Author's Note: After a fun long weekend up the coast for a friend's Bucks party, I've recovered sufficiently to proof and post Chapter 7. This crazy juggernaut keeps on building momentum - and now that we know what happened a year ago in Tokyo that sent Kim running, why don't we hear from the young woman herself? Also, how will Betty, Will and Shego cope with having to work together to infiltrate the FBI and investigate the 'body' of Kim Possible? Will Betty and Will discover the secret Shego's still keeping from them? Keep reading to find out!

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.


Kim Possible: Shadow Plays

Chapter Seven:

Sydney, Australia.

Kim controlled her breathing with a superhuman effort and felt herself slowly begin to calm down from the edge of the panic attack that her recitation of the events in Tokyo had nearly driven her to. She stared out of the large windows overlooking the Sydney CBD and looked past the buildings, focusing on the glittering blue water in the harbour in an effort to find calmness again.

She hadn't been expecting to talk about it like this, not in her first meeting with the psychologist Shego had found and finally convinced her to see. She wasn't sure how she'd gotten started, but once she had, the rest had flowed like a river bursting through a levee, and even through the trauma of reliving the experience, there was a tiny part of relief that she'd finally managed to actually get it all out.

I wish Shego were here, though, she thought. Maybe it gets easier the second time?

Across from her, Dr Katherine ("please, call me Kate") Watson let out a slow breath of her own, then leaned back in her chair. As Kim watched, the young Aboriginal woman visibly collected herself.

"If you want to stop there, it's okay with me, Kim," she said as she stood, smoothed out her pencil skirt, and stepped over to the water cooler at the side of the office. She pulled out two cups and filled each with water before returning to the desk.

Kim stared down at her hands, which were gripping the arms of her chair tight enough to turn white. With a conscious effort, she let go, only to find them clasping instinctively tight in her lap. "I thought you'd say that since I've started talking about it, I need to keep going."

"Not necessarily. It's entirely up to you." Kate extended a hand with one of the cups towards her newest patient. "To be honest, I wasn't sure whether you'd be willing to tell me about it this soon, but you seemed like you needed to get that off your chest. How far you want to go, as I said, is all up you. I'll try not to push you to say more than you're ready and comfortable with... unless I think it'll help you work through something that you need to."

Kim accepted the proffered water and drank it down in large, desperate gulps as she realized suddenly how dry her throat was. After putting the cup back on the desk, she considered something else that caused her to involuntarily let out an unhappy laugh.

"Something amusing in what I just said?" Kate asked.

"No… not funny exactly… I just realized, you're the only person in the world who I've told all this to. You're the only one who knows the truth. How screwed up is that?"

Kate raised an eyebrow at that. "Don't you think other people have worked out some of it?" she asked gently at Kim's inquisitive look.

Kim shrugged after thinking about it for a moment. "Wade has recordings of the conversation and what I told him, sure, but I dropped the Kimmunicator.. and I don't know if anyone talked to Ron about his side of it, but that's not what I meant."

"What did you mean then, Kim? What truth?"

"The truth that I'm a fraud, that I couldn't handle it. That I'm a fraud." She felt her cheeks burn.

A sudden urge rose within her to throw herself from the chair and flee the office, flee the city; to run away again, run away from everything she'd just admitted and away from her shame, and she tried to suppress it with a shudder.

How would Shego feel to come back to Sydney and find me gone? Kim asked herself. It wasn't hard to imagine her anger, and the surge of fear that followed it was suppressed as quickly as the flight urge. I can do this, I can.. I just..

Kate had blinked in surprise for a few moments, during her internal debate, then the dark-skinned woman leaned forward, staring intently at her. "I don't believe that you're a fraud, and neither do you, not really."

"What?"

"If you really believed that you wouldn't be here in this office. We wouldn't be having this conversation." Kate gave her a knowing look. "I know another person who doesn't believe it either: Shego."

Kim looked up at the unassuming and nonthreatening woman sitting across from her like she'd slapped her across the cheek.

"Oh, I know who she is, don't worry about that, we do get the news here, occasionally," Kate said. "I knew who she was from pretty much the moment she sat down opposite me on a lunch break and asked if I wanted to help save the world."

