Doctor Betty Director frowned as she considered one of the many screens arrayed before her.

"Why aren't we getting audio from Alpha-Four?" she growled as her gaze remained fixed on the monitor. She was standing in the Security Center, a large room buried deep within the Global Justice complex situated beneath Middleton. One wall was entirely covered with monitors, each one showing a video feed from one of hundreds of security cameras. No less than ten agents had to be present at all times, to keep an eye on the GJ base around the clock in case anything went wrong.

And something was always going wrong. Such as, for example, the audio surveillance in one of the prison's visitation rooms cutting out right in the middle of a potentially important conversation between a teenage action hero and a super-powered henchwoman.

"We're not sure," one of the agents admitted, not turning away from his terminal as he typed furiously. "The audio link seems fine; the microphone just isn't transmitting anything."

"Could there be interference of some kind?" Betty asked, though she was already beginning to guess what had happened.

"Negative," the technician replied, "the video's still perfect even though the audio is gone, and the wires are EMI-shielded. I believe someone is deliberately blocking the audio."

It didn't take long for to arrive at the most logical conclusion.

"Wade," she muttered under her breath as she looked back up at the two women displayed on the screen.

This doesn't bode well...

A Mile in Your Shoes
Chapter 3: The Game Begins

It wasn't until Will Du was escorting her back to her cell that Kim Possible realized she'd been played. Shego had known exactly what buttons to push to rile her up.

And now I've agreed to play her part until Wade finds a way to switch us back, she thought with a frown.

"Hurry up," Will said, prodding her in the back with a standard-issue GJ stun pistol. Kim eyed it for a moment, considering the merits of showing him just how easily she could disarm him even with her hands bound and sealed away, but instead just turned away and sped up as ordered. Now was not the time to get herself in even more trouble than she was already.

"What was it you wanted to say earlier?" the stiff agent asked before she could return to her thoughts.

"Hmm?"

Will sighed. "When I came to escort you to meet your visitor, he answered, "you started to say something. We are...legally obligated," his face twisted as if he'd swallowed a raw lemon, "to listen to prisoners' inquiries."

Kim abruptly recalled her interrupted request to see Doctor Director so she could explain what had happened to her and Shego. Then she hung her head as she realized her rash decision to accept Shego's bet had robbed her of that chance. She couldn't tell anyone now, not without ceding the bet to Shego.

And she would never do that. The villainess would never let her hear the end of it. She had no choice but to hold her tongue and play along, for now...

"Shego."

Kim spum toward the voice, instinctively trying to move into a combat stance to fight her archenemy. The strange cuffs that covered both hands kept her wrists from moving apart and reminded her of her situation. Shego wasn't there. Will was talking to her.

Will raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment as he gestured at the cell nearest to them. Kim took the hint, and walked through the open doorway into the same concrete box in which she'd woken just a few hours earlier. A loud hum came from behind her as the entrance was covered by a glowing force field. Her cuffs came undone with a quiet click and dropped to the floor.

"Toss me the cuffs," Will ordered from outside the cell. With a shrug, Kim bent to pick them up and did just that, watching them slip effortlessly through the glowing blue barrier to land in the agent's outstretched hand. He spun ninety degrees with military precision and marched away, leaving her alone to contemplate her situation.

"What was I thinking?" she grumbled once she was sure he was gone. "I never should've agreed to that bet!"

"You're too much of a coward to even try escaping your cell!"

Kim groaned and sat on the cot that stretched across the back wall of her cell. She knew exactly what had gone through her mind during the conversation with Shego. Once again, she had—as Ron would say—allowed her "Kimness" to take control.

She lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was the same featureless light-gray material as the walls and floor. She thought it looked a lot like concrete, but she knew better. If this cell was truly meant to contain Shego, then it had to be something stronger and more plasma-resistant. The only aberration on the ceiling was a single lamp placed right in the center to illuminate the small room. It was protected by a metal cage, with what looked like glass panes fitted into the gaps. Much like the "concrete" walls, she assumed the cage around the bulb wasn't actually steel and the panes weren't really glass.

She rolled over and glared at the force field still humming merrily and glowing an iridescent blue. There were no windows in her cell, and other than a pitiful cot and toilet, both bolted to the floor and wall and situated in plain view of the hallway beyond the barrier, she had no furnishings to speak of. Apparently they weren't going to allow her even a modicum of modesty.

