Authors Note: Hi there folks, Chapter Four is here. Things start to ramp up from here... at least for now. The escape isn't quite going to go as easy as Kim might have hoped though. I've done as best as I could with polishing this one up, but it got to the point where I started to dislike most of it more than I liked it, which is how I knew I had to push it out or I would do something drastic. I hope you guys enjoy it, at least.
Standard Disclaimer: The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners. Cheap shots at celebrities constitute fair usage.
Chapter Four.
The first few minutes were easy travelling for Kim and her new companion, with only the monotonous droning of the alarm for company, until-
The corridors of the facility were narrow and sparsely lit, and Kim had only milliseconds to react when a squad of guards appeared to her left side as she crossed a junction. She slid to a stop and pressed herself flat into the wall just past the corner. Ahead of her, she saw Lawson stop and turn and raise an eyebrow at Kim's evasive actions… only to tuck the batons behind her back and stride towards the troops that appeared in the junction, their weapons raised but not directly pointed at her.
"Dr Michaels, please come with us. You should not be outside your designated area during a security alert."
For the first time Kim heard one of the guards speak, and it was an odd, distorted voice that came from deep in his throat. The heavy helmet she'd glimpsed as she raced past couldn't explain the odd electronic nature of it, she thought momentarily, then dismissed it as irrelevant.
"Yes. I was with a colleague in another area. I will accompany you immediately," Lawson said politely, walking slowly towards them.
As the squad waited just out of her sight, Kim judged the distance carefully and flashed a quick signal that wasn't even acknowledged. When the other woman was almost perfectly parallel with her, she pushed off the wall and dove forward, linking hands with Lawson who rotated on her feet and spun in a circle, throwing Kim into the two nearest guards.
One fell to her first baton strike, a crushing blow to the chest that sent him reeling, collapsing to the ground and gasping for breath. The second fell a second later to a hook sweep that she followed with a roll away from the first return blow, turning the roll into a leap that took the last guard unawares. Her shoulder slammed into the armored chest, and the force was enough to drive the wind out of both of them, but Kim had braced herself somewhat. She spun off him and slammed his visor with the baton, cracking it, and then again, pulverizing his nose and slamming his head to the ground again. He didn't stir.
Behind her, there were five, six, seven dull thuds then two heavier crashes of men falling to the ground. Kim sent a carefully judged blow to the side of the last guard's head, and looked up. Lawson, or Michaels, or whatever her name was, stared back at her with a small smile. "Okay, you're actually sort of impressing me now. I honestly thought most of the stories about you were all hype, that you'd crumble at the first real test."
Kim blinked in surprise, then snorted. "Things tend to get exaggerated, sure, but you don't get a resume like mine without some skill. You can't have seen or heard that much if you weren't convinced I was the real deal. How much did you really see of me?"
The woman narrowed her eyes. "Enough," she said shortly, turning away.
"And by the way, is it Lawson, or Michaels?" Kim asked, raising an eyebrow.
Lawson's smile had disappeared when she turned back around, and Kim once again felt a slight chill under the stare. "This is not the time," she said, and set back off down the corridor. "Come on, we need to get to the armory fast. It's this way."
Kim grabbed another baton from one of the downed guards on a whim, and raced after her. As she did so, the sound of the alarm tone changed, and she shot a questioning look at the other woman.
"I take it that means something," she inquired, when no response was forthcoming.
"Yeah, it means they're trying even harder to kill us," Lawson/Michaels responded, shaking her head. "What did you think it meant?"
"Well, I was trying to work out if that was the 'send reinforcements' alarm or the 'evacuate the lower levels, we're going to flood it with toxic gas' alarm."
The other woman shot her a very peculiar look. "Why would anyone have a specific alarm for that?"
Kim just shrugged. "What can I say, I guess Drakken just really liked different types of alarms." Maybe because it used to annoy Shego? She wondered briefly. Huh, that might actually be it.
As they pressed on, the number of guards they encountered rose, but always in the small squads of five, never more than that, and while the circumstances might have differed slightly, the results were never really in doubt as Kim's own fighting ability, matched with a partner who was different but talented enough to work with her at an instinctual level - much like her first co-operative fights with Shego - was too much for the forces arrayed against them.
By the time they'd been running for what felt like at least an hour, Kim had started to feel like they'd been going in circles. Each time she thought she had a grip on where they were going, Lawson would disappear into what seemed to be random rooms, telling Kim to stand guard, only to pull back after a minute or less and press on.
Finally, her frustration got the better of her, and she came to a stop in the middle of the corridor, scowling at the retreating back of her supposed ally.