Kim looked down at her lap again, another blush rising to her cheeks, and the therapist laughed lightly.

"I told her that I didn't think that was her thing, and she said that things had changed, that she needed my help - as long as I knew how to keep my mouth shut."

"Did she threaten you?" Kim asked suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

"She didn't have to. When she said she'd found a certain missing teen heroine, a few things clicked into place. You don't need to worry about me telling anyone you're not dead, by the way," she added with another gentle smile. "I'd say it's probably the last thing you need right now, but we sometimes don't get given a choice of burdens we're asked to bear."

Kim looked up again at that, her mind losing track of the story she'd been telling of the events in Tokyo, and after. "Shego seems to think I don't have to bear it.. that I could use my 'death' to give it all away and hide in safety, anonymous for the rest of my life."

Kate considered that for a moment, then nodded somewhat reluctantly. "You could do that, sure, but that would be a different kind of burden that you'd have to manage. Staying anonymous like that isn't easy, by all accounts. Escaped prisoners, people who try to hide from abusive exes, they seem to find it hard to stay totally hidden forever. How long would you last until you slipped up, or the guilt you'd feel would break you all over again?"

"Guilt?"

The therapist nodded. "I think you'd feel it pretty quickly - and not just because you'd worry yourself about your family not knowing the truth of your survival, but because you'd want to keep helping people. Not because you're paid to, or because you're forced to, but because you think it's the right thing to do - and because sometimes you're the only one who can do it. Do you know how rare and wonderful that is, Kim? Because it truly is, but it's also a major vulnerability."

Kim considered those words for a moment, before Kate continued.

"I don't think you could stop helping people any more than I could stop myself being Aboriginal. It's not about what we do, it's about who we are." She stopped and looked intently at Kim, who squirmed slightly under that assessing look. "But because what you do is a vulnerability and a burden, you have to work out how to protect yourself while you carry it. For a long time you had someone to help you carry it, but the past twelve months, ever since Tokyo, you've been carrying it on your own - despite having someone who clearly cares about you trying to help you."

Kim looked down at her lap and was silent for a long time. "I'm not sure I'm ready for that conversation yet," she said finally.

"Why not?" Kate asked gently.

"Because the last person to 'care for me' brought half a city block down when.." She trailed off and shot the therapist a suspicious scowl. "You set me up."

Kate nodded. "It's interesting that you seem to only talk about it when you're angry. I think you're still stuck being angry at Ron, and that's why you can't move on."

"Of course I'm angry at Ron!" Kim hollered, testing the limits of the soundproofing in the office. "He. Killed. He crossed the line, and killed people with his powers."

"Killing doesn't automatically make him a bad person," Kate said.

"Oh?"

Ignoring the low, angry tone in Kim's voice, the therapist pressed on. "Sometimes it's unavoidable, Kim. I think you know that, deep down, but you've never had to do it, so you reject it out of hand. Soldiers in a war kill other soldiers, and sometimes, there are civilian casualties. I'm not saying it's right, or that it should happen.. but it does. Police officers sometimes have to use lethal force to protect bystanders... in some countries, doctors are allowed to assist a life ending when there is no hope of recovery, only a long slow, painful death. All those people take lives and you can't possibly think all of them are bad people."

"But.."

"Can you at least accept that people who aren't Kim Possible might not have another option?" Kate asked quietly, and Kim froze.

What does she mean? she thought to herself, her mind suddenly racing. Do I really hold myself to a level higher than anyone else by refusing to use lethal weapons, and then judge others for not holding themselves to my standards? How is that fair?

She shook her head. "There's always another way."

"Is there, or do you just have to believe that to preserve your view of the world?"

Kim felt her anger rising, but Kate cut her off before she could get truly upset.

"Why did he do it?" she asked. "From what I know of Ron as a person, there's no way he did it intentionally."

The silence dragged out, and eventually Kim's shoulders slumped. "Ron always had control issues with the MMP. When he beat Warhok and Warmonga -"

"Ron beat the aliens?" Kate interrupted.

