I do not own Kim Possible, or any other Disney character. I'm just borrowing them for my own view of alternative tales.
Kim Possible - Force of Justice
By LJ58
Part 4:
Kim felt herself waking, and tried to calm her wild thoughts as she sought perspective. As challenging as it could be in the past, just now, it was far more difficult than usual. Her mind whirled as she considered what she had lived though. And experienced. What she had become.
"Don't make me hit you again," a snide voice told her as she felt herself growing unexpectedly warm. "Because I will."
"Shego," she croaked, staring up at the blurred features of a distinctive green face before her.
"Doy. Who else regularly kicks your skinny butt, Princess? Jeez, you'd think you'd be sharper after all the fine-tuning the docs did on your head."
"On my…..? Why am I green? What happened to me," she rasped. "I…..I didn't get infected with your comet power did I?"
"Infected? Gah! Sometimes you can be as dense as Dr. D," she told her pointedly as she poured water into a cup, and held it out, fully expecting her to reach for it.
Kim only stared, then finally got a hand to move, and she reached for the cup that she pulled to her lips in a trembling hand she couldn't quite hold still, which naturally drenched her nightgown before she finished drinking by gulping the water that proved to be quite refreshing just then.
"Let's start small. What is the very last thing you remember before waking up as an emerald light bulb?"
Kim shot her a dark glare but said nothing for a moment.
"I…..remember trying to stop your execution. Then…..it kind of all turned into a blur. A big, bright green blur."
Shego grimaced herself. "Tell me about it. Even I couldn't believe I could go ballistic like that. Who knew? Anyway, what next? Can you remember anything after that?"
Kim sighed, and let the empty cup fall, her fine motor skills not quite what they were as yet.
"I……I think……I remember…..floating. I saw things. But they were…..strange. Like surreal visions you see on those sixties films. All color and chaos. Like that."
"So, you don't remember anything at all you can put your finger on between cashing out, and waking up green?"
"Cashing….out?"
"Look, Kimmie," Shego told her. "I'm going to clue you in to three things you really need to know. Two are about your new…..abilities. The third. They don't want me to tell you, but I think you have a right to know."
"Okay. So….what's the sitch," she asked quietly as she struggled to sit up in the bed in a sunlit room she couldn't quite place. With the blinds over the window, she couldn't actually see anything outside, so she wasn't even sure where she was any longer. She was just glad she wasn't underground any longer.
"Must you always…..? Ah, never mind. You're you. I can respect that. Just listen. The you that you remember? It ain't the you that you are now. Not completely."
"What?"
"Okay, I could have said that better," Shego sighed as confusion blossomed across that familiar, yet alien visage. She turned and walked over to stare out the window after pulling the blinds up enough to let Kim see outside. Kim looked and saw palm trees. A nearby mountain range. Not much else.
Was she in the tropics?
"Look. Apparently," Shego told her as she turned back from the window. "You got hurt bad when you grabbed me, and pulled me out of that chair. I mean….really bad."
"How bad," Kim asked quietly.
"You were dying, Princess. Nerve damage was the least of it. You were critically burned over one hundred percent of your body. You were toast. You were about to become history, Kimmie. Adios. Sayonara. Goodbye."
Kim stared at her as the green-skinned woman walked back toward the bed. "Which is when the one-eyed Frankenstein made her debut."
Kim frowned.
"You should know…… Seems that Drakken survived, too. So you're not the only walking dead here."
"So…..I didn't imagine seeing him down there in the cave?"
"No. Apparently, his own mutation lets him suck up energy and channel it harmlessly. It does explain how he survived the, ah, less cheerful moments we shared. At any rate, when you started going south in a hurry, Cyclops called in Drew and Dr. Hall….."
"DNAmy," Kim gasped. "And Drakken?"
The alarm in her voice and expression suggested Kimmie was about to start glowing again. "Don't make me knock you out again, Princess. I already said I would."
"Please," Kim huffed, looking indignant. "Who kicked whose butt the last time we met?"
"I'd say that was me. Twice now, if you're being technical. Anyway, believe it or not, that electrocution not only didn't kill Drew, it made him almost sane. At least temporarily," she grinned.
"And…..Amy?"
"Apparently, the loopy bitch went straight a while back, and has been secretly working with Bets all this time."
"No wonder we hadn't seen her lately," Kim frowned.
"Anyway, with you being so critical, your one-eyed friend stole your body out of the hospital, faked your death, and then used her pet geniuses to grow a hybrid body with our co-mingled DNA to transplant your original brain into once it was ready. It apparently worked, because here you are, Kimmie. End of story."