"Lawson!" Kim shouted as the woman continued. Oh for the love of.. "Lawson, would you stop for a second?"
The black haired woman continued to ignore her until she finally realized that Kim had stopped following her. It took about ten seconds, but at the end of the current corridor, the other woman looked back and frowned, then waved Kim forward.
The redhead folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall casually, tapping her foot ever so slightly. I can wait you out, she thought to herself. Lawson's agitation increased to the point of full blown frustration, but when it became obvious that Kim wasn't moving, Lawson stalked back to her.
"What the hell are you doing, Possible?" she demanded, a furious scowl marring her face. "In case you'd forgotten, we're in the middle of a lair with an unknown number of guards probably closing in on our location… and you've decided to take a quick rest break?"
Kim scowled. "We've been going for what, an hour? We've put down something like forty, fifty guards, the last of which was ten minutes ago. If there were any left, we'd have seen them by now. How freaking big is this place? Why do we keep stopping? What are you doing in these labs? And why aren't we at an armory yet?" She ground out the last question and pushed off the wall, stepping in close to the woman, wary and ready for anything.
Lawson narrowed her eyes. "I'm getting us out of here," she growled.
"How?"
"Oh for f... I'm setting up decoys. Dummy hacks. False alarms, self destruct countdowns, bio-hazard warning alarms and radiation leak alerts. In every lab we've stopped in, I've set up multiple cascading alarms in labs nearby, leading both towards and away from us. The reason we haven't seen more guards is because they're investigating every single ghost and shadow I'm throwing at them. And right now you.. are.. not.. Helping." She punctuated the last four words by jabbing a finger in Kim's chest.
"This wasn't the plan. You were supposed to take us straight to the armory so we could blend in and get out of here."
"I've changed the plan. Keep up, would you?"
"Fine," Kim scowled. "Maybe this would go faster if you would let me help. I'm not Wade, but I know my way around-"
"Not a chance," Lawson said. Kim growled in the back of her throat, but Lawson turned and stalked away again, her hair tossing behind her.
"Goddammit, what the hell is wrong with you?" Kim shouted, and punched a wall, not quite hard enough to do major damage to her fist, but hard enough to hurt.
"When you're finished with your tantrum, you can catch up with the adults in the corridor," Lawson called back over her shoulder, a mocking tone infusing her voice. Kim ignored her for a second, then finally started after the infuriating woman, rubbing her suddenly aching fist with her other hand and trying to ignore the other constantly growing pains in her legs and arms from the fighting and running.
Actually, I should have realized that before now. I am in far better condition than someone who spent eight whole weeks unconscious would normally be. Were they keeping me fit, somehow, preventing muscle loss?
Or did she lie to me how long it has been? And if she did… why?
On top of that mystery, the seemingly random changes of personality in Lawson were confusing the hell out of her. Most of the time she seemed calm, collected, and professional, almost scarily dispassionate, but in a heartbeat she was alternately furious or viciously snarky, far more than Shego ever was. The longer she spent around the woman, the more careful she was convinced she needed to be.
By the time Kim reached the end of the latest identical corridor, Lawson had disappeared - Kim assumed into yet another lab, though it took her a moment to find her location, until an open door with a leg lying through it helpfully drew her attention, about thirty meters ahead of her. When she made it to the door, there were several more bodies on the ground - most looked to be unconscious, but Lawson seemed increasingly unconcerned about dealing serious injuries to the guards, which only added to the worry Kim was starting to feel about the woman.
She rounded a large machine of some sort and found Lawson at a large bank of instruments. She was alternating her attention between the control panel and something that looked for all the world like a gigantic test tube just in front of her. Inside that tube was...
"My battlesuit!" Kim almost cheered with joy. Well that'll boost my odds of getting out of here significantly! "I wondered where that was! Let's get it out of that tube, and then we can really get out of here."
She stepped towards the panel, intent on convincing Lawson to open the chamber and let her put it on, but the older woman turned and Kim froze in her tracks.
Literally froze in her tracks, as the woman aimed a remote of some sort and pointed it at her.
"What... what did you do to me?" she asked, then screamed in fright as she collapsed like a puppet that had had its strings suddenly cut.
"I'm sorry Possible, but this is where we part ways. It's been... well, yeah. It's been." Lawson's voice had gone even colder than before, somehow, and the look in her eyes was vacant, distant, and totally devoid of feeling.
Kim tried to move, panic rising up from within her. As she struggled, a small, cold, rational part of her was grateful that her mouth was still working - and her lungs, for that matter. The panic started to overwhelm her, even as she forced herself to take measured, slow breaths in and out.
