Exalted
In an age long past, the Exalted ruled the world and kept it from its enemies. Now those enemies stir again. Are there any worthy to wield the power of Exaltation?
Authors Note: This is my first real foray into fanfiction. Reviews are most welcome. White Wolf owns Exalted and Disney own Kim Possible et all.
Chapter 1: Dreams and Wakings.
Elsewhere, the massive sarcophagus hung in the timeless void. Although comprised primarily of soulsteel, all five of the magical materials were present in its construction. In relief on the face of the sarcophagus was the image of a man, powerful and imposing, clad in mighty amour. In each of his outstretched hands rested a perfect egg of yellow jade the size of a bull's heart. Something shuddered in the void, and then there was light.
In the heart of the temple, a third egg, marred by a hairline scar running diagonally from its base to its equator, began to shudder on its alter. A faint crack appeared on the terrible visage of one of the four jade monkey statues that watched the egg.
In Doctor Drakken's Himalayan Lair Kim narrowly dodged another blast of emerald energy, back flipping from the catwalk where she had been fighting Shego. Below her, she could see Ron struggling with a horde of red suited goons. Ahead of her on the central platform that dominated the chamber, Drakken stood ranting about whatever it was that his most recent doomsday weapon would unleash. She rolled to avoid another blast from Shego.
"Now witness as I unleash the primordial beasts of the Mesozoic era upon the modern world with my Dimensional Temporal Summoner!" Drakken crowed, slamming his fist down on the large green button in the middle of his console.
Two of the three robotic arms ending in a weird array of effectors and focusers and emiters glided smoothly into position around the main beam aperture. The third, however, merely twitched, sputtered, and collapsed. At its base, a small pink form holding two sparking wires emerge, grinning and chattering triumphantly. The mad scientist wailed in terror.
"No! Without the proper focusing array, the beam will..." he was cut off as Shego tackled him from across the room. Moments later, power arced through the space he had just occupied. The room began to shake as unfocused energy began to pour from the machine.
"KP! Getting out of here now seems like a good idea!" Ron yelled as he ran for the exit, scooping up the naked more rat as he went.
"On it." the teen superhero yelled back as she turned to follow. They were halfway to the exit when a thunderous roar filled the room. As they picked themselves up from the floor, all eyes turned to the center of the room, where the device had been aimed. Standing there, rocking slightly, was the sarcophagus. Slowly, it began to fall. With a resounding thud, it fell face first to the floor, the two eggs of jade shattering under its weight. Again, sound and fury filled the chamber, and then there was light.
In the lost temple the watching monkey statues exploded, followed a split second later by the egg on the alter. The temple shuddered and began to collapse, and then there was light.
It seemed to Kim that the lair's ceiling had been torn asunder to reveal the noonday sun. It seemed that a multitude of voices called out to her, extolling her to greatness. It seemed as if the world laid itself at her feet, exalting its queen. She felt strong, she felt fast, she felt powerful. She felt, rather than heard the voice.
"Anything is possible." And she knew it to be true.
Ron felt the familiar rush of the Mystical Monkey Power as it flowed into and through him, the old desire to jump and swing and play and fight. Yet there was something new to it. Before it had been a sputtering flame, stoked high only by the most burning passions. Now it felt cool and soothing, and most of all, complete. As it flowed into him, a mother's voice, full of compassion and tinged with mirth, whispered his own words to him.
"Never be normal." Joy filled him, a son's joy at a mother's approval.
Shego staggered. She could feel it surrounding her, enveloping her, completing her. The hunter's fur was her skin, its mane her hair. Without words, she knew freedom, and laughter and the joy of the hunt. Inexorably, against her will, she felt her eyes drawn to Kim Possible. She could feel a connection there, both new and ancient. Whatever she had felt for the girl before, that strange combination of rivalry and admiration, was now both different and more.
Light enveloped each of them. Kim blazed with the light of the noonday sun, a great mandala of golds and reds surrounding her. On her brow burned a solid disc of gold.
Around Ron a familiar blazing aura of blue had formed. Now, however, his movements seemed mirrored by a monkey made of abstract lines of silver. A crescent moon glittered on his forehead.
