Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible. She and related characters are owned by Disney and Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley. As this is a Multiverse story, any variations in established or original characters are my treatment and belong to me unless otherwise noted in the closing notes. At any rate it is best to ask me who to get permissions from. Otherwise hands off. Understand?
Every Kim Possible
Chapter One – Half-Lives
"She's dead! Kim Possible is dead!"
The teenage girl froze, eyes wide in shock hearing those words. No! Not her!
"Sis‼" yelled Jim and Tim in unison. As with one mind four M249 automatic rifles, one in each of their hands, lifted as the burly twins stepped out into the corridor intersection side by side. "Bastaaaarrrrrdddds‼" stereo shouts degraded into wordless guttural cries of agony as they proceeded to cut loose a deadly barrage of high-speed lead.
"We need some of her DNA!" Wade rumbled.
Without thought Ron scrambled low, "I'm all over that!" With monkey-like mobility he disappeared low around the corner as the former Tweebs only incidentally provided covering fire. It was doubtful they even noticed the blond, so lost were they in their pain.
"Keep moving!" the black giant bodily picked the girl up and, tucking her under his arm, ran for the distant end of the tunnel, the others following suit. "Hurry and get that door open Doctor!" he yelled to the pair at the corridor's dead end where a bespectacled black man worked with a security panel.
Numbed to the core of her soul, the teen could do little more than watch the legs and feet of the former webmaster and the rest of the pitiful remnant of the Resistance cover ground to a destination that no longer held any meaning.
All is lost! Our last hope against the Supreme One… gone!
Less than an hour ago they still had that hope…
The afternoon heat laid like a heavy blanket across the New Mexico desert in Chibola County, about forty miles southwest of Albuquerque. Hidden among the mesas and other towering wind-formed sandstone structures to be found along either side of Indian Route 55, sits a former military base that used to be home to an ICBM missile silo. Decommissioned sometime after the implementation of START, the STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union signed in 1992. With only the weather worn hulks of a couple of Cadillac-Gage Three Hundred Series six-by-six Light Armored Vehicles left over to hint at the former use of the place, the base remained empty and unused ever since.
As far as the general public knew.
The stillness of the afternoon was shattered as a low tremble in the ground built in intensity. Peculiarly localized storm clouds formed only a couple hundred feet above a remarkably well maintained double helipad, each half marked by crisscrossed circles painted in vivid yellow. Small visible bolts of energy known as St Elmo's Fire danced about them as its rumbling mass grew until the thin bolts started striking the ground with increasing frequency. Finally, with a resounding thunderclap it began to rain.
Only what struck the manicured asphalt surface was not water.
As if an unseen giant was shaking pieces of a huge three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle out onto the ground, minute but easily visible hunks of matter fell from the darkly roiling clouds. However, unlike a spilled time-consuming hobby, the components fell into place, the puzzle reassembling itself.
Or rather, themselves.
All the while the cascading nuggets of mass rapidly accumulated and collated, taking form as several people, it was readily obvious they were alive. Even before the reconstruction was complete, excruciating pain could be seen and felt. Tortured wails, at first only half heard like distant and ghostly lost souls, grew louder and firmer as the process neared its completion until in less than a minute a dozen and a half people and a hairless pink rodent in a miniature breastplate lay twitching on the tarmac, groaning and gasping raggedly for breath. With another clap of thunder the cloud of energy dissipated, resealing the wormhole opened by the quantum tunneler. It was easy to see which of the group was used to the method of transportation, and which were not.
The first on his feet was a gruff and serious looking man whose very bearing screamed military. Still in pain, he nonetheless scanned the area three-sixty, his scuffed and scratched M-16 aimed wherever his eyes did.
"R… re… report Gunny," a woman barked with an authoritative voice as she made to her knees. She too scanned the immediate area, her left eye blinking away tears while her right, set in a metallic half mask, glowed an electrically brilliant blue.
"No sign of the enemy Colonel," he replied.
"Mr Barken," she shook her head, "I know you prefer to keep your rank, but as both WJ and now the Resistance are no more, I'm back to plain ol' Ms Direction."
"You earned both the position and my respect, so pardon me ma'am if I continue to call you by your rank, Colonel."
Still on the ground, a slender Mediterranean man was checking his weapons instead of trying to get up right away. He observed, "So far we're alone. The tunnel closed before any could follow."
"Hicka-bicka-boo!" crowed one of a set of large identical men.
The other echoed his enthusiasm with a nod, "Hooo-Sha!"
"It will not be long before they'll be able to follow us," stated a man with a goatee. He was still laying on his back, breathing hard. He too cast his gaze about their surroundings, the strapless eye-patch covering his left eye flipping up to reveal a sophisticated sensor array underneath. "The next wormhole advent is in but twenty-nine minutes. It broaches from three timelines away from where we started. The good news is that currently there are no direct or semi-direct conjunctions between them. The bad is, if they push themselves, there's a roundabout course of seven wormholes that'll let them just make it."
"¡Mãe de Deus!" Mother of God! exclaimed the dark-haired Hispanic girl just pulling herself up. "Seven of that? Back-to-back?"
"Eight, counting the final adit here," he corrected.
"No way!"
"Way Zita," Kim Possible assured, already steady on her feet, brushing herself off. She then assisted a tall slender woman upright and whispered, "You okay Mom?" The older redhead nodded. With a gasp she spotted and hurried to aid another slight built redheaded teen still groaning on her side, already in medic mode.
"Yeah," snarked a woman with olive eyes and long black hair as she helped up the other redhead, hugging her dearly and dismissing Ann. "The Supreme One," despite wearing colors indicating she used to be among the tyrant's forces, she spat the name, "makes her generals practically sleep in agony booths and kills whoever so much as flinches during a transit."
