"I really don't see the point of all this."
Dr. Drakken grumbled as he lead Kimberly Ann Possible down the cobwebb lined hallways to one of his many defunct lairs. Not braving to make eye contact with the girl, he insisted on throwing his deep villainous voice down the halls. He may not have rolled with the baddies anymore, but that didn't mean he needed to be nice to the gal who strong-armed that transition into him. "You've proven many times over to me Kimberly Ann that you really are all that."
"Uh huh, tell me more about myself," Kim grinned sharply, dressed in a tight black tank-top and gray cargo shorts, hair tied back into a ponytail, bangs pinned back. Her well-toned arms glistened with far more sweat than Brick Flagg ever gathered from playing football. To reach the bad doctor's lair, Kim opted to scale the entire cliff face without any assistant from volunteer drivers or even Wade's ahead-of-its-time equipment. This visit was off-the-books from Team Possible, so she needed it to be lowkey as possible, and of course she was never one to scoff at a challenge.
"Ugh," Drakken rolled his eyes, voice raising into a shrill register that had previously been reserved only for Shego. "Your generation is so self-obsessed. It's just me! me! me! all the time."
"Yep, sounds about right," Kim sighed. The first few times they engaged in the art of long-form banter, she quickly understood why Shego had stuck by ol' Drew Lipsky's side for so long; it was fun to get a rise out of him. But then after some time, it became draining and she understood why she vanished without a trace after the Lowardian Invasion.
"Why back in my day," Drakken gestured towards himself, still not looking back to Kim, which was good because she was checking her messages on the Kimmunicator. One from Ron and one from Wade.
Ron [8:42PM]
Hey, KP. It's pretty late, you planning on turning in tonight?
Wade [5:18PM]
Kim, you know how I feel about you going off the grid like this.
"Ooooooh, you're on your phone now?!" Drakken snapped, tired eyes finally falling onto her. He plucked the Kimmunicator from her hands and dropped it into his lab-coat. "Not on my time Possible."
She smirked. It was for the best, and he knew that as much as she did. "So how was the memoir writing today?"
Drakken's sneer fluttered into an excitable grin. "Ooh! Today I was hot! I did a whole chapter on the time I used Time Travel to become The Supreme One and take over the world!"
"Yeah — pretty sure that never happened."
Drakken waved his finger in the air, stopping right before a three foot thick steel door, "Nyaaah! You wouldn't remember — it was time travel after all" He crossed his arms defiantly.
"Riiiiight," Kim drawled, strutting past Drakken and over to the console.
"Besides, I am an evil genius, I can work out the — what are you doing?"
Without a word, Kim input a password that immediately opened the door. Drakken's jaw dropped as she rested her knuckles against her hips. "Coco Moo?" she chided.
Drakken bit his tongue and walked into the next room, grumbling all the kids-these-days and why-I-oughttas. Kim strutted into the room to find it nearly empty, the dusty cavern only home to a refrigerator and a rusty Li'l Diablos toy, left over from the invasion one year back.
"Surprised?" Drakken asked with glee, immediately heading to the fridge.
"Not really, I figured this would be the last one," Kim sighed. "You really should of given this back to Global Justice."
"Along with my other toys?" he smirked.
"Fair enough," she shot back.
This had been going on for a month now. The week before was an entire army of Bebe-Bots. The week before that was a surprisingly effective combination of the Ron-Man muscle ring, his world saving plant cocotion, Brainwashing Shampoo, and the Attitudinator. And the week before that was the Pans-Dimensional-Vortex-Inducer which Drakken couldn't figure out how to work it so Kim ended up just ghostwriting a chapter of It was a Tuesday...
Aside from those, every other outsourced invention had been returned to its original owner. The handful of original Drakken-opuses were donated to Global Justice. It was part of his deal with GJ to stay out of prison. Kim, being GJ's summer intern, was tasked with weekly check-ins to make sure the Bad Doctor was holding to his word.
"Go ahead, knock yourself out," Drakken smirked, immediately diving to rummage through the fridge.
The little yellow eyes of the toy glowed and within seconds Kim went from needing to squint to stepping out of the monstrosity's shadow. The Diablos quickly raised its claw and fired off a laser at Kim. Grinning, Kim vaulted backwards just in time to watch the green light smash bits of cement across the room.
"It is set to non-lethal, right?" Kim raised an eyebrow.
