I don't own these characters and I don't own this concept. Disney owns the characters and the concept comes from the anime "Bubblegum Crisis 2040." The chapter title is a song by Disturbed.

3: "Guarded"

"How the hell could you let the Knight Sabers beat you to that Bebe again?" the roar practically shook GJ headquarters.

Barkin and Ron grimaced together as their boss let them have it in his powerful, booming voice that was known to make animals flee in terror. They were in a meeting with their boss, as well as a debriefing about their latest mess. They were trapped in a small room, which was about the size of an office space with a long table in it. They were at the table while the chief paced at the front of the room, taking his time to scream at them.

"Could you be any stupider?" How such a thunderous voice came out of such a small man boggled many minds.

The pair winced from the shrill yelling and tilted their heads to the side with tense faces. Their eyes focused almost on the dull grey floor and part of them was trying their best not to laugh. They hoped their boss did not notice their struggles. If he did, his temper would explode even more.

It was one thing to be screamed at and talked down to by their boss, but the fact that their boss — the chief of GJ — was about three feet tall and had odd mustard yellow skin made things a bit rough on their egos and tickled their humors at the same time. It did not help that he turned bright red after hollering for a long period of time. They were not the only ones who had to fight off the urge to giggle when the Chief went off.

Still, they sat there and let the little guy scream his head off, as he often did when it came to his employees. Sometimes, they took bets on who would crack first. There had been cases with officers bursting out into laughs before him, but they tended to be fired immediately after. Those consequences helped keep Ron from laughing out loud.

"You two are like reoccurring idiots! How could you possibly let them show you up again?" the chief, a man by the name of Demenz Dementor, hollered at the top of his tiny little lungs at them. The brown hair of his goatee caught a bit of spit flying out his mouth. His employees were lucky they were far enough away the shower did not touch them.

Barkin and Ron, never guys to learn their lesson, tried to explain what happened. Now, every time the Knight Sabers beat them to a crazed Bebe and they tried to explain the situation to the chief and he listened for about half-a-millisecond. After that, Chief Dementor went back to screaming. Yet, the two officers continued to try to get a word in edgewise.

"What happened—" Steve began to say and that was usually about the only thing that made it out of his mouth.

"Shut up!" Chief Dementor made a slicing motion with his hand. "I don't care what happened! Those girls left you looking like complete morons, yet again, which I don't doubt you are! But, you're making my operation look bad!" Dementor's voice was so loud the walls shook as he spoke and his voice bounced off of them. His officers resisted the urge to stick their fingers in their ears.

"Do we even know they're girls?" Ron put a finger to his chin, pondering this new thought. Rufus hopped out of his pocket and nodded to that question while taking his own "thinking" pose on his human's shoulder.

"Yeah, how do we know they're girls? They're probably some kinds of robots or something. They might even been some new military Bebes. I mean, girls couldn't do things like that," Barkin said. He motioned to the front of the room, where there was a screen set up with a paused picture of the emerald and onyx armored suit.

"From the intelligence we've got, I've been told the Knight Sabers are human and from the shape of the suits, I think it's safe to assume they're women," Dementor stated, glancing at the screen in front of him. He had been using it as a visual aid in chewing out his employees.

"Or guys with weird hobbies," Ron remarked with an amused smile. His joke got a chuckle out of his usual audience — Rufus. Barkin and Dementor did not even cut him a glance to acknowledge that he spoke. He sighed. "Everyone's a critic," he muttered, dropping his head for a moment.

Dementor decided to play the recording up on screen for them to get a look at what they were up against. The suit was shown fighting a berserker Bebe for a few brief seconds. The green suit's fists seemed to be on fire and the video paused before the suit delivered a blow to the Bebe.

"This is the information we were able to get on the Knight Sabers. The video feed is so short because it's just damn hard to get anything on the Knight Sabers. Video feeds always malfunction when they show up. We have yet to figure out if that's somehow due to their interference or some other phenomena," Dementor said while information appeared in bubbles up on the screen.

Barkin and Ron took some time to read what the screen caps stated. They focused first on the flaming fists, where the words on screen stated the knuckle-bomb weapons on the thick, armored hand, but said nothing about the jade plasma rising off of the whole fist. It was pointed out that the armor had to be made of an exceptional metal for hands to keep form under the blaze and also from the explosions that came from the impact of the knuckle-bombs.

The captions informed there were also bombs in the feet. Barkin cut Ron a glare to keep from saying anything stupid about that. Ron held up his hands in surrender and they continued on reading.

The hands held claw-like weapons in the fingertips, like an eagle's talons. There were also a series of holes in the underside of the hand for needle-like projectiles to come out of, but it was pointed out that the green suit rarely used that feature. Topping off the weapons of the green suit were the back and boot jets used for flying. There was only speculation on what the suit was made out of and how it was so maneuverable.