A young man built like a football player remarked, "Real nice lady that."
"Oh you don't know the half of it Brick," Ron hopped to his feet in one smooth motion. "She's Ruthless Incarnate." He moved to a position between Zita and a Japanese girl dressed all in black, offering a hand to each, "And how're my two spe-si-al ladies doing after that wringer?"
"Sinto-me como merda," I feel like shit, complained Zita, for once not smiling at his 'special' joke, but taking his hand gratefully. "How about you Yori?"
"Oh Zita, you with your South American colorful language," the ninja smiled, taking the other proffered hand, "have, how do you say, 'hit me on the head'?"
"'It', Yor," the blond corrected as he easily boosted them to upright positions before enfolding both into a three-way embrace. "Hit 'it' on the head," he finished as both kissed him lovingly on opposite cheeks. "Now, you two kiss… oww!" both smacked the back of his head in practiced unison.
The black giant, Wade, checked a wrist-mounted device. He addressed the teen leader, "Right on target. Themis Universe, two weeks after your graduation."
"Wow, practically the day we left," Ron remarked.
"Practically the minute," the genius chuckled. "That's quantum mechanics for you. You can't double exist in your native universe at the same time, so this was the earliest that a wormhole would allow us… you… to arrive."
The redhead shook her head at the complexities of cross-dimensional travel between alternate universes. Nothing taught in high school even remotely covered the situation. The closest brush she had to this was the time the Pan Dimensional Vortex Inducer got its signals crossed with cable television. One of the Supreme One's earliest campaigns had been to round up and eradicate all copies, versions, individuals and research involved with the PDVI in an attempt to ensure she was the only one with control of crosstime travel.
Fortunately, while she concentrated her efforts there, Kim and the Resistance was able to smuggle the Quantum Tunneling technology out from under her nose. Something that rankled the woman to this day.
A perky blonde with straight hair in a bushy ponytail and melodious voice struggled to help up a teen with his lower body comprised of shiny metal, "Poor Felix. In a lot of pain? Wow you're heavy."
"Thanks Britina. Amazingly enough there's very little pain. It's just that the quantum transiting disrupts my cybernetic-neural interfaces for a few minutes."
In quick order the entire group were on their feet and taking stock of their situation and weapons. "We have to get moving," Kim Possible declared. "A lot of good people gave their lives to buy us the time we need…," she paused, emotion closing her throat.
The older Possible came over and laid a consoling hand on her shoulder. Blue eyes softened. "It's alright… Nana was practically my mother. Her courage and strength… gave us all purpose and drive. And in covering our retrea…," she too fought back tears.
Kim laid a hand atop her mother's, directing a gaze filled with steel on the group. "We must not allow their sacrifices be in vain. The clock is ticking folks. Our only hope lays in the next phase of this mission." She nodded to the olivine-skinned Mediterranean, "Agent Duz, your sole job is to protect Dr Freedman."
A man of few words, by way of acknowledgment Will clamped a hand about the older black scientist's upper arm.
"Over here!" called a clear deep voice. Rufus 4000 appeared a short distance off around the end of one of the hulking LAV-300s. He was on his hind legs and waving them over. When the group approached he led them down and around to a boxy concrete archway positioned under a sandstone overhang. It held what looked like a large armored metal garage door under a two line sign that read:
λ Black Mesa λ
Central Complex
Crowding the doorway, Will thrust his charge forward. "What makes you think this will even work?" the black man balked.
Ms Direction turned baleful eyes on him, one natural and angry, one artificial and unblinking. "You might not be the same Gordon Freeman that worked here, Doctor, but you are his idem. For all that security systems care, however, you are him. You memorized the codes, yes?" He was the sole surviving alternative analogue, or idem, of the black scientist Kim only knew as an advanced cyberneticist, yet who also turned out to have been a pivotal part of what went on in this place. When he nodded, Betty shoved him to the cement jamb with the access keypad, "Then get on with it."
"Twenty-one minutes to the next advent," the one-eyed man scanned the courtyard again as Freedman carefully started entering a long string of numbers into the digital lock.
Stepping to his side, Betty gave him a wry smile. "They won't be coming you know, right Sheldon?"
"Rest assured, the Supreme One will not give up this easily," he kept his eye and opened sensor on the direction which they came.
"Not her," she shook her head. "GLEE. What few of them remained faithful to you are either dead or being reeducated."
"The true Global Lawless Evil Empire was shattered a long time ago my dear sister," he sighed. "She saw it brought down even before assuming the mantle of Supreme One. My sole consolation is she turned on your own World Justice virtually right after."
"We're in!" Kim stated as the heavy door rolled upwards. An almost-imagined breeze wafted across their faces as air shifted inward.
"Oh dear, negative pressure," noted Ann. "That can't be good."
"What's that?" Britina asked. "Why's that?"
"Usually air pressure inside and outside a structure, like say your house, is equalized. The same inside and out," the surgeon explained. "But there are occasions you'll come across where that is not the case. The inside is intentionally kept at a different level than the outside. For example, it's a normal practice for hospitals to maintain positive pressure in some rooms or even entire wards."
Zita inquired, "Because why?"
"Mainly to keep out any airborne germs or contagions. With the difference in air pressure inside greater than outside, anytime doors are opened the airflow pushes outward keeping germs from getting in."
The younger redhead frowned. "So if positive pressure keeps germs out …," she looked at the ominous archway, nibbling her lip pensively.
The raven-haired woman at her side finished for her, "Negative pressure would keep them in."
"This place's been abandoned and sealed for nearly ten years," Kim spoke loudly. "Any contagion would've burned itself out by now, if that's even the reason. It could simply be a partial failure of the base's environmental systems. Either way we have little choice. Rufus take point. Mr B, back him up, please and thank you."