Shego stood, engulfed in a storm of emerald and silver. On her brow a crescent of silver mirrored the one that marked Ron.
Drakken's eyes were glued to the sarcophagus, oblivious to the blazing display behind him. A drop of blood trickled from the side of his mouth, unnoticed, as the great metal construct began to open. Only when a trickle of blood from a newly opened cut on his forehead obscured his vision did he pause. Horror filled him, as he felt more wounds opening all over his body. A wordless wail of terror was choked off into a gurgle as blood filled his mouth.
Ron recovered first. After all, this was not entirely unfamiliar territory for him. As the aura surrounding him dimmed, he saw the henchmen littering the ground, retching and convulsing as bloody wounds appeared all over their bodies.
"KP! Getting out of here RIGHT NOW seems good!" he yelled, grabbing her hand. She seemed to suddenly snap awake, her blazing anima vanishing. Resuming her aborted dash for the exit, she pulled out the Kimmunicator.
"Wade, I need transport with Hazmat capabilities now! Have GJ quarantine the area. Drakken's set something loose and it looks bad. Can you do a preliminary bio-scan of me and Ron?" The normal lighthearted, confident tone of her voice had been replaced with deadly seriousness. Hearing her words and her tone, the child prodigy simply nodded and began typing furiously.
"I can't get a scan on you until you have a chance to stand still. A GJ hoverjet with full medivac and biohazard equipment will meet you in the valley a few miles west of you. It should be straight downhill from the lair's primary entrance."
"Got it Wade."
As the teen heroes fled, Shego snapped out of the reverie that had gripped her. Turning, she dashed for the medical kit mounted next to the door. She had the syringe filled with universal antigen out and emptied into her veins with superhuman speed. If anything amazed her about Drakken, it was the wondrous things he created when he wasn't trying to take over the world. While the doomsday machines he devoted himself to were hair-brained at best, his offhand efforts to reduce the cost of health insurance expenses had resulted in a serum that could cure any known disease, among other things.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a low grinding noise, coming from the sarcophagus. As she stared, frozen in place, the bulk of the thing heaved upwards.
The sarcophagus's occupant was encased in a massive suit of jet black armor. As the figure clambered to its feet, she thought she could see faces in the metal, screaming. She flattened herself behind one of the machine's supports, and watched as the figure walked to where Drakken lay, panting weakly for breath.
"Not much to work with, but you'll have to do." The figure's voice was like two granite slabs rubbing against each other. Suddenly, Drakken's body began convulsing. Slowly, the convulsions faded, and Drakken rose from the ground like a puppet in the hands of a novice. As he stood, the wounds that had so mysteriously appeared began to close, leaving puckered scars in their passing. By the time he stood fully erect, all his wounds save one had closed. On his brow, a half-filled disc of black corruption slowly leaked tears of blood. Then he gasped, his eyes flying open. With that breath, an aura of intricate spirals of indigo shadows enveloped him.
"Your name is now the Unrepentant Dragon Coiling in Fire and Darkness. Your life belongs to me, and you will do as I will. Do you understand?" the armored figure boomed.
"I think I like Doctor Drakken better." his voice full of uncharacteristic confidence. Crimson energy lanced from the ceiling, enveloping the armored figure. The armor clattered to the ground, dust billowing from its joints and visor. Turning to look where Shego was watching, the villain grinned madly. "Come Shego. We have a world to conquer!"
Deep below the earth, in the central chamber of the buried temple of the Yono a row of statues stood, waiting. A pale light, wan and terrible, rose up from the floor. It flowed around the statues, examining them each in turn, until it came to the last in the line. Contorted in fear, the figure's arms and legs were strange, the arms of a monkey rather than a man. The light flowed into the statue. Suddenly the statue gasped, and stone became flesh. A torrent of flickering shadows surrounded the man as he stared at his arms. The hair on his arms and legs, once pitch black, was now the white of a burial shroud. His eyes stung as blood dripped into them. Reaching up, he found an empty circle cut into his forehead, surrounded by radial lines of small cuts.