"These things are like a million times more advanced than our suits and weapons," Barkin commented, leaning back in his chair with a tight expression on his face. A snarl tugged at his lip and his jaw was tense enough to shatter if his teeth if he was not careful. Damn it, I hate those goddamn Knight Sabers. How was GJ ever supposed to come out on top if those damned vigilantes had such amazing equipment?

"And slimmer," Ron added with a smirk that said he wanted to chime in with more, but he bite his tongue.

But, Ron was right. Their armored suits looked like bulky battle tanks compared to the suits that the Knight Sabers used. Their suits moved like cheap bulldozers and hardly slowed down berserker Bebes. He did not bother to mention how much more effective the Knight Sabers' suits were. He had done that once and was cursed out for about a week by both the boss and his partner.

"If we had half of their power, I'm sure we could leave them in the dust," Barkin declared, hitting the table slightly just to vent some of his frustrations.

"Well, we don't! We have what we have, so you need to go do your damn jobs!" Dementor hollered at them to the point of hurting their ears. They flinched and made faces, hoping he did not reach the volume that made their ears ring, which the boss could do.

"Well—" Barkin was about to argue. Of course, he did not make it far now that Dementor was on a roll again.

"I don't want to hear it! Get out of my sight right now before I have you two idiots hand in your damn badges" The chief pointed to the door.

Barkin and Ron quickly rose from their chairs, causing a screeching sound to echo through the room. They rushed out of the tiny office and into the dull blue-grey hallway of the GJ building. They both sighed a little as soon as they were safely away from the madman they worked for.

"I can't believe that guy. He's expecting us to do the impossible over this," Barkin groaned as they started walking. His footsteps slapped the cheap tile like it had wronged him.

Ron chuckled out of the blue, which earned him a puzzled look from his partner. He decided to explain himself before the older man started to go off on him. "You just reminded me of something I used to hear about from the town near my hometown."

"I don't give a shit about that little town you come from that was so deep in the boondocks it's amazing you even knew what year it was when you came here," Barkin stated with a growl caught in his throat.

Ron rolled his eyes and just kept talking. "Supposedly, the town close to ours had a girl that used to do all kinds of hero work or something like that. Her name was Possible or something. She was pretty good at helping people and saving people and stuff. She seemed really nice from what I heard, but some of the guys in my town said she was just made up because the people in Middleton led really boring lives and needed something spice it up. I dunno if it was true or not, but you just reminded me of that is all."

Barkin glared down at him, looking at him like he was an idiot. "That doesn't have a damn thing to do with this. The Knight Sabers aren't interested in saving people or helping people. They only fight berserker Bebes and more than likely just because they like to kick ass. It gets on my nerves!" He snarled again and punched his hand into his palm. "They're interfering with our business!" He turned, about to put his hand through the wall, but he stopped just in time. He did not need to end up in the hospital or in more trouble than he already was.

Ron chuckled again. He was pretty sure Steve joined GJ just to kick some ass. That was one of the things that made GJ different from the regular police force. Since they were always going against dangerous Bebes, they were allowed to use as much force as possible. There was always a fight with them and Barkin seemed to enjoy that; well, in Ron's opinion anyway.

"I don't know. I read somewhere that they're actually military. You know, from Area 51 and crap like that," Ron said. It made sense to him considering the damage they had seen the damn things do. Now, he was not sure if the suits were Bebes, regular robots, or armor, but they had to be military.

"You're shitting me. I don't want to have to deal with the army and shit later on if that's true," Barkin groaned. The more that he thought about the Knight Sabers, the more it pissed him off off that they even existed.

"Well, that's what I read somewhere. I think it does make a lot of sense. I mean, how the hell else would they be able to have such cool tech? I mean, it's not like this is a comic book and some rich nut-job decides to fight Bebes because her parents were killed by them or something like that," Ron remarked and then he stopped and thought about it. Hmm, maybe that was actually plausible. He thought he might have to look into that when he went home.

"So, the Knight Sabers are, what, Batman?" Barkin scoffed.

Ron chuckled. "I'm impressed you know that. What does it matter if they are military?"

"Then it just means they're testing the damn things out here and eventually we'll be out of a job."

Ron rolled his head to the side a little. "Yeah, that would suck. But, then again, they might let us join."

Barkin scoffed while Ron stopped as they came up to a vending machine. The vending machine was just about Ron's favorite place in the whole headquarters. It was stocked full of things he and Rufus loved to devour, so he could not help stopping there each and every time he passed it. Barkin frowned at him, like always, and shook his head.

"Watch out, Stevie-poo!" a cheerful voice cooed from behind Barkin.

Barkin practically jumped out of his skin as a warm hand lifted his massive arm. He was not surprised to see Tara trying to get by him. He growled at her smiling face, which only seemed to make her smile more. He glared at her and his eyes seemed to be trying to force her to flee the scene. She was not moved, though.