With the burly Gunnery Sergeant and genetically enhanced mole-rat leading the way, and the Direction siblings bringing up the rear, the rest in the middle fell into a habitual pecking order behind Kim as the group filed inside. Sheldon paused long enough with eye-patch flipped up to once more scan the staging area. Once done he ducked under the door rumbling closed, "Sixteen minutes left."
What they found inside was pretty much stereotypical for a secret research facility which appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry. Years of dust coated most surfaces despite the efforts of still circulating air. Using a series of schematics the Wades had hacked from antiquated achieves on half a dozen cross-temporal realities, he guided them along. Where all or most of the maps agreed in details the group moved with confidence, only pausing in places for him to compare them where they diverged. In this fashion they proceeded fairly quickly past the administrative areas. Moving deeper into the lower levels was trickier. Most of the power was minimal or out completely, with only critically key systems, like emergency lighting and environmental controls, still running. After ten years even they were failing in places.
Everywhere were signs of death and destruction. The only things alive were occasional rats and scores of bugs, predominately cockroaches, all of which scattered and scurried quickly from sight upon their intrusion. Soft speculations about what might have occurred were bandied about among those less inured to such experiences.
Thanks to the grown versions of Jim and Tim, lugging along a super compact and powerful generator they had built, and Doctor Freedman's voice, hand and retinal scans granting them access where needed, not much blocked their passage. Wisely however, they shunned the elevator systems, opting for the stairs.
They were five levels down, navigating their way carefully along the tracks of an elaborate subway-like transit tunnel, when Sheldon Direction called out, "Advent in… five… four… three… two… one… ." …
On the surface, a larger scaled repeat of the first group's appearance heralded the arrival of the enemy. Quickly the constituent components of the massed numbers of armed and armored forces and their equipment reconstituted in the courtyard, overflowing the helipads. Wearing uniforms reminiscent of their leader's signature catsuit, all but one lay writhing on the hard surface in muted agony.
No one knew how she did it since the discordant super-dimensional arrangement of the cross-temporal timelines defied anticipating the quantum spatial declinations of arrival, but the older catsuited woman with the platinum streak in her long flowing hair always landed on naught but her four-inch high-heeled feet. Despite the searing pain of the transferences – eight in total, averaging three minutes apart – she never flinched, never winced, never uttered so much as a whimper.
To do so would be weakness.
Not merely a display of weakness. Weakness itself. She had not once been weak in the past thirty-seven years – by her personal subjective accounting of time – since The Buffoon destroyed the Tempus Simia, opening a crosstime wormhole to a fateful – and fatal – encounter with herself.
Not a past version of herself. An entirely from-the-birth-up alternative aberration of herself. Successive events proved it a flawed copy whose very existence had been an affront to her sensibilities.
Killing it made her stronger.
Killing even more flawed abominations made her stronger still.
Even though wracked with pain, the troops about her struggled to their feet as swiftly as possible. The Supreme One allowed no more than three seconds from completion after transport to be on their feet. Some of the generals might stretch the recovery time to as much as five seconds, but never in her presence. Definitely not when she accompanied them. One among them, while having gotten upright within time, failed to suppress a groan.
The Supreme One gave no indication she heard, but the mousy-brown haired woman to her left nonetheless took no chances. Should it be the Supreme One had noticed and it not be handled…
Her own nervous system protesting even the blinking of her eyelids, the brunette swiftly drew one of her sidearms as she spun, placing a slug between the eyes of a weedy thin black man. Even though he was in the third row back, her aim had been impeccable. He collapsed while she inspected the rest of the ranks with narrowed eyes, nodding first in satisfaction, then to those on either side of the corpse to drag it aside. She re-holstered her weapon.
"Who was that Bonnie?" the Supreme One inquired as if asking who had been on the phone, no indication of strain to her voice.
"One of the Falsettos, Mistress," the sterned-faced general forced herself to reply in the same fashion. "I'm uncertain which. One of the younger ones."
"Ah yes. They're a weak strain," she commented. "I'd've them all killed outright but for their use as cannon fodder…
"She's here. I can feel her…, Bonnie, Moanique, Drew…, bring Kim Possible before me." She glanced from one general to another, eyes resting on the last, "Need I remind you she must be alive?
"Only I shall have the privilege of killing her. No one else!" The Supreme One snapped her fingers to dismiss them.
The three dropped momentarily to one knee, bowing heads to view the woman's feet. "As per your whim, Magnificent Mistress!" they called in unison. Then they stood and started barking orders, to which the soldiers moved in double-time, flowing around the Supreme One as if she a statue, to fan out in search of the installation's entrance… .
Deep down in the complex, the group felt an explosion. "Right on schedule," Sheldon commented to his formerly estranged sister. Her only answer was a tight-lipped nod. She called ahead, "Kim! Sheldon and I'll double back a couple levels up to hold them off as long as we can."
The redhead pivoted, the rest flowing around her as if she a statue. She locked eyes with both of their natural ones. They were so much like the Betty and Sheldon Directors of this line, if slightly different and older, that she had grown quite fond of them the past couple years. She only nodded in acceptance and gratitude. "Thank you for everything. Felix, go with them."
He waved, "You got it Kim. Good luck."
All knew they were really saying 'goodbye'. That the redhead was sending them to their deaths. For this was the last of the Resistance, the final hope for a thousand-fold universes… and its last desperate plan all hinged upon her. So many times she had saved the world – her world – with no more than a 'no big' and a 'so not the drama'. Only this was A Big. It was So the Drama. For what this mission entailed was more than simply saving the world.
She had to save all the worlds.
Kim only knew, if the Supreme One could subjugate more than a thousand, she could free them.
She had to.
She watched the cybernetically enhanced trio head back for the stairwell and the upper levels as the facility trembled again from distant explosions, dislodging showers of dust and dirt upon their heads.
