A Piece of Herself, a kim possible fanfic

"A Piece of Herself"

By Eoraptor

Kim sighed as she sat in the gym, waiting for Shego to show up. If anyone told her eighteen months ago that she'd be asking the mercenary for advice on anything, let along stopping a bad guy, she'd have laughed them out of the room and sent them to her mother for head trauma.

But Kim was starting to adjust to all the changes in her life in the last year and a half. SO much had changed in the wake of the Lorwardian's attempted invasion. For one, she and Ron had drastically changed, especially in their relationship. Probably because they both realized how short life was and how little their relationship had progressed since Junior Prom. A major part of THAT was Kim deciding that she didn't NEED to go to a dozen different over see's colleges when Ron was going to be lucky to rate a 2A school on the strength of his "gentleman's C" GPA.

Yes, going to school at Tokyo U, Cambridge, or Duke Law would have been Spankin', but Ron was a fixture in her life, and not one she would toss aside for a school's name or location. Upperton U had perfectly acceptable curricula and a decent enough name for law and justice courses. And Ron going to Middleton Community meant it was not a huge stretch on their relationship, especially since as Kim's father said bitterly, "they cohabitate."

And of course, after almost three years of solid "dating" the M word was starting to be bandied about by their friends and families. Kim felt torn on that, because she didn't want to fall into the same place they had after J-prom, but she also didn't want to jump into a place she didn't feel ready for. It certainly didn't help that Monique was married now, and constantly expounding its virtues to her and every one of their friends like some self-help book.

But none of that was important to her immediate situation, and if she brought it up, Shego, who had finally broken off her own "relationship" with Doctor Drakken, was likely to brain her with a dumbbell.

That was another change… Shego was… well maybe not mellowing… but not quite as ferociously self-centered as she had been. She was putting her teaching degree to use, instructing detective candidates for Global Justice on criminal theory and behavior. She typically did so by randomly robbing or beating the crap out of a student, and then making the rest of her class determine her motive. Consequently, anyone who undertook Miss Dragovni's Criminology course got double credits in criminal psyche and hand-to-hand combat.

Kim still wasn't sure if "Mary Dragovni" was Shego's real name or not, but she was… content in knowing her simply as Shego. And she was working on letting go of some of her obsessive behaviors, for Ron's sake as much as her own. So using her contacts at Global Justice and the State Department to find out was low on her priority list right now.

Kim sighed and flicked her GJ visitor's badge with a finger before looking up. After seeing how Global Justice had reacted to the Invasion by wanting to crack down and enact more laws, she had decided that maybe her maverick, situationally ethic manner wasn't the best fit for them. She knew from Shego that the woman only worked here because they were the least rigidly structured of the organizations who had courted her after her pardon. It had been down to the CIA and Global Justice, since Shego didn't speak Hebrew and couldn't get into the Mossad.

Kim also knew that Shego was still only paying lip-service to being totally legal, since she engaged in major insider trading with her scientific and villainous knowledge, and also body guarded off the clock at some questionable operations. But frankly, no one was getting hurt and the world wasn't totally imperiled, and if Global Justice could look the other way then so could Kim. She could still take the mercenary down if it actually came to that, and Shego seemed to at least be making an effort not to slip into real villainy, so no reason to harsh on it.

But there was something she needed to harsh on, and she looked up when Shego entered the Gym in her black and green workout clothes. Villains had also changed since the invasion, and only Shego could really, Kim felt, give her the insight she needed into a particularly troublesome new one.

Most of Kim's old foes had gotten out of the business after the Invasion. Of all the major villains she had battled over the years, only Professor Dementor was still a bona fide villain; and Camile Leon, who was too stupid, or too arrogant to give it up. Gemini probably would have been active, but no one had seen or heard from him since the Invasion, and the theories ranged from his being killed taking on Lorwardian robots and WEE disintegrating, to suicide, to being eaten by his Chihuahua.

Which left a lot of room for new villains to pop up, and of them, a few played by new and dangerous rules. Surprisingly, one of the most difficult new players was the team of Junior and Bonnie. Kim would have written them off as dilatants too lazy and self-centered to be real villainous players, but between the evil training Shego had given Junior, and something cracking in Bonnie when Señor Senior Senior passed away, they had become ferociously formidable, if still self-centered.