"End of story? End of story," she shrieked, her eyes shimmering brightly.
"Calm down, Princess. You'll figure out soon enough that your emotional state can really do a number on your self-control. And trust me, you want to stay in control. Unless you like flash-frying your friends and neighbors for fun."
Kim held up her hands that were glowing green up to her elbows. The hospital gown was even charring slightly where her new glow exuded itself from her green-tinted skin.
"Now you know why I wear the same stylish outfit. My uniform is made of a special plasma resistant material, or I'd be running around naked every time I fired up the plasma."
Kim picked at the charred gown, and shuddered. "Not the image I was wanting just now, thank you," she said, doing her best not to even look at Shego who was staring at her with a smug grin.
That she was not wearing said trademark costume suggested she wasn't going to be doing anything anytime soon.
"Let me guess. They brought you here to help me learn to control myself before I blew something up."
"Well, you've still got a little of the old smarts left after all," Shego grinned crookedly. "Once you get back on your feet, we'll find out what else you still have."
"What about the rest of what you mentioned? You said three things I needed to know."
"Okay. Second. It's a power thingy. As I said, its intensity can be directly related to your emotional state. So, time to use that fabled discipline of yours, Pumpkin. But, emotional state aside, you have to vent your stores at least once a week, or…..you blow off excess energy involuntarily. I learned a long time ago, it's better to vent every few days than have an spontaneous surge of plasma when you least expect it. Or want it."
"Okay, that makes sense," Kim grimaced. "And….third?"
"Third is something no one but I know, and I'm not going to share it until you-know-who doesn't have us surrounded by ears and eyes. It's important, but so important that there is no way I'm risking Cyclops finding out what it is. Understand?"
"What's to keep me from telling her when you tell me," Kim asked flatly.
"Because I'm guessing you're smart enough to realize there are some secrets you cannot trust Bets with."
Kim said nothing to that, but simply sat and stared at her hands.
"So, I'm basically a clone?"
"I guess," Shego shrugged, not liking her suddenly despondent tone. "Of a sort. You're supposed to be a hybrid, state-of-the-art genetic construct. From what Drew, AKA Dr. Janus told me, you embody the best of both our own bodies. Apply Kimmie's own all-original brain, and it's Franken-Kimmie time. We'll see how well that works out," she huffed.
"Janus," Kim murmured. "I get it. The two-faced god of Olympus. Clever."
"Glad you get it. I thought they gave him a girl's name," Shego drawled with a smirk.
Kim couldn't help but grin at that, a small chuckle escaping in spite of herself.
"So, ready to start finding out what you can still do?"
Kim looked toward the door. "Sure. Just tell me one thing. Where are we?"
"An island in the Pacific where GJ hopes you won't do any more damage until you get yourself completely under control."
"Any….more….?"
"Guess the old short-term memory is still rusty, huh? You fried an entire, top-secret, underground boy's club, Pumpkin."
"The…..cave."
"The cave. And let me tell you, from what monkey boy said, they were ready to put you in the ground for real after you broke all their top-secret toys they had stashed down there. Of course, the problem with that idea was….. See original model," she sniggered, and flared her fingers out on both hands as if pantomiming an explosion. "Which, brings us to Club Cyclops' little tropical getaway."
"Oh. And they just left us here alone?"
"Not quite," she said, and gestured for her to join her at the window.
Kim staggered to the open window after climbing out of the bed with some effort, and looked down from what proved to be a second floor balcony. "Welcome to GJ's tropical retreat and spa," Shego gestured as Kim took in the agents outside the two story manor. Not far off shore, no less than five battleships were patrolling the ocean in what she would learn was a staggered, and steady circle to keep the entire island surrounded.
"Uncle Sam still doesn't trust you just yet," Shego grinned. "He sure don't trust me," she added.
"Uncle Sam? And GJ, and Dr. Director? Together?"
"Oh, yeah. And they'd both love to put me back in a meat locker if we don't play their little war games, and get you on your feet pronto."
"Huh?"
"Let me tell you something about that control freak you seem to like so much," Shego told her as she turned and led her toward the door after Kim got dressed in what looked like her usual mission clothes left for her, both of them ignoring the wheelchair parked to one side of the bed. "When she found out she couldn't kill me, she took another tact," Shego explained as they left her room to step out into a large hall that led to a sweeping staircase.
Men and women in blue uniforms were everywhere they turned it seemed.
Kim frowned as Shego told her about that underground cold storage chamber. She couldn't help but wonder what was in store for her now if she was thought dead, and Betty would go so far as to do the things Shego claimed.
