2. Mouth of the Dragon

July 16th, 2007

Il-76 Motherland

3:12 PM

When Ron stepped out of the bathroom a minute or two later, he found Kim chatting easily with the stout Russian pilot.

"...I can't tell you how much I appreciate this, Mr. Yazaltin."

"Eees no problem at all, no problem at all, Keem Possible," the bearlike commander replied, who was named, somewhat inevitably, Boris. (It had been a good year for Borises.) "...I only 'ave you to thank for getting my plane unstuck from that polar ice last year."

"It was no big, sir... I'm just glad Ron found some sort of cavern loaded with Diablo sauce."

Ron shook his head glumly as he folded into his seat. "I'd finally found that landfill loaded with unopened hot sauces... and then you had to go and use them all...!"

He slumped forward onto the table, resting his chin on his hands. His eyes widened slightly as he glanced from Kim to Boris and then to the cockpit stairwell. "Ummm... who's flying…?"

Boris chuckled deeply. "Ron, you silly… Dmitri, my copilot." He paused. "Oh... now that you remindeds me..." The pilot turned toward the flight deck hatch. "...Dmitri!...Сколько времени до тех пор пока мы не достигнуть зону падения?"

"Один час."

"Хорошо... Вы." He turned back to the teens, smiling happily.

Ron looked blank. "Wha'–?"

"We'll be over the drop zone in an hour, Ron," Kim said quietly, the language chip in her brain translating effortlessly.

"Booyah, just enough time for a nappie..." The blonde trundled over to the webbing chairs next to Rufus and sprawled across three of them. Even with metal handrests poking into his back and calves, he was snoring lightly in about five minutes. Thankfully for him, his sleep was dreamless.

Kim turned back to Boris. "I hope we're not throwing you guys off schedule with any of this, captain."

"No, no... We een no hurry – run trips like this before. That Breetish snowy-cat –" he jerked a thumb toward the orange vehicle in the cargo bay, " – Nothing like old Soviet design. Broke a frozen piston. Our facility near Moscow only one capable of fixing that model... McMurdo to Moscow... very long way, you know." He spread his arms to emphasize the distance. "Multiple refuels. Your drop ees just a few kilometers off our planned route, and we've got enough petrol een the droptanks to make it to the next tanker."

"Well... Thanks, again, Mr. Yazaltin."

"Eeet's no problem," said Boris, "Is such a joy to be working with you Americans... The Cold War was such a, how do you say, an icicle, you know."

Kim nodded politely.

Boris smiled sadly. "...Of course you don't... But eet ees better that way..." After a lapse, he gave himself a shake. "But eet is done…... Need anything, Keem?"

"Nope, sir."

"Then I'll be running down the prejump checklist again... I give you depressurization warning at twenty 'teell."

After Kim thanked him, Boris turned and hoisted himself up the steep aluminum steps into the cockpit.

Kim settled into her seat at the small table and scribbled out the answer to problem #36 in about a minute. Putting her pencil down, she gazed unfocusedly at Ron, trying to quench a faint afterglow from her recent daydream. Lulled by the rhythmic drone of the Ilyushin's four jet engines, she drifted in and out of consciousness.

Every few minutes, she snapped awake as hormones flickered and sparked through her dreams…


Wedged unnoticed in a recliner chair in the far left corner of the compartment, partially hidden by the coffee/vodka machine, the navigational officer slowly lowered his book below the tip of his nose. His deepset eyes narrowed distrustfully as he panned from Kim to Ron and back. The bridge of his long, prominent nose and his tall forehead furrowed. He didn't approve of the two shining symbols of the decadent capitalists being aboard his ship one bit. A proud Russian ship and its proud Russian captain currying favor to the errands of two Americans? It never would have flown, literally, in his day...

But the captain seemed to like them, and even he had the sense not to trifle with a commanding officer.

A scowl creasing his ratlike face, he tilted his book, Grundrisse, back over his eyes and tried to ignore the two Western snots…


Twenty minutes later, Kim's eyes fluttered open. A group of GIGN ops had taught her to snooze like a warrior, and as her senses ramped up, she knew by feel she'd timed her sleep exactly. Glancing over at Ron, she decided she'd let him sleep for another minute or two. Reaching across the table, she picked up a standard-issue Kimmunicator – the wrist-top version didn't work as well at high altitude. Quietly turning the PDA on, she skimmed an altimeter visual, which placed her at 32,000 feet. Satisfied, she checked their position on a GPS screen before moving on to a live feed with her webmaster.

"How're we looking, Wade?" she asked softly, trying not to disturb Ron. That was, of course, entirely unnecessary – Ron could sleep through an airplane crash – but she continued anyway out of habit.

"I've been picking up some newly-installed radar installations around Drakken's lair, so penetration won't be as sitch-free as I'd hoped... They've been calibrated to pick up aircraft signatures."

"Wow, an actual learning curve."

"Yeah, but the good news is that he's got low-power units… No more than 15-mile range. My guess is either he got cheap knock-offs or he built them himself."

"Soooo Drakken."

"Bingo. You should be able to bail out unnoticed. He's probably expecting a standard parachute drop, since your jetpacks don't have the range to get you in undetected."

"Will radar be a problem with the new equipment?"

"No."

"Good..." Kim paused. "...Turn up anything on whatever Drakken's been boasting about?"

"Surprisingly, no... I've checked his usual blog haunts and Villainster but other than a cryptic taunt toward Dementor, something about..." Wade squinted at his screen, "You and Kim'll never guess what I've got coming. Neener-neener," nothing of importance. On top of that, he's routed his purchases of the radars and who knows what else through so many boilerplate companies that I can't track it ...I'm not liking these vibes too much, Kim."

"You don't think he ordered Evil for Dummies off Amazon, do you?"

Wade paled slightly. "Let's hope not."

Kim glanced up and saw Boris wedging himself down the cramped cockpit stairwell, well-fed tummy wobbling as he jerked down the railing.

"Gotta go, Wade."

"Wade out," said her taskmaster, and the LCD screen went blank.

Kim made to rise as the pilot approached, but the Russian motioned for her not to bother. She sunk back into her seat, contenting herself with a salute. "Captain."

"'ello, Keemberly," he said in an undertone, "Jeest coming to tell eet's almost time for –"

"– oxygen prebreathing, I know," Kim finished, smiling gently. "I've done a few of these before."

Boris chuckled faintly. "But of course... how silly of me."

Kim looked back over at her boyfriend, who had somehow scrunched himself down into one seat and was now curled serenely in something like a fetal position, hands under his right ear to protect his head from a metal handrest. Kim shook her head, wondering how somebody could even sleep like that. "I'd better wake up the Ronshine…"

She walked over to him, soft rubber soles silent on the aluminum floor, and contemplated how to get him up. Hormones still a bit peaked, she decided there was something classier than a simple poke.

Heartrate spiking, she bent over and placed a long, warm kiss on his forehead.

Boris merrily flicked his eyes away, wondering how those two would handle at a Russian Christmas party.

The navigational officer eyed them disdainfully over the lip of his book. Westerners...

"Hoh' tub alhready…?" Ron mumbled, squirming slightly, "Immmm…" He opened his eyes and found Kim a few inches above him, looking startled. "...Yiep!"

Kim backed away from him slightly, looking shaken. "What was that?"

Ron fidgeted, eyes darting. "Nothing..."