Kim turned and picked up the pace to rejoin her team. "Agent Duz."
The older version of Will Du paused. This one was not as stuck up as the one she knew. At least, not anymore. "Commander?"
"Find a suitable vantage point to set up a backstop. You, Brick, and…," she scanned the thinning guerrillas. Her gaze fell upon the pony-tailed blonde and the confident way she stood with the butt of her huge rifle propped on a hip, "…Britina." The decisions were slightly harder as these were the same football and pop stars she knew, but favorites could not be played. "Mom, take charge of Dr Freedman."
All nodded, Duz already moving for a fortified location, checking his ammo supply. After the rest had moved from sight around a far bend in the transit tunnel, the trio sought the best places to make their last stands… .
Two levels above, the Direction Twins and Felix Renting waited behind squared-off concrete pillars. They knew it would not be long before the Supreme One's forces were upon them as there was a clear trail of disturbed dust from their initial passage. Sitting on the floor with their backs to the columns, weapons resting vertically between their knees, they listened to the distant sounds of the pursuers.
"Elizabeth," the bearded man whispered.
"Sheldon?"
"I just want to let you know how fun it was going up against you and World Justice."
A soft chuckle, "I'll admit to some glee in putting the smack on GLEE." A few beats of silence as they heard the tramping steps grow closer and for the nth time checked their armament.
"Shelly."
The man grunted. It had been forever since they used their reverse-gendered childhood names. He answered in kind, "Eli?"
"I'm sorry I never gave you the respect you deserved as the older twin." That elicited a stronger chuckle from him which almost broke into a full guffaw. "What's so funny?"
"Here I thought our chances of living past the next five minutes as good as a 'snowball's chance in hell', but you had to go and make it a complete nil by finally apologizing!" He chuckled louder and she joined in.
"Hate to interrupt the Hallmark and all, but here they come!" Felix hissed.
"Pépé…," Sheldon lifted his artificial right hand, clenching it into a fist while cybernetically taking inventory of its remaining armament, "This, is for you… ." …
Down below, the next set of defenders heard a few minutes of distant gunfire punctuated by a series of explosions. They understood in addition to dislodging even more detritus from overhead exactly what it signaled. The end of the three that had gone back. These three also accepted they would never again see the light of day, and in being so resigned, no longer felt fear.
After all, what price freedom?
Laying on their stomachs shoulder to shoulder on a staging platform behind a pile of rubble from a collapsed portion of ceiling, Britina cocked her rifle and muttered, "Y'know, my only regret is I never had time for a steady boyfriend."
Rick 'The Brick' Flagg used his smoothest Cool Jock tone, "I hear ya babe. I regret never banging a rock star."
"Oh Brick…," she replied in a sweet voice, her eyelashes aflutter.
"Yeah babe?"
"You do know I've a big gun, right?"
"So then that'd be a 'no'?"
"Here they come," Will warned… .
The Supreme One, after giving them time to engage the pitiful remnant of the puny resistance, finally moved to follow her shock-troopers. She moved now for the same reason she had stayed back.
Boredom.
With each version of Kim killed, another of the timelines fell. With so much of the Crosstime Multiverse firmly under her thumb, her power had grown exponentially. For her to take immediate and direct action was neither fun nor seemly for one of her station and power. The only reason why she accompanied this engagement was to be on hand when the last, and arguably the greatest, of the Kims – Kim Possible – was taken down. The young woman had been a thorn in her side the entire past two years, and proved harder to kill than a New York cockroach. Time after time the infuriatingly elusive redhead slipped through her clutches.
Today would see that end.
The catsuited woman moved in a straight line for the base's entryway with a casual sashay, her long cape billowing behind her. When she came to the first of the two decrepit military vehicles she altered her path not one iota. Instead she reached out her left hand and, with seemingly no more effort than flicking a fly, flipped the sixteen ton vehicle out of her way and onto its back with but a twist of her wrist!
The Supreme One never deviates for anybody or anything. Nothing must stand in her way. Instead all shall give way before her.
A bump with her booted toe sent the second six-by-six skidding about on its wheels, the dried out rubber protesting. When she came to the shredded remains of the blast doors she did not even bow her head to avoid the sharp ragged edges. Called forth, her glow's power – of which she had learned ever more tricks over the years – enveloped her entire body. The jagged metal bent away from her form as she sauntered through in search of those that sought to elude her… .
Down below, those remaining dozen people, and mole-rat, all paused momentarily at the closeness of the latest exchange of gunfire. Even as it continued to echo along the transit tube, Kim turned to survey the faces about her. They were being whittled away. "Mr B… Yori… Zita…," she pointed, unable to finish the order.
There was no need.
The rest of the group resumed the press onward with the four-thousandth hyper-evolved clone of a Rufus resuming point. "It was an honor to have known and served under you. Godspeed," the idem of the man she had known most of her school years barked in full military mode. With the most stiff-backed drawn-to-full-height salute he could pull off, he waited until the redhead returned it just as formally before jogging back up the tracks to where a subway car sat immobile, jumped from the rails.
"Sim." … "Hai, Kim-chan," the two women acknowledged before turning to where their boyfriend waited with open arms. Embracing each other tightly, the ménage à trois shared gentle loving kisses and soft tearful whispers. Not her intention to intrude or eavesdrop, Kim nonetheless could hear things like Spanish Rose, Lotus Blossom, and Monkeyshine before they broke apart, each suddenly instilled with the strength of the other two. Hand and hand the young women ran back to where the gunnery sergeant had climbed into the car.
The sounds of warfare from farther up the line had gone silent. The enemy was gaining on them way too fast. They only had to follow, while Kim's group had to take precious time at security checkpoints for Freedman to do his thing.