Kim frowned. "Yes. I know that's not the official story.. nobody else really saw apart from Shego, but I was.. disabled.." A shudder ran through her as the feeling of helplessness returned. "I was out of it, my skull about to become an alien monster's trophy, and Ron suddenly hulked out.. and threw them both into their own ship."

"The ship that exploded a mile high?" Kate asked.

"Oh yeah."

"Oh… wow. So... you're saying he never trained in the power? I admit, this is slightly outside my three hours yoga a week expertise but.. you spend hours practicing martial arts didn't you, to be as good as you are?"

Kim flushed, slightly embarrassed. "Not.. exactly. I was a quick study. A ridiculously quick study, by all accounts."

"Okay, but you still had to train a bit when you learnt a new style, yes?"

She nodded.

"But Ron never did? Despite having world changing superpowers?"

"I guess I never really thought about it. I mean, he trained some in Yam- a school for it, in Japan. I think - he.. he didn't like talk about it much."

"Can you blame him? The power to destroy city blocks, uncontrolled inside of you, that has to be pretty scary, right?"

Kim knew they were talking about Ron but her mind couldn't help but flick to another superpowered individual who could probably level city blocks if she really tried.

She must have been so careful all the time.. one wrong slip and it'd be bye bye Kim Possible. That thought dragged another along with it: Was I ever really that good? At any of it?

"Hey, Earth to Kim," Kate said, leaning forward and tapping Kim's shoulder.

"Oh, sorry. Was just thinking. Lost track of the conversation."

Kate raised one eyebrow delicately.

Kim sighed. "I was just thinking.. Shego.. if she wanted to, she could bring buildings down with her powers, and yet, for all the times we've fought, she's never unleashed everything she has. I saw her cut through the legs of one of the Lowardian tripods, during the invasion, and that metal alloy is beyond way anything we've made on earth."

"And now you're wondering if she took it easy on you?" Kate asked.

Kim nodded. "Yeah… and I'm wondering if I was ever really that good."

Kate shrugged. "The only person who can really give you an absolutely honest answer to that is her, Kim. But she wasn't the only person you've fought - I know I've seen footage of you taking other villains on, and doing pretty well against them. The English fella who had his hands replaced.." Kate shuddered slightly. "Monkey Fist?"

"Yeah, I fought him a few times," Kim said. "Though he's really more Ron's nemesis than mine."

"But you did fight him, and he was no slouch with martial arts, no? Then there was the mad golfer? Killigan?"

Kim nodded again. "Okay, so I was good against them, but.. I always tried to measure myself against Shego. And I thought I was pretty good, but she's a genuine superpowered villain, and now I'm pretty sure she's been going easy on me."

"Again, I think you need to ask her about that. How could you know for sure?"

"Because I'm still here," Kim said quietly. "She could have.."

"You can't know that for sure until you actually talk to her," Kate interrupted. "This cycle of self doubt, wondering whether you're actually good enough to keep doing it? Whether you can stop people from dying.. this is part of why you ran from Tokyo, why you never went home, isn't it?"

"I… I think so," Kim admitted eventually. "I think.. well, when I saw Ron, and he wasn't.. Ron. He was something else. And I got so scared that he was going to do to me what he did to Warhok and Warmonga, and I wouldn't be able to stop him."

Kate nodded. "But you had to know that wasn't the real Ron."

"Maybe intellectually?" Kim shrugged. "But emotionally, after having only survived the fight with the Lowardians because of his powers, to then see those powers turned to destruction… I couldn't bear it. I couldn't even look at him without seeing the blood on his hands, and some part of it belonged on mine too because I didn't stop him... and I didn't know how to deal with that, so I left. I walked away and I didn't stop running until I ended up here, in Sydney."

"In what sort of condition?"

"Not a very good one," Kim admitted.

"Shego implied you were pretty heavily banged up."

"She did?" Oh. I wonder how much she told her.

"What happened, Kim?" Kate asked.

"I stopped caring about myself, at some point," Kim said. In for a penny, I suppose. "I.. I kept trying to right the wrongs I saw along the way, though. I don't know why, but you're right, I can't just turn it off."

