-Chapter 3-
Dr. Betty Director sat up, her head reeling from a blast that had knocked her over moments before, sparks still arcing across the room from the malfunctioning robotic limbs that were formerly housed in the floor of the Nemesis Chamber.
"Status report! NOW." Betty Director barked at the nearest agent with her in the chamber.
"Dr. Director ma'am, it appears that Project Nemesis and Miss Possible are tearing the base to pieces in their attempt to escape." The nervous agent replied, knowing full well that an angry Betty was a dangerous Betty.
"It appears? I want facts not assumptions." Dr. Director paused, as all the lights in Global Justice HQ shut off. "And get the damned power back on. I want this base to be up and running again in time to track their movements."
"Yes ma'am" was all the agent said as he slowed his pace, allowing the quick pacing Director of GJ storm ahead into the corridor towards the briefing room from where she would oversee the progress, once the power was restored.
Dr. Director, with a confident, yet determined stride in her step, marched down the long hallway. Stepping over loose cables and replacement parts strewn across the floor when necessary, she wasted no time in gathering intel and barking orders to idle agents and guards to busy themselves or to gather the remaining senior scientists of the now clearly failed Project Nemesis in the briefing room.
"Get the global link up and running again!" the fuming Director barked indiscriminately into the room before turning to a group of technicians wrestling with a malfunctioning portable generator arcing electricity along its cables. "And shut that off or fix it up before that thing causes more problems… this has not been a good day."
An agent that had been, up until recently, bent over a computer screen set into a desk stood to attention as Dr. Director approached.
"Agent Du, report."
"Dr. Director, ma'am. Base power levels are beginning to stabilize and we are currently reconnecting the uplink to the 'SENTINEL' satellite defense systems." Agent Du reported stiffly.
"And what of the connection to our bases around the world?"
"Should be coming online in a moment, Ma'am." Du replied, before adding "I thought it best to get SENTINEL up and running before anything else, just incase things get too far out of hand."
"Agreed, though plans are not yet far enough in for activation. The greater mutant community could still form a united front, there are still many wildcards out there that could do our work for us without needing to show our hand." Dr. Director stated, reading over data on a tablet in her hands as connections were made with GJ forces positioned in population hotspots.
Finding a stray office chair in the room, the now somewhat tired Betty Director made a beeline for it, content on giving her feet a rest and analyzing all that was happening in the wake of the blackout at HQ. Fate it seemed however had different ideas in mind for Dr. Director as red lights flickered to life on a computer terminal and an alarm sounded.
"No moment of peace, I mean seriously!" Grumbled the Director of GJ changing her course back to Agent Du. "Du, Report. What just happ-"
"It's Nemesis and Possible." The annoyed agent cut in. "It seems they're attempting to escape via the Hangar."
Before Dr. Director could reply however another set of red lights lit up on the same terminal.
"AND that?!"
"Hang on, ma'am." Agent Du paused to take in what was going on, before his eyes widened. "We just lost power to the Subject containment level. It must have either been a generator malfunction or due to the damage Stoppable and Possible have done to HQ's local power supply."
"Could this get any-"
"Update coming in Dr. Director," one of the agents across the room in charge of said level shouted to her. "Subject restraints failing. Live video feeds… down, confirmed subjects 5, 15, and 27 have escaped. Attempting to deadlock all doors from the cells."
"See to it Agent Carter. We haven't spent years and millions of dollars on bending them to our will to just let them go."
"Yes Dr. Director… ah er ma'am, it would appear that the Subject in cell 5 has, uh, exploded..."
"Damn, they cost $35,000 a piece I knew those control chips weren't ready for testing on mutants with unstable powers. Mothball 'em and stop Subjects 15 and 27 from escaping!"
On the Subject Containment Level, moments before power loss, Subject Containment Cell 15
Bonnie Rockwaller sat in the corner of her cell. Unmoving, bar her breathing, Bonnie eyed the door and the turret above it, its focus unwaveringly on her. She knew what the turret would do if she was to behave 'suspiciously' during lockdown, suspicious entailing even a single movement of her finger. Luckily for her, the turret was not armed with lethal ammunition, but instead with high power tasers and custom built cooling elements to subdue her. She had discovered this fact within half an hour of Global Justice abducting and imprisoning her in this cell when her powers developed more rapidly than she could hide from the authorities. Notoriously hot tempered in high school none of her peers, not even the famed Kim Possible had ever suspected a thing that she was a mutant. One that could create and harness fire at that too, which had caused the fire brigade to come to her aid many times to put out the occasional fires at the Rockwaller home when Bonnie's powers had been proving uncontrollable early on. That had been years ago now though, and nearly as long a time since she had been able to see the sky, or feel the warmth of the sun on her skin.