'Prolly best not to tell her...

"Whatever," Kim said warily, giving him a hand up.

It's probably best not to tell him...

Thankfully, Boris averted further awkweirdness as he gathered Rufus from his webbing chair and handed the naked mole rat to Ron. Rufus hopped from the Russian's hands, into Ron's, and then toward Ron's thigh pocket. His metal foot became snared in the cloth lip, and Ron spent a moment untangling him. Freed, Rufus slipped into the teen's pocket and then poked his head out, happily questing the air with his nose.

Walking back to the table, Kim stuffed her homework and textbook into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. She yanked on her utility belt and it slithered across the table toward her. As a leather holster at the end cleared the table lip, it abruptly plunged downward and hit the floor with a loud metallic clank. Unprepared for the weight and downward wrench, Kim staggered, almost falling. Chastising herself for forgetting about it yet again, she dragged her Smith & Wesson semiautomatic to her waist. Clamping the belt around her hips, Kim bit her lip, thanking herself that she never kept a bullet in the chamber.

For a moment, the double holsters and pouched ammunition bit into her waist, but she gave her hips a gyrate and the belt settled into position.

Glancing down at her loaded waist, she sighed quietly. I've had this thing for over two months... But I'm still thinking I'm living without it. I never wanted it, still don't want it, I hate it, but I can't live without it now that there're fatwas on my head... Part of her belly scar traced across the lower edge of her vision. ...And I wouldn't even be here without it. Why does everything have to be so damn complicated...?

"...You ready?" asked Ron, bringing her out of her thoughts.

"Yeah... Thanks," she said, smiling slightly. A blush creased over Ron's nose.

"…So tells me again," Boris said, leading them through the massive cargo bay to the rear of the plane, "Where are we goings to be droppings you off?"

Kim pulled out her Kimmunicator and tapped buttons until she brought up a GPS map. Their current position was indicated by a small airplane icon traveling along a purple line scattered with waypoints. As the icon moved forward, it turned the line behind it yellow. Kim and Ron's jump point shone as a bright green dot in the middle of nowhere; the screen displayed unbroken Pacific Ocean beneath the superimposed directions.

"Good, good... Those are the directions I have plugged into the ship's computer... And your target, if I may-s ask?"

The redhead zoomed out until a tiny black speck appeared in the middle of the desolate South Pacific, highlighted by a pulsating red dot. When she pressed another button, a magenta waypointed line spanned from the green dot to the red one. Total glide distance was indicated beside the line in miles, along with time increments between individual waypoints.

The captain's eyes widened as his pupils traced the magenta line. "...Impossible! That's over 40 kilometers!"

"...Not if you've got the right stuff..." Kim said coyly, stopping beside two man-sized crates propped between the snowcat and the airplane's skin. "...Wade set us up," she said simply, pulling out her laser lipstick. Within a minute, she had used the tightly focused light beam to detach the front panel from the crate. With Boris's help, she grunted the front panel out of the way to reveal a carbon-fiber delta wing standing five and half feet tall inside the crate. Small ailerons jutted from the bottom of the six-sided black glider, just below a decal reading "ESG.".

The underside of the streamlined contraption faced them, exposing a body-shaped depression molded into the carbon-fiber. Harness straps sagged into the cavity. Rotary handles stuck out about halfway down the wing roots. As Kim eased the wing forward from its vertical position, she exposed a thick bulge running along the spine of the wing which housed a large, latched panel and a parachute pack. Stubby vertical stabilizers sprouted from the aft section of the bulge.

Watching from the crew compartment, the navigator sat bolt upright, gazing avidly at the wing. Enthralled, he rose from his chair and slunk forward until he stood just behind his captain, still clutching his book between his thumb and forefinger.

Boris stared at the device as he gently rested its nose on the airplane's riveted floor. "...Хороший Бог... What ees it?"

Kim pulled out the Kimmunicator and pulled up a specs page. "It's called a Gryphon," she said, partly remembering her training with the glider and partly reading off the fact sheet, "It's an experimental parachute system for paratroopers... Works just like a tiny airplane – you move the flap-thingies with those little handles. Supposedly, it had a top speed of 250 miles per hour with a range of over 25 miles, and can carry 100 pounds of stuff..."

Unnoticed, the navigator riffled to a blank page in his book and began scribbling frantically.

"...And it's so fast and low-pro that it's nearly undetectable to radar. It's even got its own oxygen supply."

Borrowing Kim's laser, Ron sliced away the front panel of the second crate – his cutting job was considerably less clean than his girlfriend's – and lowered his wing to the floor. He and Kim dragged their wings aft until they were within ten feet of the sloping rear cargo door.

In the dim aftersection, the temperature dropped dramatically as convection circulated cold air around the cavernous hold. Frigid air oozed from the walls, the elderly plane's heating system unable to keep up with the subzero temperatures outside. Past the four screaming exhaust ports of the Il-76's jet engines, the naked formers and skin rattled and popped and vibrated so much it made speaking difficult.

Ron gently lowered his wing to the grip-tape-covered deck plating and stared uneasily at the glider's radical design. "...Why can't we ever get anything that's been, well, ya'know, tested?"

"That's just how it works, Ron," Kim said loudly over the fuselage noise as she unbolted the luggage compartment, "Untested stuff just seems to work around us, even though the scientists are always pulling million-to-one odds against it... Never figured that one out myself... Anyway, we're trying out stuff now so it'll be proven and tested for somebody else."

Lifting the cover, she pulled out a black jumpsuit, windproof gloves, aviation oxygen mask/helmet, and a length of ribbed oxygen tubing. Below the clothing lay a backpack identical to the one Kim currently wore, nestled alongside necessary paratrooper supplies such as a knife, altimeter, compass, survival pack, and first aid kit. Whatever was in the second backpack filled the sack's available volume completely.

Kim shrugged off her backpack and wedged it into the space left by the clothing. She then unclipped her belt and gun and curled it around the backpack. Easing into a webbing chair, she flapped out the flight suit and stuffed her feet down the legs. Standing, she wriggled into the torso section, made more difficult by her existing clothes, and then pulled the front zip from her crotch to her chin. Wade had apparently either done his research or sent Rufus to break into her closet – the suit fitted perfectly. Beside her, Ron folded into his flight suit, which was more broadly cut around the waist and shoulders.

"Dang..." he grunted, trying to stuff his foot through the elastic boot cuff, "This is like going out in the snow when I was five... Stupid cargo pants..." Ramming his shoe down and out the pant leg, he heard a long, slithering ripping sound. Blanching, Kim dropped to her knees and inspected Ron's pant hem. To her relief, she found only that a cuff expansion zipper had parted itself under the strain.

"Ron..." she sighed, jerking on the zipper pull until both sets of teeth had mated again, "Clumsy-much?"

The blonde grinned apologetically. "Sorry 'bout that, KP."

"...No big," she said, standing and giving her hair a shake before pulling it into a ponytail. Digging one-handedly through her stuffed-down pack, she found a slim purple scrunchie and fastened her hair back. Fitting the grey Gentex flight helmet over her head and lowering the Adidas Galeforce anti-fog visor, she unspooled a USB plug from the bottom of the Kimmunicator and inserted it into a port just to the left of the oxygen mask fitting. Turning on the PDA, she was instantly rewarded with a HUD springing to life inside the visor. The red-tinted display calibrated for a moment before displaying current heading, altitude, speed, time, and barometric pressure. Although useless at the moment, a thick line, like a lane divider, curved away from her, indicating the virtual path she would follow. The line ran through a series of large, glowing vertical rings, like Quiddich hoops, which gave her the proper three-dimensional glide slope necessary to reach her target. Satisfied that Wade's program worked properly, she removed the USB plug, took off her helmet, and strapped the Kimmunicator to her upper arm.

