A/N: Another short chapter, but I'm starting to think that I'm not going to drag them out. It'll make regular updates more likely and hopefully keep the story alive yea?

Reviews!

Honulicious: hmm shego really pressed the release button huh? no kim's pov? i guess that's next chapter. both kim and shego are really bored

Shhh...don't tell Drakken. XD Here's a Kim chapter for ya, though!

Anttolas: well i will say i am really enjoying your story so far and i really want to read more, so i will be waiting for the next chapter, see ya then

I'm glad you like it! The whole point of this sort of thing is for other people to enjoy it, and I like to think that I'm at least partially successful in that!

yojimbo89: Wow just wow the way you write your story is great I've watched Kim Possible and this was like reading an episode.

I'm glad I'm doing the original material justice. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep up that sort of quality.

Third Track: Over and Over - Three Days Grace

Kim Possible. Cheerleader, honor student, teen hero, and all around Good Role Model.

At the moment, she felt anything but.

She kicked at a loose stone, watching indifferently as it skittered across the gleaming-white of the cement pathway. The path was clean, and smooth, the grass on either side perfectly trimmed and cropped as the man-made stone wound through the whole park, crossing over itself and looping in simple patterns, highlighting the best parts of the landscape...

A beautiful, gleaming, clear path.

'Why can't life be like that? Just once and awhile?'

She sighed, running a hand through her hair...running both hands through her hair...shaking her head wildly so that she had to comb it all back several times before she could see again...

A late night jogger smirked at her as he passed.

Her face burned almost as red as her hair, and she pressed her hands over her eyes. "Greaa-haaate..."

Just another stellar example of the...whatever...that had been screwing everything up for weeks.

'Whatever? Please. You're being obtuse.'

'It's 'I'm being obtuse'. I'm referring to myself.'

Sometimes she wondered if Ron's goofiness was contagious or something. It wouldn't surprise her in the least.

Heck, maybe it'd be a good thing. Something to...distract her. To help avoid and...ignore.

It wasn't bragging to say that she was a genius...or near genius, depending on whether you subscribed to Ericsson's preference for assessment of an individual's creativity in psychometric terms or Terman and Hollingworth's IQ range for your definition of the label...

Ugh.

Case and point. As much as she loved the adrenaline and focus of her missions, physical activity was a...distraction. One that she embraced whole-heartedly. When she was falling a terminal velocity, when she was hanging onto a sheer cliff face with a bare hand...when she was dodging plasma-backed punches and bone-breaking kicks...there was no room for thought.

But the second things slowed down, the world came rushing in at full force. Schoolwork for the next day, volunteering time-tables, new cheerleading routines, college plans, job openings that didn't conflict with any of the above, missions...and all of the little details involved in all of it.

It was tough, trying to sort through it all. To keep on top of everything. She'd gotten better, over the years, as she'd learned how to counteract the thought through the action. Keeping track of what she'd already done and what she'd only planned. Cutting down on the extras so she didn't burn out, but still keeping enough going at once that she didn't have time to dwell.

Still, sometimes it just seemed...messy.

And lately, more and more often, she found herself with free time. Time when she really didn't have anything much to do. And it was during those times that her thoughts began circling a number of very uncomfortable subjects...

Kim paused, blinking in the bright, electric light that shone down from above. She'd wandered off her usual route. Somehow, instead of the jogging path, she'd made it all the way to the old playground.

It was...simple, really. A couple of slides, a jungle gym, monkey-bars, see-saws...and the swings. She eyed those with more than a hint of nostalgia, remembering a time when she wore pigtails and braces, and freaked her parents out by doing somersaults out of them. The thought brought a smile to her face...and it felt so good to smile.

Her mom wouldn't mind if she was a little late. And...well, her dad would probably be as overprotective and worried as ever, but it'd be easy enough to calm him down again once everything was said and done.

For now...that squeaky swing-set was just begging to be used.

'Smaller than I remembered.' She couldn't help but grin at that utterly inane thought, as she gave a gentle kick backwards. The chains creaked nicely, and drew her further into memory. A time when when she'd just known that moving so fast and jumping off just right would set her down safely in the sandbox behind the swing-set. When she'd known that a twist here, or a turn there, would flip her stomach and send her heart racing.

A time before real life and grown-up things had crept in.

'Better days.'

No muss, no fuss, no missions. No crazy scientists with robots and death rays. No...

