Kim Possible was feeling extremely worn down. She and Ron had gotten a call from Wade – the third one that week alone - at around 7, just when she and Monique had gotten back from work at Club Banana (after cheer practice had ended) and had gone to the Middleton Library to study for their biology midterm the next day.

It had been the usual Drakken plot – a convoluted take-over-the-world scheme inherently flawed due to Drakken's lack of planning – with just a pinch of Monkey Fist thrown in at the end when he showed up at Drakken's lair (pre-explosion) with his monkey posse to demand the return of the fancy silverware that Drakken had 'borrowed' when Jack Hench came to dinner. Ron and Kim made their exit after ensuring that they had retrieved the whatsamijigat-of-the-day (some super-secret Project Y that the familiar forgetful scientists of Middleton had somehow let get stolen, yet again) and that Drakken and Monkey Fist were not posing a threat to anyone but themselves. As the teens rappelled down their daily cliff, they were intercepted by Shego. Kim, already feeling exhausted from the two women's 'workout' earlier that had left Kim's mission clothes tattered, sighed and waited for round II to begin. Ron imagined Kim and Shego exchanging blows on the face of the cliff and wasn't sure if that would be mildly arousing or if he should be concerned about Kim's safety. But Shego just passed them on their way down and muttered something about letting the guys work out their issues on their own and needing some retail therapy after a week holed up with Dr. D.

The mission itself wouldn't have been that bad had it not been for the travel time. Kim and Ron had caught a lift (a Goodyear blimp) at 7:15, arrived in Drakken's lair at an undisclosed location at a quarter to nine, and were still waiting for Wade's arranged pick-up, a UPS cargo plane, at 10:30. It was nearly one in the morning by the time they had gotten back to outskirts of the Lowerton/Middleton/Uppertown area (this time traveling with an overly nostalgic truck driver who frankly wouldn't quit blabbering about the good old days. Kim was too polite to interrupt, and Ron had a five-minute attention span). The truck driver dropped the pair off a few blocks away from Ron's house, and Kim and Ron trudged along in the chilly fall night, wearily lugging their gadget-laden backpacks behind them. Only Rufus seemed energetic, and that was because he had slept during the entire sitch.

After Kim had said goodnight to Ron, she was left by herself to walk the remaining few blocks to the Possible house. She shivered, pulling her arms around herself to try to regain warmth, but her tattered shirt was unsalvageable and rather useless. The moon was full, though, providing a glittering beacon of light interspersed between the occasional star-dot in the otherwise opaque night sky. For a brief moment gazing at the moon, Kim remembered her childhood – visits to the planetarium with her dad, summer nights spent chasing fireflies and licking popsicles that turned her tongue rainbow hues, playing soccer at Middleton Elementary on the weekends with her family and Ron tagging along to the games. Life was much simpler then, she concluded. No crazed villains to chase around the world, no petty teenage girls to attack one's vacillating self-esteem, no worrying about relationships or college or….hours of homework to do every night of week. Kim groaned, remembering that not only was her big biology test tomorrow (no…today!?!?!), but that she had to get 100 pages of reading done between her literature and history classes, and she had homework pages in German to turn in (which she was already two days late on). Kim realized there would be no sleep for her tonight, which would be an awesome addition to the two hours of sleep she had gotten the night before and the four hours from the night before that…no big, she could catch up on her sleep during the weekend….except that she had promised to go with her family to a strawberry farm on Saturday, had a Middleton seniors fundraiser she was required to participate in on Saturday night, and had promised to make an appearance at a children's hospital on Sunday with Ron and Rufus to spread pre-holiday cheer. Kim debated the consequences of getting home and collapsing into bed, but decided that they were too steep…she had gotten a C on her last biology exam (coincidentally, also the day after a mission, which had been much shorter than this one) and needed at least a B+ on this one to pull off a B for the semester. She didn't even want to think about the repercussions of blowing off the rest of her work, since that had already happened way too frequently that school year. "I am so fucking screwed," she muttered to herself. Kim used to feel energized after missions, happy that she was able to positively contribute to the general good, but tonight…no, lately…she had just felt grumpy, annoyed, and too tired to think clearly.

Kim finally arrived at the Possible house, which was completely dark. Her parents and the tweebs had probably gone to bed hours ago, lucky them. She was sure that her parents worked hard and had gone through tough times in their lives, but she was convinced that they totally couldn't relate to the life of a 17-year-old who routinely saved the world but still didn't get any slack at school, at work, or at anything else. Kim tried to be as quiet as she could entering the house and going into the kitchen to brew herself a gigantic pot of coffee. She walked up the stairs to her room to grab her laptop and check her email.

"85 new messages? What?" It was her Gmail account that got all the emails automatically forwarded from her official website and from her school account. As Kim drearily sifted through the email, checking for anything relevant, she muttered something incoherent about how Ron must have used one of her email addresses to sign up for some Wii site that he liked so much, causing her inbox to be flooded with messages about outrageously cheap software and free samples of cialis, viagra, natural male enhancement, and sleazy webcam sites. Deleting those, she sorted the rest of her email into general categories of important school stuff, irrelevant school stuff, important mission leads, stupid mission requests (yep, she still got the "get my poor cat out of the tree!" requests, even after all these years), heartwarming fan mail, heartwarming hate mail, and stuff that was just creepy. In that morning's creepy pile was a short email at the top of her inbox with a masked sender address:

Saw u just now walking home. Isn't it way past ur bedtime?

Just give it up, Possible. Maybe then u won't be so off ur game and pathetic all the time.

xoxo

Heh, creepy even for the creepy pile. Kim was way desensitized to this stuff already and was too tired to speculate about who might have sent the email or what their intentions were…maybe she could ask Wade to trace it later or something, she just couldn't focus on it now. She glanced at her watch – 2:30 AM – and freaked out. Only five hours before she had to leave for school. How was she going to get all her work done without passing out, like her body was demanding? She needed that caffeine boost immediately. Searching for her textbooks and notebooks among the chaos that was her room and grabbing her school backpack, she headed down the stairs to the smell of burnt coffee.

As Kim walked through the living room, she felt like it was a little chillier than normal, as if someone had opened a door or a window recently. But her guard was down when she groggily entered the kitchen, making a beeline for the coffeemaker, that she jumped upon seeing that she had a visitor sitting at the table, sipping a cup of coffee and looking quite relaxed.

"Just when I thought this sitch couldn't get any worse…"

Her visitor chuckled. "Just a typical day in the life of Kim Possible, huh?"

----

Kim was enjoying those happy last few minutes of sleep before waking up. There was nothing on her mind – no worries that she could recall, at least for the moment – and she felt safe and secure on her comfortable bed with her arms around a Pandaroo-shaped, cuddly object. She was dreaming something about fireflies, blissfully unaware that her pleasant dream was about to end...

- The End -

Don't you love ambiguity? D What do you think happened at the end, and who was the visitor? Feel free to speculate…I honestly didn't have an ending in mind, so there are no right or wrong possibilities. Hopefully you're not too annoyed…

If you're reading this, I assume you read the story, so thank you for sticking with it! I hope you found it somewhat interesting/not totally confusing. Reviews make me happy ).