Kim looked up to see Ron with his helmet on, goosestepping around with his arms groping like a zombie. Concentrated on walking heel-toe-heel-toe on the imaginary guidance line, he didn't notice the narrow confines of the plane until he bonked into the curved wall. Staggering backward, he yanked out the USB cord and popped his helmet off.

"Coolio!"

Giggling, Kim plopped into a webbing seat and began removing items from the wing trunk. She slipped a Strider SMF lockblade into a pouch on her calf. The knife allowed her to cut away the riser lines if the parachute became fouled up on landing. Because of her new HUD system, she did not need to place an altimeter or GPS display into a window pouch near her wrist. Craning her arms behind her back, Kim tied webbing straps to hold a survival kit, emergency oxygen bottles, and a floating, flashing locator beacon to her chest.

After securing her gear, Kim checked over Ron and made sure he had all his stuff. The blonde stuffed his gear into his wing trunk and slipped Rufus into a specially-made pocket on his chest. Then they did a final meticulous buddy check, paying special attention to their oxygen equipment for the long, cold, mind-blowingly fast ride to the ground.

"Are you two ready for oxygen, then?" Boris asked as they finished.

"Yessir," Kim and Ron replied in unison.

"Good, good... VLADIMIROVICH!!!"

Standing just behind him, the navigational officer jumped as if electrocuted and mashed his book between his hands.

"Ah, there you are, Vladimir," said Boris as he turned around, dropping his voice and sounding surprised, "I didn't know you was back there... Get these two fine young people on the breathy, will you?"

The navigator/oxygen technician guiltily crunched his book into a rear pants pocket and scuttled off after the oxygen tanks.

"Vladimir..." Boris shrugged apologetically. "Beeet of what you Americans call an odd egg... but does his job well."

"…Sir," said Kim, "Before we get on intercom, could we rundown the bail proced one more time just to make sure we're on the same page?"

"Certainly, certainly, leetle paprika," he said. "Right now, ees thirty minute before jumping-spot. At twenty, the cabin will depressurize."

"As you told me."

"Correct. I give you further warnings at ten and five."

"Over the intercom and with a yellow flashing jump light? That's what most jumpmasters do."

"As will I. The plane will begin slowing during that time. At two minutes, I will lower ramp. At one, alarm bell ring and you'll get right up to ramp. At coordinates you requested, the jump light turns green and you go."

Kim sat up slightly and shook his hand. "That's exactly what I was thinking… Thank you sooo much, captain."

"Ees as – what you say – no big, Keem."

The redhead smirked playfully. "Do you wanna have us scrape some ice for cocktails before we leave?"

The Russian belly-laughed. "I weel gather my own ice, Keem."

"Wait… You mean you're –"

"Yes, I am standings right here…" Boris said, removing a Soviet-style thick brown wool hat (emblazoned with the Red Russia star), massive brown overcoat, muffs, and gloves from a locker beside the jump light. "...Duty as captain to see his guests off."

"Totally wow, sir… Thanks. But what about – "

"The flyings? Dmitri hads won sixteen vodkas last year for dropping Yugo into ten-meter ice hole. I have no worries."

The navigator/oxygen tech returned with the oxygen. Kim and Ron plopped on their flight helmets, tightened a seal around their necks so air wouldn't leak downward, and clamped their masks in place. After they slotted their lengths of ribbed oxygen tubing in place in the mask, Vladimir fidgeted with the gauges and hookup cables, following protocol to the letter.

An s.o.b. he might be, he was most certainly not stupid. He wasn't about to try anything with the vigilant, adoring gaze of his boss peering over his shoulder.

With a low hiss, pure oxygen began flowing from the tanks into the masks. This prebreathing stage flushed nitrogen from the teens's blood. They would switch to their wing's oxygen supply five minutes before the jump. Once they began breathing, they kept their visors up so the oxygen tech could monitor them for signs of hypoxia.

After giving oxygen bottles to himself and Boris – to be used once the cargo bay depressurized – he sullenly handed Kim and Ron their intercom jacks.

Plugging the jack into the side of her helmet, Kim began testing the links between the copilot, Boris, and her boyfriend sitting next to her. As Boris was breathing out of a cheap, disposable clear mask, he had slipped a pair of headphones and mike over his head.

"Current pilot, this is Kim Possible. Do you read? Over."

"Kim Possible, this is current pilot, Dmitri," returned a thick Russian voice, "I read you. Over."

"Mr., um, Vladimir, do you copy? Over."

"Yea."

"Mr. Yazaltin, this is Kim. Do you hear me? Over."

"You ees coming loud and clear, Miss Possible."

She clicked frequencies. "Wade, this is Kim. Is everything streaming properly?"

"Broadband's itching to go, Kim."

She clicked frequencies again. "Smoke, this is Fire. Do you copy? Over."

Ron reached over and flirtingly toyed with Kim's ponytail. "Fire, this is Smoke. Booyah..."

Kim took a second longer to reply as she battled a hormone rush. "Smoke, Fire copies..." she said, playing off their little in-joke. Whenever Ron showed up alone, the villains always panicked, thinking Kim couldn't be far behind. "...Assuming Major Edward Murphy doesn't start hanging around, Operation Firetail is a go. Over and out."

The next ten minutes passed slowly. Boris's head nodded onto his chest, half-snoozing. The navigator grimly folded his arms against the cold, surreptitiously making small squiggles in his notebook.

Kim ceaselessly checked and rechecked her gear, webbing, and attachment straps to make sure nothing would rip away in the coming blast of wind. As pure oxygen flooded through her brain, she felt giddy, jittery, uncomfortably buzzed. Like she's taken a sip of one of the Red Bulls that Ron chugged while gaming. She always hated that feeling.

Occasionally, she vented mucus, another unglamorous side-effect of breathing pure oxygen, out an emergency purge valve usually reserved for blood or vomit.

At twenty minutes out, Dmitri's voice flickered over the interphone. "...Cockpit pressurization integrity secure. Depressurizing in ten, nine, eight..."

Kim and Ron activated electrical heating systems in their jumpsuits. The heaters were tied to their altimeters. Once below a preset altitude, the heaters would turn off so the two special agents wouldn't broil in the oppressive South Pacific heat.

Boris simply snuggled deeper into his thick fur coat.

"Five, four," came the copilot's voice, "three, two, one..."

Pneumatic sighs initiated the loss of cabin pressure. A gentle wheeeee resounded through the cargo bay as air screeched through carefully contracted baffles and chambers, equalizing with the low pressure outside. Brutally cold air enveloped them. Ice crystals sublimated on the skins of the oxygen bottles. The cold even seeped through the teens's thermal jumpsuits, sending goosebumps prickling across Kim's bare forearms and midriff.

To distract herself from the cold, Kim watched her Kimmunicator screen as the Ilyushin slowly gobbled up the purple line before it.