"Ooooh," Drakken practically fluttered, despite the loose flap of swiss cheese in his mouth and the tightly lidded pickle jar nearly slipping out of his grip. "Guy tries to take over the world for three years and you still can't let it go!"
"Sure," Kim drawled, somersaulting away from another beam. "Well call me over if you need help with Operation Gurkin over there."
"Ooh! The mouth on you!"
A lot had changed in the past month, so it was relaxing to have some familiarity locked in with someone.
Her muscles pulled taut as she flipped around the room, only able to navigate the perimeter. Had Ron been at her side, this would have been an easy takedown, but he wasn't there; she needed him not to be.
"You really think I'm ready KP?" Kim entered the bedroom expecting to see Ron tapped out for the night, but instead found him still in street clothes, sitting on the bedside. "I mean, I've gone solo before, but this is — " he rubbed his wrist. " — different."
"Of course you are, Ron. You've always been ready," she grinned, squeezing his hand and she could feel the immediate release of tension.
Ron rubbed the back of his neck. "It's just kind of a bummer that — ya know — me fulfilling my potential and everything also means —"
"Trust me, I know."
Kim's body roared for relief as she vaulted away from beam after beam, but to stop would mean getting nailed by the scathing energy and this bot was showing no signs of stopping, which meant she couldn't either.
But to evade every blast was realistically going to wear her out. She was only human.
Unlike her Mystical Monkey Power Master boyfriend, and if Ron was there in her place, the battle would be over in seconds. Kim grimaced, knowing that the only way to get out of this was to let go of her fear and learn a harsh lesson in how to take a hit.
Kim ducked inward, beelining for the center where the Li'l Diablos soulessly stared back at her. She saw the green glow ignite on the claw and leapt into the air, just in time for the laser to nail her in the back.
Her chest heaved as her hands braced herself for impact with the floor. She flipped her hair out of her eyes and darted ahead, finally able to slip past the fire of the Diablos. As it lowered its claw to line up the best shot, Kim was just skimming ahead. She nearly collapsed from exhaustion when she reached the leg of the Diablos, leaning against the steel for support.
The robot twisted in a circle, cannon pointed down as she danced with its movements, again staying out of range. Finally, she could think straight.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead, briefly acknowledging the searing pain in her back. She was so not looking forward to having to clean up the wounds later. Wounds that would need to be kept private from Ron.
"Hey Drakken!" Kim cried out,
"What?" he snapped, pickle jar still wedged between his arm, an almost finished sandwich dangling from his mouth.
"Hold that pose," Kim smirked, kicking off one of her combat boots.
Drakken raised an eyebrow as he tried to put two and two together, but by the time he figured it out, Kim's plan was already in motion. Carefully lining up the shot, Kim tossed her boot into the air and the Li'l Diablos's cannon swung up and fired a beam, incinerating the poor shoe.
But the beam showed no signs of stopping and flew across the room, striking the lid of Drakken's pickle jar, and bounced back, destroying the cannon in one earth shattering kaboom.
She let out a very tangible sigh of relief; strategy like that before was only something that came out of Ron's buffoonery, but now she was doing it in her own little solo act. And with that the game was finally on.
She didn't want to let her nerves get her so with nary a thought, she rolled out from under the robot, turning on her heel and flipped backwards, just barely avoiding a quick swing from the now smoking Diablos.
She landed with her feet firmly planted, teeth ground so tightly together that she needed to remember to loosen her jaw, or she'd wake up the next day with a headache.
Drakken leaned back against the fridge, forgoing the pickles, because he was about to see quite the show.
Kim pounced forward, ducking below another swing, and then flipped into the air, successfully landing on the Diablos' arm in a move that by the way — won the cheer regionals. Rearing back, she wrapped her gloved hands firmly around the steel lining as it attempted to throw her off, and in a brief lapse from the bot, she launched herself once again into the air and onto the helm.
Briefly, this was a victorious moment but then she remembered that she actually had no idea how she was going to take this thing down. Unlike before, there was no big radio tower to destroy which meant —
She cringed.
Looking down, she saw a tiny hole at the top of the helm that was the size of say — a naked mole rat. But without any weapons, her best bet at the moment was to maybe aggressively shove a hair tie down there, but that was dumb.