After a shared look, for I'm sorry was too… insufficient… a sentiment to put in words right then, the companions moved on. Kim Possible had to wonder if she was worth the faith these people placed in her, and humbled by the obvious answer from their actions. The tunnel bent to the left once again. Another station platform lay up ahead and the pair of woman and teen waved them on upon seeing them… .
Having pried the door in the forward end of the subway car half open, Stephen Barken had just finished carefully setting up his barrel-mounted tripod Minimi M249, a spare customized five-hundred round box of belt ammo to the left and his M-16 laid to his right, when the lead edge of the Supreme One's forces turned the far bend. With a prolonged yell he pulled the trigger and never let up.
The three generals leading the assault flung themselves low and to opposite sides of the tube as hell was rained over their heads. The air filled with smoke, explosions, and debris as the ammo belt had an eclectic mix of tracer, incendiary, and high-energy explosive shells interspersing the regular. However in less than a minute the leaden hailstorm stopped as all five hundred rounds had been depleted. It was not much of a respite as Barken was fast in his change of ammo boxes, and in less than thirty seconds opened up again to mow even more of them down.
"Cannon fodder indeed!" yelled Lipskin from the center of the tracks. "This expenditure of life is inexcusable!"
From where she lay to his left behind a couple torn bodies of troopers, Bonnie called back, eyes narrowed but not about to lift her head to impale him with them, "Are you criticizing the Supreme One?"
"Yeah Blue Boy!" added the dark-skinned woman across the tracks. "You'd best be careful, y'knows you're already on thin ice with her over the Probable Incident!"
This time they were ready when the firestorm ended. Bonnie popped her head and arm over the sheltering corpse and, with the same proficiency she showed up in the courtyard, squeezed off a single between-the-eyes shot. Barken slumped over his weapon.
The generals and soldiers barely had time to dust themselves off before the coordinated pair of co-lovers swept from either side of the tram car to plunge amidst them with the fearlessness of the condemned. Yori wielded the Lotus Blade, Zita a pair of tessen war fans gifted her by the other. The partners slashed wildly high and low, giving no quarter and expecting none from lackeys of the Supreme One.
The Japanese girl moved with the unpredictable motions of Yojinobori Saru, Scrambling Monkey, a style in which one's feet rarely touched the ground once engaging opponents. She kicked from one soldier to another and even utilized the walls where available, her long katana piercing chests and taking heads with abandon. The Brazilian's dance-like Capoeira style kept her head mostly low to the ground where her fans slashed left and right while her feet kicked high. As a team they were truly impressive, racking up dozens of kills each within minutes, the battle against overwhelming numbers nearly of Hollywood-epic proportions.
The moment their backs touched, however, both knew they had reached the end. With no more room to maneuver without risking the other's life, they were easy targets for the brunette and black generals' precision aims.
"Well, what're you goofs waiting for?" railed the mousy-haired woman. "Go after them! We've almost caught up!"
When the majority of the faces expressed weariness, Moanique jump-started their motivations with a quiet, "You know, by now the Supreme One's on her way down here expecting results." The still mobile and less critically wounded of the army surged about them with renewed vigor. The two women leaders remained to 'deal with' the less fortunate… .
Kim and Ron followed several paces behind the woman and other redhead, all racing to catch up to the group. Shots began to ping the walls about them as the leading soldiers gained on them. "Keep going!" shouted the young woman, spinning about to level her M-16 on the pursuers.
The blond boy had just rounded the corner where the corridor T'ed into another when she was hit. Stunned and spun about by the impact, several more riddled her body, sending the rifle flying along with the hand which held it, shredding and separating huge hunks of her away.
The redheaded hero did not know which surprised her more. That she was hit, or that she had failed everyone.
As her body hit the floor she could hear Ron cry out as if from a long ways off, "She's dead! Kim Possible is dead!" Followed a moment latter by "Bastaaaarrrrrdddds‼" and automatic fire whizzing past her sight, frozen on the ceiling.
A seeming eternity later her best friend's worried face stared into hers. "Kim," she could barely hear him but was uncertain if it was because she was dying or just from the loudness of the gunfire. Relieved that she was in fact not dead, the boy gripped her under the arms to pull her to safety, "Hang on KP! I'll get you to safety!"
"Aahhrrhh‼" she cried out in agony. "No, Ron… go on, I…I'm… done…," she gasped, looking up into a face flowing more tears than when he parted from his lovers.
"No… No Kim… it can't end like this!" he shook his head. "We need you!"
"N…n…no… n…nee on…only…," she gestured to the side with the stump of her arm where her right hand lay, "D…D…N…, th… ot…ther on…one… ." He shook his head, barely able to see through his tears and breaking heart. "G…o…, I…I lov…," her voice choked off as she was wracked with pain. "Go‼"
With a wail of anguish so primal it sounded simian, Ron rolled across the body of his best friend since Pre-K, who stupidly had to wait until her dying moments to admit her true feelings for him. Snatching up her severed hand he scampered low to the floor under the Tweebs' mindlessly aimed torrent of bullets. At that moment the Supreme One's forces rallied themselves enough to return fire.
A much greater stream of projectiles painted the wall behind them with holes the color of their own blood, the huge twins a-dance, unable to fall so long as the hailstorm continued. Even the blond Monkey Master was ripped apart. His last act before his life fled was to throw the bloody hand into the corridor he almost had gained, where Rufus 4000 stood with eyes wide.
Snatching up the grisly mass of vital DNA in his teeth, he did something most hyper-evolved naked mole-rats were loath to do.
Run on all fours.
"Come on Rufus!" The barrel-chested Wade yelled from inside the opened room at the end. Suddenly the four-foot thick vault-like door began to swing close. The black giant turned, "What are you doing?"
Dr Gordon Freedman's eyes were wide with fear, "They're almost on us!"
