Let's Go Possible Force!
By
Ken-Zero
Disclaimer: I own nothing of any characters associated with this story, or the general backgrounds, etc. All characters and ideas are properties of their respective owners. This is a work of fun, not profit, and so on.
"What the—it's a castle!"
Shego's last word rang in the collected crew's ears uncontested by any other sound; the sheer impossibility of the sight kept anyone else from saying a thing.
Sure enough, visible near the horizon, tiny with distance but growing steadily with their approach, a distinctly-shaped building loomed up from a smattering of trees and surrounding water. White-painted, with dark colors for the roofing, it contrasted well with the setting sun and pinked sky. It was squared at the base, each corner a reinforced tower that flared out near the bottom to expand the castle's footprint. A central spire rose majestically to nearly twice the height of the corner towers, sloped so steeply and coming to such a sharp point that Shego's imagination had no trouble coming up with mental images of fantastic beasts impaled upon that point. As they neared, more details became visible—lights, bright and steady, shone through windows and hatches, clearly indicating power of some sort. A large opening at ground level interrupted the castle wall on the side facing them, more light spilling forth from within.
And most curious of all, a shield-shaped heraldic crest adorned that same wall, dominated by silver and gold.
The castle's size was apparent the closer they got—the rangefinder told Shego they were still a number of miles out, but already it seemed big enough to actually house their vessel. Shego only became more convinced of that the closer they got.
"We have to go in," Kim breathed from next to her, finally breaking the silence.
"No argument here, Princess." Shego shook her head, then looked at her former employer. "And I don't think Doctor Daffy is in any condition to say no."
Blinking, Kim looked away from the stunning view to see Drakken all but scrambling to get his gear together.
Movement from Shego's chair brought Kim's attention back to the front of the craft, as the pilot brought them in closer, slowing down enough to land. Kim felt the back of the ship dip a bit first as the view tilted up, but it leveled off soon enough as they lost all forward momentum and hovered over a clearing astride a road just outside a moat surrounding the castle.
Gingerly Shego allowed the ship to sink, her entire concentration focused on making sure they didn't crash, or sink, or suffer some other calamity. She had her pilot's reputation to live up to, after all. Watching the instruments, she followed the altimeter as it counted down to single digits, and slowed their descent still further. Finally, with a minor bump she felt only because she was waiting to feel it, they touched down, and she released a breath she forgot she was holding.
A hand tightened on her shoulder, and she looked up in surprise to see Kim's suit glove there, the redhead smiling just a bit. "I have to admit," she said, "you do have your moments."
Shego smirked, though she could feel just a bit of heat in her cheeks. "I prefer to think that I have my moments of imperfection," she retorted.
Kim's smile got a little wider. "Then let me rephrase: you have your nanoseconds."
Shego couldn't help but laugh. "Touché." She unstrapped from her chair and stood up, stretching. "I think I'm gonna have to kick your butt just to get the kinks out," she teased.
"Please," Kim retorted. "You can wait to try until we go check out that castle. Just think—as high-tech as it looks, there's probably a really awesome gym."
"I'm game. C'mon, it looks like the boys need to be let out."
Kim looked to the hatch, and sure enough, Ron and Drakken were arguing over who was going to be first to step foot on an alien planet, with Wade trying to interject every few seconds. Yori was standing back, silent, making no move to join in or remove any one of the arguers.
Shego, of course, felt no such restraint. "Alright, children," she growled, "break it up. Or did it occur to either of you that with structures like this, there would already be people here?"
Drakken opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Ron merely was silent for a second, before saying, "Good point."
Kim, taking advantage of the distraction, slipped past them all and hit the hatch control. The inner door to the ship's airlock slid up, and when she stepped inside, the outer door slid down instead, sliding through a slot in the ship's outer hull to form a ramp to the ground.
"Feels a lot like home," she reported over her shoulder, where the other five occupants just stared at her. "What?" She continued down the ramp, helmet tucked under one arm.
Shego sighed. "Of course the Princess would be first one out." She shook her head and followed Kim down the ramp, similarly without her helmet. At the bottom, she stood next to the heroine, taking a deep breath. "Smells good," she commented.
