have you." Yoda hopped off of its chair and trundled over to the two women, nodding up at them, "Your specific orders and information, Master Windu will to you give in the morning. Excused you are."

"You really understand the crap coming out of his mouth?" Shego blatantly indicated the diminutive Master.

The redhead blushed hotly with embarrassment, and bowed deeply to the old one. "It's an acquired skill, I'll admit. Thank you, Master Yoda, we won't fail you."

During the twenty four hours, Kim made some adjustments to her wardrobe. It had been fine when she'd been alone on Corruscant, but now that Shego was here, the black bodysuit made her feel a bit self-conscious and felonious. After all, it reminded her quite a bit of the episode where she and Shego had been chipped and at Drakken's mercy, and she had been dressed in a spare catsuit.

To the suit she added a loose leather over-garment with baggy sleeves and a big rear cargo pouch. It gave something of the sense of a shirt dress when layered over top of the flight suit and added much to her sense of mind. Plus the added pockets would come in handy.

Needless to say she was surprised when Shego showed up at the door to her modest apartment with a crisp new black cloak to replace the one she had disposed of during the previous day's chase, but with the neon pink feather impinged on her breast by a broach.

"I need directions…" she began without preamble, "That weirdo with the big red tentacles wants me in her armory, and I am led to understand by my white-suited babysitters that attendance is not optional."

"Master Tek'ana?" Kim looked up, only thinking of one woman with 'big red tentacles' Shego had thus far met, "The armorer?"

"The bitch… yeah…" Shego snorted.

The redhead sighed darkly and shook her head at the venom, "I've only met her once, Shego, but she seems very nice. I guess that comes from being born into slavery and lifted out."

"Slave huh?" this apparently piqued Shego's interest.

"Yes, As far as I understand it, Twi'lek slavery is pretty common, and even accepted for some reason…" She shook her head at such a concept as permissible slavery. "They're like Omicronian Slave Girls, highly valued or something. Most Twi'leks not living on their home-world are either slaves or escaped slaves or the children thereof."

"Thereof… you're sounding more and more like these Jedi every day, Princess…" Shego shook her head, "Fine, I know what it's like to be enslaved, after a fashion… I'll cut the redhead a break. No more tentacle talk, I already promised that."

"What would you know about slavery?" Kim openly disbelieved as she stuffed some things into the pouch on the small of her back.

"Hello?" Shego snorted, ignoring the helmeted figures whom were clearly waiting impatiently, "You've met my brother…"

"I'd hardly call that slavery, Shego," the redhead scoffed as she fastened the lock on the pouch and gave a shimmy to make sure nothing came loose.

"Then you haven't spent enough time with him… believe me, Pumpkin, I didn't leave Team Go because the dental plan sucked."

"If you 'left' Team Go," Kim air-quoted as she stepped out the door and locked her apartment, "Then you weren't a slave."

"Eh, okay, we'll call it indentured servitude," Shego allowed as she ignored the guards again and began to follow her quarry down the endless corridors of the Jedi temple, "But let's just say that when you're on Hego's team, you belong to Hego."

"Master Tek'ana," Kim bowed politely to the Master and smiled, "A pleasure to meet you again."

"And you as well, Miss Possible." The slender red-skinned Jedi bowed in return and smiled, canting her hips to one side. Then she saw Shego, "And you…I hear you gave yourself a new name… Darkmoons?"

"Darkstone, actually," Shego corrected. After a not-so-subtle throat clearing, she worked to take some of the acid out of her voice, "And I believe we got off on the wrong foot last time… Being put in manacles tends to put me in a foul mood."

The apology apparently went far towards softening the Twi'lek's disposition towards Shego, "And I was, perhaps, a bit brusque in handling you as well. It's not often that I am called on to manacle someone in Mandalorian Iron. I may have allowed that to… color my judgment."

"Speaking of Color…" Shego inclined her head, "Red… is that a species thing?"

The Master inclined her head, her tentacles moving faintly of their own accord. Kim knew that this meant something, but had no idea what. She merely observed the exchange in case it turned violent in a room full of all description of weapons.

"Eh… actually, on Ryloth our color is specific to the clan or region we come from." Tek'ana nodded as she picked up whatever she had been working with prior to their arrival, "And what of your color?"

"A mystical asteroid fell on me and my brothers," Shego let go far more easily than she ever had on Earth, "we're each a different color, pretty rare for Humans on Earth."