Kim and Ron slid to a stop in the mountain valley, stepping off their snowboards. Immediately, they were surrounded by Global Justice agents clad in bulky hazmat suits. They allowed themselves to be bundled into the sterile hold of the GJ medivac hoverjet. The Kimmunicator beeped.
"Kim, you ready for that scan?" the child prodigy asked.
"Please and thank you," the levity in her voice wasn't forced. She knew she should be tired and afraid and confused by everything that had just happened to her. Instead, she felt confidence welling up inside her.
She felt the tingle of the Kimmunicator's scanners as the swept over her.
"Now Ron," Wade's voice was filled with distraction.
"Got anything for us Wade?"
"I'm not detecting any foreign organisms or chemicals. On cursory inspection, you're both clean. Now, what happened in there?"
Ron flopped back on the quarantine bay's bed, exhausted. It had been a long day. The flight to the Global Justice facility had been made in silence, save for a brief call home for each of the teens to explain the situation to their parents. Their reactions had been predictable. Ron's parents had taken it in stride. Kim's parents had been concerned to say the least.
When they arrived at the facility, they were separated and subjected to a massive battery of tests. They had drawn so much blood and stuck so many needles in the teens that both Ron and Kim had started making pincushion jokes.
He lazily watched as Kim ran through her evening stretches, a grin plastering his face.
"And what exactly are you grinning at?" she asked with a grin of her own.
"Just the most badalicious girlfriend in the world."
"Oh really. And just what," she arched her back, causing her shirt to ride up, exposing even more of her midriff, "about this most 'badalicious' girlfriend of yours are you staring at so intently?"
He whimpered softly in the back of his throat as she sauntered over to him and kissed him lightly.
"See you in the morning." He grinned dazedly as she lay down on the rooms other bed and closed her eyes.
They lay together on the bed, his arms around her, his face buried in her fiery mane, the western mahogany of his skin throwing sharp contrast with her southern gold. She played idly with the ruff of silver fur that accentuated his wrists.
"I should go," he whispered, nuzzling her neck.
"Stay. He won't be back for a few more days." she whispered back, arching back into him.
"Really now. I was hoping for something like that. And what will we do with that time?" he moved, catching her wrists and pinning her under him.
"Oh, I can think of a few things," she giggled, wrapping her legs around his waist. A warm chuckle rose up in his throat, as he leaned down to capture her lips with his.
Their kiss was broken as the door to the chamber exploded inward. Blazing light filled the room, outlining the man in the doorway. His beautiful features were twisted with hatred. His hands gripped a golden blade as tall and broad as he. Standing behind him was a woman, her golden tresses framing eyes glazed with blind devotion.
"Traitorous whore!" He screamed. "How dare you! You are mine! Both of you, mine!" his voice was shrill and brutal and full of madness. As his voice rang out, the blankness seemed to lift from the golden haired womans eyes, replaced with horror and pain. Meeting her mistress's gaze, she mouthed a wordless apology.
Kim's eyes shot open, locking with Ron's wild gaze. In her room in one of Drakken's Australian lair, Shego shot upright, pain etching her features. In the underground temple, the man who had been Monkey Fist awoke, manic hatred filling his face.
In his laboratory, the man that had been Drakken giggled softly to himself as he wiped the spatters of blood and grease from his face. He was making excellent progress.
Doctor Director sat at her desk and ran over the reports. In their investigations, her teams had found the corpses of Drakken's henchmen, although Drakken and Shego were both noticeable absent, along with anything resembling the sarcophagus they had described. While the wounds on the henchmen's bodies showed all the signs of corruption and rot, the medical examiners could find no trace of any organic or chemical cause. It was as if their flesh had simply rotted away in patterns consistent with knife wounds. With a sigh, she buried her face in her hands, massaging her temples. She hated mad scientists. Nothing was ever simple when they were involved. At least Team Possible's bloodwork and bioscans had come back clean. However, she had insisted on a full physical.
Kim and Ron were sweating. They had been on the treadmill for over an hour. In the observation room, several doctors were crowding around the displays in amazement.
"Hey Ron, do you smell something?" An acrid odor, like burning plastic, had begun to assail her sense.
"Wasn't me KP."
"No, I mean like something burning."