"Yeah, it does," Kim agreed. "Nature-y. Might be because of the extra oxygen Drakken said this world has."
They were silent for a beat before Shego spoke up. "Okay, that sounded really weird. Saying something like 'this world' sounds like it's straight out of science fiction."
"News flash: we're in science fiction," Kim teased. Wade came down next, with Drakken and Ron nearly tripping each other in their own haste. "At least, last I checked, flying faster than light was something straight out of that genre."
"Yeah, yeah." Shego rolled her eyes, before turning around to look at their ship. "Alright. Everyone off?" A round of affirmative answers came back, and she said, "I'm closing up and locking the ship. Anyone asks, I've got the keys." So saying, she produced a ring with a fob on it, pointed the fob at the ship, and pressed a button. The ramp retracted, sliding up through the slot and repositioning itself as part of the hull.
Then the craft beeped twice, a small red light visible in the cockpit flashing intermittently.
Silence reigned. Then Kim put her hand over her face. "Daaaaaaaaaaad," she whined.
Shego stared at the fob while Kim was getting over her embarrassment. "Seriously?" she asked of no one in particular. Then she shook her head. "Figures. You Possibles are just so…"
"Shego," Kim warned.
"Weird?" Ron offered.
"Ron!"
"Eh, that works."
"Hey!"
"C an you deny it, Pumpkin?"
"…No," Kim pouted.
"Then ignore it and let's get a move on. We've got a castle to explore, people—and until I say otherwise, no touchy!" She stared pointedly at Drakken and Ron.
"No touchy, right." Ron held his hands up…predictably dropping his helmet to the grass.
It was Shego's turn to plant her face into her palm. "Let's just go…"
A few minutes later saw the group of six crossing the substantial bridge over the moat. The bridge looked wide enough to allow for several lanes of two-way traffic, and it was paved, though pocked with potholes and other craters. The whole place was quiet, with only wind and the movement of the moat water beneath to cover up the sound of their footfalls. Two pedestals—closer in dimension to towers in their own right—flanked the roadway as the bridge ended and regular ground began on the castle side. On each was a stone-carved statue of a lion.
That particular revelation startled each of them pretty severely, given that if the Middleton Space Center's estimates were accurate, they were nearly eight times as far from Earth as Alpha Centauri, the solar system's nearest neighbor. For a life-sustaining world so far away to have any sort of remotely similar animals…well, the thought strained even Ron's suspension of disbelief.
The castle continued to loom ever larger as they approached, the initial illusion of a short distance from bridge to portcullis shattered as a handful of minutes of walking brought them closer but not quite to the entrance. Kim was absolutely wowed by just how huge the place was; it wasn't as tall as some of the skyscrapers back home in places like Go City, but the martial nature of a building such as a castle made it even more foreboding and impressive, especially with the towers at each corner and the enormous central spire. The crest, quartered red and green and blue fields with a vertical stripe of silver running vertical through it all, gleamed in the midday sun. A glint of gold caught Kim's eye, and she looked up to inspect—
-and froze in her tracks.
A golden cross—not a mere plus-sign, but the definite religious symbol—was laid into the silver stripe, surmounted by a similarly golden crown.
"Uh, guys?" she asked, pointing.
Ron, apparently the only one to hear her, looked back at Kim, then followed her finger.
"Huh. Isn't that a crucifix?"
"No body on it, so no, just a cross" Shego clarified off-handedly. Then she did a double-take.
In the general hubbub that followed, no one noticed the castle entrance raise slightly, or the slim, regal-looking man in what looked like a brown tuxedo with short tails and a perfectly-tied scarf at his throat coming out of the new exit. In fact, it wasn't until he was about ten paces away, clearing his throat noisily, that any of the six of them even thought to look…and when Wade did, the rest followed, and the discussion ceased immediately.
"Greetings," he said, in lightly accented but perfectly understandable English. "I apologize for the rudeness of this introduction, but we are in a state of turmoil. You see…" He paused and grimaced, as if it pained him to speak. "The princess is in another castle."