As Bonnie was close to dozing off she heard a low rumble echoing down the hallway, followed by distant alarms blaring.
"Well something's certainly going on out there" the ex-cheerleader said to herself as she desperately tried to make out what the excited voiced running past her door were saying.
As the voices began to die down and the closer alarms were shut off Bonnie admitted defeat and resigned herself to quietly sitting in her cell corner where she could keep an eye on the door and the ever-watchful turret. Dozing off again, Bonnie looked back to that fateful day that Global Justice had come o take her away.
Middleton, seven days after Graduation
Bonnie Rockwaller, recovering from a short little vacation with her year level peers and friends, was sitting at her desk in her room, trying to wrap her head around some of the most outlandish mathematical equations she had ever set eyes upon.
"GAH, this just makes no sense! I swear its like a completely alien language or something!" Bonnie exclaimed, becoming increasingly frustrated the more she stared at the offending piece of paper before her.
"This is ALL Possible and Stoppable's… fault?" Almost as if on cue with her flair of emotion with the homework she had to do, Bonnie felt a mild burning sensation travel down her arm into her finger tips "Oh no, please not right now…" was all that Bonnie could think before a brilliant flame burst into life in the palm of her hand and proceeded to engulf her entire hand.
"No,no,no,no. go out go out-" she begged the rogue flame in her hand before, as if to torment her, the paper and part of her desk caught fire and began to spread. Bonnie gulped and looked at her hands and then to the desk. "Not good."
The fire engulfing her hand finally extinguished itself as the wood in her desk began making cracking and popping noises, slowly but surely turning into a mini bonfire in her room. Seeing this and noting that her staring at the flame in bewilderment only seemed to fan the fire to even larger heights and somehow make it draw nearer to her, Bonnie ran to the kitchen and the home phone that was always reliably there.
Dialing in a number she now knew off by heart Bonnie thought to herself "I am so not having a good day".
Hearing the dial tone cease and a tired voice answer, Bonnie drew her attention back to the matter at hand. "Oh hi um, This is Bonnie Rockwaller, … Yes I know, third time this month, but seriously help- yes, but how did you know why I ca-" a loud crackling noise from upstairs got her attention as the fire grew. "Shit,, um, just hurry!"
Hanging up the phone Bonnie ran for the front door, the smoke inside beginning to become unbearable as the fire she had started somehow engulfed more and more of her home. Racing outside to a safe distance she could do nothing but watch and pace about nervously as she waited for the fire trucks to arrive.
"My family is going to kill me for this" Bonnie said to herself moments before the red trucks arrived to do their work.
The fire trucks pulled up and the got to work unspooling their high-pressure hoses and running towards the blaze. As the firemen went to work putting out the blaze Bonnie literally singlehandedly had lit an unmarked black four-door car pulled up not too far from the commotion, its tinted windows hiding the occupants from unwanted eye. After a moment of just sitting there the doors opened and two men in an unfamiliar uniform exited the vehicle, walking towards Bonnie, who had at that moment noticed the obviously non-firefighter duo approaching her.
"C-can I help you? Are you here about the fire?" she asked the two officials nervously, still trying to calm down from her adrenaline rush of escaping the inferno that had been her house.
"Miss Rockwaller, would you please come with us? We would like to debrief you about the incident that occurred tonight." The agent on the right said in an almost robotic, emotionless voice.
"I, what? why? I have to wait for my family, they were out tonight and are meant to come home."
"Miss Rockwaller, your family has already been informed, now come with us please?" The agent on the left spoke this time, in a similar voice to that of the agent on the right.
Although the agents of sorts had said that her parents knew they were here Bonnie couldn't help but feel uneasy. She couldn't see any insignia on the car or any badges on the two officials before her, and something about them just seemed to shout out trouble.
"I don't know, I don't think I want to. Can't we do this here?"
Without so much as another word being spoken the agent who had spoken up first pulled out a small odd looking handgun and fired a dart at her exposed skin, injecting the tranquiliser payload into her system.
