KEVIN MARX
by mileslacey
(Juche)
CHAPTER ONE
February 2009
It took nearly three hours before the construction crew was able to break their way onto the main floor of the mountain lair. When they did so they burst into a rubble strewn room that reminded them of the bridge of a ship because of the way the huge glass and picture windows were arranged and the layout of the various tables and desks. For this reason they nicknamed it the Enterprise Mark II.
A few hours later a tall, grey skinned man with grey eyes found himself standing in the middle of the room, surveying the destruction. His black leather hiking boots crunched on the broken glass and concrete chunks strewn across the floor of the long abandoned lair. A shiver ran down his spine when he saw it because the layout of the main floor of this lair was too much like the smashed up bridge of his ship after the Lorwardians had dealt to it. Only the twisted wreckage that had been a doomsday device and the smashed glass containers with vines growing out of them reminded him he was on terra firma. His name was Kevin Marx.
Strewn around the floor were papers and various notebooks. His inspection of a small sample of these papers revealed only the usual minutiae of an office. The notebooks contained technical drawings on how to modify or reverse engineer a device but little that could be called "original", apart from an occasional recipe interspersed between them. The author, whom he presumed was Drakken, was fond of something called Coco-Moo in particular. Like the device the notebooks were of little practical use to him.
Well, almost none.
One notebook caught his eye: a green and black one.
He picked it up from among the rubbish. Examining it he saw the characters キティの日記こんにちは etched on it. Pasted on it was the epitome of Japanese kitsch: a Hello Kitty picture. He idly flicked through the pages.
The diary was written in a childish type of Japanese which showed the writer could communicate competently in the language but not enough to be called fluent. A quick flick through the pages revealed little other than the usual stuff he would expect to read in any diary and the occasional sketch of a nude. Sometimes the nude was female, other times male, but never in a sexual context. They reminded him of the sketches in older medical textbooks: sterile and lifeless.
A thick piece of paper dropped out. The document was in both English and Japanese.
Picking it up from the floor he saw it was a birth certificate of a baby girl named Sharon Kazue Go, born in the city of Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, on September 11th, 1980. Her father was a Drill Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps by the name of Davis Schultz Adams and her mother was a clerk named Kazue Kaoru Go. A faint flicker of a smile crept across his lips. It didn't provide any new information. It merely confirmed what he already knew about a certain super hero turned villain sidekick.
Both the birth certificate and the diary were shoved into a backpack he always carried.
Reaching into his pocket he pulled out an iPhone and dialled a number. To his surprise he heard the phone ringing.
An Asian woman with very distinct cheekbones and freckles sprinkled across her face had walked in while he was flicking through the diary. Dressed in a black and white checkered shirt, a short black skirt and long black wool stockings with black leather boots she looked like the spitting image of an Asian movie cliché but her wardrobe was strictly practical. The room was bitterly cold. Her name was Chen Guiyang but she was known by her Anglicized name Tori.
He handed her the birth certificate from his backpack. 'Find me everything you know about her and her family.'
'Sharon Kazue Go? Isn't that Shego's real name?'
'Yes.'
'I thought you knew her brothers are Team Go from Go City.'
'I don't give a damn about her brothers. It's her parents I'm interested in. I know they were caught up in some sort of dodgy business when they were in Okinawa but I need to find out if there is anything in her background I can use.'
Their conversation was cut off by a construction worker calling out, 'Comrade Marx! We've found a room that you might want to take a look at!'
It was Tori who went in. Only moments after stepping inside what turned out to be a bedroom the roof caved in. Tori dived under the bathroom doorway. Thick dust enveloped her. It was a few minutes before the dust finally settled. The bedroom was cut off from the remainder of the lair by a slab of concrete. Her iPhone rang.
She answered, 'I'm fine. Dirty but fine. While I'm waiting for you guys to get me out I will check out the bedroom. I want to get into this girl's mind.'
Sitting down on the edge of the bed she was surprised to find it was made out of cotton linen rather than a more expensive material like silk. Considering her wealth this was quite a surprise. Using the light from her iPhone as a crude torch she used it to scan the room. The dressing table and drawers were both painted white. Mounted on the dressing table was a no nonsense rectangular mirror with no frame that had miraculously survived the roof collapse. Like everything else in the room it was strictly functional but also quite cheap. It showed a surprising practicality as it made no sense to buy expensive stuff just to have it destroyed when a lair was blown up.
Her dressing table and drawers contained the usual assorted stuff she'd expect any woman to have. The blouses, skirts and underwear were all from Club Banana. There were the usual tubes of lipstick and eyeliner. There were several unused condoms still in their wrappers and a few empty wrappers. This did at least dispel the persistant myth she was a lesbian. The perfumes were all non-alcohol based.
In one of the bottom drawers there was a Japanese passport in Shego's real name. Tucked inside it was about ¥50,000 in cash (roughly $USD496) and an outdated airline ticket to Naha, Okinawa. The only reading materials were trashy celebrity magazines, several Middleton High School yearbooks and a photo album with the captions written in Japanese. Some were of herself, her family and Drakken but most were of teenage super hero Kim Possible.
'Geez, does this woman have a fetish for this red haired girl or what?'
'Pardon, Miss Chen?' A worker asked as he stepped through a hidden emergency door.
Tori was startled but once she had regained her composure she stated, 'Once I've done my inspection you can clear away this rubbish.'
'Recycle everything?'
'Obviously.'
'Ma'am,' the worker said as he left the room, leaving the door open for light.
Tori walked over to the wardrobe and pulled open the doors. Inside there were six identical black and green Harlequin patterned body suits made of a very advanced material similar to Kevlar except that it was temperature controlled. Curious, she decided to change into one of the body suits in the bathroom. She was spooked somewhat by the way the suit moulded itself automatically to her body type, hugging every curve. It also gave her a freedom of movement that impressed her. And it was comfortable. When she accidently banged her knee against the door frame she was genuinely surprised by the fact she didn't feel it. It was as if the suit absorbed the blow. A smile crept across her lips. It did confirm what she had always believed but could never prove. It was the suit, not super powers, that gave her the ability to withstand blows that would've killed most people.
She changed back into her ordinary clothes.
The dresses in the wardrobe were all Club Banana. Like the body suits they were colored black, green or variations thereof. She didn't bother with them. Ditto with the woman's sizeable collection of boots.
She left the bedroom after stuffing the passport and money in her pocket. She called out to the worker who'd walked in on her earlier. 'Bag the body suits and send them to headquarters. Recycle the rest.'
'Yes, ma'am!'
She walked out the emergency door and past the workers who were in the process of digging their way back into the main part of the lair. Unlike the bedroom the main lair had no emergency exits for the practical reason that lairs were usually destroyed by explosions which created their own exits. After letting Marx know she was safe she returned to Middleton to deal with a more pressing problem.