"It is this, right?" she asked Drakken with a dumbfounded expression. He nodded back solemnly. "Well, happy birthday to — "
Before she could finish, the Diablos managed to wriggle her off the top and while she was still mid-air, before she could have the dignity of ground level, the robot whirled around and spiked her straight into the cement.
The claw ripped into her already scorched back and she tumbled against the floor, elbow arched dangerously over her shoulder as she glared up. She could feel the sting of blood seeping through her tank top and knew that she would need to construct quite a tale to explain this injury away to Ron, and he had already been surprisingly skeptical.
She leered up at this monstrosity towering over her and easily imagined Drakken reaching for the remote to end the fight.
"Don't you dare," she shouted in a steady voice.
"You — Kimberly Ann — I wasn't thinking!" he sputtered, "You can't beat this thing on your own — it's impossible!"
"Yeah?" Kim grinned. "Well check the name."
She could do anything; it was her tagline, and while it was an exaggeration far from the truth, it made her feel sick to her stomach to pale before the mission.
The Diablos didn't hesitate in stabbing straight ahead, Kim narrowly avoiding the jab by stumbling to the side. Before the claw retracted, she leapt forward and grabbed onto the claw and once again found herself on top the bot. She couldn't give up now; no way no how.
And she leapt off the claw and over to the still smoldering cannon, and reaching her hands into the ashy mess and before long, she found herself pulling HARD on a rusted pole that was left sticking out of the bot. Fortunately, the pole held her down as the robot rampaged around the room. She let up on her pull and focused more on her little rodeo show. Because to do anything else would kill her probably.
She needed to see Ron that night. Yes, she was really, really late, but she couldn't just not see his face. This was for him.
For them really.
Warhok was going to mount her as a trophy. She could have failed the entire world, but fortunately that was the same moment Ron stepped up his game. Warhok tossed her aside like a ragdoll, eager for an actual challenge she couldn't provide.
Yes, she had saved Ron's life many times before and he was so due for one, but that didn't make this any easier.
She really hoped he would understand, and in a one second long lapse of swinging from the Diablo, the pain crawled back in fast, and she pounced one final time back to the top of the robot and with perfect precision, she jammed that pole down that stupid robot's Empire styled thermal exhaust port.
She could audibly hear the behemoth shutting down before it collapsed onto the ground below. Body now screaming for a hot bath and some tender self-care, she was once again leaning against the pole, this time unable to stand.
"Wow, that was pretty good I gotta say, Doc," Kim heaved but Drakken didn't seem impressed. If anything, he looked more nervous than anything. Kim narrowed her eyes. "Don't tell me there's mor—"
And then her head was sent throbbing by a very well-aimed kicked to her temple. Somehow a foot had slipped through that tiny hole, knocked away the pole, and connected with her face. She rocked backwards and fell off the bot and flat on her back to find herself staring up at the ominous figure of the alleged pilot of the Diablo —
"Hello Kim," he said in his crisp preppy voice. "You remember me right? Your boyfriend? Eric?"
Kim's eyes immediately dug deep into Drakken's soul. "No, sorry, I'd rather call you Synthrone 901," she said more to the room than anyone in it. "Also what? He was alive?"
"I — uh — " Drakken had to put his sandwich down for this. "Reinvented him? Thought it'd be good for your fighter's spirit? Heh?"
Kim rolled her eyes from the bad doctor over to Eric. "Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't do it earlier," she admitted. "Good plot, Doc."
Eric dropped down to the floor, arms raised and ready to brawl. "So you're dating that loser now, huh?"
"Yeah. He actually saved the world."
Eric's eyes widened in surprise and he looked over to Drakken for confirmation, but before he could —
"Your dad saved the world too," Kim's smile nearly cracked her face in two and Eric shook his head and as Drakken tried to object, he got sentenced with a deathly Talk to the hand, a childish move that would've made anyone shake their hand in second-hand embarrassment. Anyone but Drew Lipsky.
You know what they say though: like father like son.
"So Kim, you're fighting old enemies to make up for your humiliating defeat at the hands of the Lowardians?" Eric cocked his head. "Interesting."
"No, I'm doing it for me," she growled, leaning back on her heel. "And I could say the same for you."
Eric's brow furrowed and she wondered how on earth she could have ever been attracted to this scumbag. "Yes, I guess I am," his voice was ice cold. "But I didn't want this. I'm not real, I don't feel desire towards — anyone really. Says a lot about you though. About what depths you'll sink to."