But Kim could handle them as well; it was easy to get them bickering or to play to their lazy ways and find flaws in their plots.

No, Kim's real problem was Mister Defenestrator. And his name was the only ridiculous or stupid thing about him. He was like Warhoq lite.

The man wore powered armor stolen from Centurion and mish-mashed up with Lorwardian tech. He had no qualms about resorting to extreme, almost absurd violence, or putting civilians in direct danger; and worse still, he was worse than Shego and Drakken put together when it came to escaping custody.

Kim had stopped him perhaps a dozen times in the last two years, far less than she had Drakken, but That seemed to be more down to his meticulous planning than to her defeats of him dealing him any setbacks. But now…

"All right Princess, what's so important I had to cancel my lecture on Henchman dynamics to spar with you?"

Kim looked up, shaken from her internal reverie at Shego's silent entrance and query. "Oh… Hi Shego… It's… It's about Ed."

Shego's featured darkened instantly, and green fire began to drip from her hands to the floor. It took her a moment to regain control of herself, and extinguish the spot fires with her feet.

"Mama send you?"

"No, Mrs. Lipsky did not send me. Though honestly, I would have come if she asked me to."

"Well, I don't envy Drew any. No one should have to decide to take their cousin off life support. It's why I have everything in writing should anything… happen."

Kim tried to ignore the uncertain look in Shego's eyes and nodded, "Yeah, me too. I keep trying to get Ron to do it, but he just won't talk about it."

Motor Ed had been severely injured during what the hospital had termed a "criminal misadventure." He had tried to steal one of Mister Defenestrator's unicycle androids. Unfortunately, it was armed with a criminal antitheft system, and had electrocuted the mullet headed engineer. Ed's Body had been dumped at a hospital, with a note warning others about the perils of trying to steal from M.D.

Ed had been brain dead, apparently, when dropped off. And since Drakken and Momma Lipsky were his only living family, it had ultimately fallen to the Nobel laureate to determine his care. Not even Drakken could restore a destroyed brain, sadly, and the decision had been called to let Ed go.

Coming, as it had, on the heels of Drakken and Shego's breakup, well; Kim didn't want to think about what Lipsky had looked like the last time she had seen him.

Shaking off the imagery, Kim stood, and stretched on her feet, and began circling Shego. Whenever the two of them talked any more, it had to be while sparring. They just didn't seem to connect otherwise.

"We both know who did Ed, Pumpkin… What's really bugging you?" Shego circled in the opposite direction, causing Kim to backstep as she seemed to read the redhead's mind.

"That's just it Shego. Everyone knows who did what to Motor Ed." Kim growled and threw a probing punch at the mercenary's stance. "But who has done anything about it?"

"Well," Shego parried the punch and tried to grab the arm for a throw, "Ed did do the B&E on Defenny Boy."

Kim swung all of her weight on her trapped arm, wrapping her legs around Shego's shoulder and executing a Judo flip on the taller woman. "And he deserved to die for that?!"

"He was trying to steal a dangerous weapon, Buttercup," Shego grunted as she sprang to her feet after hitting the mat. "The government would have killed him too if he broke into Area 52."

"But he wasn't killed by a person Shego," Kim growled, circling again, eyes darting about Shego for any opening, "No living being ever made the decision to use lethal force. It's like that story Joss tells about shotguns tied to fence posts."

"Still trying to set me up with your cousin?" Shego threw a bolt of plasma at Kim's face to distract her, and caught the cheerleader in the ribs with a kick. "But you're right. Killer booby traps are not kosher."

Kim let the worn out barb about Joss's hero worship slide past as she coiled around the impact, and again judo flipped Shego. "So what do we do about it? I can keep stopping him, but I'm not his jailer."

"We, Kimmie?" Shego blew a strand of black hair out of her face before setting about righting herself again. "Why are you asking me about it?"

Kim flinched at the electric look Shego gave her, and growled at herself for it. She waited for Shego to regain her feet before she started circling again. "For the same reason you took it on yourself to come to Middleton in the middle of an interstellar invasion."