"I told you not to call me that!" he barked at her, almost screaming at the top of his lungs. Apparently, he did not care if he caused a scene as long as it would get her to stop calling him that ridiculous nickname.

"Aw, but it suits you so well, Stevie-poo!" she replied in a sing-song voice with a grin plastered on her face. She looked so damned proud that it pissed Barkin off even more than he was before.

Barkin's dark eyes burned with something akin to hatred. "That's not my name!"

Tara shrugged. "I know. That's why people call it a nickname." Just about the cutest and most innocent expression settled on her face.

"This is a professional workplace! Could you act like you're over the age of ten while you're here at least?" Barkin hollered so loudly that he blew Tara's hair back. Her smile remained in tact, though.

"You sound as bad as Dementor right now," Ron commented.

"You're the only that gets bent out of shape over it. I mean, Ronnie doesn't mind. Right, Ronnie?" Tara hummed.

"Nope," Ron replied, mouth full of chocolate and nougat. His eyes shined from his sweet delight. Rufus sat on his shoulder, eating chocolate snacks of his own. "Really, Steve, you should cool out. You're going to give yourself high-blood pressure or something," he stated, his voice its typical laid back tone.

Barkin threw his hands up in defeat. There was just too much that he felt needed to be corrected with the blondes. He sighed and his shoulders slumped. The blondes seemed oblivious to his frustration, focusing on each other.

"Well, later, guys. I've got to get to my station," Tara said with a smile as she marched off toward her desk.

"Later, Tara," Ron said, waving to her back as she skipped off.

"Bye-bye!" Rufus chirped.

Barkin remained silent, happy to see her leaving. They could get back to serious matters now, he thought, instead of acting like the headquarters was a nursery school. Then, he glanced down at Ron, who looked way too happy eating a candy bar and thought better of it. Nope, this is a nursery school.

-8-8-8-8-

Kim sat at her desk, staring intensely at her computer. It would have been all well and good if she were actually doing any work. Unfortunately, she was just pressing her luck, which had been all bad since she moved to Go City. She knew she should learn, but her intellectual curiosity got the better of her. Her positive attitude also told her that her luck had to change eventually, so she was going to see if that "eventually" was now. Besides, she could do anything, so eventually she would be able to pull it together.

"How can there be nothing on what happened?" Kim murmured with an aggravated frown on her tense face. She searched a couple of other pages and her screen flashed with "access denied" and other things meant to stop her.

"You shouldn't be using company computers for things that aren't work related," the manager Bebe said behind Kim.

Kim made a noise that almost seemed like she choked and cracked her teeth at the same time. Damn it, do Bebes have stealth modes or something? It would explain why she did not hear the thing coming or feel the presence behind her. The thought was more comforting than the idea that she was out of practice already.

"I was only checking the news," Kim explained quickly, closing the site that she was browsing. At least that was not a total lie or who knew what kind of trouble she would be in.

"Company computers are only for work," the Bebe stated. "I shall have to write you up and give you a demerit."

"Understood," Kim sighed and frowned. It would seem that that "eventually" was not now.

"Carry on working," the Bebe said and then marched away.

"Girl, I told you to just forget about the Knight Sabers and your little adventure last night," Monique called from one cubicle over.

"I can't." Kim blew out a breath. "There's just no way they could've covered that whole thing up. I mean, the thing leveled an entire restaurant! How can they just cover that up?" Kim's face scrunched up as she shook her head.

"Obviously, they did. It really wouldn't do well for the whole population of Go City to know exactly what insane Bebes do, anyway, would it?" Monique countered, as if giving a reason for the cover up would deter Kim from trying to find out the truth. Of course, she knew it would not matter.

Monique was very aware the battle lost already. After all, once Kim got an idea in her head, then that was that. Kim was going to find out the truth. She could only try get the redhead to chill about it while at work because she really did not want her friend to get fired. Kim needed this job if she wanted to stay in Go City.

"It isn't safe to keep something like this in the dark. People deserve to know how often these things go nuts just in case. They should also know about the Knight Sabers. I mean, these guys are saving lives. The GJ police got there so late that I'd be dead if it was left to them," Kim replied.

Monique doubted that, but not because she had so much faith in the police. "I think you're taking things too far. We both know it's damn hard to kill you. I get why you're so worked up, but you're only one person, Kim. One person who works for the Gemini Corporation that's gotten into enough trouble as it is. I think you should let this one go. I mean, it's not like you can do much."

Kim laughed and Monique could practically feel her friend smiling. She knew that confident, almost arrogant smile of Kim's was on her mouth. Shit. Monique had definitely used the wrong words there and it was too late to try covering her ass with some other string of words.

"Mo, now you know, I can do anything," Kim commented in a tone that suggested she was telling the stone-cold truth.