Before she completely succumbed to the effects of the tranquiliser, Bonnie heard the holder of the handgun speak into a wrist mic "Dr. Director, this is agent Du. We have the package and are returning to HQ."
Present day, GJ HQ Subject Containment Cell 15
A loud metallic clank and a clicking noise brought the brunette out of her semi-conscious dream state quick enough to see the lights brighten, then dim the cell into darkness.
"What the hell?" was all that Bonnie could think to say as she began trying to make sense of what was going on. "Wait, was that the door?"
Same time, GJ HQ Subject Containment Cell 27
Tara King looked up from her bunk bed with a start when the lights in her cell shut off, and got even more curious when the magnetic seal on the door disengaged. Not entirely sure what the meaning of this was the blonde young woman looked over towards the door and the respective turret that hung from the roof, also powered down. Letting her curiosity get the better of her she rose from her bed and stalked towards the door and gave it an experimental tug.
"Huh. Even without the lock engaged its too heave to pull open, I wonder…"
Her arms outstretched, Tara placed her palms onto the solid steel doors, concentrating on that tingling feeling spreading across her whole body. Almost immediately she saw a layer of frost and ice spread over the door from where her hands were placed until the whole door and parts of the surrounding cell wall began freezing over also. A few moments later the door and its hidden hinges and mechanisms began to creak and groan before the door finally gave in, almost bursting from where it originally stood to fall onto the ground in the cell.
Tara looked out into the hallway, and to her surprise, saw nobody, no guards, nothing. Not to look a gift horse in its mouth she took the opportunity and gingerly stepped out of what had been her place of residency for the last few years, stretching her sore arms and legs, and began working on a way to work out just how to get out of whatever place 'they' had been holding her in.
"Left or right?" She asked herself as Tara looked down along each direction of the hallway her cell opened up into.
That was the point when she realized the ridiculous amount of doors, and their respective cells, set into the walls of the hallway, she counted roughly close to 50 cells no doubt not unlike her own. But before she could form any more thoughts along the lines of if she should try and save any more from their cells, a cell door not too far from hers caught her attention.
Cell door 15, she could see, was starting to glow at its centre, not to mention the groaning noise it let off as the steel began to give way, melt and bend.
"Ok… at least I know I'm not the only who noticed the lock on the door turning off. I really hope you're not going to be trouble there '15'." Tara said out loud as she witnessd the door burst from its closed state and land on the hallway, not unlike hers had done, followed by a wave of super heated air forcing her to take a few steps back and shield her face.
"Alright '15'," she said to the mystery mutant emerging from the darkness of the cell "I really hope you're not going to cause me any… trouble?"
That was the point when Tara, having opened her eyes and unconsciously cooled the air off around her, recognized the woman standing in front of her, squinting as she had to readjust to the light difference of the cell's darkness to the lights of the hallway.
"Bonnie? Bonnie is that really you?" a shocked and surprised Tara blurted as she recognized her best friend from high school.
"Hey Tara, long time no see! I take it from your attire you have been just as much a 'guest' of Global Justice as I have been." The slightly exhausted Bonnie replied, before propping herself up against the wall with the realization that she'd used up a lot of her energy channeling her powers into the cell door to burst it open.
Realising that Tara's imprisonment at the GJ facility must mean only one thing Bonnie looked up from the floor to look into her best friend's eyes. "Hey T, I know this probably is the wrong time to ask, but when did you find out? That you were a mutant that is."
"Yeah, you're right. We'll have some interesting things to tell each other, but maybe we should wait until we're out of this… this place we can share our 'coming out of the X-gene closet' stories with each other." Tara replied, before adding "Now, lets see if we can escape to some place quieter and less GJ-agent-filled."
"Wow T, I think you might have grown an attitude there." Bonnie commented somewhat passively before joining Tara in walking down the Hallway leading to the left, following the numeric system on the doors that were getting smaller and smaller.
The next half an hour went by very silently as Bonnie and Tara snuck along hallways and his in man-sized grills (allowing access to ventilation shafts) along the walls when they had to avoid large numbers of armed guards that scurried around the place.
Tara broke the silence after a group of five or so guards had run past their hiding spot "They must have realized by now that we have escaped don't you think Bonnie?"
