The Breaking of a Hero

Chapter 1: The Deal

Here's a question for you all: Who owns the rights to Kim Possible?

Is it a) the US State Department? b) Feudor? or c) the Disney Corporation?

No prices for getting it right, but hopefully your attention may have been drawn to the fact that this is an unauthorized non-profit piece of fan-fiction, written just for fun and not meant as a copyright infringement.

Everyone that is not an employee of the Disney Legal Departments are encouraged to thoroughly enjoy it, if, indeed, this sort of crap is your particular cup of tea.

If you do like it, please leave a review. Or, come to think of it, leave a review even if you do not like it, but have some constructive criticism.

Otherwise, just ignore it! You have been warned.

Thanks to Rshiel at deviantArt for beta-reading. Remaining errors are, of course, my own.

==#0#==

Three days after Kim Possible's twenty-first birthday, she was invited to a meeting with Dr. Elizabeth Director at Global Justice.

The meeting was at the Middleton Offices of the GJ, which was convenient since Kim was back home for the summer from the university in Biggerton.

The GJ office was in a rather anonymous building in the downtown business district. Kim was quite familiar with the offices and some of the people working there. It was far from the first time she had had meetings with Betty Director and other GJ operatives.

As usual, she had to cool her heels a bit in the outer office, but this time she was made a bit extra welcome and given coffee and cookies.

It all added to her expectations.

Having just turned 21 and getting invited to a meeting with a bit more hospitality than usual made her think that she was going to get some sort of offer to join the organisation. She was vaguely excited and somewhat proud that she apparently merited such treatment.

After just ten minutes or so, Betty Director opened her door and greeted her.

"Kimberly, welcome! I'm sorry to have kept you waiting! Please come in!"

"Thank you, Dr. Director. Nice to see you again!

Dr. Director showed Kim into her office. She didn't guide her to her desk, though, but to the small conference table in the back of the room. The place at the head of this table was already occupied by an elderly man, who didn't get up to shake hands.

"Kimberly, this is Mr. … eh … Smith from the government. He has a proposition for you."

And …

==#0#==

The meeting gave Kim a lot to think about.

She had been a bit surprised that the offer did not actually come from Global Justice, but she had to admit it was a generous and tempting proposal.

It did, however, come with its own set of restrictions and choices, and Kim wasn't entirely sure what to do,

She decided to walk home to get some time to marshal her thought. A quick lunch at the Middleton Mall food court, and the 45 minute walk itself wasn't enough to arrive at a decision, though. Also, she of course had to talk to Ron first, and to her parents. In general terms, that is, since the offer itself was so very top secret.

Luckily, she had been given the rest of the week before she had to give an answer.

Arriving at her parents' house, she let herself in with her key.

"Hi, Mum! I'm home!"

"In the kitchen, dear!"

Mrs. Dr. Possible was sitting at the kitchen table, a laptop before her and several stacks of notes and books around her. She was obviously working on her research and preparing a scientific paper for submission.

"So, how did it go, Kimmie?" Anne asked, looking up from the computer screen.

"Well, they did offer me some package deal, as we thought. I'll have to think a bit about it, though, before I decide."

"Don't rush it, dear. It's your future, after all!

"Yeah, hopefully. Listen, I'll just go up to my room and freshen up a bit, maybe rest a little, OK?"

"That's fine, dear. Just tell me if you're hungry or something." Her mother was already being absorbed back into her work.

Kim started off towards the attic room she still thought of as her room, even though she spent much more time in the dorm room she shared with Roxy at the Carmichael Hall of the Biggerton Institute of Technology; or the BIT-CH, as almost everyone called it.

All things considered, and despite her early misgivings, she enjoyed her time at college, but home was still Middleton to her.

A very surprising reason that campus life didn't suck, despite her having to be apart from Ron, was actually her room-mate. She would never have thought that hanging out with Bonnie Rockwaller would be in any way possible. Bonnie, however, had made some radical decisions and was an almost completely different person, hence her insistence that everyone call her Roxy instead of Bonnie, Bon-Bon or Rockwaller.

Kim still couldn't get her head around the transformation, although she was very grateful for it.

Bonnie, or rather Roxy, didn't like to talk about it. Kim, however, had gathered that she had tried her luck at an acting career, and spent the summer after graduation in Hollywood trying to get herself into some film or TV show. Probably, someone had pressured her to take the bedroom route to stardom, and Bonnie had freaked. Although Kim had no proof whatsoever, she suspected it could all have something to do with the mysterious accident of hot-shot producer Warner Piczar Fuchs, who had turned up at hospital with undisclosed injuries to the nether part of his body.

Anyway, Bonnie had made a u-turn. She now studied media, photography and music production at the BIT, and seemed set on approaching show-biz from behind the cameras instead.

She had sacrificed her long and elegantly polished nails to take up playing the guitar in an all-girl college band, she had cut her hair in a sort of tom-boy look, and she had started wearing clothes like khakis, plain t-shirts, sneakers and vests with lots of pockets, buckles and straps. She now looked more like a hot war-zone correspondent than a cat-walk fashion statement, and it suited her. Even better, her personality had mellowed drastically.

Well, Kim thought, the opportunity she had been given at the meeting today would, among other things, mean that she would have to quit the BIT, and that she would no longer have Roxy for a room-mate.

She decided she would have to call Roxy and talk this over, even though the man in Dr. Director's office had insisted she tell nobody about the top secret programme she had been invited to.

And, of course, she had to talk this through with Ron. Best friend since forever, trusty side-kick, boyfriend, fiancé and husband-to-be: he had to be a part of this decision no matter what the GJ and the government said.

Kim climbed the ladder up to her attic room, and immediately sensed something wrong.

There was somebody there.

Someone was lying on the bed, idly reading a magazine. The person was on her stomach, legs bent and feet kicking nonchalantly in the air. Her black, glossy hair spilled out over her back and pooled over the sheets around her shoulders. She lifted her sparkling emerald gaze from her reading and looked Kim in the eyes without saying anything.

To say that Kim was surprised would have been a serious understatement.

"Shego!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing in my room?"

==#0#==

/Author's note/ Yeah, that's it for now. Short cliff-hanger prologue. What is Shego doing in Kimmie's old room? What was the deal she was offered by the secretive Mr. Smith? What will happen now?

Stay tuned!

Sorry, by the way, for starting this when I had already begun an ambitiously grand adventure for Kim in "Noting to Lose". There was this other idea that popped up, though, and I couldn't deny it the limelight.

Hope I can juggle the two story lines at the same time, as well as any one-shots that might ambush me…

/Feudor/