"Which brings me to why I asked you to come," the bright red Twi'lek nodded, "In addition to captured and historic weapons here in the armory, we have experimental devices dating back centuries…"

Kim watched the Master moving, and briefly wondered why female Jedi were not called Mistresses. Then again, she considered, who was to say that they were all female or male at all? Perhaps simply picking one label was just expedience.

"One, in particular, Miss Darkstone, brought to mind that saber-grappling ability of yours." She opened an ornate box of what Kim could only describe as blue wood with gold hardware.

"This is a lightsaber like no other made." She nodded as she withdrew what Kim recognized as one of the myriad of saber hilts, each unique.

Kim studied it closely, for the master was right, it was unlike any she had seen. The handle was much more slender, a mirror-polished silver, with a corkscrew of gold metal laid into it. Other than the gold-tone inlay in its ornate spirals, the saber was featureless, with none of the requisite knobs or buttons she'd seen on any other saber she'd been permitted to examine, and had one almost opaque green crystal adorning the "business end".

"This is about three thousand two hundred standard years old…" She nodded, "From a time when sabers were utilizing external batteries. The apprentice Zimodius Ral sought to recreate ancient force-powered blades."

She handed the hilt to Shego and instructed, "Obviously it never worked, but was kept as a study example; because ancient holocrons show that dark side users could create such blades with enough practice. I thought that, given your unique powers, you might be able to ignite it."

Shego looked at the truncated weapon in her hand, and then to Tek'ana, and then to Kimmie. Finally, she sighed, "I understood maybe three words of that. Translate, Princess?"

"I think she wants you to use your phwoosh to see if you can make a sword…" Kim nodded, looking to the red Twi'lek for confirmation.

When the Master Jedi nodded, Kim nodded. When Kim nodded, Shego shrugged.

She held the hilt out in front of her and flexed the mental muscle that ignited her plasma. Nothing happened, including her hand failing to catch alight. She pushed more power into the absent plasma pulse, and finally felt ~something~ twitch within the handle she was holding like an idiot.

Kim watched, but didn't see anything other than Shego, wearing the expression of one who badly needs to use the bathroom, grunting and squeezing her hand. She had to work hard to resist the urge to laugh at the sight of the fearsome warrior who looked like she was three seconds away from doing the potty dance.

Then a whoosh and familiar hum filled the air, and both Kim and Tek'ana leapt back as a decent length blade erupted forth from Shego's hand. At first it quavered and wavered much like her trademark fire, green flecked with black spots along its length. But a bit more grunting and facial contortion from the mercenary and it solidified into a cylindrical blade; a blade with a jet black core and a brilliant green aura.

"Amazing… a black blade… I wonder what-,"

With a thunderous electrical snap, the lightsaber winked out, leaving Shego holding the hilt again in a faintly steaming hand, "Cheese and Rice! That was like getting blown by a crackwhore who can do the golf ball trick… All suck and no talent!"

She finally succeeded in dropping the hilt from her hand, but only after several seconds of willing her fingers to return to life and open around the steaming handle. She shook the aggrieved hand furiously while glaring at the red alien, "I hope that was what you wanted?"

"It was truly amazing, Miss Darkstone, truly amazing indeed!" Master Tek'ana enthused, picking up the saber handle, which had stopped steaming and hissing the instant it fell from Shego's hand. "Only one other blade in history has been black, perhaps your meteor was mystical after all."

"Careful there, Red," Shego smirked as she again shook her hand, "Your emotions are showing…"

Apparently chastened, the Twi'lek steadied herself and nodded, "Tell me, why did you stop?"

"Stop? That thing was trying to turn me inside out!" Shego snapped, before reigning herself in. "Wait, what was that about no other black blades?"

"Only one other saber, even older than this one, is known to have produced a black blade, but it was stolen from this temple centuries ago." The Master Jedi nodded.

"Huh," Kim mused, "A dark saber, for Miss Darkstone."

"Hmmmm, maybe" Tek'ana knelt, examining the discarded hilt. "It's of little use here as more than a curiosity. I suggest you take it with you, Miss Shego Darkstone… Perhaps learning to master it will temper your passions?"

At that moment, the doors to the armory chose to open, and Anakin entered, "Ah, here you two are… Shego, Chancellor Palpatine wishes to speak with you about those pardons of yours… I was hoping Kim could-,"

"Buff your saber hilt while I was gone?" Shego smirked, and sighed when the normally emotional Jedi didn't rise to the bait.