"You were right before when you guessed that I was keeping you under for a reason, but I didn't tell you what it was," Lawson said, and tilted her head to one side as if considering whether or not to continue, then she shrugged "I don't see how it'll matter if I tell you early, since I imagine that they'll finish the process as soon as they recapture you."
"What did you do to me?" Kim asked, trying but failing to keep the fear out of her voice.
"It's not what I did, Possible, it's what our friendly hosts did when they grabbed you," Lawson sneered at her. "They implanted cybertronic nanobots to interface with your central nervous system all the way up to the motor control systems in your brain. They can't settle in while you're awake, there's too much electrical interference, but an unconscious subject is exactly what's required for implantation, and thus, your extended nap."
"Cybertronic... nanobots?" Oh crap, Kim thought. Dad's stuff. Like in Drakken's Diablos? She held tight to the knowledge that at the very least she was still talking and still breathing. While those two things were true, she was sure she could find some way out of this new nightmare.
"Normally the process only takes three to four weeks, but I kept you in your beauty sleep a little longer, and passed it off as 'extreme circumstances' as a result of the trauma you took when they captured you. Haven't you noticed some of the guards here seem a bit.. robotic?" Lawson asked, her voice becoming mocking. "They fight, but they don't fight well."
Kim had in fact noticed that, but hadn't really bothered to analyse it all that closely because it was proving to be a beneficial factor in her escape.
"It's because they've been through the same procedure, but are failed examples where the true cybernetic conversions didn't fully take for one reason or another. Since they can't function with the enhancements, they get simple command override implants, and are trained as guard dogs for basic facility work."
"That's…"
"Disgusting? Amazing? An incredible leap in mind-to-machine interfaces? Yes, yes, and yes," Lawson said.
"You're sick. And I'm going to put a stop to this."
Lawson laughed at Kim's defiance and looked down on her with a pitying expression. "Sure, sweetheart. I don't know if you've realized it, but you're helpless. The only things you're moving right now are lungs, head, and mouth, and I can take even those away from you if I want. Interrupting autonomic function is hard to implement and dangerous to maintain, but.."
She pointed the remote at Kim and clicked it. The redhead waited for the lack of oxygen to start to affect her, but her breathing remained slow and steady, and after a second, she found her lips widening into a smirk.
"Guess not everything took like you thought it would," she observed.
A furious Lawson nearly threw the remote to the ground, then recovered her poise, the cold mask slipping back onto her face.
"It doesn't matter anyway," she barked. "I'm about to get what I came for, and you're about to suffer more than you can possibly imagine. You might be still able to talk, but you can't move, and you can definitely still feel pain… so I'm going to give you a whole world of it."
A loud hissing sound filled the lab as coolant vented from the tube that was holding the battlesuit. A few moments later, a cloud of white steam poured across the floor, causing Kim to shiver as it passed over her. Unseen in the fog, Lawson moved towards the rack which the battlesuit was on, and made to lift it off.
"Shit, that's cold."
Scuffling, then a satisfied grunt came from above her, and Kim heard Lawson pulling gloves of some sort on, then the woman was reaching in and pulling the suit out. As the fog cleared, Kim looked up to see Lawson holding the suit triumphantly above her, a mocking smile twisting her face.
"This suit.. This suit means I can finally fucking leave this shit hole… with the nice side effect of making me very, very rich. And I'm going to cripple you permanently while I'm at it."
Kim looked at the suit as Lawson held it, noticing the water starting to drip off of the fully deployed form of the suit. She realized that it hadn't collapsed to it's normal stored form in the wrist Kimmunicator because it had been chilled way below freezing, cold enough to reach the point where the functionality of the nanobots that made up the suit itself would be almost totally disabled.
But… she could also tell that the suit was coming back online, thanks to the telltale shimmer in the 'fabric' as the nanobots started to realign themselves.
And if the suit was online, there were some parts of it she could use. Even if she wasn't wearing it.
Please let this work, she thought to herself. I'm only going to have one shot at this.
"Suit: Taser field!" she called loudly, and there was a momentary pause where nothing happened. Lawson looked down at her with a puzzled look, then her eyes widened in shock…
And then they widened in a different kind of shock as a brilliant sphere of blue energy formed around the suit and expanded maybe a foot or two - not as concentrated as the shield it could produce, but still strong enough to almost blind Kim. A surge of electricity raced through Lawson's body and down to the cold, wet floor despite the gloves she was wearing. The sudden muscular convulsions opened her hands for just long enough for the suit to slip from her hands.
As Lawson took a half step back, seemingly purely on instinct, she fell thanks to her coordination being wrecked by the electrical impulses disrupting her central nervous system. As she collapsed, she tried to snatch at the battlesuit again, only for it to float to the ground, landing partially on Kim's lower left leg.