Kim grimaced.
"You fell for me hook, line, and sinker," Eric's pretty boy allure became distorted in the building rage lines on his contorted face, like Dorian Gray finally morphing into his his horrific portrait. "And then, so broken hearted by little ol' me, you rebound to that loser and now you're torturing him with our lies."
Kim screamed and despite her burning joints, somersaulted towards Eric and crashed both fists right his big dumb charming head. He doubled back and looked up to her with a deathly glint in those black eyes and just like he had done to Ron that night one year ago, he twisted his skull back into shape.
"Oh you don't have a chance against me Kim, not like this," and he grabbed the pole Kim used to shut down the Diablos, and slammed into her jaw, sending her crumpling to the floor. She wiped the blood from her mouth and stood tall before him.
"I will stop you," but she wasn't so sure about that yet. No tools, her only weapons her body, but her flesh was blunt and no good against a Synthodrone. "Drakken, I think you overdid this one a little."
"Overcompensating more like it," Eric's brilliant teeth. "He's been so mad about his complete failure to kill you that — "
"Not kill! I'd never!" Drakken declared. "I just didn't think — "
"You didn't. And now a broken Kim Possible needs to take me on or die. You scared?"
His high voice was once endearing, but in this moment it was the stuff of nightmares. Eric was one of her most ruthless enemies yet; he had no compassion for human life and was fully willing to get inside Kim Possible's little high school head and — break her.
"No." Kim snarked and spun on her heel, swinging a punch at Eric's head, cracking his cranium so hard that it doubled over his neck, and with it came the same disturbing retraction as his body contorted back into shape. He swung his leg clean into her job, sending her spiraling away. He then lunged forward, gripped her by the underarms, and ran his knee into her back.
"You thought you were all that Kim Possible," he hissed. "But you're not not!"
"You even talk like him," Kim groaned through the pain, trying to wrench herself away from Eric, her footwork throwing the two into a sort of dance; much like Prom. The boy had so few memories to him, it made sense that he was so eerily close to rekindling that old passion. Her knees felt weak.
"Do you think what you're doing is healthy, Kim?" Eric chided, kicking her in the back, sending her face-first into the floor. Before she could response, he crunched his foot against her spine, holding her firmly into the dust. "You've been upstaged by a buffoon — face it. The world doesn't need you anymore."
Kim looked over to Drakken; he hadn't even touched his ham and cheese sandwich he was so concerned.
"You must have such an ego to do all this just to hold the spotlight on you a little longer," Eric chortled, lips just touching her ear. She could smell the stench of his inner syntho-goo. "Why not just give up? Face the facts. You did your part to save the world; you created Ron Stoppable."
Her face flushed with both shame and rage. It had been so easy to zero her ego when working along someone like Ron, a humble guy who longed for the simple things in life. But now that he was a titan everyone was running scared from?
Her foot twisted from Eric's hold and nailed him in the chin. She rolled out from under him, and flipped off the floor and back to her feet. Eric looked back up to her with the same cocky expression, slowly rising back up.
"You can't stop me, Kim," Eric laughed. "You'll never stop anyone again."
And before she could strategize, he charged at her again in an onslaught that only pushed her back and drained more of her energy. Meanwhile, he showed no signs of stopping.
If Ron were there, he would work some monkey magic and plow his fist so hard into Eric that it would break that stupid suit, and with his hand plugged into the monster's torso, he would ignite his magic and burn away all the Syntho-Goo. It'd be over in seconds.
Even Rufus would fair better than Kim. He would just bite into the man once and he would be ruined.
But Kim didn't have magic or any of it. She only had her body, her wits, and her will. And nowadays, all that mattered was her will to keep going, to never give up.
Kim didn't tell Ron because she couldn't stomach the failure, but it wasn't her decision to split Team Possible and to send Ron on solo missions of a higher scale.
"Kim, we're worried about you," Betty Director said after one particularly rough outing in the Middle East. "You come back to us every time in serious need of hospitalization."
Kim looked at her blood-soaked abdomen she had hid from Ron long enough to get back to HQ. "I know."
"We're going to have to separate you two," Betty looked away. "I know that hurts, but you can't keep up with him, and it's holding him back."
Kim knew she was right and she choked back tears. When her eyes opened, she saw Betty looking right at her, hand resting on her knee.
"He's not your distraction any more than you are his muscle. Things change."