She slipped the odd lightsaber into her calf-pouch while executing a crane maneuver that showed off her legs well, again to no response from the human. "Fine, yes, she can 'escort' me to meet Chancellor Fancypants."

With that, Shego exited the Armory, and Kim quickly set about checking to see if anything other than the three thousand year old lightsaber had gone with her.

Next to her, also performing checks, Master Tek'ana inclined her head towards Kim, "Was she ever a dancer? She could teach a blue slave girl a thing or two with those legs of hers…"

"No, In fact, she learned that little trick from me…" Kim smirked, because it was part of a cheer routine she had worked up in junior year.

The three humans made their way down the halls of the Senatorial Palace in silence. Well, mostly silence; Shego complained that all government buildings looked alike to her, even on different planets.

Surprisingly, this prompted Anakin to agree and a small conversation filled the last dozen yards to the great doors to the office of Palpatine, Chancellor of the Grand Galactic Republic.

"Wow, what's this guy compensating for?" Shego smirked and shook her head.

"Nothing my dear, I assure you," came an oily voice as the doors opened, revealing an older man of middling height, flanked by two huge…

What was it with this place and aliens with tentacles on their heads?

Kim shook her head and made a show of straightening her garb, "Chancellor Palpetine, may I present Shego Darkstone, late of the planet Earth."

The Chancellor extended his hand to the taller woman, who pointedly ignored it, resting a hand on her hip, "Alright Pal, What's it gonna take to get me off these piddly little charges?"

The redhead covered her face. Shego had NO tact. This man was ostensibly the leader of the galaxy!

Because she had her hands over her eyes in shame, she missed the slightly shocked expression in the Chancellor's eyes as he suddenly reassessed Shego, his hand twitching in the air the closer it got to her.

"Eh… yes. The ah… the charges." Palpatine nodded and returned behind his great desk. "The Jedi have you going on a very important mission for the grand army. I think… I think if you complete that and manage to return here that we can consider the matter resolved."

Kim looked up suddenly. Not at the Chancellor's words though… No, it was the change in Shego's posture. The two of them had tried to kill each other enough times over the years that they could each read the other like a book. Shego's entire body had suddenly gone prickly. She no longer felt like she was in control of the situation, at least in Kim's estimation.

It put her on edge instantly.

"That's very generous of you, Chancellor," she enthused brightly. Her eyes caught Anakin, but whatever it was that had set Shego's teeth on edge, apparently the Knight hadn't picked up on it.

In fact, if anything, he was looking on the whole situation with a very Ron-like absent smile on his face.

The redhead decided that whatever was causing these reactions, it was best to decamp before things exploded. She grabbed her companions' hands and excused them all, moving out of the office.

She was about to ask what the heck was going on, until she saw Shego giving Anakin the look one gives a three day old fish. The last thing she wanted was some kind of force-powered throw-down between the two here and now, so she held her tongue.

Once they were away, and Anakin went wherever it was that bored Jedi Knights went, Kim wheeled, "What the heck was that?"

"Kimmie… that guy has the crazy stink aaaaaaaaalllll over him," She scowled, "I'm talking Diablo-bot take over the world crazy… Lorwardian Great Blue cray-cray… DNAmy and her stone dildo whacked… straight up off-his-nut. Last time I read a guy like that was a Knowledge Channel marathon of Hitler's greatest sound-bites."

"Huh? How can you tell?" the redhead looked back in the direction they had come. This was only the second time she had met the man, but she had to admit to herself that he didn't exactly strike her as well balanced either; and the way he laid on the charm was the way some guys laid on the body spray, in thick oily coats.

"Because Princess, I walk the line," Shego waved a hand airily.

"…huh?"

Shego rolled her eyes and flapped her black traveling cloak. "You ever see that show Criminal Brains?"

"Y- yeah?"

"Well I'm one of those people…" The mercenary smirked as she resumed walking down the corridor, "I'm just crazy enough to know how crazy people think, but I'm not so crazy to think I could actually pull it off."

"Oh, and Bueno Nacho?" Kim snorted and followed along.

"Just along for the ride. Remember, I wasn't even in on the plan till the last minute." Shego waved her hand in the air as they walked.

"Oh and that qualifies you to declare the leader of the free galaxy insane?"

"No, my college degree does," the dark woman smirked as she pinned one on the redhead. "Psych degree, remember? Major in Psychology, focus in Childhood Development?"

"And your minor?"

"…I'd rather not get into that," the malachite mercenary's eyes suddenly went shifty. "Anyway, I don't trust that guy as far as I could drop him."