She blinked, then carried on in a dull monotone as her memories flooded back again. "I got into a knife fight on my third night in Shanghai, nearly died before a friendly woman who spoke no English took me in and mended me up. Took a while.. Decided it wasn't safe there after pissing off the local Triad lord's son in the rematch - this time I was ready for his knife trick and he wasn't ready for my left foot - so I left and kept moving south.. but every place I went, I found more bad things happening to good people, and I kept trying to help but getting hurt cause I was getting slower.."

Kate watched as Kim rolled her hands over each other repeatedly.

"I broke a couple of ribs in Vietnam, I tore the posterior cruciate ligament in my knee during a fight in Laos, I broke some fingers and my patella in Cambodia, and then struggled through Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia breathing through a twice broken nose... I made it to Australia, I don't even remember how - I think I stowed away on a cargo freighter - and wandered down the east coast, surviving by pure luck, until I ended up in Sydney.. I got into a fight and aggravated a bunch of the injuries that had never properly healed and figured that was the end of it. I.. I kinda just crawled into a corner and waited to die.. and then she found me."

Kim shuddered and angrily brushed away the tears falling from her eyes.

"What was it about?"

"Huh?"

"The last fight? Why did you get into it? Surely you had to know your body was on the verge.."

Kim shrugged. "I saw a guy hitting a girl - his girlfriend, his wife, someone random, I don't know - but he hit her hard enough to knock her to the ground, then when he went to kick her I just.. sortof.. exploded. But everything added up, so while I got some good hits in when he was surprised, he was bigger and stronger and I took a beating."

Kate shook her head. "Even when you're alone, on the run from your old life, and injured, you still put your own life on the line to protect someone else who can't. Do you have any idea how amazing that is?"

Kim shrugged again, and kept looking at her hands. "Is it?"

"Do you not think so?"

"I sometimes.. It's just ever since I started this hero thing, every time I found a problem, I solved it with my fists. Every time. Then during the time I was running, every time I did it, it just made things worse - for me, and sometimes for the person I was trying to help… so now I can't help wondering if the only thing I'll ever bring to the world is violence - and if that's true, what's the point?"

Kate reached across the desk and grabbed Kim's hands, holding them tightly in her own. The contrast of black and pink skin startled Kim momentarily.

"I've seen these hands do other things, Kim," Kate said. "Weren't you the one who rescued half a dozen kids from croc infested floodwaters in the Northern Territory a few years back? What about the people you saved after that avalanche in Nepal? The broken dam in South America that you fixed, averting a catastrophe and saving dozens of villages? How many lives have you saved with these hands?"

Kate held the hands up between them.

"Everything we do is a choice, Kim. You have always had the choice on how to use these hands - and you've always chosen to use them to help people - sometimes by rescuing them, sometimes by protecting them against people who would hurt them, with the violence you're trained to use. Both uses are admirable, both are exceptional, and both are worth more than you'll ever know. You've inspired people, Kim. I hope you know that."

Kim looked at her hands again, then over them into her therapist's eyes. "You really think so?"

"I know so," Kate replied forcefully, and then smiled ruefully. "My younger sister went through an 'I want to be Kim Possible' phase at fifteen, not long after you first started out."

"How did that work out?" Kim asked curiously, surprised that a young Aboriginal girl in Australia would want to emulate her life.

"She's in her first year of med school," Kate replied proudly. "When she realized she didn't quite have the, uh, physical aptitude you do, she went looking for other ways to help people, and she settled on medicine." Kate grinned. "She keeps talking about neurosurgery as a specialization.. I wonder where she got that idea from."

Kim couldn't help but smile back at that.. and it got her thinking again. Maybe… maybe she's right. Maybe I can do more than just hurt with these hands. Maybe I just have to try..

Kate nodded. "There we go, I saw that. Something changed. No, don't tell me just yet. Work through it a little bit by yourself - or better yet, with Shego - and next time we can talk about it."

Kim nodded, and stood to leave. Before she could move, Kate came around the desk and enfolded her in a hug. "I'm here whenever you need, Kim, I promise."

"Thank you." For the first time in months, the weight on her shoulders felt a little lighter. For the first time, the smile on her face felt almost genuine, and not a facade because it was expected of her.