"…and that is why the people of this planet are in hiding."
It was about an hour later; the six space explorers were seated in a room inside the castle, its furnishings a curious, somewhat chaotic blend of ornate and technological. Their host, who had revealed his name to be Coran, had explained why he had greeted them the way he had. In short, they had been brutally attacked only a short while ago—a matter of a handful of days—and the local ruler, a young woman by the name of Allura, had been snatched up by the invading forces, who had then flown off with their prize. Coran wasn't sure what fate would befall her, but he held little hope, because raids like the most recent had become commonplace in the last decade and the planet lacked any sort of capability to fight them off…with one exception that he hadn't gone on to explain.
Now Shego, who'd been as silent as everyone else through the whole impossible-to-believe explanation, raised an ebony eyebrow. "The castle looked okay from the outside," she commented.
Coran nodded heavily. "Our defenses here are top-notch, and they have to be to keep the Drule from completely destroying it. This is as much a symbol of history and hope as it is a stronghold. Our only other hope is…well, by this point, nonexistent." His voice was tired by the end of his statement.
"Two hopes left and one won't work…" Kim repeated. Shego could tell the redhead was getting that look.
"Oh, no, you don't, Princess," she countered, not noticing Coran's eyes widen briefly. "You aren't dragging all of us in to fix this sob story's problems. We've got our own priorities, so now that we've had tea and crumpets it's time to jet."
"And why not? Wouldn't tracking this Allura of theirs down qualify as more exploration? We haven't been to anywhere but here yet, and there's a lot of galaxy left to cover."
"Because, genius, it ain't exploration if someone's already there! Yeesh, are you red or blonde?"
"But we haven't been there yet, so it still counts!"
"No, it doesn't!"
While the verbal spar continued, Wade turned back from the spectacle to Coran. "How is it that you speak English? There's no record of anyone leaving Earth, much less displaying this kind of technology."
Coran looked surprised. "And here I was going to compliment you on your fabulous Arthrian!" He started to smile, but then it froze. "Did…did you say Earth?"
His question got Kim's attention, and Shego harrumphed in irritation as they suspended their argument. Still, she turned her attention to the dweeb and their host. She hadn't even thought about it once she accepted that Coran was human, but the techno-dork had a point.
"Yeah…" Wade said cautiously. "What about it?"
"Then…the Galaxy Alliance still exists? It has sent aid?" The hopeful, plaintive, almost begging tone of his question was painful to Shego.
"Nope," she said shortly. "Just Earth. No such thing as this alliance thingy. And they didn't send aid, just us."
"We're aid enough," Kim put in, and Shego had to restrain herself from throttling the other woman.
"You're not the one in charge, here, Kimmie," Shego returned, her temper beginning to flare. "I am. And I say no."
"Then you can go home, and I'll stick around to do what I can."
Shego, of half a mind to just let the stuck-up little so-and-so mutiny and strand herself here, growled heatedly. "Look, you. I go home without you, and there go my hopes of relaxing for the rest of forever, because they're gonna lock me up faster than usual if you're not there, too. Even if it's not my fault—which it wouldn't be, 'cause you're the one with the hero complex."
"You used to be one, too! Besides, don't you think there'll be some sort of reward involved—especially if you save a planet ruler like this?"
Shego snorted. Apparently, Kim thought money was the only way to get her to do anything. The sad part was, in large part, she was accurate in thinking that. And now that Shego was thinking about the castle, and everything around it…
"Look," Kim continued, "you call me Princess all the time, but we both know I'm not one. But apparently there's a real one here –well, usually—and royalty means money."
Shego growled in annoyance, but the kid had a point. And green had always been her weak point…
"Argh! Fine. But I want it clear that I'm in it for the money, and all I want to do is play chaperon. You want to go out and get yourself killed, it's no skin off my nose, especially when we could have avoided it altogether." Having had enough of Princess Priss, Shego left the little impromptu meeting for the saner locale of their ship.
"Well…that could have gone better," Ron remarked. Wade and Drakken nodded.