'Nope. Nope nope. Not going to start that again.'

Too often, lately, her mind had wandered to her. Too often she'd had to shake herself out of daydreams that were, quite frankly, a little worrying.

'Focus...something else, anything else...definitions! Physics.' She closed her eyes, going back to schoolwork. 'A charge carrier is a mobile particle carrying an electric charge, especially those carrying an electric current. Charge carriers include electrons, ions, and holes. Charge carriers are found everywhere, including transistors, integrated circuits, vacuum tubes, and pla-'

She groaned, dragging her heels into the sand to slow the swing again. Of course. Something else then...

'Two cannons, one aimed forty-five degrees from horizontal, the other at sixty degrees from horizontal, are fired simultaneously toward each other. First step: In order for the two projectiles to collide, at some point in time the 'y' components of position must be identical. Since they were launched simultaneously, the 'y' components of their initial velocities must also be equal...'

'As if. I always wind up moving first...'

She blinked, twice, and slumped against one of the chains. "Nope. Nu-uh. Simplify. Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine..."

'Shego turns twenty-nine some time between August twelfth and September twenty-fourth...'

Kim snorted, then laughed, though she quieted down quickly as she remembered just where she was. And then she had to stifle another giggling fit as the situation really sunk in. What would people think! The great Kim Possible, hanging out on a kiddie playground after dark, laughing at herself...

"Heh...it's official. I'm losing my mind. Ron kept telling me it was going to happen some day, but did I listen? No! Of course not! Because he was coming down off a rant about zombies and which celebrities would survive!"

She managed a fond smile, but it gave way quickly to a frustrated huff. She kicked fitfully against the ground to rock her seat to the side. "And now I'm talking to myself, because apparently that's what insane people do. Maybe I should just go home and have mom call Dr. Samson so he can suggest I be institutionalized. I'm sure everyone would have a good laugh about that."

A brief moment, and she fell silent again. Lost in thought.

'Who'm I kidding?' A deep breath in, then out, and she closed her eyes. 'Nobody, that's who. I'm avoiding. Because that's a perfectly natural and understandable reaction. Totally. I'm completely justified in that.'

It was a mess. And it was going to make a mess, any way it ended up going. There wasn't anything that would make it anything less than an utter...mess.

Heroes weren't supposed to falter. Or worry. They were supposed to know what to do, and stand up for what was right.

A hero doesn't sympathize with a nemesis.

Shego...

Kim stood, hooking her thumbs in her pockets and scuffing her heel in the grass as she padded back toward the sidewalk. It was getting late. And the park had offered no escape from her problems. Not that she'd actually expected it to help...but it had been nice to hope.

It was near the very edge of the park that she spotted trouble. They were off-balance, staggering. Laughing too loudly. And she felt a rare, bubbling anger, at how...disgusting these people could be. This was such a nice town, and these idiots...

Oh, and trouble had spotted her, too. Judging by the way they were shoving each other forward and moving with whatever passed for purpose toward her...

"Heya girlie." One of them slurred, grinning as he stumbled ahead of his friends. "Howsabout ya walk with us for a bit, huh?"

Kim blinked, once...and the world fell away.

Mission mode.

Six men. Inebriated, unarmed, and unprepared. Four were athletes, one with either bad luck or fighting experience, judging by the crooked nose.

A groping hand came up, and she swatted it away without hesitation.

Prioritize. Mr. Grabby.

A two-fingered strike to his throat drew him up short. No motion wasted, she followed up with a twist of her wrist that planted her palm over his ear. One sharp push, and he was sent tumbling to the side.

The rest were staring like idiots. Crooked-nose guy broke out of his stupor first, expression screwing up into a scowl as he rushed her.

She'd been wrong about the fighting experience. He'd probably just eaten more pavement than Ron during his 'skater' phase. She threw a straight punch, slow enough for him to flinch away, and used her new momentum and positioning to drive an elbow into his jaw. A simple sidestep...and she drew back her extended arm, slamming the back of his head with that same elbow.

It hurt, but the adrenaline was flowing. And she felt good.

The remaining four idiots decided to rush her all at once. She juggled them like it was nothing, and dropped them before any one of them could tell what was happening.

And she stood there, for several minutes, as she caught her breath and rode that rush. The guys were all groaning and either unconscious or getting there.

...civilians.

This was not how a hero behaved.

Kim took off at a jog.

'I just need to get home...'