GJ HQ, near the surface, Main Hangar bay
"I thought I could trust GJ, all this time! And they were behind it all too!" Kim vented to nobody in particular as she reached out with her power and threw a trolley and the tools on it towards two GJ agents that had been reloading their firearms after their ammunition had been mysteriously taken apart before even being fired.
"Yeah, they really seem like nice fellows! Maybe they're just having a bad hair day or something KP!" Ron shouted over the blast of a small explosive that knocked over a stack of suspiciously painted red barrels. "Oh, that's not cool. Have they never played any games ever, like dude seriously!"
"Haha, geez Ron, say seriously one more time and I'd swear you might have been trying to impersonate Motor Ed"
"Motor… who is Motor Ed, he sounds familiar. Is he a friend?" Ron paused holding his sword casually his side as he scratched the back of his head, his helmet having disassembled itself during the lull of the small firefight that had erupted in the Hangar bay.
"Hardly Ron, definitely a big no-no in the friend department," She paused, seeing a bit of a defeated look cross over his face. "Don't worry, we'll work on this. Together. We can get your memory back."
Carving and smashing their way through Global Justice HQ Kim had realized just how extensive Ron's memory loss was, though neither really knew why or how it had happened it seemed. But Kim, being the stubborn Possible she was, was determined to help Ron, her fiancé, get through this rather big low point and come out on top together.
"After all Ron, 'anything's possible for a Possible' and 'nothing-"
"And 'nothing stops a Stoppable'." Ron cut in, more or less blurting out the little phrase instinctively.
By now the hangar was relatively quiet. The GJ agents and mechanics that had been shooting at them when they had first entered the hangar were all either downed or knocked out cold. The thought of having killed people she had once sort of worked with still made Kim feel sick in her stomach, and this whole mutant power thing, though the heat of battle and adrenaline had helped her in great lengths in learning to control and use it somewhat, still confused and worried her immensely.
'Will the mutant power injure me when I use it? Why do I feel so tired after a while' she thought, but more importantly 'Will Ron be safe? What about my family? Will they accept me for who I am now? A murderer, a mutant?'
Kim was so lost in thought that she didn't realize Ron had found a small two person Hoverjet prototype and was going about getting it ready for takeoff. She only noticed that Ron had procured a ride for them to escape with when she heard him shout out to her.
"Hey KP! I've got this bondiggidy ride all ready and waiting for us to escape with, shall we?"
"Yes, lets. I've had enough of Global Justice to last me a life time I'd say."
As Kim climbed into the cockpit, seating herself beside her blonde partner she felt a wave of nostalgia come across her, and allowed her mind to race through the old memories of the adventures they had been on. As relaxed as she could be at the moment she somehow felt calm, and knew, somehow, that everything was going to be all right.
"Hey, um Kim can I ask you a question?" Ron turned to her as they began to hover and turn towards the exit of the hangar.
"Yeah sure Ron, what did you want to ask?"
"What does KP mean? It seems so familiar, so important and whenever I see you 'KP' comes so mind…"
"Oh that, it's – its kind of like a nickname you gave me, well its my initials to be precise; K.P, Kim Possible." She said with a smile.
"Before this," Ron gestured to the top of GJ HQ that they were fast leaving behind "we were close, weren't we?"
"Yeah, we were. And I know deep down we still are, we just have to climb up and over this 'tiny' hurtle and we can then work out where we'll go from there." Kim looked at her fiancé, before softly adding "I won't lose you again Ron, I'm here for you. I promise."
The small Hoverjet was silent for a while again, but not an uncomfortable silence. After a while of flying Kim realized they hadn't exactly worked out what to do once they had made it out of GJ HQ and turned to the blonde next to her
"Ron, whereabouts are we actually flying to?"
"I'm not sure, but for some reason, this direction seems right, I'm not sure why…"
"Ronald Stoppable, you will be joining us soon I would think."
"Huh? Did you say something KP?"
"Uh, no Ron. Why did you hear something?" Kim replied, suddenly feeling nervous.
"Ah uhh, nothing KP, must have been my imagination…" Ron trailed off mid sentence when the voice came back, and spoke to him.
"Only you can hear me for now. I am a mutant like you. I have given you the co-ordinates to a place where you will be safe Ronald, safe flight, we will meet very soon."
And just like that, without much thought or fanfare, the voice was out of his head, gone.
"I think I know just where to go KP, to be safe."
-End Chapter 3-