She ground her teeth and stood up, walking over to the force field. She stretched her right arm out towards it. A tingling sensation ran from her palm all the way up to her shoulder. Curious, she moved her hand just a tiny bit closer—

ZZZAPP!

"Ow!" she cried as she leaped back from the field. Her arm seized up and she shook it as much as the cramped muscles would allow.

"How long did it take them to build this?" she asked her silent prison, marveling despite herself at its construction. "It's perfect for holding Shego..."

That brought her thoughts back to the reason why she, rather than Shego, was occupying the cell. She knew she had nobody to blame but herself for getting into this mess in the first place. If only she hadn't taken Shego's bet!

"So, I have to be Shego for a while," she told herself. "What would Shego do right now?"

That, unlike the question of why she'd ever agreed to this in the first place, was easy to answer. She immediately knew what Shego's first goal would be in this situation:

Escape.

"Oh, the look on her face!" Shego crowed as she collapsed onto Kim's bed with a grin so wide it looked positively sinister. The thought of Kim languishing in prison made her want to cackle with glee. Even the realization that her ten-year streak of evading arrest had—technically—ended wasn't enough to dampen her enthusiasm. Particularly since she wasn't the one who was sitting in jail right now.

Beep-Beep-BeDeep!

The distinctive jingle distracted her from her mirth, and she cast a baleful glare at its source. Kim's blasted Kimmunicator had been ringing constantly since she'd left the prison half an hour ago. She had ignored it until now, hoping the caller would take the unspoken hint, but her patience was finally beginning to wear thin.

She thrust her hand out towards it.

Nothing happened.

"Right, no plasma," she realized, reminded once again that she wouldn't have access to her usual powers until she and Kim switched back. Although the trade-off was, in some ways, completely worth it.

She looked down at her hands again, at Kim's hands, at the hands of a normal person, so different from her own. Peach instead of green. Normal fingernails instead of sharp claws.

Normal...

"Don't touch her. What if she's contagious?"

"Hey Greenie!"

"Why would anybody want you around, Greenie?"

"Stay away from her. She's dangerous."

"Stop it," she snapped at herself, annoyed. The voices from her past sank back into her subconscious.

Beep-Beep-BeDeep! went the stupid device. It was a welcome distraction from her thoughts, though. So welcome, in fact, that she decided to finally answer the damn thing. She picked it up from the bed, where she'd tossed it after the first time it went off, and examined it closely, looking for a way to answer the incoming call.

One of the buttons on the front looked likely, so she pressed it. Lo and behold, the face of Kim Possible's preteen tech guru appeared on the small screen.

"Shego."

"Nerdlinger," Shego replied, grinning as her mirth returned.

"Call off the bet," the child said flatly, far less amused than she was.

Her grin widened, turning into her trademark smirk, and she absently wondered how unsettling it would be for someone to see her second-favorite expression (her favorite being the bored look she'd perfected for use during Drakken's longer rants) on Kimmie's face.

First order of business: find a mirror and experiment, Shego thought, her smirk widening even further as she thought of all the fun she could have just making Kimmie look however she wanted. Perhaps she could even come up with some blackmail material...

"No," she said aloud. "After all, you heard her agree, didn't you?"

"You manipulated her," Wade retorted.

"Uh, doy," Shego answered, rolling her eyes. Her favorite word sounded incredibly strange in Kim Possible's voice. "Of course I manipulated her! Still not calling it off, though. She's welcome to back out if she wants."

He rolled his eyes, muttering something under his breath that Shego couldn't hear.

"So, Nerdlinger, any advice to offer?" she asked him, her grin not dimming one bit.

"Why would I help you?"

"Weeeell," Shego was still smirking as she stretched out the word, "I'd hate to, say... accidentally get her kicked off the cheer squad or whatever..."

The boy muttered something else, but eventually sighed and nodded.

"Fine, I'll help you out," he acquiesced, "but only a little. And only to keep you from ruining Kim's life."

Shego's smirk transformed into a very malicious grin. Wade visibly shuddered at the sight. Kim Possible's face was not supposed to look like that.

Okay, Kim thought as she looked around her cell again, escaping isn't hard, right? It's just like sneaking into a lair... only backwards! And I've got a few new tricks now, too.

She held up a hand and squinted at it. The warmth she could feel emanating from the center of her torso shifted a little bit, flowing down her arm and into her hand, which lit up with plasma a moment later.