"Now that you mention in I kinda-" he was cut off as the machine, unable to handle the strain anymore, died. Ron stumbled forward, hurtling through the machine in a spray of plastic shards. The room shuddered as he slammed headfirst into the wall, sending a spiderweb of cracks through the concrete.
Before any of the watching med techs could even move, Kim was beside him.
"Ron! Come on Ron, talk to me." near-panic filled her voice as she reached down to him.
"I think I lost my pants." he groaned, sitting up. Indeed, he was stripped to his boxers, his pants hanging from one the posts of the now destroyed treadmill. "Talk about going for the low bidder." He rapped the wall with his knuckles where his face had left an unmistakable imprint in the concrete.
The first med techs to enter the room found the teen heroes laughing in near hysteria.
Shego was on edge. What she had witnessed at the Himalayan lair had shaken her, badly. Her dreams hadn't helped.
Despite her line of work, Shego had seen relatively little death. She had hospitalized and injured more than her fair share, but she had always been careful to avoid killing people. The same applied to Doctor D. The deaths the henchmen had suffered were had shaken her to her core.
The change in Drakken was even more disturbing. After dispatching whatever it was that had inhabited the sarcophagus, he had taken a near ghoulish delight in loading as many corpses as he could into the hovercar along with the empty suit of armor and the sarcophagus. She still wasn't entirely certain why she had helped him load the gruesome cargo, or why she hadn't bolted. Even his appearance had changed. He looked emaciated, his skin clinging tightly to his bones.
Fortunately, she hadn't had to see him very much since their arrival. He had sequestered himself in his primary lab with instructions that he was not to be disturbed. That suited Shego perfectly.
She had decided to work off her nervous energy in the gym. It hadn't worked. Most of the equipment, designed to withstand her comet enhanced abilities, had been destroyed in the first few minutes. She stood in the wreckage, staring at the wall length mirror. The usual green glow of her powers was now shot through with silver, and on her brow a crescent moon burned. In the back of her mind she could hear the hunter pacing.
She needed to get out, to do something. She briefly considered telling Drakken that she was leaving, or even leaving him a note.
"To hell with him," she said, grinning, and was gone.
In the underground temple, the man who had been Monkey Fist wandered angrily. The temple was a maze and he had made no progress on finding an exit. All sense of time had abandoned him. He couldn't tell if he had been wandering for minutes, hours, days or years. Several times he had found intersections that folded back on themselves. He had rounded corners to find empty corridors where he knew for a fact that there should be an intersection. And all the while, he could feel a slight breeze that brushed his fur yet seemed to touch nothing else. Sometimes he would run wildly in a mad dash to escape the shadows that surrounded him. It seemed the faster he ran the more likely they were to catch him up, and the more likely the wound in his forehead would open again.
Finally, maddened with terror, his way barred by a dead end, the shadows waiting just behind him, he had torn through the very walls. The shadows had matched his panic, and revealed their face to him. A monkey made of shadowy smoke had run with him, almost on top of him, aping his every move. He had run until he collapsed, giving way to exhaustion.
He had dreamed, then. He woke snarling, his face twisted in hate.
"Mine!" he screamed, echoing his words in the dream. "They are mine! They belong to me!"
He found himself in a corridor unlike the twisted maze that had trapped him. It ran straight, with no twists or turns, sloped slightly upwards. At its end he could see light.
The man who was once Monkey Fist started up the passage.
Drakken felt the faint rumbling of the hanger doors open and heard the whine of the hovercar leaving.
"Finally some quite," he whispered to himself, carefully splicing wires into nerve endings. Blood covered his face, although he wasn't sure how much of it was from his creation and how much was from his caste mark. Channeling Essence through his Anima, he quickly made another incision, black blades of shadow leaving cuts more precise and clean than any scalpel ever could.
Doctor Director poured blankly over the reports. At their last physical evaluation, Team Possible had demonstrated at least Olympic levels of fitness and ability, pushing the bounds of human capabilities in several fields.
Those bounds had been shattered. Before the treadmill gave way, both Kim and Ron had run the equivalent of two marathons in just under an hour, less than half the world record for a single marathon. Even when they slowed down the footage of Kim's dash to Ron's side, they still couldn't see more than a blur of her movement. Ron's assessment of the concrete wall he had impacted could not have been more wrong.