"Rufus-4K is still out there!" he snatched the thin older man by the shoulders, "He has Possible's DNA!"
"He can make it!"
"Stop the door!" Wade shook him. The heavy door tinged with gunfire.
"He'll make it!"
The cloned rodent squeezed into the rapidly dwindling space. Scampering as fast as he could, he quickly realized had he been an exact duplicate of his smaller namesake he indeed would have made it. However his chest, having been enhanced to allow larger lungs, diaphragm, and vocal apparatus to endow him with speech, made his form much too large. He spat the hand through the tight space. "Here! Godspee…eeeeeeeeeek‼‼"
The horrendous screeching squawk and crushing of bones was cut short by the thoomb! of the vault sealing tight. Ann threw a hand to her mouth, turning to empty her stomach in a nearby corner.
Wade picked the scrawny scientist up by the front of his shirt. "MURDERER‼" he yelled in his face at the top of his impressive lungs. He threw the man against a wall, where he slid to the floor. Wade pointed at him, "You. Don't. Move." The large genius spared a moment's silence for the latest of them to fall. Rufus 4000 had time and again proven himself a valuable asset, and while all in the Resistance accepted the possibility of death, that was no way for anyone to die.
He looked about, taking in first the other surviving members of the defunct resistance, then the hermetically sealed lab. Three walls were lined with complex looking machines and consoles, the forth was half glass looking onto another chamber; a cubical space with two large conical structures, one rising from the floor, the other from the ceiling.
"We got the genny hooked up," the woman with long raven-black tresses turned. "Systems are booting, and according to the notes you provided should be online in seven min." Her redheaded companion was sitting in one of the monitoring seats, nearly catatonic, muttering repeatedly, "All is lost… all is lost… ." …
The Supreme One had finally made it to where Kim Possible's shattered body lay rapidly draining of life. She rushed for the first time in a long while as soon as she saw the broken redhead. Kneeling, she felt at the younger woman's throat for a pulse.
Still alive!
If barely.
"Kim," she spoke, almost tenderly, slapping the other's face. "Kim Possible! Come on Kimmie, I know you. You're too stubborn to die just yet."
The eyelids of the broken form fluttered half open. Matching green eyes locked. "Su…Supre… Onnn…," Kim rasped.
A chuckle, "Come now, I think you can use my name."
"…yu… lo…lo…st tha… right…," blood bubbled on her lips. There was not much time left.
Straddling her, the Supreme One leaned over until their noses nearly touched. "You know, different circumstances and you could have been me."
The hero looked into the time-weathered mirror image of her own face. With every strength left in her body she spat a bloody wad in the other redhead's face. It hit the left cheek just under the matching olive eye. "…I'l… ne…ver be… uuu… ."
Having already risked the girl dying before she could do it herself and thereby absorb her energy, the older Kim sighed. Reaching out a white and blue covered hand she snapped the aberration's neck.
"You're right about that. You'll never be me… ."
All about the corridor energy began to build up. Lightening-like coronal discharges played about the walls, floor and ceiling. What lights still worked shattered one by one. The concrete underfoot cracked. Most of the discharges were localized between the forms of the two women. The generals stood back, having seen this time and again.
The Supreme One sat up, tossing back her waist-long mane of red hair, arms spread wide. Her pose on Kim's body reminiscent of a sexual position, the frequency and intensity of the energy transfer increased. When the thinnest of streamers connected them by the mouth, a low passionate moan slipped from her lips. It built into a cry of sheer orgasmic ecstasy as Kim Possible's life force grew in thickness and strength until both crescendoed, then swiftly dissipated.
For long moments the Supreme One held that pose, as if waiting for something more.
"NO‼" she cried, her voice now reverberating with nearly untold power. "Something's wrong! With the last of the Kims I was to be a GOD!" With a frown she concentrated, testing the Æther. "There's another! But how?"
The white and blue catsuited redhead stood with an ease almost akin to levitation. "I personally killed every Kim possible… with the… exception of…," slow realization dawned on her features.
"With the exception of Kim Probable…!" she spun angrily about to face her blue-skinned general who, due to the vagaries of crosstime, was the same age as her. "Lipskin‼" The scrawny general shivered in fear, his eyes casting about for an escape from the woman's building fury, which was becoming nearly tangible in the enclosed area. Bonnie and Moanique surreptitiously stepped away from his vicinity.
"You told me: She. Was. DEAD!" the red glow of her chi power snapped to life, her hair so energized it stood out away from her body. She stalked close to the traitor. "Disintegrated! An accident, Is what. You. SAID!"
Suddenly filled with the fatalism encountered by the thousands of doomed resistance fighters who had gone to their deaths willingly, and with great conviction, Drew Lipskin finally found his backbone. He stood straight for one of the few times in his life and stared his death in the eyes with a sneer. "That's right! It was no accident. I let her go. Sent her away with my lieutenant and faked their deaths. It might have cost the lives of nearly my entire regiment, but it was worth it!"
"Why Drew?" she asked, abruptly ever so calm. A tone those closest to her knew to fear.
"You're kidding, right?" he returned. "There's a reason why the multiverse exists, but more importantly, a reason why it's populated with so many idems of everyone. The human brain requires thousands of synapses to process one thought. It can afford to lose a few without danger to the entire organism. However the more synapses that get fried, the greater the chance of inducing a stroke. What you're doing is nothing short of risking the life of the universe. Should you ever be the sole representation of your strain of idems, the universe could be destroyed!"
"Oh please!" scoffed the older Kim, moving closer. Her voice was losing its reverberant quality from the initial high of the power up, "You're a Mind of Goddist? That drivel doesn't even make any sense!"
"You subscribe to the belief you'll become a god, so why is it so far fetched?" he shot back.