Time passed with glacial cold and slowness. Then a yellow light on the jumplight box pulsed once and Boris's voice crackled through her radio, "Ten minutes."

Kim felt an excited buzz building her chest; one that had nothing to with the extra oxygen.

Unexpectedly quickly, his voice sounded again. "Five minutes." The caution light pulsed once more. They felt the airplane begin to slow beneath their feet and the racket of the fuselage lessened slightly.

Standing, Kim propped her wing upright. The navigator clapped his book shut and stood as well. With a nod from Kim, he disconnected her tubing from the oxygen main. Her head ringing in the sudden near-vacuum, bitter air punching daggers into her throat, Kim wobbled over to her Gryphon and inserted her tubing into the oxygen port with a quarter-turn. The ringing in her ears disappeared as oxygen once again bathed her tissues. After helping Ron do the same, she tilted her visor back to expose her eyes so the navigator could check for hypoxia.

Her oxygen connected, Kim hoisted on the wing-harness like a hiking backpack, clamped the hip/crotch straps, snugged up the sternum strap, and tightened down the shoulders. Ron followed suit, hopping sideways and nearly falling over as he struggled to thread an arm through one of the shoulder straps. Eventually, he strapped up and came to stand by Kim.

"Got it?" she clicked through the radio.

"Yeah..." he panted. After a minute, he shifted uncomfortably, jiggling. "Oh, my ba – "

"Ron!"

"...What? My back is killin' me," he whined. "This thing is friggin' heavy."

Kim heard Boris chuckle through the headphones. The pilot and his navigator harnessed up and attached themselves to tie-down rings embedded in the airplane's floor so they wouldn't be blown away when the cargo door opened.

Kim and Ron waddled forward, gripping steel anchorline cables until they were six feet from the sloping ramp. In front, Kim flipped her visor down and activated the Kimmunicator. So close to the jump point, the directional program calibrated properly and now the guidance line pointed straight away in front of her. The HUD also displayed their airspeed steadily dropping toward the ideal 135 knots. As the green blot on the Kimmunicator – and on the cockpit's GPS screen – neared, the map scale zoomed in so they would launch at exactly the right spot.

"Two minute warning," said Boris through the interphone. The yellow caution light flashed twice before a red light just below it illuminated. A separate green jump light, just below the red one, would switch on when it was time to exit the plane.

Kim felt her legs brace for the coming maelstrom of wind.

"Comrade Yazaltin," came Dmitri's voice, "Open the ramp."

"Confirmed," said Boris, grasping the ramp release handle beside the aft intercom box. He tightened his grip, then turned to the teens with a grin. "…Hope you guys packed some long underwear."

Kim chuckled darkly and tightened her grip on the guide cable.

Boris yanked down on the ramp opener. With a hydraulic whine, the huge ramp began cranking outward. White light blazed into the dim cargo bay around the widening gap, silhouetting the door into a solid black mass. Instantly wind screamed inward, sending the four humans staggering backward even as they wrapped their arms tightly around the tie-downs. Kim felt the steel guide wire soak up the unimaginable cold. Within seconds, the coldness burned painfully through her Goretex gloves as she clung to the wire.

Agonizingly slow, the ramp finally clanked into place. A great burst of wind roared through the cargo bay, flinging Kim's ponytail straight out behind her. Windchill plunged the temperature beyond twenty below. Sunlight glared off a brilliant layer of cloud tops and blasted her directly in the eyes.

"Taach!"

Kim twisted her head away, eyes scrunched closed. As polychromatic film on her visor darkened, she turned back to look out the massive opening. Over the howling wind, only Kim heard Ron's "Whoa..." filter through her earphones.

They stared out at a whole other world; an undulating, unbroken ocean of pearl-white clouds under a pale whitish-blue sky. Clouds contorted and twisted into wild, ethereal, beautiful, impossible shapes, tinged up with gold from the midafternoon sun. Kim had skydived thousands of times, but never lost the wonder of seeing the final piece of trinity – underwater mountain ranges, temporal Sierras, and now a mountain range seeming constructed by a six-year-old having fun with his dad's can of shaving cream.

Above a certain point, the clouds abruptly cut off as if reaching a glass ceiling, leaving the sky blindingly clear. There was not enough moisture to support cloud formation. The only whiteness above that altitude were the Il-76's wing contrails, which streamed behind them in tightly coiled vortexes before melting into the horizon.

A klaxon.

"One minute!"

Adrenaline humming through her veins, Kim eagerly waddled forward until she stood right on the ramp hinges. The wind tore at her, rattling her like a chew toy. Even though she'd jumped out of "perfectly good airplanes" immemorial times, she still hadn't lost her addiction for this moment. Her pulse pounded against her eardrums, breathing sharp and tight. This was far better than any Red Bull.

"Ramp opened and locked, Dmitri," she heard Boris say through the intercom.

She began silently counting down the seconds, inching closer and closer to the ramp edge until her toes stuck off into the bottomless void. Ron timidly followed her, whimpering terrified noises into his radio.

As Kim focused totally on the steady red light above her head, she almost didn't hear the captain's voice in her ears.

"Feefteen seconds… And, Keem, I'd like to keep my intercom cords, if you please...?"

Startled, Kim embarrassedly pulled the mike plug from the interphone port. She rapidly clicked frequencies to Wade. "Wade, do you think you could splice our radios into the airplane's frequency real quick?"

"Yeah," came the reply, "But my computers don't like it much. It violates security programming. You'll have about twenty seconds to talk before the system runs a cycle check, realizes you've got an "unauthorized" connection, and shuts it off."

"That's all the time I need."

Within three seconds, Boris's voice cut through the earphones. "Keem, you there?"

"Yessir. Thanks for all this, sir. Hope it was so not the drama."

"No, no, Keem, not at all. Just glad to see you again...Ten seconds."

Kim crouched, ready to run, every muscle in her body delightfully wired.

"Five seconds… Jump in four, three, two…"

Kim turned around and saluted. As the crimson light blinked off and the jump light blazed a vivid green, Boris returned it, sending her off with an affectionate little nod.

"See ya!" Kim yelled before running off the cargo ramp and vaulting into space. Peering off the ramp, they saw her tumble for a few seconds until the wing stabilized and she sliced away into cloud-shrouded nothingness.

Just behind her, Ron teetered on the ramp edge, balancing on the arches of his feet, face dead white behind his helmet visor. "Ho-leeey enchilada…" he gasped, catching a pinhole glimpse of the ocean thirty-two thousand feet below his toes, "That. is. high. There is noooo waaaaaaaaaay I'm going down th –"

The length of transparent fishing twine Kim had secretly tied to his ankle tightened, catching him off-balance and pulling him out into the void after her.

The last thing Boris heard over the radio before Wade's computer cut the transmission was Ron's voice.

"KIM, YOU BIT ––– ! ...Ohmigawd, this is AWESOME!!"

Chuckling, shaking his head fondly, Boris pulled on the ramp extension/retraction lever. The huge cargo door began cranking up, even more slowly than it had dropped.

After a moment, the commander looked over to see his navigator eagerly absorbed in a book, not even bothering to sit, hunching over the pages with his upper body. Bemusedly curious, Boris silently padded up behind him and peered over his shoulder.

He saw his navigator putting the final touches on two exquisitely detailed military-intelligence-grade sketches of the Gryphons that had just exited the airplane. On the facing page were all the performance and payload statistics Kim had named, plus some extras he had gleaned from the Kimmunicator fact sheet.