At the moment of contact, a chill ran through her, as the suit read her DNA and confirmed her bioprint.
She focused on the sensation of the suit on her leg, and grinned. Well I'm one for one, here's hoping I can go two for two.
"Suit: Integrate," she said. The next thing she felt was the familiar but always uncomfortable slithering feeling of the suit's nanobots sliding up her body - only multiplied by a hundred thanks to the residual cold of the storage in deep freeze - until the suit had covered her completely, the Kimmunicator had slid to its familiar spot on her wrist, and the integrated hood/mask formed over her face.
Wade had built the remote voice activation into the first suit on a whim last year, after realizing there was still a chance that Kim might be disabled and require protection while separated from the suit. That little bit of foresight was going to be worth a dozen trips to Bueno Nacho - or wherever else Wade decided to cash in his rewards - when she got back.
As the mask integrated with her eyes, the room swum back into view just in time for her to try flinch away from the other figure in the room - not that she actually ended up moving any part of her body.
"N.. no. No! NO!" Lawson screamed, and lashed out in a vicious kick at Kim's leg. The limited self protection software in the suit saw the attack coming and reacted accordingly, hardening the outer shell just moments before impact, and a loud crack echoing around the lab. The resultant scream of pain brought a hidden but very vicious smile to Kim's face.
Okay, still can't move, but I'm definitely better protected than I was before. That's something at least.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Lawson, or whoever you are, but I think I'll be holding on to this, at least for now," she said, the suit amplifying her voice into the lab.
Lawson's scream of frustration echoed, followed by several crashes as lab equipment, computers, and more things went flying in her rage.
A very familiar and extremely welcome voice suddenly sounded in her ear.
"Kim? Kim, can you hear me?"
"Wade! Boy am I glad to hear your voice! I'm in a bit of a pickle, and I could use your help."
"I know! You're in South-East Asia, whatever you did to get a signal going worked perfectly. I have a rescue team on the way but they're still going to be a while… I guess you finally found the suit?"
Kim smiled. "They were keeping it in a liquid nitrogen bath to force it into emergency self preservation mode, nothing else was going on, until someone defrosted it, tried to steal it."
"That would explain why I couldn't track it before now. Well, now that you've got it on, you'll be able to handle things until your evac arrives."
The smile on her face fell away. "That's kinda one of the things I need you help with. Uh.. things are a little bit more complicated than that," she said, as Lawson stalked back towards her - with a CO2 fire extinguisher in her hands. As the cold spray hit her, Kim tried to shake her head - the extinguisher would never get the suit cold enough to disable it…
… but it was annoying and it was still cold, she realized.
"Complicated how?" Wade asked.
"Uhhhh… short version? Injection of something to spine, blocking muscle control of my arms and legs. Still breathing and talking though."
She didn't exactly know why she felt like she couldn't tell him about the nanobots that Lawson had claimed were the true cause of her sudden and nearly total paralysis. Was it that she didn't really believe it, or that she didn't want Wade to know how completely - and how easily - she'd been disabled?
There was a long ten seconds of silence. Kim sat quietly, knowing Wade's brain was working in overdrive, developing ideas, processing them, and rejecting them at a speed few people could match, and she knew he'd have a solution of some sort eventually.
"Shit," he muttered, and she felt those hopes evaporate slightly.
"Wade…?"
"No, no, it's okay, Kim. I… I got something. It's not much, but it's something. Let me do a really crude scan with the suit's..."
"If I could just move my arms and legs, it would be better than what I've got right now, which is absolutely nothing," she muttered. "What have you got?"
Lawson had given up on the extinguisher and was heading for the exit. Shit, she's getting away!
"I may be able to tie the suit's muscular enhancers directly into your own movement cortex, like it was reading your mind's intentions and activating them accordingly. The suit can already perform routine scans as part of the monitoring software."
Kim narrowed her eyes at that. It wasn't something she remembered being on any of the manuals, exactly. Had she really agreed to let Wade basically run a continual brain scan on her when using the suit?
"I have a baseline of how your brain already instructs the muscles it normally would, now all I have to do is tie it to the suit's enhancers and activate them instead of your muscles," he continued in a rush. "Hopefully that'll give you some level movement. I mean, hypothetically, the suit should allow this to work for everything from the legs down to the fingers, like I said, it already knows how you think to move. Well.. it might. This is going to be a really crude hack, but it'll probably work."
"I heard a lot of maybe, hopefully, and probably there," Kim said slowly.
"It's the best I've got. If you're in trouble, it's your best option."