If only she could find Ron. Talk to Wade. Maybe see her parents. She was starting to grow uneasy when she saw the lean, sandy-haired young man in his own ninja gear waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
"Ron," she smiled, and rushed down to hug him, all graceless staggering suddenly gone in the same instant she moved. "I can't believe you're here."
"I wouldn't be anywhere else, KP," Ron assured her, and glanced at Shego who had watched her go from careful stagger to fluid grace in an instant.
She clung to him as she felt a surge of emotion that told her she couldn't be just a soulless clone. She couldn't be. "I love you, Ron," she sniffed.
"I love you, too, Kim," he murmured, hugging her back without fear or concern though a few of the Global Justice agents looked a little uneasy at seeing her.
"Always?"
"And forever," he told her, playing the silly game they had started that night after stopping the Lil' Diablos.
"Jeez, get a room," Shego huffed as the two kissed.
KP
"Okay, we're about as far as we can get from the house," Kim said as they paused in the afternoon run after she proved she was capable of doing so. Meanwhile, Shego was clad in a pair of green sweats as she was still not allowed her trademark costume just yet as she worked with Ron to get Kim into shape, and fine-tune her control of her powerful, new body. They had done some basic kata and stretching warm-ups back at the house, then worked out a little with Ron on the beach earlier. Then Shego suggested a run as it seemed the more Kim pushed herself, the faster and better her coordination and control seemed to be returning.
"You'd think, wouldn't you," she said, reaching into the pocket of her sweats to pull out a pencil and a small notepad. "Me, I wouldn't put it past Bets to have this whole island bugged."
"Now you're just being paranoid."
"Says the human brain stuffed into a hyper-cloned body," Shego huffed as she began to write.
"What….?"
"Just give me a sec. Gotta make sure you understand this, and then….. Well, both our lives are probably in your hands."
Kim took the notepad after she finished writing across three pages. She read the words Shego had written three times before she clenched the notepad in her right hand. "This is…..? It's real?"
"Real as it gets for people like us, Princess," Shego nodded. "And I'm talking about comet-powered people now, of course."
"You're probably right. Dr. Director would probably kill for information like this," she admitted as she closed her hand around the notepad.
"Probably," Shego agreed.
"But you're probably right about the rest of it, too. She doesn't need to know," she said, and her right hand suddenly flared with bright green flame as the notepad vanished in a puff of emerald fire.
"Not bad," Shego grinned as Kim dusted the ashes from her palm. "Ready for a real race now?"
Kim smiled. "Think you can keep up with me this time, old woman," Kim grinned.
"Hey, I'm not that much older than you, Kimmie," she huffed.
"Please. I'm only four days old," Kim smirked, and turned and bolted through the forest before Shego could even think of giving chase.
"That's cheating," Shego hollered as she ran after her.
KP
"Tell me we had an angle on that pad," Betty demanded as she frowned at the paper held in Kim's hand on the video monitor.
"Not an angle we could read. They apparently chose a place just far enough away, and at an position where we couldn't focus on the pages. It was as if they knew where the cameras were," Dr. Kavish scowled.
"I wouldn't put it past Shego. Still, it concerns me that Kim would agree to keep a secret that is obviously….."
"Important to the both of them," the scientist asked suggestively.
"Please," Drew drawled. "Shego's all about secrets. She only rubs your nose in what she lets you know, so you don't pay attention to what she's not letting you know."
Betty stared at the blue-skinned man, and frowned. Day-by-day, he was becoming more like Drakken than Janus again, and she had the feeling it wouldn't be long before he was trying to break free, and return to his usual antics as his normal mental state, such as it was, restored itself.
Well, even if she couldn't hold a fusion generator like Shego, she should be able to hold someone like Drew easily enough. She would just get him to finish the blueprints on his neural control chip that should make even someone like Shego obedient, and then she'd put him to bed. Leaving her with control of possibly the two most powerful agents in the world once they were properly rehabilitated.
She had hoped it wouldn't be necessary to tag Kim, but if she was already being swayed by Shego, she couldn't take a chance on her potential super-agent going rogue before she even debuted the future enforcement arm of Global Justice. Kim, the real Kim, would understand.
Sometimes, sacrifices had to be made.
The Greater Good demanded it of all of them.
It was the way the world worked. She couldn't help but wonder if she might manage to tag Stoppable, too. He was getting far too willful of late. And he was far too valuable to leave undirected.
KP
"Well, I can't say I didn't see this coming," Drew said as he found himself brought into a smaller lab where a clear, frosted glass tube waited.
