DISCLAIMER: Nothing from Kim Possible belongs to me, though I misuse it all at will. The Cthulhu Mythos doesn't belong to me either, but it suffers as well. Soundtrack for writing this chapter: EL&P, Tarkus, Pictures at an Exhibition, Trilogy, Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Shuffle play is a wonderful thing.


"The Go City Museum is renowned throughout the world for such exhibits and artifacts as the ancient Colossus Fragments of Ozymandias, the mysterious Electrostatic Illuminator plans drawn up by some unknown 19th century genius, and the original manuscripts penned by the legendary author of the weird and uncanny, Howard Preston Likework." It was the last tour of the evening and Maia was expertly hiding her weariness under a façade of exuberance. It was a gift. Some people had it, some did not.

Those who did made good tour guides.

She stopped before a glass case covered with a black cloth. "Without question," she continued, "the most remarkable of our exhibits is this fragment of the rainbow-coloured comet that gave Team Go their incredible superpowers." Here she paused for a moment of silent respect. The heroes had perished under strange circumstances, just before their infamous sister had nearly given the world to some sort of monsters. No doubt she had something to do with their deaths as well, Maia thought, as she did every time she demonstrated this exhibit.

She wasn't the only one who felt that way. Sherri Nicole Gordon, known to the world as Shego, was anathema to all the citizens of her birthplace, despised as strongly as her brothers were venerated.

"Every Hallowe'en, for twenty-four hours, this fragment emanates an aura of colours that are visible and yet quite outside our spectrum." On cue, the lights went down; Maia lifted the cloth to reveal the faint glow, waiting for the oohs and aahs to begin.

Instead there was a cry of shock from the onlookers. The glow was anything but faint; it crackled and coruscated inside the case, growing larger as they watched. The stone itself was floating about three inches above the bottom of the case, spinning slowly in the grip of the eerie power.

Still clutching the black cloth, Maia backed slowly away from the exhibit as the stone lost its substance, became a rippling, static-laden phantom and disappeared completely, seemingly sucked into the glow, which vanished as well.

The lights came back up; Maia placed the cloth back over the case and turned to the stunned crowd. "Well, that was different. And over here – the mind-reading device created by the sinister Air Loom Gang in the late 1700s, the amazing precursor to Dr. Drew Lipsky's famous Telepathic Amplifier."

She was nothing if not professional.

The fragment would never be found. The gate between dimensions had been forcibly opened by Dementor and Electronique's device; everything that still held the alien essence of the Old Ones was being drawn back into their anti-universe.

Hundreds of miles from Go City, two orderlies ran down asylum halls in response to the terrible cries from the Lipsky woman's room. They'd seen a lot of strange things; though the woman had never been a violent patient, they were ready for anything.

Anything but what they found.

She twisted and screamed in a sphere of alien force, floating almost upside down in the center of the room. Her husband clung desperately to her hands, pulled from the ground himself by the evil power. "Help me!" he cried, the cryptically coloured glow casting shadows huge and strange on the wall. "Don't just stand there! Help me!"

Faced with the nameless threat, less courageous than Maia the Go City tour guide, they turned as one and fled.


The whole lair leaned to one side like a sinking ship; the walls began to shine with an alien light. Kim knew she had only a second to decide which Ron was the real one, and in less than a second she made her decision.

The young woman jumped over the heads of two Rons, grabbed hold of another with one hand as she punched the levitation switch on the belt. Evidently the teleportation effect worked on anyone the person wearing the belt touched; she prayed the weightlessness would carry over, too.

Into the air they flew; a Ron leaped toward them, blue ch'i flaring, its face twisted beyond recognition, gibbering an alien word in Ron's familiar voice: "Tekeli-li-li-"

She shot it point-blank with the laser; it fell apart into black slime, reconstituted itself as it hit the floor.

"Kim, we've got to get out of here." That was so her husband, stating the bloody obvious.

"I know!" They were against the high, arched ceiling; outside the narrow, barred windows of the lair the snowy mountain landscape was growing dim, overlaid by a dark world of terrifying shapes and impossible angles, like nothing imagined on Earth.

The Rons below them had lost their Ronness, were flowing together to form one monstrous black liquid column, festooned with crimson eyes and snapping, sucking lamprey jaws, stretching upward, ever closer. Sometimes a Ron hand or face would bubble to the top, melt away as quickly.