"Yeah… yeah… okay, do it. And tell your rescue group to hurry it up. I get the feeling that I was duped, and even though I managed a Hail Mary, I'm suddenly fairly sure there's still a lot of troops down here between me and them."
"I will," he promised. "Now this might hurt a little bit."
KP KP KP
Aboard the Yamanouchi VTOL, Ron Stoppable blinked then cocked his head to one side, before reaching out and toggling the secure communications link on one of the multi-function displays in front of him.
"Wade, what's going on? Is Kim okay?"
As the question left his lips, he heard a feminine - and disturbingly recognizable - scream emanating from the other end of the link.
"Sorry Ron, little busy!" Wade shouted. "Kim, hold on, I'm trying to adjust the sensitivity on the fly but you're throwing all the readings off the baseline!"
A scream of what sounded a lot like "No shit!" filled the cockpit.
Ron looked at Yori, seated in the cockpit beside him, then reached forward to flick the mute button on the MFD. He shifted his hand across and threw the jet's throttle into full afterburner. Fuel consumption went out the window, but with it, so did their original ETA.
A yelp or two emanated from the cabin, and a moment later, a throat cleared behind him. He turned his head to find Hirotaka bracing himself in the cockpit door, an inquiring look on his face.
"Sorry, Hiro, we just got our priorities updated a little. Need to make up some time," Ron said softly.
Hirotaka, for his part, was looking down at the communications panel, where Wade's face was silently shouting at his other screen.
"Possible-san is in trouble?" he asked. "That scream did not sound pleasant at all."
Ron's face was unreadable, his eyes distant. "Yeah, she's in pain, but… it's not because someone's hurting her," he added. "Huh, it's almost like she's hurting… herself?"
"I do not understand," Yori said softly.
"Neither do I," Ron growled. He looked back, and Wade's face was staring up at him, ashen. He turned the controls over to Yori and unmuted the channel. "Wade, what's going on?"
"It's complicated, Ron. The really, really, really short version? She's got the suit, but her injuries are hampering her movement, and the suit is overcompensating and hurting her every time she uses it. I'm going to try and get her to hide and wait for you… but you know Kim."
Ron nodded. "We're at full burner now, we'll be over the target in less than thirty minutes, but we won't have the reserve to stay on station and make it back without topping up. Can you get us a secure refueling station nearby, preferably one that won't ask any questions?"
Wade paused, spun to another screen, typed for a few seconds, then nodded. "Yes. I think I can get you a refuel on board the USNS Rappahannock - they're a US Navy supply vessel on patrol with the 7th Fleet in the South China Sea. They're being told you're a Japanese Self Defense Force reconnaissance jet, and won't ask too many questions even though you don't exactly look like one."
Ron nodded. It wasn't even all that far from the truth, really, even if his current mission wasn't exactly sanctioned - either by the Japanese government, or Yamanouchi (at least, officially sanctioned in the latter case). "Thanks, buddy. How's she doing?"
"She's scared, she's sore, she's pissed, so about what you'd expect," Wade said with a resigned sigh. "She's also not telling me something, but…"
"That's the Kim we know and love," Ron finished for him, a faint smile brushing his lips. "Got any heads up on what we're flying into?"
"Satellite scans came up empty, but that's kind of the problem - they've been doctored, and doctored carefully enough that they hold up to a cursory scan of the images. I've been waiting for a commercial sat with a live view that I actually have a mostly legitimate access to to pass over. It's just coming into range now."
"Not borrowing the NRO's…"
"Noooo," Wade cut him off with a scowl. "I got a warning about that from Dr Director last time. They don't exactly appreciate me retasking their assets - at least, not without asking first, which I don't have time for - and even when I do and they like my image stabilization and enhancement software, they still get possessive."
Ron just waited.
"Right, focusing. Got a picture coming up at relatively high angle now," Wade said, switching his screen, then zooming the view of Earth and rotating it the horizontal for them. "Oh boy."
"What am I looking at?" Ron asked.
"Looks like a fairly large facility in the deep Vietnamese jungle," Wade said. "Only, it's not as large as it used to be."
A large square popped up over a blurry section, and as the picture quality resolved slightly, Ron spotted what looked like the remains of several buildings that surrounded a larger building that looked like a warehouse of some description. Around it, at fairly even distances that he couldn't accurately guess at, were small towers he took for guard outposts or similar structures. As he waited further, small dots circled the sight at speeds far too rapid for them to be people, and buzzed across towards a concentration of towers that he guessed might be what constituted the 'front' entrance, flashes of light coming from both the dots and the towers.
"Am I seeing what I think I am?" he asked. "Those are helicopters or VTOLs?"