"I dunno, Shego, that's pretty far," Kim smirked.

"Hardy har har…" the mercenary snorted, "And yeah he's a politician, they all tend to be a little off…. But this guy? He pegs my 'don't let him near the baby' meter at a 9 plus."

"And where is Ron on that meter?"

"Two point three… his evil twin on the other hand…" Shego shivered, remembering the yellow force bubble that had nearly suffocated her.

Kim sighed, shaking her head, "Well, my aberrant psyche prof at Cambridge once said that in order to lead so many people, you have to be just a little bit sociopathic. Otherwise you get swarmed under with caring about too many people's feelings at once and can't make good decisions."

"And once again, we find out why I support home schooling." Shego rolled her eyes as they passed back out to the landing platform to be rejoined by the troopers. "If you follow that logic, Princess, then I would make a better world savior than you…"

Kim shook her head and chuckled. This was probably one of the longest and most civil conversations she had ever had with the ex-villainess.

It ended when they boarded the transport and were met with their troops for the mission.

"Wow," Kim blinked as they boarded the transport, "I knew this mission was important… but I guess I didn't have any idea how important."

Shego looked around the assembled white suited troopers, and failed to be any more impressed than she had in the previous weeks of tracking and finding Kimmie. "Yeah? More goons, so? I gotta tell ya Princess, at least Hench springs for different color uniforms for his."

The redhead covered her face and groaned, "Shego, these are not… goons. These are… Advanced Recon Commandos… ARC troops, right?"

"Right Miss Possible," Responded the blue uniformed commando with the round shoulder sash of a unit commander nodded, standing, "Happy to have you aboard. I hear tell you're almost as impressive as we are."

"Humor?" Kim inclined her head, a wry grin on her face, "Skywalker was right, you are a breed apart from the grand army."

Shego, never one to work with groups rolled her eyes and snorted, "ARC, FARC, Malarky… whatever… Can we get this tin can moving?"

"Shego" Kim sighed, shaking her head, "ARC is like, the SEALS of the stars. Delta Force, British Commando, Section Six… These are the guys the Republic sends when it absolutely positively has to be blown up overnight."

"Oooh, I like that…" one of the other troopers cheered as he adjusted his blaster.

"And guys… guys, why is it always guys?" Shego held on as the transport lifted off, departing Senatorial Palace, "I haven't seen a set of tits in that white armor in the month I've been here. The Grand Republic never heard of Affirmative Action?"

"Shego?" Kim looked confusedly at her dark counterpart, wondering just what she was getting at. "Why would any of them be female?"

"Why the fuck wouldn't they be?" the mercenary jeered, looking at the identically uniformed blue and white troopers checking their heavy gear, "You and I are two of the biggest grade A ass kickers in this universe and apparently any other… and there's several more of like us back at that temple… extraordinary ovaries don't descend to the grunts?"

Kim and Shego lurched a bit as their transport made the jump to hyperspace, and Kim got up to confront her troublesome counterpart, "Shego… Seriously, how can you not know this?"

"Miss Darkstone, do you have a problem with clone troopers?" the sneer was evident in the voice coming from the squad leader's masked helmet.

The very air inside the transport became electric, and Kim actually took a step back, because Shego's eyes were suddenly glowing, illuminating her cheeks faintly.

"Clones… you're… Clones…?"

"Yes, Shego," Kim frowned, not liking the suddenly tensed look on her nemesis in the confined space of the covert transport. "The entire Grand Army of the Republic are Clones. Seriously, did you not notice that they all look alike?"

"I knew that your pet Rex had twin brothers and a son," Shego panted, gripping the hand strap more and more tightly, even as it started to smoke in her grasp. "Fucking Clones?!"

"Shego, Maybe you ought to sit down and," Kim tried to reassure the obviously panicking woman, trying not to gasp at the way her eyes had turned she-hulk green in addition to glowing.

"CLONES?!"

The electricity in the air exploded, and green lightning began leaping off of Shego as she bellowed, shorting out the lights in the cabin in great sparking arcs, "LET ME OUT OF THIS TIN CAN! LET ME OUT! GET ME AWAY FROM THESE MEAT MONSTERS LET ME OUT NOW!"

Kim had never ever seen Shego so much as flinch from bizarre situations in the past, and this whole Go lightning thing was entirely new. Before Kim knew it, Shego was pawing at the hatch they had come in from, and leaving black scorched claw marks in the inner covering as she screeched to get out.

"Jeeze Shego! Calm Down!" Kim tried to grab the taller woman, only to be thrown back.