This time, she wasn't startled by the sight. Instead, she brought her hand up to inspect the plasma closely as its warmth washed over her face. Bright green, with flecks of darker green and black, the glow seemed to dance like a burning flame. Its light was consistent though, not flickering as a normal fire would. She allowed a little more warmth to trickle down her arm and watched as the not-flame grew, tongues of neon-green plasma reaching out to lick at the air. The walls of her cell took on a greenish hue as her plasma overpowered the light coming from the small bulb in the ceiling.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, mesmerized by the sight. "I've never noticed that before..." Then again, she had only ever seen Shego's plasma while the two of them were fighting each other. She'd never really had a chance to stop and admire it.

A few moments later, she finally tore her gaze away from her glowing hand and walked over to the back wall of her cell. She drew back her plasma-encased fist and punched the wall with all her might.

Her fist bounced off with such force that she almost fell flat on her back. The shuddering force of the impact traveled all the way up her arm and down her spine. When the tremor finally ceased, she took a moment to steady herself, then examined the wall.

"Not even a scratch?" she asked aloud as she eyed the pristine surface.

She lit up both hands. The power came easier than it had just a few moments ago. It seemed almost too easy. Everything was too easy. Kim's extensive martial arts training had instilled in her a very clear sense of her body and how it moved. Shego's body was different, with a different shape, center of mass, and balance, yet she apparently had no trouble adapting to it and moving as if she'd always been Shego-shaped. The plasma wasn't any different, either. After only once summoning it by accident, she now felt she had firm control over a power she hadn't even possessed the day before.

Given her mom's position as one of the world's most skilled brain surgeons, Kim knew she'd picked up a bit of knowledge, whether she wanted to or not, about how brains were supposed to work.

And they weren't supposed to work like this.

"Mad Science," she muttered, chuckling in Shego's husky voice, "always breaking the rules..."

She looked up at the wall again and frowned.

"Okay, you can take a hit," she spoke as if it was listening to her, "but can you take the heat?"

The plasma around her hands grew hundreds of degrees hotter at a mere thought. She could barely feel the temperature increase as Shego's body was resistant to the heat, so she knelt to touch the metal frame of her cot. The metal started to glow and deform around her fingertip.

"Around fifteen hundred degrees," she murmured as she looked at the bright red-orange color of the superheated steel.

An image of what would happen if Shego ever used plasma this hot in one of their fights crossed Kim's mind, making her shudder. She quickly distracted herself by focusing on the wall. She pulled back and punched it again, this time with heat to go along with the force of her hit.

Again, her fist rebounded from the wall. Again, there was no mark left behind.

Frowning, she pressed her fist firmly against the wall and increased the heat even further, burning as hot as she thought she could go.

Still nothing.

"Hmm...is it deflecting the plasma somehow?" she wondered aloud. "Is it some kind of coating or does it go all the way through? If I could just make a small hole somehow..."

A quiet clatter of metal hitting concrete made her turn around and raise her fists, both still glowing with plasma. The hallway outside her cell was empty, but there was something new lying on the floor. She knelt down to examine the small black device that hadn't been there a moment ago. It looked like some kind of digital watch, with a tiny LCD screen. Confused, she looked out into the hallway beyond the force field, but saw no sign of whoever had delivered it. She looked back down at it, then hesitantly reached out to pick it up. As she did, an image appeared on the screen.

"Wade!" she almost shouted, though she remembered at the last moment to keep her voice down and turned it into a strangled whisper. "What...? How did you...?"

Wade's image grinned back at her from the tiny screen. "Early birthday present. I've been working on it for a while. Like it?"

"Like it? I love it!" Kim answered with a smile of her own. "But how did you—"

"I had a drone lying around," Wade interrupted with a shrug. "It wasn't hard to repurpose it to sneak into GJ and bring this to you. It's just a prototype, though. I wanted to fit a mini-grapnel into the final version but it would have to be a lot bigger to hold the cable spool—"

"Wade, thanks," Kim said, cutting off the boy genius before he could launch into a technical explanation of all the features he planned to add. "As always, you rock."

Wade blushed and cleared his throat. "Right, sorry. Anyway, it's not much; all you can really do with it is tell the time and talk to me, but at least it's better than nothing. I thought it might help out a bit."

"I... yeah," Kim murmured, her good mood evaporating. "Wade... I've really gotten in deep this time, haven't I? What was I thinking? Why didn't I say no?!"

Wade shrugged. "She knew just what to say to get on your nerves." He stared at her for a moment, then shuddered. "Sorry, this is just so weird. You looking like Shego, I mean."