Kim sighed. "Look…Coran, I'm really sorry to speak in your place like that, but it was the only way I could have gotten her to go along, and she's the only one that knows how to fly for us…since I'm guessing you meant that your leader is on another planet."
"Indeed," Coran answered, nodding sagely. Kim idly wondered if he had any other personality besides "wise, old adviser"—and even "old" was pushing it, given that his still-brown hair made him look not even forty years old.
Then he seemed to shake himself. "But where are the rest of my manners? It is late, and you've doubtlessly been on a long journey; I know Earth is no short distance away from Arus. Please, relax, stay the night at least. If you leave, at least do so freshly."
"My man!" Ron practically shouted. "Dude, you are alright. And this is one bon-diggety place to spend the night!"
Coran looked…confused. Kim couldn't blame him; Ron's lingo was hard to understand at times even for those closest to him.
"He means, 'Thank you,'" Kim clarified with half a smile. "And…I guess we're taking you up on that?" No one said otherwise, so Coran nodded and led them out of the room they were in and to another section of the castle.
The new area looked to be just about as opulent as any of them could expect the inside of a castle to be, high technology or otherwise. The designers had clearly opted for a more personal touch; the walls and columns were decorated with dark, rich colors, and the floor was actual polished stone, so perfectly buffed that it could nearly serve as a mirror. Hanging tapestries kept the area from resonating too loudly with stray sounds, each woven scene depicting what Kim surmised was some scene or another from the planet's history, recent or otherwise. Many of them involved what looked like multicolored animals, especially large cats, seemingly in keeping with the castle's outward theme of lions.
When Coran stopped to show them to their rooms for the night, every single guest there nearly fell over in shock. The rooms looked to be like what a visiting head of state would stay in, and—if possible—were more heavily decorated and fancy than the hallway. Enormous four-poster beds dominated the floor space, with similarly oversized wardrobes and foot lockers being the remaining wooden pieces of furniture. Thick carpeting covered each room's floor, and drapes that looked almost as heavy as the carpet covered windows that were simply too huge to be made of normal glass without shattering under their own weight.
Everything inside the room looked to be the height of fantastic luxury, and Kim was sure that the opulence of even one of the rooms would put a considerable dent in any of even Shego's ill-gotten fortunes. It actually left her feeling a little uneasy, as such open displays of boundless wealth usually did, but she resolved to keep it to herself.
Especially since Ron was taking to the place like it was a giant Bueno Nacho.
She felt her spirits lift a little bit, watching him run around the place as though he was years younger, pulling open drawers and doors and cabinets and so on, carrying on like it was the neatest thing he'd ever seen. He shouted for both her and Yori to come look at something, and Kim felt a familiar flash of anger, but she pushed it aside. She did have more important things to worry about, after all.
"Go see what he found," she said to the ninja girl, who was standing nearby. Yori looked back at Kim, more than a little surprised; Kim returned the look with a thin smile, effectively and silently conceding their subtle tussle over the blond boy. "I have to find Shego and drag her back inside," she explained. "She'll flip when she sees where she gets to stay."
There was a similarly small smile on Yori's lips as she bowed deeply to Kim and went in to see what Ron had found. Kim heard her say something to "Stoppable-san" and idly wondered when the Japanese girl would feel loose enough to use only his first name. Then she turned on her heel and walked out.
She found Shego leaning one shoulder against the side of their parked spacecraft, staring away from the Castle of Lions. Kim's boots, lightly-soled to save weight as part of a space suit, made little noise as she kept moving forward, but she knew that Shego would normally be able to hear her approach from several paces away.
The former thief didn't turn around, though.
In fact, it looked to Kim like she was tightening up, if the barely-noticeable drop of her shoulders was any indication. The heroine came up behind her and tapped her on one tense shoulder.
"Go away." The words came out tersely.
"No," Kim replied.
"Go away."
"No."
"Scram."
"No."
"Beat it!"
"Make me."
Shego, seeming to take her up on the offer, snarled as she whirled around, hands aflame with her signature plasma. Kim hastily backed out of range, finally settling into a guarded stance a number of paces away…and the fight was on.