"Bring her down," called the commander, "She'll kill us all!"

"No, wait!" Kim yelped. "I've got this!"

She grabbed a heavy pistol out of the holster of the nearest trooper and leveled it carefully. Fortunately, while she was not an expert marksman, the pistol was supposed to be self-targeting, so she aimed and squeezed the trigger.

The shot hit its mark, spiking Shego in the shoulder and spinning her around forcibly. Kim then closed the three steps to the panicking mercenary and clocked her in the temple with the butt of the oversized pistol. Shego gave a gobsmacked look, and then dropped unconscious to the deck amidst the feet of the troopers.

"Medic?" the clone trooper indicated the fallen woman.

Kim held up a hand and knelt to check Shego, only to see the charred hole in her shoulder already closing up. "Don't worry about it, she's made of tougher stuff than that. Three years ago I dropped part of a building on her and she walked away."

"I want her off my ship." The commander growled, peeling off his helmet.

"No!" Kim yelped, then she got ahold of herself, the adrenaline running its course. "Erm, no. We need her. I need her. We're ~the~ tactical advantage on this mission. God I've never seen that before… what the hell? I saw this woman rip the legs barehanded off of a Lorwardian scuttler as my world collapsed around her."

Taking another deep breath, Kim looked around, "Is there… is there a weapons locker or something I can take her to?"

"Take her up to the flight deck." The commando sneered gruffly.

"Um…. Clone pilot?" Kim ran a hand through her hair.

"Droid pilot, Miss Possible. The Jedi insisted that it would help whatever mysterious ability it is you two have to have an automated pilot rather than a living one."

"I see… they didn't tell you what those abilities are, did they?" Kim hunched over to grab Shego's arms.

"We don't need to know. Just make sure that one doesn't kill us before we get there."

The redhead sighed, irritated with herself, with Shego's insane outburst, and with war in general. But she hadn't seen anyone killed yet on one of her assignments, and she wasn't about to start before the next one even began. So she would have to interrogate her counterpart when she came around. It wouldn't do to have Shego trying to kill their backup.

Kim was surprised… Shego stayed unconscious a lot longer than she expected. Which was good; it gave Kim a chance to wrap the older, larger, superpowered woman up tightly.

Which proved to be fortuitous because Shego would have come up swinging otherwise. As it was, she jerked hard at her bindings when she came around, "Jesus Christ All Mighty Above get me out of this tin can!"

When Shego realized she was well and truly restrained; she stopped struggling and glared balefully at the redhead, "You have to let me out."

"I have to do no such thing," the light stone snorted, "Shego you were trying to melt the door… to a space ship. You would have killed every one of us."

"Killed a dozen meat monsters… yes, there's a monumental loss." The green woman sneered darkly.

"What is your problem?!" Kim snapped, her body crashing from the adrenaline rush of the last half hour. "The clones are good people!"

"They're meat monsters, Possible!" Shego snapped right back. "inhuman beasts who kill to stay alive!"

"They don't kill anyone, they fight the droid army…" Kim resisted the urge to snap back. She needed to figure out what the hell Shego's problem was. "Robots, Shego… no different than Bebe's and Synthodrones."

Kim sniffed the air and scowled, "And stop trying to burn your way free, Shego this is a space ship. Everything in here is designed to resist thermal stress."

The dark stone made an unintelligible noise and slumped against the chair she was in.

"Now, do you want out?" the redhead posed after a long moment.

"Was Mary Queen of Scots?" she sneered.

"Oy… leave my ancestors out of this." Kim shook her head sighing and watching hyperspace flow by through the front viewer. "Fine… if you want out, you're going to tell me what it is that has you so tweaked about clones."

"How the hell did you learn to tie someone up like this ayway?" She scowled, again bucking against her restraints.

Kim shot her a loaded look, smirking, "I had a very good teacher."

"You had a-," Shego stopped, and then rolled her eyes, "Hardy har har."

The light stone sat back, making it clear she would wait as long as it took for her answers as the joke wafted away into silence.

"Fine… you want to know how I know how clones are bad news?" She huffed after another long moment of testing her bonds. "I've fought them."

Kim listened, not interrupting.

After another long moment, the villainess continued, "See me Princess? Shego Darkstone? There's only one of me. Just like there's only one Kim Possible, and one blond dickface and one blue balled buffoon. But Clones… they can't say that. Not a single clone ever lived its own life. They are all cheap copies of someone else's original."