"Ah, I see the psyche courses at U.U. are paying off." Shego smirked dangerously, and then swung the same plasma and kick combo at Kim again. "How's that battle axe Petersen?"

Kim tried to repeat her grab-and-flip combo, only to find herself on the mat when Shego reversed the kick at the last second and clocked her right in the head with a heel. "I… darn that hurt. I think she's impressed by me."

"I know she is Princess, you're only the third person to get an A on one of her tests." Shego waited for Kim to stand, but immediately dove at her with a claw strike. "Myself and Mego being the other two."

Kim whirled her hands as quickly as she could to deflect each claw strike as they rained in on her, backing her up. "Yeah, well, she accused me of stealing one of your papers, so I had to give her my entire notebook for the semester to disprove it. Do you think maybe we think too much alike?"

"Of course I do," Shego's breathing was increasing as she stopped pulling her blows, winging backhands at the redhead that could break bones if not blocked. "Which is why I know what you're really asking."

Starting to interlock her spinning kicks with Shego's backfists, Kim narrowed her eyes, looking for a point to turn the rhythm to her advantage, "So what am I thinking?"

"Simple," Shego grinned, catching Kim's searching eyes, and deciding to bring out her trump card early.

The redhead actually squealed when Shego's spinning fists suddenly lit up, forming an unbroken ring of green fire around her. Kim felt her left thigh kissed by flame and she fell backwards. Only years of fighting Shego allowed her to convert the fall into a hand spring. It took her a moment to clear her stunned vision of the ghosts of green streaks, and when she did, she found Shego standing right in front of her, a fist posed to end it.

Kim yelped as the fist shot in, only to stall an inch from her nose, grip it between two fingers, and honk it.

Grinning, Shego made a beeping sound and released the redhead's nose. She gave her a split second to read the movements of her hips before back-spinning a kick at Kim's head. "You want to know if I would kill him if the positions were reversed. Since no one else can hold him after you catch him."

Kim executed a flawless cartwheel around the incoming foot, and came to stand right in front of Shego, glaring at how the question was tossed off so easily. "Well?"

But the mercenary didn't answer. She came at Kim with the flaming ring again, spinning both arms outwards and driving the redhead backwards rapidly behind the circlet of heat and light.

Kim growled and narrowed her eyes against the onslaught, backing up with each step Shego took forward. She couldn't back up fast enough to spring away, for fear of burning her other leg, so she kept losing ground.

"Darn it, that's not an answer."

Shego didn't respond. She increased the speed of the onslaught, her long black hair starting to rise up in the center of her flaming wheel as the air around her heated.

Kim kept backing away, until she felt the heels of her sneakers hit the edge of the mat. Knowing the bleachers were only a few steps beyond, she swallowed, because Shego showed no signs of letting up her attack. Realizing she had to risk injury to break the momentum the mercenary had built up, Kim counted off another rotation, and then jammed her forearm into the ring of unbroken flame.

Slipping past the flaming wall with only a singe, her arm impacted Shego's and loosened up her tight circle. The redhead swept in angrily, ignoring the heat in the air around them, and started swinging punches at Shego's torso, landing the first three with wet thuds before Shego managed to break her own momentum and block.

"Damn it! Answer me! Why Shouldn't I kill him if he can't be captured?!" Kim was still punching, impotently into Shego's blocking arms now as she pushed the teacher back across the mat with the shear fury of her volleys. "He'll only get out, and kill someone else!"

"Because," The mercenary winced as the impacting fists started to wear on and sting her forearms, "The moment you kill him, you kill part of yourself too."

The statement was punctuated by Shego taking a shot to the chest, so that she could thrust both of her own fists forward, plasma washing over Kim's chest and knocking her backwards and to the mat, air exploding from her lungs.

Shego leapt onto her, pinning Kim's shoulders under her knees as she glared down at the redhead. "You don't want to give that part of yourself up, Kimmie. Trust me."

Kim growled up at Shego, and squirmed her shoulders, trying to break the pin. "Why not?! What if it's Drakken next time, or Ron!?!?"