And from then on, Ron was sent off on secret missions Kim couldn't even know about, whereas she kept working against the usual baddies like Motor Ed, Dementor, and Duff Killigan. But the fun that went into those battles was gone and it felt more like she was going through the motions than anything else.
Kim growled and wrapped her legs around Eric's waist, grabbing his head again and twisting it so hard that once again his neck snapped. As his arms tried to tear her off him, she kept twisting the head until the neck was thin enough to fit into her palm of her hand. She gnashed her teeth in delight as his smooth skin twisted and knotting under her rough fingers. She pressed tightly, draining the syntho-goo from his head and pushing it past the knot.
Not pleasant to look at, but it let her drag his writhing hand up to the rope-like appendage she molded his head into, and in one swoop, she knotted the two together and let go of him.
Eric roared, trying to untie himself but to no avail. He couldn't see anything with his head bent so uncomfortably behind him. She watched, goosebumps sizzling over her body, as his chest and lower body ballooned with the new flow of syntho-go.
"I'm going to kill you, Kim," he said in a cold voice.
"No. You won't."
And she drove her foot into the chest, into this influx of goo, and because of the fluctuating pressure in his body, she popped him. A massive hole ripped into his chest and he moaned as he hobbled towards her before collapsing on the floor just like he did one year ago.
It was silent for some time.
"Wow," Drakken finally let out, shoving the sandwich into his mouth.
"Thanks, Doc," Kim sighed, walking up to Drakken and unexpectedly giving him a hug. "You know, I was really worried about your memoir. But you're pretty good with dialog."
Drakken raised an eyebrow.
Kim smiled. "C'mon, you're not going to try to convince me that you didn't write what Eric just said, yeah?"
Drakken rolled his eyes, but she saw a purple hue come into his high cheekbones. "Yeah, I — I thought it'd be good for you to hear that."
"It was," although she didn't want to admit that. "Guess it's good he was the last one, huh?"
Drakken couldn't think of anything to say so he just nodded.
Kim couldn't think of anything either, so instead she pulled the butter knife out from the mayonnaise jar and chopped Drakken's beefy sandwich in two.
"Hey! That's mine!" Drakken sobbed.
Kim gave him a stern look. "Drew you eat this whole thing and you're going to start looking like DNAmy."
"What? With the gorilla hands?" he smirked.
Kim rolled her eyes and reached for the pickle jar and ended Operation Gurkin with one flick of the wrist. She tossed the scorched lid to the floor and smacked some pickles onto her sandwich. Drakken could barely speak.
"Thanks," Kim said without making eye contact. "I can't believe I'm saying this to you but — " She froze, trying to rearrange the words so they wouldn't too mushy for her former nemesis.
"Kimberly Ann," Drakken decreed, setting the sandwich down. "You're like a daughter to me. You don't have to say it."
"Thanks," she quickly snipped before biting the sandwich.
"I hate to admit to being a snoop but I looked at your beep-mes — " Drakken started.
" — text messages," Kim corrected softly.
"Mm — that's such a literal name for them, you kids have no imagination," he frowned. "But I saw the text message from whatshisname and wanted to let you know that they're letting me keep the hovercraft if you want a ride back home so you can see him tonight."
Kim had to stop her automatic refusal so she could listen to her body.
She hadn't been this tired since her underaged self pushed a very little girl to the limits to start up Team Possible. She looked up to Drakken with a wry smile. "I have an idea."
Drakken blinked. "Kimberly Ann — haven't you — "
She pressed a finger to his lips. "After I finish my internship, I want to break ties with GJ. I like freelancing more. It's not going to be a popular decision, but it's happening and — we might lose some contacts."
Drakken didn't quite understand.
"Which is bad because our operation has expanded and — uh," Kim cocked her head. "Wade's gonna need some help to keep up with everything."
"Ooooooooooh," Drakken leaned back. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah! I want your imagination," Kim smiled and for the first time ever, Drakken noticed the lines in her face and how human she was. Her cheeks were straining to keep that smile afloat, otherwise she'd cry.
"Deal," Drakken shook Kim's hand and then dove into the pickle jar.
"Spankin'!" Kim chimed and chowed down on her sandwich.
When they both wiped the mustard stains from their lips, Kim locked eyes with the bad doctor once again.
"And as your first task with Team Possible, I would love for you to escort me home. Please and thank you."