The remaining tests showed similar results. They had broken several world records in weight lifting, although by a much smaller margin. Their already impressive athletic abilities had shown almost absurd levels of growth.
Their health evaluation had come back perfect. Not even the smallest traces of disease or chemical contamination could be detected. Impossibly, several of the contaminants they had picked up over the course of their careers fighting villains who utilized dangerously radioactive and chemically unstable materials extensively were gone. The scars and damages to muscle, joint and bone they had accumulated were likewise gone.
One anomaly caught her eye. She blinked, then called the doctor who had made the report.
"Regarding your report on Stoppable: what exactly do you mean by 'furry wrists'?"
"Maybe we should try to contact Master Sensei," Ron said, whispering to avoid waking Hana. Getting a ninja baby to go to bed was a taxing affair, requiring great endurance, cunning and skill. Normally, he and Kim would have collapsed themselves shortly after. "This is his field after all."
"Any ideas on how?"
"On second thought, we should wait for him to contact us. This is his field after all."
Kim settled down next to her boyfriend on the couch. This was the first time they had been truly alone with each other since the incident at the Lair.
"My parents should be turning in around now." Rod said with a goofy grin.
"I know. And my parents aren't expecting me home for a few hours."
"Really now." there was something in his words, something both strange and familiar, like hearing the voice of a friend that you have not spoken to for some time.
They were curled up together several minutes later when the warble of the Kimmunicator interrupted them, followed quickly by Hana's wailing.
"Whats the sitch, Wade?" she asked, fighting to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
"Its Shego. She was recognized by the police at a night club in Rome. She pretty much tore through the cops that tried to arrest her. I'm tracking her movements since then. It looks like she's headed for a small island in the Caribbean. Looks like the perfect location for a lair. If you leave now I can get you there a little after she arrives. And Kim, whatever you and Ron got exposed to, it looks like she got a dose of it herself."
"We're on it, Wade."
Ron picked up the squalling infant and headed for the stairs. At the base of the stairs, he passed the child to his bleary eyed mother.
"Sorry mom, mission time. See you in the morning."
Shego flopped down her bed. She felt she had salvaged the evening quite handily. A little larceny followed by a night of clubbing all culminating in a little old fashioned mayhem. The look on the faces of the police when she sent the car they had been using as a barricade flying end over end had been worth it. A pity none of the boys at the club had been any good. The combination of drinks, dancing and destruction had left her horny as all hell.
It hit her in the shower. The same feeling she had back at the Himalayan Lair. Kim was here. A few seconds later, the lair's alarms began blaring.
Taking stock of her situation, she came to a simple conclusion. This was going end in embarrassment no matter what she did. There was no time for her to get dressed, she could feel Kim closing too fast. She had a robe, but it was definitely ill-suited for combat and there was no way that it would survive a fight with her teen nemesis.
The connection to Kim seemed to tug at her, and she grinned. A thought rose up in her mind, like a voice from a memory. This was going to end in embarrassment, but it needn't be hers.
"After all, two can play at that game."
Now where the hell that come from?
Kim could feel it guiding her through the lair as Ron trailed behind her. It was like instinct, telling her that this was the door to open and this the fork to take to reach her goal.
The lairs assortment of death traps proved even less of a hindrance than normal. Sidestepping a spinning blade she entered a long hall lined with numbered doors. She stopped suddenly, her mouth falling open. Right behind her, Ron froze, his eyes wide and his ears burning.
Shego leaned in the doorframe at the end of the hall, examining her nails. She was dressed in a thigh length silk bathrobe, split to the naval. Minty skin gleamed in the dim light.
"Hi princess, I was wondering when you would show up. Took your time, didn't you?" Shego's tones were sultry as she sauntered down the hall towards the teens, her hips swaying. The teens were frozen like deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi. This was not how missions were supposed to go.
Suddenly Shego's demeanor changed, her smile shifting from sultry to triumphant, and she sprang forward, her fist wreathed in green and silver flame. Kim was barely able to dodge the blow. Ron was not so lucky. The blow caught him square in the chest, slamming him through the wall like it was tissue paper.