She waved a dismissive hand, "Whatev's. Now how was it I was unable to sens…," she looked back at Kim Possible's body. "Of course. You sent her to stay as close to Possible as possible. It might have increased my ability to sense them, but not how many. For once, clever."
Now close enough, the redhead reached out her glowing hand and clamped it to the top of his head. Stiffening in a silent scream, his limbs quivered as if in seizure. Eyes rolled back, red energy streaming from them, his mouth, ears, and every large orifice in his body, and still she held on to him. She focused energy into him until within seconds his skeleton was incandescent, visible through blue flesh and white uniform. Hair curled and frizzled, skin dried, charred, and crinkled. Steam and the odor of cooking meat rose from him, and still she poured enough power into him to boil an elephant. Only after a full minute did she release him. The corpse fell onto its back with a meaty thud, the skeleton still energized to incandescence shattering like glass.
Cape swirling, the Supreme One pivoted dismissively from the duplicitous general. "So, where are they?"
Not that it was required under these circumstances, but taking no chances her displeasure might seek another target, both brunette and chocolate-skinned generals fell to one knee before her, a fist resting on the floor to support them, looking no higher than her ankles.
"Supreme One, Magnificent Mistress," Bonnie spoke. If there was one thing she knew, it was kissing up. She had learned it in her youth from everyone who had wanted favors from the Rockweller family, and having taken it as the Kissee, it was easy for her to dish it out as the Kisser. Especially if it kept her alive. "The last of them have sealed themselves in a lab at the end of the corridor behind a steal door easily three to five feet thick."
"Hmm," The Supreme One considered the options. Glancing at the highly perforated body of Kim Possible she mused that Lipskin, who had taken point from the other two, must have given the order to shoot her down. A desperate attempt to steal from her the opportunity to deliver the deathblow herself and deprive her of being receptacle to the younger woman's life-force, instead of it dissipating upon the Æther. So while on the one hand she could not entirely fault her troopers for following orders, on the other hand all knew her explicitly stated standing orders concerning Kims.
She could, therefore, fault them for not following her orders.
"Have the troops work on cutting through. And set explosives."
"Yes, Magnificent Mistress!" both said in practiced unison, then rose to convey the orders. The relieved soldiers moved in double-time. The smarter of them had also reasoned on their culpability in the mortal wounding of the Supreme One's idem, but figured that since she still managed to collect the energy she sought and, having vented her ire upon the traitorous general, forgiven them. At the very least, in her desire to get at the Last Kim, she had forgotten them. So it was that none of them noticed the white and blue catsuited woman quietly hold back her remaining generals and a few they selected as not among the shooting party… .
Inside the lab, the powerful portable generator built by Wade and the Possible Twins was powering nearly everything with the exception of the Anti-Mass Spectrometer in the other chamber. It, however, was powered by something called the Lambda Core which was still putting out power. It only needed the control room's systems to channel it into the AMS.
"What's this going to do again Nerdlinger?" the ravenhead asked again.
"Once I load in the programs and mods compiled from everything we could find in other lines, this device will perform a controlled resonance cascade which will open an adjunct to a parallel timeline." the giant computer geek responded absently while he worked.
"Right, like we don't have enough timeline problems to deal with."
"You know the difference. Paratime has an orderly parallel structure, unlike chaotic crosstime. We have to launch from the Themis Universe because between Kims Possible and Probable, this was the only facility in any semblance of working order."
She sounded skeptical, "And there's more Kim Possibles in this new set of brave new worlds?"
"An infinite number of them," the computer whiz nodded. "More than enough to be able to handle the Supreme One."
"Still sounds dangerously theoretical to me." She cocked a questioning eyebrow, "And Possible's DNA was for…?"
"For priming the aperture device's seek functions." Ann had recovered enough to handle, if with great distaste, her daughter's hand. Intellectually she knew she was in shock about Kim's death and running on autopilot, but if there was to be any hope for restoring the Combined Crosstimes Consortium, she could not afford to slow down. She had been working at a station across the room. "Okay, that's it," Ann hefted what looked like a small flip cellphone. "The aperture device's targeting system has been calibrated with…," she choked briefly, "…the proper DNA."
"I'm sorry Mrs Dr Possible," Wade started uneasily, "She was the bravest woman I'd ever known. The bravest and greatest of any of the Kims."
The woman's lips tried to smile, but if her rimming eyes were any indication, it would be a while before they ever would again. She spoke with a vehemence, "It's vital her sacrifice not be in vain."
"Then it falls to us to complete the mission. Time to crank this sucker up," the other woman cracked her knuckles… .
Outside in the corridor, once most of the Supreme One's forces, the ones she had neither forgiven nor forgotten, were busily working on setting large yield charges at the vault-like door, she stepped out into the T-junction where the idems of her tweeby brothers had made their last stand.
Cupping her hands with widely splayed fingers in front of her chest, she marshaled her power. Once an initial fuzzily glowing ball formed, she started the focusing mantra that would summon forth more. The difference between the energies she was about to unleash, compared to what she used to fry Drew Lipskin, was the difference between a match and a flamethrower.
"KAaaaaaa'MEeeeeee…," the ball of chi sharpened it's boundaries, no longer fuzzy, but as defined as a bowling ball. The men and women of her forces looked about, suddenly realizing the fate about to befall them.
"…HAaaaaaa'MEeeeeee…," the sphere expanded to twice its girth as visible chi power was drawn from the surroundings and the very air, the red glow intensifying to the point its brilliance dispelled all shadows in the hallway except for what it itself cast of the redhead's body. Bonnie and Moanique already had their welder's mask quality darkened glasses in place. Some of the soldiers dared to open fire on the woman, but the growing powerball both attracted and incinerated the bullets.