She slipped out of the office and headed back towards the hotel, taking a detour to walk around the Opera House and through Circular Quay, enjoying the sun on her face and mingling with the street vendors and artists and pedestrians, never noticing the two men who stepped into the flow of foot traffic a few dozen meters behind her and followed her.

KP KP KP

The second she stepped off the ramp of the VTOL, Shego shuddered and had to make a real effort to stop herself from marching back up and giving yet another variation of the 'don't touch anything' speech she'd given three or four times already.

They're probably going to ignore me no matter what, so why bother? Ugh.

She made her way to the far edge of the rooftop, and only then did she sneak a peek behind her, where a faint shimmer, like a heat mirage, was all that gave away the presence of the jet under the active camouflage she'd spent so much time acquiring and retooling to work on her jet.

Wade had chosen a good location for her to set down, near enough to the FBI headquarters to get to the target rooftop with minimal effort - thanks to a couple of toys he was delivering to her that Kim would have been far more familiar with. She looked up as a low buzzing signaled the arrival of a quadrotor carrying two packages. One she opened to reveal a grapple gun disguised as a hairdryer, the other, smaller package, she opened to discover an earpiece and handset.

All three items in a very familiar green and black with a harlequin pattern.

Snorting in amusement, she slipped the handset into her ankle pocket and the earpiece into her ear, tapping it once to sync it with the handset.

"Wade?" she asked.

"You got my delivery," he said in her ear. "Good."

"Nice touch with the color scheme on the equipment."

He laughed. "You like? This is a new model phone and hands free earpiece too, I was going to trial them with Kim but this seems like a good opportunity for a real field test. Hey, I was thinking of calling this one the Shegofon, what do you think?"

She growled, and he laughed again, and she joined in.

"By the way, I re-tested that grapple line, it should be good for you."

"Should?" she asked curiously, looking out over the well lit DC skyline toward her target, her eyes momentarily distracted by a few of the other landmarks she knew well.

"I'm not 100% certain how much you weigh, and I wasn't game to ask, so I doubled the strength and reserve I had for Kim. The trade off is the cable's a bit thicker so you have less total line to play with, and the heads need more to grab hold of, especially the magnetic ones."

She sighed. "I'm not sure whether to be amused or annoyed that you estimated that I'm double Kim's normal weight," she said, stressing the normal. "Especially since I definitely recall the buffoon catching a ride with her on the same cable."

Wade's grin was clear through his reply. "Safety margin - would rather not have an angry Shego coming after me for making it too weak."

"Fine," she sighed. "Well, time to get this show on the road. Before I do this, can you set me up a second link back my VTOL systems from the earpiece, so I can talk to Bets and Will? And then give me a way to mute only that line by tapping the earpiece?"

There was a moment of quiet, broken by the sound of Wade's typing, then a ping in her ear. "Done, you're on."

"Bets, Will, you hearing this?"

"Reluctantly," Betty Director quipped.

"Don't forget I can still set off the self-destruct remotely if you get too mouthy."

"Are we to believe you'd really risk a self destruct on your own VTOL?" Will asked blandly. "That's a very Drakken thing to do, not your style at all."

Shego sighed. "You're no fun. Right... assuming I don't screw this up totally.. I'll be on the roof in five minutes."

It was closer to eight, and Shego was breathing harder than she would have liked, but she made it to the roof of the FBI HQ building without being spotted - she hoped - and stashed the grapple gun next to the rooftop vent she planned on using while she opened it with a burst of her plasma.

"Christ, this is so cliched," she complained a few minutes later as she crawled through the building. "How on earth did Kim manage to do this - she must have been bloody liquid to fit through some of these ventilation systems."

She heard a muffled conversation between Betty and Will, and assumed that they were covering the microphone. The muted snicker confirmed that suspicion, and she growled. "I can hear you, you know."

"So much for the stealthy approach," Betty mocked, and Shego sighed. She tapped the earpiece to mute and cut them out of the conversation, and groaned. "Remind me why we're working with them again?" she asked Wade.

"Cause they might be useful?" he asked carefully.