"Let's not make this any harder than it has to be," the agent in the doctor's coat told him.
"Oh, I quite agree," Drew said pleasantly as he turned to face the man. "Frankly, I'm just glad to get this over with. After all, if there is one thing I'm familiar with, it's treachery and betrayal. Well, that's two things, but you do understand?"
"Just get undressed, and get into the tube, doctor."
"After you," Drew smiled, and pushed a button on the watch he wore.
Two darts flew out to pierce the agent's neck, and a short, electrical crackle sounded before the man stiffened and fell.
"I insist," Drew smiled a very manic leer as the man lay twitching at his feet.
Stuffing the man into the tube after stripping him, he then took the agent's clothes, and key cards, and headed for the maintenance bay. He was halfway there when a woman stepped into the hall to block his way.
"Drewbie," Amy frowned. "They said you left."
"Well, they're almost right, Amy, dear," he smiled. "I am on my way out. Like to tag along?"
"Oh. No. I think I'd better stay this time."
"You can't say I didn't offer."
"I know. But…..Dr. Director has been good to me. And I have to stay to look out for Kimmie. She's still going to need help. I just know it."
"Actually, my dear," Drakken smiled, his Janus personality all but gone by then. "I think she's going to be far from needing any help very soon. If anything, Global Justice is going to regret ever saving her life."
"Drewbie? What did you do," she asked, knowing him well enough.
"Let's just say I left a little surprise for our erstwhile champion of Justice. Whatever happens, I can tell you this," he said, and his blue face darkened as he scowled coldly. "No one…..! No one turns Dr. Drakken into a lapdog! That one-eyed bitch is going to pay. Oh, my, how she is going to pay."
"Drewbie," Amy frowned as he walked away whistling a little too cheerfully.
Two minutes later, the entire laboratory floor exploded, and chaos reigned as the ventilation system filled with a bitter, acrid odor that left men and woman alike choking for breath as the stench of rotting meat filled the air throughout the complex.
No one noticed when, where, or how Drew Lipski got away. Even the Navy's circling ships didn't spot him. That did not prevent him from disappearing without a trace.
KP
"Okay. Let's amp it up a little today," Shego grinned two weeks after Drakken vanished, though they were yet to be told that fact. Shego was finally back in costume as Kim wore a version of her old battle-suit that was now made of the same plasma-resistant material Shego used, but in silver and trimmed with green piping. It was Wade's latest next-generation battle suit built just for her.
Betty was still fuming that Ron had not let her test it herself before he simply handed it over, having kept it until she was ready.
"I'm game," Kim nodded as she adjusted her equipment belt Wade had also sent along in spite of Betty's protests. As it came through Ron, who Betty couldn't control, there wasn't much she could do about it.
"We'll start with a race to the gym. Take out the targets waiting along the course with projectile plasma, and then get through the barriers any way you can before we turn and face one another for a genuine one-on-one like the old days. You up for that, Princess?"
Kim smiled as she casually stretched, feeling much more like her own self lately, even if she was in a new body that was far from her old one. "Sounds like fun."
"I guess you'll be keeping score, monkey boy," she glanced over at Ron who eyed them without comment.
He simply nodded.
"After two weeks, this should be a good assessment of her coordination and control," he agreed. "Whenever you're ready, ladies," he said as none of the three even mentioned the armed GJ agents that lined the course as they did every day. Each of them with orders to shoot to kill if they felt the pair warranted such sanctions.
Not that anyone, even Betty, thought they could take either woman down that easily. The orders were just to ensure the agents understood it would take all they had to just slow them down, and recapture them if it came to a showdown.
"All right," Shego smiled, and rolled her shoulders as they turned to face the island gym that five miles from the main house. "Go," she shouted even as she sprinted forward.
Kim was already two yards in front of her.
"Damn it, Kimmie," she howled. "You jumped the gun again!"
"Prove it, slowpoke," she laughed gleefully over her shoulder, and kept going.
The agents moved to job after them, none of them every trying to keep up, which was why others were posted along the course. They already knew these women, even Stoppable, were too fast to pace. And it was dangerous to be too close when they started throwing plasma since they reached the energy training part of the course.
Kim had already vented her 'excess' energies twice, and both time she had discharged green fire into the ocean that boiled the water, and set off monitors as the energy went off the scale when they tried to gauge it. It seemed that Kim's base energy levels were over five times what Shego's were even after a lifetime of experience and maturity with her comet-power.