Kim snapped out of her daze in time to duck under the follow through and respond with a brutal jab to Shego's ribs. The wall cracked as the impact threw her back into it. The fight began in earnest then.
Ron lay dazed amidst the rubble that had been the room on the other side of the wall and watched as Shego and Kim went at it. The two women were too absorbed in the fight to notice, but Shego's earlier predictions about her robe's chances of survival had already come true. He felt himself grinning dazedly. The scene filled him with an almost dreamlike sense of familiarity.
The cramped confines of the hallway restricted their normally acrobatic fighting styles. He frowned woozily as Shego dodged a blow from Kim. The frown deepened when she punched a large hole in the wall before recovering. In fact, there seemed to be a lot of that happening. As punches and kicks were dodged and redirected, each inflicted far more structural damage than they should have. Actually, as they fought, the restrictions imposed by the closed quarters were rapidly vanishing as the surrounding walls were systematically demolished.
As Ron struggled to regain his feet, certain oddities about his own situation began to intrude on his consciousness. Not only had he survived being punched through a reinforced concrete wall with barely a scratch, but since when did he have opposable toes? Or a tail, for that matter. In fact, as he his head began to clear, he saw that his body was covered in golden fur. Monkey fur.
Kim and Shego paused as a piercing wail split the air.
Master Sensei struggled to his feet. The corpses of those who had refused to flee littered the broken streets of Yamanouchi. He himself was exhausted from the fight.
More had wanted to stay, but he had not permitted it. The evil he had sensed was even greater than that of the Yono. The portents had hinted at a darkness more terrible than any he had imagined. In the end, he had only allowed enough to remain to buy the rest the time to escape.
Yori had been the most determined to stay, and the one he was most determined must leave. Someone had to carry the Lotus Blade to safety. Someone had to warn the Chosen One.
The architect of this devastation casually stepped from the ruins of what had been the shrine of the Lotus Blade. The thing that had been Monkey Fist strolled leisurely towards the master of Yamanouchi. The old man readied his beleaguered defenses once more, lashing out with a blow not only of flesh but of Essence as well, meant to pass through all mortal barriers and strike at the enemy's very soul.
Casually, Monkey Fist swatted the strike aside, responding with a blow of his own that sent the ancient master sprawling. He struggled to rise again, only to be thrust back to the ground as one of the monkey obsessed madman's prehensile feet wrapped around his throat.
"I see your little toy escaped with the blade. Good. When I come for the traitor and his whore, they'll offer at least a little challenge. Now you are the boy's mentor, his teacher. So lets play a little game. I hurt you, and you scream, and we see if your precious student comes to your rescue."
Master Sensei had spent his entire life mastering himself. He could control the very Essence of his being to accomplish feats that would seem impossible to the unlearned. He had certainly learned long ago to master pain and fear. Yet in the end, he screamed.
"MONKEY!"
Kim and Shego stared. Standing where Ron had fallen was a creature that could have come out of DNAmy's labs. The golden furred man monkey was wailing in horror as it stared at its limbs.
"Ron?" Kim was incredulous, but the voice and reactions were most definitely his.
Drakken leaned back from the workbench, wiping his hands with a rag already soaked through with blood. It was complete. He had used up the corpses of five henchmen in making it, but that left him with plenty of materials left over. A grin spread across his ghoulish face. The next time that meddlesome teenager and her buffoon of a sidekick tried to interfere, there would be a little surprise waiting for them. The mad scientist grinned at the face screaming out at him from the scythe-like claws he had provided his creation with.
"Now now, why so upset. You're getting what you wanted, aren't you?"
Shego couldn't help it. The voice was so plaintive and the monkey face was screwed up with such human despair. She threw her head back and laughed, her whole body shaking with mirth.
"Hey Princess, I didn't know you liked them so hairy."
Monkey Fist wiped his face clean of blood. Devouring the old fool's Essence had been immensely satisfying. Unfortunately, he wasn't done yet. He still had a message to compose.
As the ravens descended, he began to drag the corpses about, arranging them according to some unfathomable design. When he was done, he stood back and admired his work. When the traitors came, they would remember. After all, they had to know their sin against him before they could be punished.