"…VLADIMIROVICH!!!"

At the captain's furious roar, the navigator shot a foot into the air and whirled around, crushing the book frantically behind his back.

Boris was too quick for him. Before the navigator could shove the sketch into a back pocket, the bearlike commander put a vice grip around his arm and dragged the hand clutching the book up and forward. Vladimirovich tried to tug the book back, but Boris pried it from his grasp and began whapping him upside the head with it.

"WHAT IS THIS?! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!? HOW DARE YOU – !"

Up front in the cockpit, Dmitri deftly switched off the intercom aft, grinning. This brought back memories of the old Soviet Boris. The little bastard'd had it coming.

After bombarding him for a full thirty seconds with essentially one long Russian cuss, Boris angrily pointed toward the narrowing chasm between the cargo door and its frame. The intensity of his scowl brooked absolutely no disobedience.

Glowering, throwing acid looks at his captain, the navigator marched insolently to the slowly-closing door and sullenly ripped out the offending pages. He clutched them wistfully for a moment in the frigid, flapping wind. Turning, he cast a pained look at Boris. The commanding officer just growled, cracking his knuckles threateningly, and nodded. Sighing, the navigator cast his drawings to the wind. Immediately, they were sucked out of the plane and into the slipstream. In the final seconds before the door closed, he watched as the tearing wind shredded the papers into a thousand pieces, scattering them across a hundred square miles of desolate South Pacific ocean…


Seventh time's the charm...

Finally getting the polarity of the three backup batteries right, the red-suited lackey inserted a plug into the workstation's power socket and booted up his boss's brand new 25-mile radar array.

Leaning back in his swivel chair, he twiddled with the safety of his double-ended energy staff. As the machine warmed up for the first time, reflection signatures began dotting across the circular LCD screen.

Reaching for a cup of coffee and his iPod, the goon noticed an unusually large blip rounding the upper circumference of the scope. Lowering his thermos, he read the identification tag several times over before twisting around in his chair to face a command station at the rear of the room.

"...Miss Go...?"

At her name, a woman in a formfitting green-and-black bodysuit slowly looked up from something she polished between in her hands. The lackey felt himself shrivel under her icy, withering gaze.

Overlooking the tiered control room, Shego leaned casually backward in a swivel chair, her legs indolently crossed and propped on the table in front of her.

After 4/23, Drakken had declared an indeterminate hiatus on take-over-the-world activities. This was partly because he and Shego were, if formerly, if grudgingly, American citizens; It just didn't seem right to take advantage of the situation, particularly against his home country. Deliberately targeting civilians wasn't his bag. Oh, sure, there would be massive collateral if his plots ever succeeded, but he aimed more for eliminating command structure. No use killing civilians; he'd need lots of slave labor in his new empire, wouldn't he?

And partly they worried an overjumpy CIA – freaked out, overworked, trigger-happy – would finally bypass the cheerleader middleman and have a flight of F-22s drop a few Hellfires down the chimney. The jittery Feds would drag them off to Supermax on some minor, trumped-up charge if just to get them out of their hair.

As much as they'd hate to admit it, the other villains saw Drakken as a bit of a bellwether. Even Dementor would follow The Blueberry's example if he saw it was a good one – and many had the second concern on their minds. Shego, for her part, did not relish the prospect of being eagerly strip-searched by CIA, FBI, and DOD agents, thank you...

Coldly panning her eyes across the room, she picked up on the lone technician facing her way. She gazed piercingly at him for several long seconds, as if deciding if the minion was worth her time. Finally deciding that he was, she lazily dropped a polishing cloth on the table and lifted a stocky black object from its resting place in the bend of her legs and torso and gently slipped it into a pouch on her thigh.

In one fluid, elegant motion that used only her abdominal muscles, she jerked-swiveled the chair away from the desk and rose to her feet. Picking out the radarman, she ambled toward him, radiating a sense of haughty, effortless power.

As she came to stand by him, she leaned on his scope housing with one hand, gazing at the screen with narrowed green eyes. "...What'cha got?"

"Uh... uh..." stammered the radarman. He'd never actually been this close to her before. She carried the same breathtaking beauty and terror of a particularly sharp katana"...W-we've got an aerial craft penetrating the northern edge of our airspace."

"...Shoot it down?"

"Negative, miss. Our employer said that the U.N. and C.I.A. would anal us if we created an international incident this close after 4/23."

Without replying, Shego bent down so her head was right beside the operator's, staring intently at the splotchy green dot in question. Immersed in her aura, the lackey felt an icy shudder down his spine.

"... Where's it from?"

The technician pulled up an information packet broadcast by the airplane's transponder. "… Russia... RA 4468K… an Ilyushin '76, by the looks of it."

"Has it diverted from its flight plan?"

Confidence ebbing back, the operator snapped a data window up on a screen beside him. "…Aaaaaactually... Yeeessssss..." he said slowly, "...But not by more than a few kilometers."

Shego's mouth thinned into a line. "...And now it's slowing down. Why?"

"It's going from Antarctica to Moscow... I'd expect it'd need a few refills."

"And we're expected to assume it's diverted course and slowed down to intercept with a tanker?"

"I'd think there'd be high probability of that, yes."

Shego flicked her eyes at him. A hopeful lump rose in the man's throat, but then died as her seductive glance turned into a sneer.

"...Who gave you permission to think…?" she said callously, letting the statement hang, seeing right through him.

"...So…" she continued after a tense moment, "Can you pick up any tankers in the area?"

"Uh, um, n-no, ma'am... If-if there are any, they're out of our detection range."

"Huh……."

They stared quietly at the screen for a few minutes, mesmerized by the rhythmic sweep of the Doppler arm.

"…And now it's gone," murmured the operator as the plane finally vanished from the radar screen.

Shego stood up. "...Anything else?"

After a few moments, the radar operator squinted hard. "...Weellllll... I've got two signatures approaching from the vague general direction of the craft... But they don't look much bigger than a pair of seagulls."

The vixen glanced over her shoulder at the LCD screen. "...Keep an eye on it... Call Drakken if anything changes at all."

"...What about you, ma'am?"

From behind, Shego ran a finger up the nape of the guard's neck, curling his fingers and toes, and smiled enigmatically. "...Let's just say I've got some things I need to attend to."

Leaving the operator with his mouth dry and chest thumping, she strutted away down the center isle.

...Messing with Drakken's goons was always fun.

Sure enough, everyone in the room found it very hard to keep their eyes only on their work as Shego sauntered toward the door...


Winds whistled shrilly as it flowed past Kim Possible's helmet. She glanced away from the virtual GPS line to peer at the HUD speedometer, which was settling around 172 knots. Her fitted clothes roared; the leading edges of her arms and shoulders plastered flat against her arms, trailing edges rippling and flapping.

200 mph does that, she mused, grinning.

The flight was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Lying facedown parallel to the ocean, drilling headfirst into rarified air, toasted the meanest rollercoaster ride. Her hands dropped out of sight behind her, grasping control sticks near her waist. With just a twitch at the left rotary control, she was able to effortlessly slew left and right. Nudging the right control sent her diving up or down.

So this is what it feels like to be a falcon, she thought giddily, giving the pitch lever a squeeze to maintain course. Completely control. I've never seen a descent this flat. This so blows the pants off a 'chute...