"Fine. Where to from here?"

"Down three more levels. The morgue facility is, for some reason, on the twenty first floor, not in the basement."

Shego nodded to herself, and continued on. Five minutes later and several deactivated security systems, she was in the vents on the right floor, and starting to feel the chill. "Okay, it's getting colder in here. Must be near the right spot," she said.

"Floor plan shows there's a series of outer offices, probably for the ME and their staff, and then the examining room and morgue proper are deeper inside," Betty told her. "There's a guard station at the elevator, too, but if you're where I think you are, you should be out of his line of sight when you drop in."

Shego nodded, then opened the grate with one claw and a small application of plasma. She dropped into the darkened office and crouched low, scanning around her. "No cameras in this office, and no sign of security. Wade.. can you get into the camera system?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Wade replied.

"I didn't want to.. you know.. encourage you to break the law."

"It's fine," he replied. "I've pushed the boundaries of legality before.. this is for a good cause. For Kim."

Betty chimed in. "For what it's worth, I could probably offer you a temporary consultant role in GJ, and order you to hack in."

Wade laughed gently. "I'm not sure that would do me any good now, sorry."

Betty sighed audibly. "True enough."

"Shego, the guard on your floor is just finishing a round, he's heading back to the station by the elevator."

"Right," she whispered, and waited a further minute after he left to open the door to the office carefully and slip down towards the examining room. As she got there, she reached up and tapped the earpiece to cut Betty out of the conversation again.

"Wade... have you given any thought to what we're going to tell them?" she asked softly. "I'm not sure.. I don't think we should tell them that we have Kim just yet."

"I agree," he replied after a moment's thought. "But.. that doesn't mean we can't tell them that it's a fake Kim."

Shego nodded, and gave a thumbs up to the nearby security camera. "Just what I was thinking."

Feeling vaguely morbid, Shego crept into the morgue and started looking through the names on the doors of the various compartments. "Hey, I'm not seeing Princess' name here anywhere," she complained as her frustration built.

"Checking," Wade said. "She should be here. I've found a record that seems to match the time.. freezer eighteen."

Shego walked over to the appropriate freezer and checked the name on it again. "Shit, of course they have her down as a Jane Doe," she said, and went to turn the handle and open it.

"Wait!" Betty called. "Wade.. can you scan the inside of that freezer?"

"Sure.. why?"

"Call it a hunch," Betty replied.

"Shego, grab the handset, and hold it to the door."

She complied, then tapped her foot while Wade scanned.

"Whoa, good call, Dr Director," he said eventually, with a worried tone. "There's several circuits behind the door, and I'm not actually reading a body in that freezer."

"I just know I'm going to regret asking this but.. what's actually in there?" Shego asked.

"Couple of kilograms of C4, if I'm reading this right. Oh, and a mound of ball bearings. But you have bigger problems."

"Bigger problems than the world's nastiest improvised shotgun poised to rip me apart if I open this?" Shego asked incredulously.

"Yeah. You're standing on a pressure pad that sent a silent alarm that I didn't catch in time to the main building security station. I don't know if they can detonate that remotely.."

Shego didn't stick around to hear the rest of that sentence, she ducked back around the corner and burst through the door of the morgue, right into the path of a group of three security guards, their guns already drawn.

"Shit!" she cursed, and dove straight into them, using their surprise to close before any could bear on her, then reaching out and grabbing two of the guns with hands that flared hot enough to melt the barrels clean through. She extinguished the plasma to grab their shoulders and fling herself at the last guy, bringing her foot up in a kick that crunched into his wrist and sent the pistol flying.

Before he could react to the pain of the broken wrist, she slammed into him and threw a hard elbow into his temple, dropping him to the floor. She turned back to the first pair, who had both drawn batons and were starting forward, and sighed. "I don't have time for this."

A pair of plasma blasts rolled down her arms and leapt across the distance between them. Almost entirely kinetic energy rather than thermal, they slammed into both guards and tossed them backwards down the hall and heavily into the wall at the far end, fifteen meters away.

"I'm compromised, Wade," she called. "Ran into three guards who were already looking for someone inside - what's the go with the security, where was my warning?"