"Kim, just do the work. We need to go to college at some point in life and getting fired isn't going to help that," Monique pled. They had a plan, they were supposed to work and go to school in the same city, like good little best friends, and Kim was getting off-track, as Kim tended to do. This was the reason Kim showed up in Go City a year after they came up with this plan.

"I will."

"I mean it. Besides, if you use work computers for personal stuff, they send alerts to the floor Bebe anyway, so she'll know its you if you keep this up and you will get fired. So, please, just do the work."

The silence was not a good sign and Monique was well aware of that. She sighed and felt like banging her head against the desk. Kim just had to meet the damned Knight Sabers, didn't she?! There would be no working with her now, Monique thought. Despite all of her pleading and melodramatics, there was a small, fond smile gracing Monique's lips. Same old Kim.

-8-8-8-8-

Sneaking away had never really been a problem for Kim. She did it easily, even before getting tons of martial arts training, but the training did help. So, she was capable of getting away from her desk, even with an alert Bebe patrolling her work-area, even with an alert Bebe that seemed to have it out for her.

Kim slipped into Brick's office when he was away. She knew he had gone to get some coffee from a vender in the lobby after asking around, pretending she needed his help. She was informed she would not get that anytime soon because Brick had a thing for trying to pick up the girl who sold coffee. Apparently, the coffee-seller had standards and rebuffed him all the time, but that only made him try twice as hard each time that he saw her. So, Kim had plenty of time to get in and do what she wanted to do.

Kim bolted into the boss' chair and hopped onto his computer. She quickly went through the pages she did not have access to on her own computer. A frown cut across her features.

"Damn," she hissed. There was seriously nothing about what happened with the crazed Bebe attacking the restaurant last night in any of the news articles. "How the hell could they cover that whole thing up like there where they say nothing about it at all?"

Kim wondered for a moment if the company had anything to do with the cover up. The Gemini Company made Bebes, after all. Their product would not sell if people were aware of how dangerous a malfunctioning Bebe could be. So, did the company pay off news channels to not report on the berserker Bebe incidents? Did they really have the money for that?

"I doubt it. They'd have to pay off every news station in the city every time this happened and I doubt that was some random event," Kim muttered.

She was not really sure what to think. People had to already know there was some danger to Bebes. After all, there was an entire police force whose job it was to fight nothing but Bebes. Obviously, the city would not spend money on a police force that it did not need, by her thinking anyway. But, who was covering up all of the Bebe problems then? Why did the media not report on it? What was going on?

I have to be able to find something. Where to look? Kim patted her chin and then she smiled. A light bulb practically appeared over her head.

She decided to go check out things in the GJ main frame. She was sure that their database had to have something in it. She just needed to find it. I hope I paid enough attention to know how to do this.

-8-8-8-8-

Tara was at her terminal, which was a rounded off space instead of a cubicle like in most places. The area was set up like a lecture hall, giving dispatch a view of a large screen for serious emergencies. She had a sealed bag of potato chips hanging from her mouth while trying to get herself situated for her shift. Her attention was distracted from that task as she noticed a blinking red light on her console.

A smirked worked its way onto Tara's lips. "Ho, ho, someone what's to play?"

Tara quickly rid herself of all unnecessary items, which included her bag of chips for the moment. She pulled up to her desk and turned her full attention to her computer screen. She could not help chuckling and she cracked her knuckles.

"Someone's getting a little nosy about the Knight Sabers, huh? Well, let's see how nosy they're willing to get," she murmured, reaching into a drawer at her small desk. She pulled out small laserdisc and popped it into her CD drive. "I wish I could see the look on this guy's face when he gets hit with this."

-8-8-8-8-

Kim thought she might make some progress until the computer screen suddenly went black. She was not too sure what was going on and then it looked like a crimson liquid oozed down the screen and Kim groaned. She kind of figured out what happened before the thing even finished.

"No one who's researched the Knight Sabers has lived to tell about it…" an ominous and spooky voice stated from the computer.

Kim frowned and tried to get around the virus now inflecting the computer. The screen would not go back to normal, though. She decided to not press her already obvious rotten luck. She sneaked out of the office and hoped someone thought Brick downloaded the virus, which did happen. His superior, who thought Brick had tried to get porn on his office computer again, reprimanded him.

"I'm not giving up," Kim muttered as she eased back into her seat. Thankfully, for the first time, the floor Bebe did not seem to notice that she was gone… or so she thought. She was ready to smile in over the very small victory, but that was short-lived.

"Miss Possible, once again, you left your work station without authorization. You will receive another demerit," the Bebe informed the redhead.

Kim groaned. At this rate, I'll be fired before the end of the month. Unfortunately, she could not help herself.

-8-8-8-8-

Next time: Kim never one to give up, tries another angle at finding out about Knight Sabers, seeking out Shego.