As she flew just "above" the glideslope line, a countdown timer in the lower right corner of the HUD flickered backward. Following the line, she zinged into the heart of the main cloud layer. Dull grayish-whiteness pressed in from all sides, leaving her completely blind. Ice pellets crackled against her visor, shoulders, and leading edges. Unwittingly flying by IFR, she relied on her GPS and flashed through a twinkling golden hoop positioned in the deep white bowels of the cloud. She was bang-on time – the counter hit all zeros just as she passed through the waypoint. As Kim shot out of the cloud into blazing sunlight, the timer reset and restarted its count until the next hoop. The whole setup reminded her of the corny racing games Ron occasionally bribed her into playing.

Ron shot into view below her, performing a tight horizontal spiral, whooping giddily into the microphone. Pulling out of his shallow dive, he snap-rolled prone and settled into Kim's wingman position.

"Man, this is just like a videogame!" Ron perked excitedly into the radio.

"Indeed," Kim responded sardonically into the secure, encrypted frequency, "Right down to the language… Remind me… what was that last thing you said?"

"Uhhhh – man, this is just like a –"

"No, no, right after you left the plane."

"Oh." He chuckled weakly into the microphone. "Uh, sorry 'bout that, K.P. Caught me by surprise, and... That was really not cool, ya'know?"

He heard her grin. "To quote the Sacky incident – You've got your nefarious streak, etc, etc, I've got mine."

Ron growled amorously, which Kim returned. They would've ruffled each other's hair, if contact at 200 miles per hour hadn't meant instant death.

Conversation faded away. They followed the guidance line through a series of hoops, descending gradually.

After a few minutes, the silence broken only by the sound of wind tearing past his helmet, Ron heard Kim sigh.

"...What?"

"Been pretty quiet lately," she responded softly, gazing through the HUD at a twisted cloud formation near the horizon.

"Whaddya mean?"

"I mean, ever since we got back from Afghanistan, the superfreak sitch has been almost nonexistent. Everybody's keeping their heads down. It's been over two months, and no chatter, no take-over-the-world plots, no boasting about my imminent demise, no magazine subscription renewals. Nothing to pinpoint. Nothing to trace. I wonder – "

"I think I can answer that," Wade chipped in unexpectedly.

"Wade?!" Kim and Ron's surprised voices merged into one.

"Sorry to butt in. I've been monitoring the frequency for encryption lapses... Anyway, you haven't been picking up on anything because there wasn't anything, well, exothermic, directed to the outside world." He paused. "…I've got some contacts, favor-owers, who're able to get me inside secure supervillain web forums and chat sites. The scene around the villain community, well… There was a short, intense, endothermic burst of posts right after you got back. Drakken was ground zero and it filtered out from there."

"…Wade, what…– ?" Kim started.

"Scars weren't the only thing new on you, remember?"

Kim felt something heavy and cold slide into her stomach. "…Y-you mean my – "

"Word got around at Villainster," Wade answered shortly. "And let me tell you, the statement 'Kim Possible has a gun' scared the crap out of quite a few people."

She cursed faintly under her breath. "Wade, you know I don't like the thing. It's just there as insurance, I promise you. I won't use it unless I have to, and even then as non-lethal as I can get it. It's like a last resort."

"Tell that to the other side," Wade said darkly. "Some stuff leaked out about what happened in Afghanistan. Osama and everything..." He took a breath. "Kim, after rumors of that, I don't they'll see quite eye-to-eye with you on the whole last-resort thing, and I somehow doubt they'll give you the chance to explain over milk and cookies."

"Hmph," Kim muttered. "… Well, how'd they find out?"

"Drakken claims he spotted the holster on TV when A-F-One touched down at Andrews."

"Good eyes."

"I'll say. No word on Shego's reaction, though. I've noticed a few divots in her bank account over the past month, but it's untraceable. Funny… Usually she likes to flaunt her statements – stuff like luxurious vacations, black-market clothes and accessories from the Fashionistas, upgrades for the jet – but now, nothing…. Just like everybody else…." He trailed off. "Anyway, where was I…? Oh, yeah. The internet is a two-way thing, Kim. I can see everything they don't go out of their way to hide, and they can do the same to us. And I'm not the only hacker on the block… You're in the NRA's system, guys. Those guns have to be registered for you to carry them, right? If you can get into the police databanks – and it's a real easy job, by the way – you and Ron's names show right up, along with everybody else's."

Kim's face fell. "So now that the word's out, now what?"

"Well, that's the sitch, isn't it? All the villains are on the DL, freaked out that you might come after them next. Drakken's been the first to say anything recently, and I have a feeling it's a calculated move. The first play in a whole new chess game."

"Wheeeeeeee…" Kim muttered sadly, giving the rudder a twitch to stay on course.


At 10,000 feet, the heater elements in the teens's jump suits switched off. Kim was chilly again for a minute or so, but as they dropped into humid, hotter air, she wished the jumpsuit had sleeves.

The wings began to slow down and lose their momentum. The glide slopes led them along a series of roller-coaster dives to keep their speed up, the positioning hoops coming faster and faster.

"You've got about a mile and a half to go," Wade crackled through their earpieces, "Starting radar jamming signal in three… two… one…"


The radar operator popped his iPod's listening buds out of his ears and perked up at what was happening on his screen. The display was snowed over in frenetic green-and-black pixels like a broken television. This electromagnetic noise, whatever it was, made it impossible for the radar to track the direction of incoming threats.

After staring helplessly at his own screen for a few seconds, he scooted his wheelie chair over to his neighboring operator. "…Hey, Mackenzie?"

Mackenzie jerked out of a heavy, grunting sleep with a rough snort and looked blearily around. "Wha'–?"

"Hey, hey… Is there anything wrong with your screen?"

Wearily blinking his eyes, the second goon leaned forward and stared at a similar electronic fuzz over his LCD display. "Yeah…. Why?"

"You think we're being jammed?"

Mackenzie buried himself in his chair again. "…It's 'prolly just some random radio noise… It's nothin.' Give it a few seconds and it'll clear up."

"Yeah, but Shego said to report anything out of the ordinary…"

Thing 2 sighed wearily. "Look, if you just give it a few seconds –"

"Hey, if you're wrong and they hear about this conversation, it's your esophagus she'll be ripping out, not mine."

Mackenzie churned that one over for a few seconds. "...Err, on second thought…?"

Vindicated, the first lackey reached across to his workstation and picked up an intercom handset.

"Dr. Drakken….?"


"…Jamming signal ongoing," Wade reported. "One mile to target."

As they punched through one final fluffy cumulus cloud, Drakken's lair suddenly leaped into view before them. Jutting out of the sea on a nearly-vertical extinct volcano, it looked almost identical to his Caribbean complex. Even the side towers matched. It looked deserted under the sun's baking rays, motionless. Light danced across the rock walls as sunlight reflected off the waves. No activity or people on the exterior made the place seem deceptively quiet and serene.

Except…

"Looks like someone's been busy," Kim said, pointing.

Drakken, apparently, had been sucked into the real world too. Looking menacingly businesslike and practical, surface-to-air missile batteries sprouted on ledges carved into the cliff faces and tower complex. The blunt, single-minded utilitarianism of the rocket batteries clashed badly with the wonderfully absurd architecture of the mad scientist's lair.