"Then it's Drakken or Ron!" She go bellowed, and only just stopped her hand backhanding Kim across the cheek. Taking a deep breath, and pinning Kim still beneath her, she narrowed her eyes. "He kills. You don't."

The two women glared daggers at each other for a long moment, before Shego finally rolled away from the pin. "Listen Princess. Killing isn't like on TV, or in books, or movies. It's ugly, it's messy, and unless you're flying an F-26 at thirty thousand feet and dropping a bomb, it's always personal."

"So?! He does it all the time! Those SWAT officers-," KKim shot heatedly out, vaulting to her feet, fists at the ready.

"And why do you think Window Boy is such a crank?!" Shego yelled back, but didn't assume a stance, instead gesticulating. "Let me tell you what it's going to be like if you kill Mister Defenestrator. You're going to shoot him, or knife him, or snap his neck, or let something fall on him when you could stop it."

Kim actually lowered her hands. She had never seen this look in Shego's eyes before. The mercenary looked like she was about to have an aneurism.

"And you're going to watch him. First, his bowels and bladder will stop functioning, and he will shit himself, and piss all over himself, and you'll be standing in a puddle of it. You'll smell it… all. Ever smelled a death shit Kimmie? It ain't like a dirty diaper." Shego glared dangerously at Kim, and pointed at her as though she was death and Kim's number was called.

"And then, his muscles will start to die. His heart will stop beating, and his knees will give out. He'll fall into that pool of shit and urine, and collapse, looking up at you. Next, the muscles in his diaphragm will fail. He will make the most god awful sound. A sound no living being can make, as his lungs go limp and collapse in his chest and his voice box spasms as he tries to breathe in and out at the same time."

Kim swallowed slightly at the imagined feeling of such a thing in her own throat, but Shego wasn't done yet.

"When he finally falls onto the ground, he grins up at you, with the last bit of life in his body. Because his dying brain knows it. Knows that you have lost that part of yourself to him. That you can no longer look at the world and say there is no blood on your hands." Shego's voice was growing ragged as she pointed at Kim and glared, chest heaving. "And you will remember it… every day for the rest of your life. The smells. The sounds. The sight of his grin."

After a long moment, Shego's body seemed to be spent, and her arm drooped to her side. She heaved a ragged breath, and Kim shuddered, almost feeling the emotions out of the mercenary's body onto the mat between them. She was about to take a step towards Shego when the dark woman looked up, her face returned mostly to normal.

"Kimmie, Doctor Director could send you back in time to 1932, and order you to kill Hitler. We both know you'd do it, because we both have taken twentieth century history. Six million Jews, six million gypsies, gays, and mentally ill? A million Russians? What's one man's life compared to that?" Shego took a deep breath, and combed her hair out of her face as she let go a cleansing sigh.

"But even that most altruistic of killings would change you. Destroy some innocent part of you that you don't even know you have."

She sighed, and looked Kim square in the eyes, her own emerald orbs somehow more dull and glassy than Kim had ever remembered seeing them. "Ask yourself that Princess. Do you want to give him that power over you? To see his face every day for the rest of your life? There is no punishment for the dead, they can haunt you till your own dying day."

"Wh- who did you kill, Shego?" Kim swallowed as she eeked out the question, licking her lips quickly.

"Someone who deserved it, Pumpkin. Someone who will always have power over me no matter whether I forgive myself or not." Shego seemed wrung out, and her shoulders drooped limply as she looked at Kim.

"and that's…"

"Yes, that's why I never actually let Drew kill you those times he had you unconscious and at his mercy." She groaned, causing her sparring partner to shudder at the portentous sound. "Just call me Miss Cautionary Tale."

"We really do think alike then." Kim sighed, her own shoulders dropping. "I thought that's why we never died… because one of you could not actually muster the urge to do it."

Kim rolled her neck, and groaned, her body simultaneously loose and tense. Then she stopped, and locked her eyes on Shego, a new thought occurring. "Shego… What was that about Doctor Director sending me back to 1932? That seemed awfully specific."

"That, Pumpkin," Shego smirked a bit weakly, "Is a whole 'nother story."

:AN: a one shot that has rattled around in my head on the nature of Kim and the next step in her "career"

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