They traded blows for several minutes, lasting longer than any of their normal fights only by virtue of there being no self-destruct device, no authorities bearing down on the scene. It was pure, intense, and exhilarating, and it left no time for talking, as both combatants poured every iota of concentration into attack and defense, strike and block and counter, dodge and roll and parry.
As they neared the ten-minute mark of total exertion, the pace of the fight began to slow, winding down to something approaching pro forma sparring. Even that lost gradual steam, ending entirely when each blocked the other's high kick with one of their own, legs meeting at the ankle, elevated above their heads.
The battle ended then as both women flopped onto their backs, breathing harder than they had in weeks.
Kim was the first one able to get words out around her panting. "Shego…"
"Don't…wan'…hear it, P—"
"I'm sorry."
Silence descended again as they continued to recuperate, Kim out of need for air, Shego out of total stupefaction. When she finally had enough control to not sound like a smoker who'd finished a marathon, she asked, "What for?"
"For…I don't know, for being me."
"Heh. That's a new one…"
"I'm serious!" She pouted at the sky. For some reason, it was easy to say it straight up and have Shego overhear it. Easier, at least, than she assumed it would be to say it to the other's face. "Look. I know you're against the whole idea. And I promise—I'll pinkie-swear, if you want me to—that once this is over I won't ask to help anyone else until we get home."
"Yes, you will," Shego replied tiredly. "You can't not."
"I'm still going to try!"
"Why, Princess?"
Kim's brow furrowed. "Why what?"
"Why are you going to try? Assuming I believe you, of course."
Kim rolled onto one side so she faced away from Shego. "Because…"
"Because why?"
"Just because."
"Because why?"
"Just because!"
"Because isn't an answer," Shego nagged, reminding Kim so strongly of one of her old teachers that she couldn't help but start laughing. And after a second, the utterly ridiculous nature of their argument got Shego laughing, too.
It was strange, in a way; they'd been mostly cordial to each other pretty much since just before liftoff back on Earth, hadn't had a physical confrontation until just now, had been downright amicable in some cases. And yet neither had really relaxed in the other's presence. There had been a couple of moments of letting down guards, but at this particular moment, in all its absurd humor, they were actually getting along.
Almost like friends getting over a quarrel.
The thought made Kim pause, her laughter dying away as she thought. She rolled again onto her other side, facing Shego, who was wiping a tear from the corner of one eye while her own laughs were stuttering out.
Kim had to admit, it felt good to make someone else smile—even if that someone else was her old nemesis. It was something of a relief after the last handful of months back home, what with graduation and the invasion and breaking up with Ron and so on.
"Can we be friends?"
Kim instantly clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling her face heat with a blush. I can't believe I just said that! Stupid!
Shego raised one eyebrow, but she moved no further. She was still slightly smiling, though, which Kim took as something of a good sign; so, fighting down her mortification, she lowered her hands and kept talking.
"Since, you know, we're supposed to really be in on all this together, and it's supposed to be bigger than us all, and all that other stuff…I just figured we need to be able to get along to avoid killing each other, and you and me are the only two people really able to kill each other for real…though Yori probably could, and maybe Ron could now that he's got the monkey stuff, but not Wade or Drakken…and you did such a good job flying us here and all that, which I think is pretty cool, and…well, I just think it would be neat if we could be friends, instead of always worrying who's going to stab who in the back."
"Stab whom in the back," Shego corrected, and Kim narrowed her eyes even as Shego cracked another grin. "Hey, who's the teacher, here?"
"Ugh." Kim scoffed and got to her feet. "Whatever. Come on, everybody's waiting inside. The rooms are awesome. You'll love them, they're all big and luxurious."
Shego got up, too, still grinning. "So long as I get the one next to yours, it's all good."
Kim shot her a sideways glare, her cheeks just a bit red. "What are you planning?"
"Now, now, Princess; that would spoil the fun!" And she took off running.
Kim gave chase, but not before realizing that while Shego hadn't said outright said yes to being friends…
…neither had she said no.