"Damn…" Ron muttered, "Once everybody gets with the program, saving the world suddenly isn't as fun anymore…"

"Wade…" said Kim, eyeing the red-tipped SAMs apprehensively, "Those aren't going to be a problem, are they?"

"If they haven't launched yet, no. The jamming prevents them from getting a lock."

Almost spent now, their wings wallowed through the air, just barely generating enough lift to keep them flying level. The rudder and aileron controls felt unnaturally loose in Kim's hands. Ron kept stalling his, making a series of spikes and swoops like a descending leaf.

A quarter of a mile from the island, Kim pulled on her aileron controls one last time and rose vertically into a stall. The wing's momentum completely drained, she hovered upright for a moment, as if standing on air. Then, as she began to sink vertically and before the wing could flip into a nose-first dive, she pulled her parachute ripcord. The fabric blossomed into the air with a dull ripple, gently as if pulling a kleenex from its box. There was no jerk on the harness whatsoever. Before she even realized it, the ram-air parachute had inflated and she was gliding silently toward Drakken's fortress. The wing dangled below her on a carbon-fiber cord, its weight pendulumming her backwards and forwards slightly.

As if booming loudspeakers had been switched off, the sound of wind tearing past her helmet ceased. For the first time since leaving the airplane, Kim heard her own breathing. After the constant deafening wind-roar, the abrupt silence pressed unnervingly on her ears. Checking her inflated canopy for rips, Kim pushed up her visor and unclamped her oxygen mask, breathing in the heavy, moist air for the first time.

Ron mimicked Kim's maneuver and yanked his ripcord. He deployed with slightly less grace and he swung around a bit before settling to her right, slightly above her.

"WHAT-" Kim started, then cut off embarrassedly, realizing she was almost shouting. "I mean, what a ride, huh?"

"Yeah," said Ron, his voice also sounding unnaturally strange and loud in the whispering quiet.

Pulling on vent toggles, Kim entered a shallow dive and then leveled out, zeroing in on the roof of the lower main tower. Tense, she glanced down at the SAM installations. She saw no technicians or guards, no scurrying movement or panicked gestures. The missiles remained silent, innocuous; seemingly lifeless and abandoned.

As they dropped, the lair suddenly took on detail, hatches sprouting, cooling lines rearing into tangled masses, smooth surfaces suddenly dotted with vent covers and power boxes.

"Watch out for the pool," Kim said, pointing toward a large baby-blue splotch tucked between some cooling towers, glimmering invitingly in the 90-degree heat.

"Waddya mean?"

"Well, this is a South Pacific island, right? So we have to watch for a rocket or something coming out of the pool."

"Where in the world'd ya get that one?"

"I have no idea. Dad was all over it, though…"

Things began happening fast. Kim abruptly became aware of her speed, the tip of the coast sliding beneath her feet, the crevasses and pitfalls of Drakken's complex rearing up to meet her. She was dropping quickly now; her target, a fifty-by-fifty-foot square of clear roof on the lower of the two main towers, filled her vision. Her point of view rotated from looking at it above to approaching it like a runway. For a moment, it looked as if she wouldn't be able to make it. The wall loomed. Bracing her legs and pulling on the parachute toggles, she just cleared the roof lip. Behind her, the wing clattered loudly on the black roofing grit. Kim now skimmed just a few feet above the roof. She yanked the venting toggles all the way down, and she skipped lightly onto the roof as stepping off a curb. Leaning back hard, she sent the parachute billowing to the ground in front of her. The air was stunned, heavy, dead.

Clearing the LZ and taking off her helmet, she watched Ron land. He had pointed his legs too much and only his toes made contact on landing. For a few terrifying moments, the parachute kept pulling, Ron frantically trying to dig in with the tips of his shoes as he was dragged toward the other edge. He ramped off a small bump in the roofing material, which allowed him to reset his feet and make a proper landing. On solid footing, Ron managed to collapse his chute and release his harness. As the fabric fluttered down, part of it draped over the far edge of the roof. Panting, Ron popped off his helmet and stared at the section sticking into thin air.

Kim unclamped her harness, walked over, and helped him stand. "What, are we going to have to call you Twinkle Toes now, or something?" she said gently, running her fingers through his hair.

"Yeeesh, don't start, KP," he said wearily. Shaking his hair out of his eyes, Ron looked around at Drakken's doppelganger lair. Everything was in exactly the same positions as his original complex. "Well, this looks familiar."

"I'll say."

Ron kneeled and scraped away the bitumen layer, exposing metal plating. "Aaah-ha, here we go," he said, pointing to a small logo etched into the metal. Bending closer, he read aloud:

"Henchco: The Leader in Villainy Products… Do you not want to learn a new floor plan every time a whiney superhero destroys your lair? Do you not want to blunder into an unexpected death trap while sleepwalking? Has your lair's design become part of your Terror Package™? Look no further, then! Our lair duplication process, championed and perfected by Wal-Mart, allows you to create an exact copy of your original lair with our patented prefab parts, no matter where in the world you are! A wide range of accessories allows you to customize your new location to your tastes. Phone: 1-800-ASK-HENCH. Hencho – an equal-opportunity employer."

Ron finished and rocked back on his heels.

Kim raised her eyebrows. "They fit all that onto one logo?"

"Seriously."

"Nice."

Standing, Ron brushed away more bitumen with his foot, revealing more metal plates interlocking together like simple jigsaw pieces. Each of them had a logo identical to the one Ron just finished reading.

Kim helped him dust off the black grit covering his pant knees and they walked together toward the roof edge.

His steps growing smaller and smaller, Ron curled farther to his knees as he neared the drop. Whimpering, he spanned the last three feet on his stomach and used his arms to drag himself forward until his eyes stuck out over the void.

"Oh, yi-yi-yi-yi-yiiiii!"

He felt something in his lower half retract to somewhere around his navel. Some 600 sheer vertical feet down, a white line skirting the mountain's feet was the only evidence of the massive combers pounding the shoreline below. The devastating combination of water and momentum drifted up to them only as a faint Shusssh… Shusssh…

Yelping, he backed away from the ledge and ran to the very center of their landing pad.

The metal toe in her shoes only a few inches from the plunge, even Kim felt an instinctive, apprehensive tingling jolt run up her spine. Sweat running down her skin underneath her black jumpsuit suddenly turned cold. Ordinarily, she had no fear of heights – after all, once in the air, there are no references to compare for physical height, only the altimeter. But now, standing on something solid, with an actual drop looming before her… Well… six-hundred feet would not end prettily.

Scanning around, she saw a series of crude iron U's driven into the side of the tower, leading down to a balcony terrace fifty feet below. They'd have to be careful. A slip to the left and they'd be coming down on flagstones. A slip to the right, and at least she'd have time to pray before she hit the rocks. Bundling up her parachute and wing, she trundled to the drop and tossed them over. Biting her glove, she watched, relieved, as the wing clattered onto the balcony, parachute fluttering down on top of it. Ron flung his flight system over after her, the wing nearly missing the balcony edge.

Getting to her knees, Kim slowed backed toward the access ladder until she felt her shins stick out into the void. Taking a deep breath, she leaned backward, one foot swinging wide through oblivion. She heard her foot crunch on rust on the first rung and opened eyes she didn't know she'd closed. Giving a last wave at Ron, she hupped herself over the 90-degree ledge and began climbing downward. Kim moved cautiously, step-by-step, staring resolutely at the concrete wall in front of her. Wind sighed, gently tugging at her, but she ignored it. After what seemed an eternity, she felt her shoes contact balcony and she stepped away from the ladder, looking expectantly up at her boyfriend.