Kim scowled at Shego's acidic tone, but chose not to intervene in her story.

"And someone cloned me. Someone tried to steal everything that I am, and turn me into an army… just like your grand handjobs of the republic out there." She indicated behind them with her head to the door she could not even turn to see. "Clones… they all have a fundamental flaw. They are human, but they are not people. That means they all have the hopes and the dreams and the desires of a person, but they can never fulfill them, because they are only a Xerox of the person who IS fulfilling those hopes and dreams."

"And to a unit," she spat, "it twists them. Some turn in to robots, losing all humanity… and some go insane. Like the ones they made of me."

Kim perked at this. She might not have Shego's psychology degree, but she had taken a few psych courses herself, enough to know there was something here Shego was holding back. "Shego… I fought clones too, remember? Clones of Ron, Bonnie, and me. I'll admit it gave me a few sleepless nights… but you? You had a psychotic break down there…"

"They did things to me… Kimmie…" the warrior woman glared at the redhead. "The clones of the green plasma army were psychotically jealous of the original. And they… they took that out on me."

"Se- abu-…" Kim's obsessive nature warred her more human caring as she tried to both ask and not ask specifics. "What happened?"

"Nothing you ever need to know about Princess," the darker woman scowled and suddenly jerked her shoulder hard to the left. "Not if you ever want to be able to sleep again."

Kim tried not to get queasy when she saw Shego's left arm drop two inches, separated from her shoulder. Sighing, she saw that Shego had figured out, or had always known, the way to get out of the bindings.

After a long moment, she shook her head, "Shego… I've been working with the clones for almost six months now. They are not robots, and they are not psychotic. And they can't go after the person they were cloned from… He's dead."

She watched, morbidly curious, as Shego squirmed free of the bindings, her left arm hanging limply at her side. "I don't give a shit… I want out of a universe that uses clones as its standing army… that shit will only end in tears."

"and why?" Kim scowled. Rex was a good friend to her. She was not about to accept that clones were universally evil.

"Okay, best case scenario… this war ends because of what we are going to do… what is an entire race of militarized clones going to do when they are suddenly out of a job? No war to fight? And all this hardware sitting around?" Shego made a disgusted face as she got the last of the ropes free, and then considered her dead left arm.

"Well… it's a big universe… maybe the Mandelorians will take them, they're already a society of mercenaries…"

"Oh yeah, sure… great idea… heavily armed, well trained, and killing-for-money meat-monsters," the dark stone sneered at the very concept and then rammed her arm into the crook of the co-pilot's chair. "Ask yourself this Pumpkin… Who is keeping them in line? An army of tens of thousands of physically fit young male humans? I haven't seen any flag officers. Either they're brainwashed, or they're biding their time, because you can't breed fealty and loyalty in a test tube; its deeply cultural."

The redhead frowned. She hadn't thought about that. Shego was right... The clones might be human, but they had no specific society to fight for. There was no clone culture, so far as she was aware. Rex had alluded to a few of the alphas and ARCs learning Mandelorian ways, but that was just a few dozen people out of tens of thousands.

Shego slammed her shoulder into the chair again, grunting and swaying unsteadily as her body rebelled, "And so ask yourself… if they are brainwashed, who is in control, and what orders will they give to a race of trained killers with unflinching loyalty? Once this war is one, where will the dagger of the clone army be pointed next? And if they are biding their own time… yeah, you're smart enough to question that one yourself. Feck… the sooner we are out of here, the better. I'm not a murderer… but is it murder to kill something that came out of a tube? You said it yourself… bebes and synthos aren't alive either."

Kim's head snapped up as she caught Shego looking at the door to the troop section with dark intent, rising to her own feet and clenching her fists, "No Shego! I don't know about all that… stuff… but the ARC are here to help us… and Rex is my friend. If I have to stop you hurting them… I will."

The black-cloaked woman turned and eyed the redhead archly. After a very long moment, she eased off of her tense stance, "Fine... have it your way. I can't fight you AND them. But the moment we land you're on your own. I'll set up and destroy the droid technology. You and your… meat puppets… can handle arresting those two guys and getting the intel."

"And… will you come back?" Kim suddenly asked uncertainly of the dark woman across from her.

Shego looked long and hard out the front of the view screen at the smeared stars of hyperspace. Finally, without looking back, she responded, "We'll see."

AN: A WIP sort of experiment. It's fairly well rough and also completely unfinished, but I feel it's compelling enough to share for the moment. This was originally a fanfic challenge at KP Slash Haven.

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