"I don't just look like her; I am her," Kim replied with a grimace. "It's definitely weird, and I think it's only gonna get weirder. So, on that note, how long do you think it'll take to fix this?"

"No idea," Wade admitted. "I'll need to analyze Doctor Bortel's schematics to figure out how the scrambler malfunctioned as it did. As far as I could tell, it was only supposed to temporarily overwrite or modify memories, and the effect only lasts for a few hours. If it had worked as intended, the two of you would be back to normal by now. But it didn't just scramble your memories, it somehow overwrote your entire identity."

Kim frowned, picking apart his explanation in her mind. "So... wait, if it's just supposed to mess with memories, am I actually Shego, and I just think I'm Kim Possible? Or am I actually Kim Possible, stuck in Shego's body?"

Her genius friend shrugged. "With whatever modifications Drakken made, who knows? But this isn't really the time for an existential crisis." He smiled wryly, then continued, "Either way, we'll somehow have to recreate what happened yesterday to get you two back to normal. I just wish I knew what Drakken had done to it."

Kim smiled as an idea crept into her mind.

"Well, I am supposed to be playing the part of Shego right now," she told him. "If I'm going to honor the bet, then I'll have to find a way to escape and free Drakken, right? I'll ask him about the scrambler and let you know what I find out."

"So you're really going to do it, then," Wade said. It was not a question. "You're really going to pretend to be Shego. You could always back out of the bet, you know."

"No. It's really no big," she lied. The look on his face told her she hadn't convinced him. "Besides, I'll never hear the end of it if I back out. I have to play along for now."

"Shouldn't you at least tell Doctor Director—"

"No," Kim said again. "She'd want to go capture Shego right away and keep us both locked up until this is fixed. If I'm really going to... to be Shego, then I'm going to do it right. Which means getting myself and Drakken out of here on my own."

Wade sighed, but didn't protest. She had that same tone of voice she always used when she'd decided on a course of action and nothing could sway her now. "Alright," was all he said. "Good luck."

He vanished, his face replaced by the time. Kim absently noted it was late in the afternoon as she fastened the watch to her wrist and began to reexamine her prison cell. There had to be a way out. Shego had never had much trouble getting into or out of places, and Kim herself was fairly skilled in that department as well.

Her roving gaze landed on the cot and its metal frame. One side of it was bolted to the wall, the other to the floor. The part of the frame she'd tested her plasma on was still glowing a dim red, though it hadn't deformed any further.

Then she looked down, at the floor beneath the cot. Both legs were held in place by thick, steel bolts screwed deep into the not-concrete.

She grinned.

Doctor Director was still in the Security Center, wondering about the mysterious conversation between Kim and Shego, when a loud explosion echoed though the base.

The floor bucked beneath her feet. The security staff tumbled off their chairs, but she managed to stagger backwards and lean against the wall until the tremor passed. In its wake, sirens and alarms started to go off.

"REPORT!" she barked as the agents clambered to their feet.

"Explosion in the cell blocks!" one of them shouted over the cacophony of alarms.

"Cellblock Alpha!" another announced.

Betty paled. Cellblock Alpha held only one prisoner.

"Is she—"

"Cameras are offline!" yet another technician responded before she even finished her question.

"Damn it!" Betty swore as she sprinted out of the room, calling back over her shoulder, "Check on the other prisoners! Make sure the cells are still secure! And someone shut off that alarm!"

Then she was gone, heading down the corridor at full tilt. The ear-piercing alarms thankfully fell silent as she arrived at the only occupied cell in Cellblock Alpha a few minutes later. When she skidded to a stop, she couldn't help but stare at the devastation that Kim Possible's green-skinned archenemy had wrought.

The cell that had taken them four years to construct, and another two years to upgrade and reinforce as they learned more about Shego's abilities and powers, had unfortunately not fulfilled its sole purpose. The three walls and ceiling were still in place and the force field still glowing bright blue.

The floor, on the other hand...

"How the hell did she manage this?" Doctor Director asked herself quietly. Hurried footsteps behind her announced the arrival of another agent on the scene. She recognized the sound of his stried and asked, "Any ideas, Du?"

Her top agent was silent for a long moment before saying, "Negative, Doctor Director." His boots snapped together as he stood at attention. Though she was looking away from him, she still knew he was saluting her and nodded in return as he continued, "It looks like she found a way to bypass the anti-plasma coating. I've already called in the Forensics Department to analyze the scene. They should arrive within the next two minutes."