"…HHHHAAAAAAAA‼‼‼"
With a shoving gesture, the redheaded woman released the pent up power the length of the corridor. It was as if, were she a spotlight, the red energy was her beam. Or perhaps a human laser.
Removing their arc-shades, the two generals whistled at what their mistress had wrought. The hallway was scoured clear of any and all debris, including the paint on the walls. Certainly nothing human remained. They were uncertain where the beam had stopped. Not at the door, that much was certain as they could see the lab beyond where it had been mounted, the wall past it, several chambers further on, and a good portion of the mountain the complex was carved into.
Not that they were at all surprised by the display. On the few timelines, including this one, where the alien Lorwardians attempted to invade, they had watched as the Supreme One Kamehameha'ed the crafts out of orbit from the ground.
"WADE!" Ann cried in the aftermath of the beam's passage. He had been on his way to discuss something with Freedman, and thus immediately behind the door at the crucial moment. The black scientist's eyes were wide with how close he had come to being hit as well.
"Time to go!" the dark haired woman steered the redheaded teenager from the chair she had been sitting in and for the door between the chambers where stood a swirling upright disk in the air at the Anti-Mass Spectrometer's focal point. "Come on Ann!"
The older Possible threw the hand-held portal device across the room before bending to retrieve one of the guns scattered about. She caught it easily. The two locked eyes, olive and blue. Each nodded in understanding. "This is for my Kimmie, you BITCHES!" the normally genteel surgeon screamed, opening fire. She only got off seven shots before she was riddled with effectively selective return fire, one between the eyes included.
The ravenhead paused in closing the adjoining door as the white and blue catsuited Kim sauntered into the lab, followed by her minions, "You heartless bitch! You killed Kim's mom!"
An indifferent shrug, "Ce que sera," Whatever(will be), "Wasn't my mother… . You've lost Lieutenant. Surrender my idem. It's time for me to become God."
"Never, bitch!" she slammed the door and gave the locking wheel a good spin. Then she welded it with a blast of green plasma. Just as soon as she had, the metal started to glow red, but she knew they had a few moments as the other dared not unleash another Kamehameha, even if she was rejuvenated enough to do so. That much raw power would incinerate all in the chamber, and she would not have her beloved final step to godhood.
"Kimmie!" she slapped the unresponsive girl's face a few times. "Time to snap out of it!" when that failed, she leaned in and kissed the redheaded teen. Deeply and with feeling. Once she felt the girl respond in kind, she pulled apart.
"Shégo?" the teen blinked. "What's going on?"
The pale green woman pointed to the floating disk. From the front it looked for all the world like the eye of a tornado laying on its side, but from the backside it was virtually invisible. "Time to go! We've a mission to complete!" She shoved two devices into her hands. "The portal opener and Possible's old PDA Kimmunicator. Wade wasn't sure if it will actually, y'know, 'Kimmune', but its data area is loaded with all the information and tutorials you'll need, plus he's reasonably certain it will be able to piggy back on any existing Kimmunicator cellphone lines."
"What's the use? She's dead Shégo. Kim Possible's dead!" Kimmie shook her head.
"Look, I know you had a serious, if kinda spooky, girl crush on her," the former minion tipped her chin up to look her in the eyes. "She'd want you to complete it."
The redhead shook her head, "There's no hope left. The mission's nothing without Kim Possible!"
Shégo shook her former part-time nemesis by the shoulders, "Kitten, snap out of it!" She pointed at the portal, "Through there's every hope!" The door's locking mechanism falling off with a clang said time had run out. She shoved the girl towards the aperture.
"Through there's every Kim Possible!"
The last thing Kim Probable saw as she stumbled backwards into the swirling dimensional portal was her girlfriend, hands glowing green, tossing plasma at all the delicate equipment in the AMS chamber… .
Notes: Well, here is yet another result of an Evil Nazi Plotbunny. The nature of the multiverses involved, there are at least two, will be explained as we go along. Yes, technically, objectively, and by definition ALL aspects of different multiverses are in fact ONE Multi-verse. The differences, for the purposes of EKP, is to be found in the subjective method of travel between them… ah, more will be explained next chapter and as we go along.
This chapter started in the Crosstime Multiverse™®. It is very similar to that of Jet Li's The One, as is the basic motivations of the Supreme One. One vital difference though is that the energy of the idems, or alternate selves, are not shared between them. Instead the gathering of energy is closer to that of Highlander. Also like The One, the idems have different names, which for the major part is limited mostly to their last names, such as Possible/Probable, Lipsky/Lipskin, Rockwaller/Rockweller, etc. That's not to say I won't get creative now and then, like with Moanique. Oh, and yes, Rufus 4000 was not a typo.
The crossline seen in this chapter was NOT the canon one from the show. It was almost identical right up until, as noted, graduation when the invasion should have happened, but was put down before it could start. As for the idems of familiar faces, I had a little fun with some of them. The interaction between Betty and Sheldon came from out of a pleasant nowhere, and I've particularly became enamored with Ron's triad. I've always fancied Zita as a runner up for Ron's affections, after Yori. The girls' fight scene was filled with plenty of potential, so I just might carry that relationship into one or two of my other fics. I did not spend much time with any of these characters as the point was for everyone to die in order to emphasize how ruthless the Supreme One and her oppression is.
Oh! As I was writing EKP it spawned a side-quel, or companion, story to take place while this one goes on, fully set in the crosstime lines. If you love Tara, you won't want to miss it, so keep an eye out for Tara Royalé!
Chapter One is longer than my usual target lengths of about 6000 words, but there was just no place to properly break the story, and I wanted this origin to be complete. If you haven't already noticed, Kim Probable is not a redress of Kim Possible with a different name, there is a major deviation in personality as well. Rest assured while this is only the beginning, it is not just the story of Kim Probable, but indeed the story of Every Kim Possible…
Enjoy the ride.