He huddled at the edge, looking down at her with eyes the size of hubcaps, face white.

"I… I… can't do this, KP!"

Kim rolled her eyes. "Sure you can!"

"No, I can't!"

"I just did it, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but you're Kim Possible, girl!"

"So…?"

"So this is Ron Stoppable we're talking about! I'm afraid to help my dad clean the gutters! …And we've only got a one-story house!"

"OK, fine, you want to be stuck up there?"

"Stuck?! I don't wanna be stuck!"

"Then you'll have to climb down, then!"

"But I can't!"

"Ron, yeesh, just, uhhhhh, imagine you're climbing down a… bunk-bed, or something!"

"Bunkbed, right, ok, fine, that'll work, bunkbed, bunkbed, bunkbed…" Ron muttered, easing himself gingerly over the edge to the first iron rung, eyes shut tight. He slowly groped halfway down the ladder before slowing to a crawl, eyelids still clamped together. His face contorted slightly. "Shawwwnnnn," he mumbled, "I was gonna get the top bunk…! Heeeeeeey, I called double-dibs on that, you know… Shawn, what are you doing? Shawn…? Shawn, this isn't The Lion King… What are you – Shawn! Hey, stop that! Shawn, no, don't, I'm not Mufasa! No! Don't do that! Don't – Yeip!"

Ron opened his eyes. His feet had touched the stone terrace. Kim came over and gave him a deep hug. "Whatever makes you tick, Brainswitch Boy."

He awkwardly returned the hug, patting her on the back a bit. "T-thanks, K.P."

Kim separated and went to stand at the semicircular balcony's apex, looking out to sea. She leaned on a low three-foot-high stone wall built in the style of Hitler's Eagle's Nest. The parapet acted as a fall restraint and a warm, solid seat. The balcony was positioned on a small natural outcropping, giving them an unobstructed view to the shoreline far below. Behind them, an arching, thirty-foot-wide, open-mouthed tunnel burrowed into the wall until its end was lost in gloom, still going.

The sky rose around them in an unbroken dome, a flat, listless blue in the harsh equatorial sunlight. Twinkling greenish-blue sea water spread away at their feet to the razor-straight horizon. Wind whistled softly upward, curling through Kim's hair.

Ron, like any boy throughout history, couldn't resist tossing something over the edge. Prying one of the stones loose from the parapet, he flung it into space. Both he and Kim watched it fall. Five and a half seconds passed before he saw it, barely distinguishable, vanish into a foaming breaker.

Kim watched for a moment as the breaker destroyed itself on the rocks, then stepped away from the wall into the center of the balcony. Unsnapping a zipper cover, she pulled the zipper pull all the way down her body and stripped out of her flight suit. Her black synthetic top clung tightly to her back in the humid South Pacific air, soaked through with sweat. The body water trickled down her exposed midriff and channeled down the trench of her spine.

"Hot out here, innit?"

"Yeah…" Ron said, flicking his eyes away from her tan, well-toned midriff with difficulty. He stepped out of his suit as Kim unbolted the luggage compartments on their wings.

"…It'd be even worse with my purple stuff, though," she continued. "My middle couldn't vent."

The connections she'd formed with Simms, Jonathan, and Ben two months ago had unexpectedly paid off. Word got around to them that Kim's old-style mission clothes had been discontinued in her senior year, and they were able to convince a military supply company to recreate the design. The move proved a boon to the kevlar clothing manufacturer, as they now had "the" Kim Possible providing a powerful unspoken testimonial. Business was booming as other defense agencies overloaded them with orders. Kim now wore her purple outfit for milder climates, saving the midriff-bearing design for missions like this one. Club Banana CEOs, meanwhile, banged their heads against the wall. After considerable public outcry, they had been in the motions of reinstating the outfit alongside Kim's purple-and-black version, using it as a kickoff for a brand-new product line geared toward the military and defense agencies. For their hesitation, they'd been beaten to the punch.

Gathering up her stuff, Kim slung on her backpack and ruefully clamped on her gun belt. Looking up, she saw Ron about to sling on the second, full-volume pack.

"Wait, wait, wait, Ron, not that one."

"Huh?" he said, one strap looped over his shoulder.

She took a similarly-sized backpack from her wing and relieved Ron of his. Walking into the tunnel a few yards, she stuffed them in a darkened corner behind a fire main pipe.

"…What was that for?" Ron asked as she reemerged, shifting the other backpack over his shoulders and clamping on his utility belt.

"You know, insurance..." Kneeling, she squinted at a list of instructions the U.S. Air Force had printed on the side of their wings. Reading the last direction again, she glumly activated the Kimmunicator.

"…Wade, that last line… Do we really have to?"

"Orders is orders, Kim."

"Yeah, but it seems like such a waste… And carbon-fiber is expensive!"

"ESG and COMAFFOR told me specifically, Kim."

Sighing, Kim pulled out her Strider SMF and hacked her parachute to ribbons, then turned and did the same to Ron's 'chute. Pocketing the blade, she stuffed her jumpsuit into the luggage compartment as Ron followed her lead. Hoisting the wing above her head, she tottered to the balcony edge and balanced it upright on the parapet by its wingtips, the parachute trailing ungainly after her.

Kim gave her wing a push. It leaned backward in slow motion before losing its center of balance and tumbling over the edge. Kim quickly stepped aside as the shredded parachute followed it with an angry ruff. Looking over the edge, she saw the doomed equipment bobbling in air resistance from its downward plunge. Slamming to the ground with a small dust cloud, the wing shattered into several pieces.

Beside her, Ron eagerly heaved his wing over the ledge, then cheered as it broke apart on the shore.

"This is a lot more fun than a rock!"

Kim glared, annoyed. "Ready, Wade?"

"Yep." He pressed a small button on his consol.

After a short, expectant pause, small charges of C4 embedded into both wings detonated. The large wing chunks scattered into even smaller pieces. The parachute and flight suit ignited and burned into an oily, gunky mess.

Kim's lip's curled at the stinking hydrocarbon smoke billowing away from the wreckage. "Well, that's that..." She looked down at her PDA. "…Anything else?"

"That's it for now."

"'Kay. I'll beep you when I need to."

"See you then. Wade out." The little screen flickered into darkness.

Kim walked into the mouth of the access tunnel, her footsteps echoing loud off the smooth, curved concrete walls. Her way was lit by a long row of metal-halide lamps bolted to the crown of the ceiling. They stringed down the hallway until they were lost into the darkness.

After a few steps, the air chilled, the sunlight gone and the corridor soaking up the coldness of the granite it drilled into. Kim turned to find Ron still standing in the light, looking wary.

"C'mon!" Kim called softly, gesturing over her shoulder.

Taking a final deep breath, Ron trailed after her into the mouth of the dragon.

To be continued…


(I would like to add that somewhere in here I borrowed a very short line of dialogue from Shallow15's story "Timebreaker." I hope this will be seen as a sign of complement instead of plagiarism, since Shallow15 is an excellent writer and put the same idea I was trying to convey into a much more succinct form. If not, then I apologize, Shallow15.)