"Good thinking," she acknowledged absently. She spared one more glance at the completely destroyed floor of the cell they'd thought to be indestructible before turning to walk away. "I expect a full report on my desk within the hour. Lock down all points of egress and—"

"Doctor Director!"

She winced at the volume of the shout coming from her earpiece. Her frown deepened as she pressed one finger against it and barked, "Tell me you've found her!"

"Negative," the voice on the other end, which she now recognized as belonging to a member of the Security Team, responded. "She's gone."

"She's... gone? Are you certain? She could still be within the base."

"A-Absolutely positive," the agent confirmed, his voice cracking slightly. He sounded nervous. Betty grit her teeth as she wondered just how bad this next bit of news was going to be.

"How did she get out?"

"She... stole the X-75 prototype, sir."

Betty's face went completely white.

"Shit."

Earlier...

Kim Possible glared down at the point where the frame of her cot met the floor. The metal was glowing a bright, almost neon yellow, tinted brown from the green glow of her plasma.

"Come on, come on..." she muttered, both hands wrapped tight around the base of the frame, where it was bolted to the floor. She willed her plasma to heat the metal even further. The frame twisted and deformed in her grip, and then abruptly came free with a loud snap!

Kim grinned as she twisted the frame off to the side. All that was left now were the four bolts that had previously secured the frame in place. They were still tightly screwed into the floor, but with the frame out of the way, she could finally get a little extra leverage.

She gripped one of the bolts with two plasma-tipped fingers, almost instantly heating the metal to a bright red color, and started twisting. It took a minute or so, but the bolt eventually heated up enough to deform slightly and lose its grip on the floor. She unscrewed it quickly and tossed it off to the side as she examined the hole left behind. If she wasn't mistaken, the material forming the sides of the hole was a darker gray than the surface of the floor.

"I hope that means the plasma-proofing doesn't go any deeper than the surface," she muttered as she slid her pinkie finger into the hole and lit up the tip as hot as she could.

The floor wasn't exactly normal concrete, but it was made from a lot of the same materials. Many of these materials—such as quartz, limestone, and even small amounts of condensation caught in minuscule air pockets—undergo drastic changes in size and structure when exposed to intense heat. Normally, this isn't much of a problem, as these kinds of changes only occur in temperatures well in excess of five hundred degrees Celsius.

The plasma she was using now, if Kim's estimates were correct, was almost four times as hot.

Hairline cracks spread out from the hole. She heard a loud snap as something beneath the surface buckled. The floor beneath her knees began to heat up as she grinned and pushed even more plasma into her fingertip.

The condensation evaporated. The quartz's crystalline structure shifted and weakened, expanding minutely. The limestone decomposed into lime and carbon dioxide, expanding suddenly and violently.

She felt the floor bulge beneath her, and had only a moment to wonder if this was perhaps not such a great idea after all before the increasing pressure finally reached a breaking point.

BOOM!

Suddenly, Kim was airborne. She slammed into the ceiling with enough force that she was sure her back would be bruised later. Before she could recover from the sudden disorientation of being thrown straight up into the air, gravity took hold and she fell back down through the new hole she'd made in the floor and landed face-first, dust and concrete fragments raining down around her. Alarms were blaring up above, but Kim was in too much pain to notice.

"Ow," she hissed through clenched teeth as her head pounded fiercely. Pain sliced through her back, letting her know that she would definitely have a bruise later, and her nose didn't seem to be in great shape either. She took a breath, then started coughing as she accidentally inhaled some of the dust floating around her.

When her world stopped spinning, or at least slowed down enough that she could almost see straight again, she slowly raised her head from the floor and looked around. She had fallen into a maintenance shaft of some sort. She saw a long concrete hallway, dimly illuminated by crimson emergency lights, that led out of the cellblock area and towards the center of the base. She grinned despite the pain in her nose. It was probably broken, but at this point, she didn't care; her escape had begun.

"Booyah," she wheezed, borrowing her best friend's favorite word.

Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

A/N: Sorry it took so long. I meant to post this chapter in December (which would've been quite late already), but real life has a way of interfering with plans like that. Updates for this story will likely remain sporadic and spaced out, but I do have some good news: I have quite a lot of the story roughed out now. I decided to turn this into my NaNoWriMo project for 2014 and although I didn't make it to 50,000 words, I did still get several chapters written. They require rewriting and extensive editing, but the point is that at least half of this fic does actually exist outside of my mind in some form.