The lair shook, shuddered, portions of the ceiling falling away, machines below shorting out in a rain of sparks. A gigantic tentacle crashed through the wall, blindly, mindlessly swept the shoggoths across the room, withdrew. The very air shook with music, mad music pounding and shrieking, eldritch harmonies and timbres that shattered the soul, crushed the spirit, destroyed hope. Unknown words shook the crumbling building: DAOLOTH. LLOIGOR. OSSADOGOWAH. Another tentacle lashed the air, collapsing the rest of the wall.

She strained to be heard over the chaos, stammering with fear. "The k-keyboard t-t—" With all the self-control she could muster she forced herself to be calm, to finish the sentence. " Teleports. I don't know how to play it. G -Get it wrong and we'll –"

Before she could finish his fingers danced across the keys; there was a blinding green explosion and they were suspended in strange colours like flies in amber. There was a momentary glimpse of the lair falling to pieces, suspended in the alien sky, then they were falling through infinite space, the crushing cacophony of the moment before now superseded by an even more frightening silence.

Dementor was so insane that having his atoms scattered across the world was just one more minor setback.

She had a feeling she wouldn't handle it quite as well.

They continued to fall.


Slowly, irrevocably, he was being dragged into the field with her. It was stronger than him. Stronger than both of them. If he didn't let go, they'd both go to hell together. Or worse.

Again he screamed for help; again no one came. He hung on grimly, regardless. "I won't let them take you. I won't. I won't. I won't –"

She was flickering like an image from an old television, blurry, overlaid with static snow. Her eyes begged for help. For release. For anything but what she knew was happening. Beyond her he could dimly see the forms of things unknown, the silhouettes of the horrors she had betrayed to save the world. Waiting for her.

I can't give up, he'd told James Possible. There must be a way. There had to be a way. If everyone in the world refused to help him, if reason and logic said there was no escape, there still had to be a way.

"I WON'T LOSE YOU!" He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, reached deep within himself for the strength to either save her or go with her. And suddenly there was help. Someone was pulling them back, someone stronger than he could ever be. He looked back, trying to see who had come to save them, but his vision was blocked by the petals around his head.

And he knew he had won this time.

He knew, finally, that there was hope in the world, and sometimes even the Great Old Ones suffered defeat.

His botanical powers had seemingly worn off not long after the end of the Lorwardian invasion. No more ridiculous flower petals around his neck, no more vines with the power to crush war machines in their grip. He was just plain old blue Drew again, superpowers no more.

Maybe he just hadn't needed them badly enough. Until now.

A new confidence burned within him; with a single thought he stretched another ten vines from his body, anchoring them in the floor, the walls, anything they could reach. They went taut, pulling him from the field, pulling Shego down, defying the energies that ravened to take her. Something was oozing from the woman he loved, something formless and fiendish, something that emanated hatred like a fire gives off heat.

Electronique, who despised the supernatural, would have called it psychic residue. Telepathic invasion.

Anyone else would have called it demonic possession.

The crawling chaos Nyarlathotep had stamped an avatar of itself within her mind, insuring her suffering would continue, forcing her to write that horrible book which has a million different titles in a million different universes. Now, as Drakken's powerful vines slowly pulled her free from the glowing gate between worlds, the stranger inside her was drawn in, exorcised, sent back to the horror that had birthed it. He watched it stretch from every fiber of her body, heard it snap like a broken rubber band, saw it hurtle into the glowing abyss, flailing and flapping as the field collapsed in on itself and vanished.

He caught her as she fell, looked at her still face, her closed eyes, and for a dreadful moment thought he had won the battle and still lost the war. Then she stirred in his arms, eyelids fluttering, shaking her head as if waking from a deep and dreamless sleep. Opened her eyes, her gaze sane and steady, and he almost broke into tears.

"What's going on? Where are we?" Her eyes widened. "You're a pansy again!"

Words couldn't get past the lump in his throat.

"Weren't we going… to the cabin?" She gently pulled away, tried to stand on her own, almost fell. Steadied herself, still shaking her head. "Oh, man, I must have really tied one on. I'm – I'm not in jail, am I?"

"No. Not in jail. You're free." He felt the tears finally rolling down his cheeks, didn't care that she was looking at him as if he'd gone insane.

"Dr. D? You – you all right?" She reached out, touched his cheek, concern on her face. "Because you're freaking me out."

"I'm fine," he said, and laughed. "Hallowe'en's over."