"Yeah, and they're not alone, look. Two groups are engaged on the ground."
The image shifted and zoomed in, and as it refocused, Ron was able to finally see the running battle on the ground with two sets of forces arrayed against one another. One group was clearly defending, squads of troops dug into the large bits of rubble that were the remnants of the satellite buildings around the main one, the other, larger force, seemed to be pressing the attack en masse towards the largest remaining structure that he'd seen first. As he watched, one of the defensive positions exploded as a helicopter or VTOL fired a missile into it, while off to the side, the guard towers were taking similar punishment.
"This just became somewhat more complicated," Hirotaka observed from the rear of the cockpit, sotto voce.
Ron nodded, then smiled again. "Or possibly less. Wade, those hench uniforms don't look at all familiar. Are we looking at new players in the game, here?"
"Could be. We do know that some very powerful people were looking for Kim in Sydney, and there was more than one group there."
"Power play?" Ron softly, and both Hirotaka and Yori nodded. "I sense an opportunity."
Wade smiled at him. "What's better than chaos?" he asked rhetorically.
"More chaos," Ron answered, and his eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open. "Wade, keep a close eye on the battle down there. As we engage, I want to know which side seems to have the upper hand, we hit them first. Yori - you're our best infiltrator by far, find your way inside the facility - expect a large part of it to be underground. Find Kim, and get her out - over any objection she might have… but try to be gentle. Our rendezvous point is going to have to be flexible, but call in the jet if you're safe to do so. Hiro, you're with me, we're going to push the invading force off balance and prevent them grabbing Kim and at the same time keep the defenders busy enough to keep her safe and let Yori get to her." He paused, then turned. "Get Takeda up here, she'll be flying and providing close air support as well as dust off. Wade, liaise with her on priority targets and best drop locations, as well as anything that comes up during the operation. I've gotta go prepare the squad."
Hirotaka bowed and turned back into the small cabin of the jet, while Wade nodded and muted his link momentarily, turning back to the other screen.
Ron turned back to Yori, and gave her a wide smile. "I am sorry for putting you in such danger, Yori-kun," he whispered. "But I meant what I said about you being our best infiltrator. I trust you to find her and bring her out safely."
Yori's blush was slight - she had excellent control over her emotions most of the time - but Ron could still see it. She bowed her head to hide it. "I will find Possible-san and return her safely, I promise."
"I know you will. And don't worry, I'll keep Hiro safe."
With a snort, his friend returned to the cockpit, another of the Yamanouchi ninjas by his side, who slipped into the pilot's seat as Ron vacated it.
"Please, Stoppable-san, it will be I keeping you safe out there, as always."
Ron shook his head, then the two men high fived each other as they stepped back into the cabin.
Yori turned to the young pilot who took control and shook her head as she stood up, both women smiling as the same thought crossed their mind at the same time.
Men!
KP KP KP
For the first ten minutes, it didn't matter how much she tried to grit her teeth and bear it, the pain of moving was so intense that it ripped a scream from her throat every time she tried to stand. Thankfully, Wade had suppressed the external speakers of the suit, otherwise everyone within a mile radius would know exactly where she was.
It had taken almost the entirety of that ten minutes for her to make her way agonizingly towards one wall, where she finally managed to brace herself in a sitting position and paused to take stock of her situation.
Can't move my own muscles.
Battlesuit can compensate by direct interface but when the muscles resist it's a toss up as to whether the muscles, the tendons or the bones give first.
I'm basically on the verge of breaking myself in half.
Aside from that, everything was peachy. Wade had told her a rescue force was on the way, and that she was relatively safe for now.
Relatively being the operative word.
She blinked as a shadow suddenly slipped across the door of the lab she was stuck in, and then operating on pure instinct, threw herself at the guards that had just entered, noticing only at the last second that these moved far faster and reacted more fluidly than most of the ones she had seen to this point.
"Wade!" she shouted, as the first spasms of pain slammed into her from the movements orchestrated by the battlesuit, her muscles and joints and tendons screaming their protest into every fiber of her being that was currently capable of feeling pain. "Does the Kimmunicator still have that specific special reserve we talked about once?"
"Yess..?" his questioning voice came back, as she dropped her weight and kicked out at the nearest guard with a foot, the attack being far slower than her usual speed and missing the mark as a result. The guard leaped over her attack before returning it with a kick of his own that she avoided by flopping away and rolling until she could lever herself to her feet, standing with her back against the wall of the lab.
"I need you to dose me with it, right now."
"Kim! That could kill you in your current condition. It's not safe!"
"If you don't give me it, these guys will kill me before your rescue team gets here. I need it, Wade, and I need it now."