Shego pushed hard, now, determined to prove herself as her genetic counterpart seemed to be continually shoving the bar higher and higher without discernible effort. Even Kim Possible at her best had not been able to push her like this new and improved version was doing. Panting heavily even as she headed for the gym, she caught a glimpse of the redhead just ahead, and growled a little indignantly as she flew past agents that would never be able to keep up with the older woman at their best. They certainly couldn't pace Kim, who was still continuing to improve on a daily basis.
Even as she darted right around a tree, a swinging target flew, and she blasted it even as she saw plasma burst across her peripheral vision to the left as Kim somersaulted, took out three targets at once, and kept going.
"Show off," she hissed.
"Watch it, Shego," Kim tossed over her shoulder. "I think I saw a gray hair in your head this morning."
"You…..! Gah," she howled, and pushed herself even harder as she began blasting at anything that even looked like it might be a target to get past the obstacles that still separated them as they neared the gym not far ahead now.
Just to one side, Ron paced them in grim silence, saying nothing.
She reached the gym, easily leapt, or scaled the barriers that rose before her, and then stopped on the sandy strip of the beach where Kim was staring at a battleship just sailing into view as it's patrol route carried it around the island yet again.
"About time," she grinned as she turned to face her, looking as if she weren't even breathing hard at the moment as Shego came loping up to join her on the beach with a cold glitter in her eyes. Games were one thing, but this redhead was really starting to push her buttons.
"Need a breather before we……?"
Shego spun, rolled, and jumped out to drive a hard kick at Kim's head even as she ducked. All with just a low growl rising in her throat that vented her outrage.
Only as Shego flew over her, Kim came back up with a hard fist that sent her flying straight up almost twenty feet in the air before she arched down to land in the nearby ocean. Shego came out of the water literally steaming as she dried herself off, gaping at Kim as she demanded, "How….? How did you…..do that?"
"Do what?"
"You…..You shrank! Then you hit me as hard as…..as Hego!"
Ron stepped forward as Kim sputtered her innocence, and nodded at the confused woman. "You did, Kim. You actually shrank to half your own size, then grew again so fast you hit her like a truck. I think…..you might have been given much more than just Shego's power."
"Code Omega," a nearby agent hissed into his radio even as he overheard the words. "Possible is off scale again. Repeat….."
"Here," Shego grinned, walking up to the man, and taking the radio. "Let me have that while the grownups talk. 'Kay," she smiled, and melted the mike at the agent's feet before turning back to the pair to rejoin the conversation as the man just gaped at her.
"So…… Anyone here think something more is going on that Bets told you guys?"
Kim and Ron both stared at her even as more agents came running to finally catch up to them. "Ladies," the lead agent moved to approach them. We're going to have to ask you to come back to the villa. Now."
"He means the lab," Shego stage-whispered as she noticed the very anxious look in all those faces.
"We're not finished with our workout," Kim grinned before looking over at Shego. "Unless the senior citizen here is ready to quit, and go back to her rocking chair."
Shego growled, and flung herself at Kim without a moment's hesitation.
"Oh, you are so going down, princess," she screamed as the agents scrambled to get out of the way as plasma, fists and feet began to fly again. Even as the Global Justice agents went scrambling for cover as the two comet-powered entities slammed into one another with enough force to shatter trees and clear jungle, Ron lifted his concealed communicator to his lips, and whispered, "Now."
In the same instant, a small, submerged vehicle all but exploded from beneath the waves as twin faces grinned at Ron as the small, purple car pulled up onto the beach.
"Ready to go, ladies," Ron called.
"Shotgun," Shego shouted.
"We're driving. You're all in the back," Tim shouted from the passenger seat. "Now, move it, or we're all headed for jail."
"Command! Command! Perimeter breach! I say again, perimeter breach! Code Gemini! Code Gemini," one agent shouted into his own radio a second before a plasma burst destroyed it.
"Oops," Kim giggled as all eyes went to her just before she climbed into the back seat. "Sorry," she called to the agent howling, and holding his singed hand as Ron jumped in after her and Shego.
"Get us out of here," Ron told the twins.
"Fly over the gym first," Kim leaned forward to tell Jim, her green eyes dancing.
"Are you nuts," Shego cried. "Do you want to get caught before we even get away?"
"Ah, we got plenty of time. Nothing can touch my Sloth," she told Shego.
Five minutes later, the car banked away from the island as the rocket boosters ignited and even the aircraft chasing them couldn't keep up.
"You're twisted, Possible," Shego remarked as Kim continued to snigger after waving to the agents, shouting, "Later, losers."
Kim only smiled as the small miracle-car flew them to their next sanctuary.
To Be Continued…………….