Kim shoved Shego back, sending her staggering into a wall, which promptly collapsed. Shego's laughter cut short, replaced with a snarl.
"You bitch! Do you have any idea how hard it is to get drywall out of wet hair?"
As Shego launched herself at Kim, Ron could only stare. The feeling of familiarity was almost overwhelming.
Drakken was annoyed. He needed Essence to continue his work. However, because he lacked access to a Shadowland, and the lair was too isolated to have easy access to a source of victims, he had no way to replenish his stores. He could have gone out to find a few, but Shego had taken the hovercar. And knowing Shego, it could be days before she returned.
Normally in these sorts of situations, he would just order Pizza, but it wasn't food he needed...
Drakken smacked himself in the forehead as he reached for his phone. The Pizza might be useless to him, but he the deliverer would provide a solution to both his Essence and transportation needs.
Ron took a few steps towards the fighting women before pausing. Did he really want to try to break this up? Kim's clothing, although not a fragile as Shego's robe, had not benefited from whatever force it was that was allowing the two of them to shrug off blows that shattered walls. Nails and splintered wood that left skin unmarred had torn great gashes in her mission outfit. He might be a teen hero, but he was also a teen male.
The strange feeling of familiarity seemed to intensify suddenly. Kim and Shego paused in their fight as the feeling rose up in them as well.
The two women bowed to each other as they assumed their stances in the center of the training pavilion. By unspoken agreement, they both burst into movement at the same time. The golden hair woman was older, stronger and more experienced. The fiery haired woman from the south was younger and faster.
The easterner smiled languidly as he watched the bout from the branches of one of the crystal-pear trees that surrounded the pavilion. He munched appreciatively on one of the translucent fruit, greedily licking the sweet juices from his fingers. For a moment, he wondered what it would be like to lick those juices from the younger woman's body, before crushing the thought. She was his master's wife for the Incarnae's sake. So what if she had yet to even see the man, neither had he, except in brief flashes of memory and dreams of his former lives. It was the relation her Exaltation had had to his master's for over a dozen incarnations on both sides. While it was the privilege of their kind to stand above the tides of fate, they were not so blessed against the tides of social pressure. As for himself, the ties that bound were simpler. He was a child of Luna, and his master was his Solar mate.
His focus shifted to the golden haired woman. She had known his previous incarnation. Several of them, in fact. Her face stirred ancient memories. Suddenly he knew what the crystal-pear juice tasted like from her skin. It was an incredibly intimate detail to remember about someone you hadn't even properly met yet.
The bout ended with the younger woman pinned to the ground in what looked like an unnecessarily provocative position. The young man in the tree dropped down amidst a rain of crystal leaves and approached the pavilion.
Thoughts and observations:
First off: what should Shego's spirit form be? While Spotted Hyena was my first choice, there are certain... pecularities of female spotted hyena biology that are just squicky when combined with shapeshifting.
Kim Possible is the perfect candidate for Solar Exaltation, what with the whole "Anything is possible for a Possible" thing. While Dawn (for her martial arts skills) or Night (for her stealthy/acrobatic skills) were my initial choices for her caste, I finally settled on Zenith because while she is skilled at combat and she is acrobatic, she is mostly a leader.
Ron Stoppable is the definition of a Lunar. He's got the whole "never be normal" thing going on, his relation to Kim (the Lunars are the Solars' sidekicks), his somewhat protean nature (count the number of episodes where he has an apparently radical change in his personality) and his protectiveness of the things he cares about. The fact that his Solar Mate is Monkey Fist serves to mess with his head.
Drakken wouldn't qualify for Exaltation of any kind. Fortunately, Abyssal Exaltations are given out on the whims of their keepers, and the one that Exalted him didn't have much to work with at the time. Monkey Fist is also Abyssal, although I'd say he's slightly more deserving of it.
Shego as a Lunar fits for most of the reasons Ron as a Lunar fits. I toyed with the thought of making her Terrestrial (fire caste), but Terrestrial Exaltation is hereditary. Anyways, it doesn't really fit.
If the characters seem to be acting a bit odd, they are being influenced by their previous incarnations.