"I'm going to regret this," she heard him mutter. "You're probably going to regret it more.."
"You can lecture me about it later, I promise, if I survive, which I won't unless you.."
There was a sharp hissing noise from the inside of the Kimmunicator that was sitting on her wrist, and she felt the jab in the surface skin, followed by the burning rush of the drug concoction making its way to her core. She almost stopped moving for a second, and had to desperately ward of a series of blows until...
"Ohhh…"
She felt her eyes dilate, and as she backed away from the guards, the sudden clarity in which she saw the room and her situation was in stark contrast to how dark and helpless it had seemed before. As her breathing steadied and the pain faded, she grinned inside the hood, ignoring the questioning voice that seemed to come from very far away despite being right beside her ear.
Four figures in heavier armor than she'd previously seen confronted her, each carrying a heavy baton of the same type that she had purloined with Lawson in their initial breakout. Hers lay discarded somewhere in this very room, lost when she'd been paralyzed by the treacherous doctor. The addition of a small circular shield on their left arms made her pause, but only momentarily.
The four moved to surround her, spaced out enough that they wouldn't interfere with each other, and she nodded slowly at their sensible tactics as she bumped into a wall behind her.
Have to take the initiative. First objective, eliminate as much of their combat efficiency as you can before they attack. Then level the playing field weapon wise, her racing mind told her. Right-most guard is the closest and will attack first. Beat him to the punch.
Barely five seconds had gone by from the first rush hitting her and suddenly she felt like she could take on a dozen people - no, a hundred! That conviction wasn't remotely tempered by the nagging knowledge at the back of her mind that the artificial boost she was currently enjoying was not indefinite, and she needed to make the most of the advantage while it lasted.
No... she was the most dangerous person in the room, and it was time to remind these pretenders of that fact. Painfully.
She exploded from the wall like she'd been shot out of a cannon, faking to her left, causing the four men facing her to being moving that way almost instinctively, before she spun in place and lashed out to her right with a combination of punches and kicks, falling on her chosen target before he could fully react to her sudden change of direction. She slipped under a desperate counterattack with the baton and grabbed the arm holding it, spinning around it and wrenching it high up behind his back, the satisfying crack of a dislocating shoulder bringing a vicious grin to her face, but strangely eliciting no sound from the guard.
She pulled the baton from his limp hand and slammed his head into the wall beside her, and, when that didn't send him to the ground, repeated it while simultaneously fending off a renewed attack from the other three with the baton, parrying two strikes and returning with a thrust of her own that only barely missed the larynx of the third, who'd stepped a little closer to try and rescue his companion.
As he stepped back and the first guard went down finally, Kim straightened and lashed forward with an even faster series of blows, none of which were really designed to hit but were setting up for her finisher, a high fake that rolled around into a vicious shot to the groin.
Aha, she thought. Hard to remove that weak spot.
She rolled out of the way of a frenzied counterattack from the last two standing guards, putting the one currently clutching at his probably mangled genitals between her and them for half a second, snaffling the discarded baton from him for good measure. As she crouched, she held both batons out, arms extended, wide and ready for them to go to either side.
The pumping of her heart roared in her ears as she waited, the artificial evenness of her breathing hiding the ragged edge of pain that was starting to sear through the focus.
"Kim?" Again, she ignored the voice, focused on the subtlest movements of her two remaining foes, looking for cues as to how they would come at her.
The guards still managed to surprise her by going over the top, jumping over their fallen companion in unison and bringing their batons down towards her with impressive coordination, but she reacted before the twin strikes could hit, diving past the attacks and over the head of the moaning guard, kicking him backwards to spoiling their attempted turns. She dashed to the doorway, taking the opportunity to escape the confines of the lab, and sprinted out into the corridor as fast as she could go.
Catch me if you can, boys, her mind whispered, even as some part of her was aware she was moving nowhere near her fastest speed. It would have to be fast enough.
She took in little of the facility as she ran, picking her direction at cross intersections and T-junctions purely by random choice, but always with a vague sense of purpose. Behind, she heard little other than heavy footfalls, as several more guards joined the strangely quiet pursuit - she was used to at least a little bit more shouting than this when running from Henches.
A sudden premonition of danger swept over her at a barely heard sound somewhere in the group behind her and she slid to the ground as she passed another junction, a beam of bright blue energy sweeping through where her torso would have been a moment before.
Looks like they're no longer trying to keep me alive, she noted dispassionately. Guess I should return the favor.
She sprang to her feet and bolted down the new corridor, before having no choice but to veer into what was - finally - the armory she'd been hoping for. She grabbed an energy rifle from the nearest rack to her, and pulled out the power packs were stored above them, slapping the pack home into the rifle and flipping it's power on. Turning back the way she'd come, she leaned back out the door and pulled the trigger at the feet of the oncoming guards.
Nothing happened. Even her hyperfocused brain blanked for a second, until the rifle buzzed angrily at her.
Oh crap.
"Wade, I need a weapon hack!" she called, her voice sounding strange to her ears. She dashed to the doorway and slammed the heavy door shut, guessing that it might be more resistant to the weapon fire of her pursuit than anything else she'd seen while she'd been running.
"On it!" he told her. "But Kim, listen: you're at your limit of stress," he added, a warning note creeping into his voice.
Lost in the rush of the stimulant still, Kim's brain ignored the warning and focused on the sound of the enemies moving outside. "Now would be good!"
"Kim, you're at max stress. You do much more, and you won't make it home. Do you understand me? Your body can't take it. You won't make it back to Shego."
Despite the buzzing in her mind, the last word made it through and, though it took a second, the impact of it shook her out of the haze that had consumed her, even as the rifle buzzed a more pleasant tone in her hands. Not really thinking of the risk, she eased the door open and poked her head back out for a half second, pulling it back in as another beam of energy lanced past her.
The guards had taken a defensive posture about twenty meters away down the corridor. Momentarily confused, she recalled suddenly that she'd been running down a dead end corridor when she'd found the armory.
She'd effectively pinned herself down and made her recapture inevitable.
Good job, Kim, she thought sarcastically as she slammed the door shut again. She limped further into the armory, a groan escaping her as the screaming of pain from her body returned with a vengeance. Gotta find a way to end this now. Wade was right, I can't handle this much longer.
For almost a 30 seconds she searched the room for some escape or advantage, then sighed, having found nothing. She turned back to the door, dialing the power on the rifle down to a lower setting. Standing back, she aimed it at the seam of the door and pulled the trigger, holding down a continuous beam until she'd swept it over all four sides of the door twice, heating the metal of the door enough to cause it to expand and jam, and melting enough of the doorway to add to the impromptu weld.
She dropped the rifle to the side, and picked her way to the back of the room, looking for other options she might have missed at first glance.
"Wade?" she whispered, her throat suddenly burning with agony.
"Kim? You're back?"
"Yeah," she groaned. "Sorry… I… I don't know what came over me."
"You were screaming," he said quietly. "In pain, the whole time you were fighting and running."
The pain in her throat suddenly made sense. "I… I didn't feel it. I didn't even realize I was."
"Probably for the best. Where are you? I heard the rifle firing."
"I used it to weld the door shut, sealing me in the armory. It was a dead end, didn't have much of a choice. Sorry, I clearly wasn't thinking."
"How many guards outside? And how long do you think the seal will hold?"
"Fifteen, maybe twenty out there. They'll have something to break in sooner or later… I'm so sorry, Wade. I know you tried."
Wade didn't respond for a second, and for a heartbreaking moment, she thought he'd given up on her.
"Kim. I need you to get to the far corner of the armory. Now."
"What?"
"Just… trust me," he said.
In her view, a blink of light appeared as far away from the door as it was possible to get from the door. She eased her way over there, grimacing in pain as she went. "Not sure what good this'll do," she protested as she fell against the wall and slid to the ground. Maybe they take an extra five seconds to find me."
Once again, Wade didn't immediately respond, and she shivered with the sense of abandonment and isolation. She closed her eyes for a second.
"Kim. Kim are you there?" Wade suddenly shouted at her.
"What?" she mumbled.
"Kim, you have to keep your eyes open. You blacked out. I need you to stay awake, c'mon. Please Kim, she's almost there."
"Huh…?" Kim looked around the room, but saw nothing new other than the door, which was glowing white hot in the center.
I guess this is it, she thought, not for the first time. "I'm sorry… Shego… I'm sorry…" she whispered, knowing Wade would be recording her last words.
The door gave way in a stunning blast of light and heat, and a half second later, two soldiers dove through the door, followed by several more. As they advanced, their weapons trained on her, Kim sent a silent prayer to a deity she was on the about begging for the end to at least be fast and painless.
Another flash of light blinded her, and she flinched. For a moment, she felt nothing other than the tears falling freely down her cheeks.
She blinked her eyes clear a few moments later in confusion, finding all the guards lying on the ground, and a single figure in black looming menacingly above her. As the figures reached one hand up towards it's head, she recognized the eyes even before the gas mask was pulled down.
"Y… Yori?"
Black overtook her before the ninja could respond, and Kim slumped lifelessly to the ground.
A/N: Yeahhh, I still love a good ol' cliffhanger ending. My bad!