"I'm a little busy, sorry," he replied. "They noticed my hack and have been trying to trace me. Also, they have a second, redundant security system that won't play ball.. I'm good, but I'm only one person."

"Fine," she growled. "I'm exfiltrating now - this is turning into a shemozzle."

"A what?"

"A charlie foxtrot," she said, snorting at her accidental use of an Australian slang term she'd picked up.

"She means things are going to hell," Betty broke in. "And she's right, because half of the DC Metro Police just showed up at the FBI building. I'm pretty sure they must have been waiting nearby judging by the response time."

"We either have a leak, or they guessed we would be coming here," Will observed.

"No shit, Sherlock," Shego muttered. "Hey, hold on a second."

She ripped a door open and stepped into the biggest office, located the computer on the desk, and slipped a cable from one of her own devices into a free USB port. "Wade, I've got a jack on what I think is the ME's computer, and it's pulling the drive. Hey, this thing is isolated from the network… that makes me suspicious."

"Good thinking," he replied. "How long will it take?"

Shego looked down at her cracker, and a light started blinking green. "Just finished - only grabbed the non system files, and it looks like there wasn't much to grab."

"Hopefully we get something worthwhile from all this," Wade replied. "I have to bail out of my hack, I can't hold it - it feels like I have half the NSA against me, I'm seeing a dozen different penetration vectors against my proxies."

"I have no idea what that means," Shego deadpanned. "But I'm assuming it's bad."

He didn't reply, and Shego decided that it was time for her to bail as well. "I'm heading for the roof, I'll head back to the VTOL. Don't worry, we'll be out of here in no time," she said as she prised open the door to the elevator shaft and grabbed onto the ladder that ran beside the nearest car.

"It's worse than you think," Betty said softly. "We just picked up two gunships inbound. Your system wants to tag them as Apaches."

"That's.. okay, that's just overkill," Shego complained. "What the hell is going on here?"

"I'm not sure," Betty replied. "But I don't think you're getting off that roof top without a hand."

"Oh no," Shego scowled. "It's not happening."

"Shego, for fucks sake, stop being an irritating stubborn bitch, and just let me fly this hunk of junk over there and pick you up! You can burn me to death after we're out of this shitstorm."

Taken slightly aback by the violence of Betty's outburst, Shego sighed. "Fine. Take the pilot seat, on the command console the login is alphagreenbitch, the password is drewloveshismommy."

There was a moment of absolute silence on the line, and as it extended while Shego made her way up the ladder inside the elevator shaft, she felt herself blushing despite the lack of audience.

"Shut up, I was drunk and Drakken's mother had just been for a visit and I haven't bothered to change it ever since..."

Twin bursts of laughter nearly deafened her as Betty and Will gave up their efforts to hold their mirth in.

"I am so killing the both of you," she swore, as she reached the top floor and broke open the door into the lift plant room and then stepped out onto the roof proper, only to stop dead in her tracks as an entire company of heavily armed response troops leveled their assault rifles at her.

"Ahhh, crud," she said, preparing to raise her hands in surrender, to buy her some time to think.

There was a seconds hesitation, and then an order was shouted that turned her time to think into no time at all. "Fire!"

Reacting instinctively, Shego threw up both her hands and flared them as hot and as bright as they'd ever been, the plasma wave that formed roiling around her hands like a miniature sun and expanding out to form a green wall in front of her, turning the night into a green-hued day on the rooftop.

She heard a whispered "holy shit" through the earpiece, but didn't pay it any attention. The strain of holding such a large plasma wave was immense, but she didn't dare drop it, at least until she heard the last of the magazines clicking empty.

As the soldiers reloaded, she dropped the plasma and grinned wickedly at the shocked expressions on their faces. "My turn!"

She dove forward, tucking and rolling to come up in the middle of the front rank of troops. Fists, feet, knees and elbows flew out, slamming into chests, armpits, jaws, and temples, as she spun through the troops like a whirling dervish. As she threw the last trooper to the ground and slammed a fist into his solar plexus, she held her crouch and breathed heavily for a few seconds.

It's a good thing I've been sort of practicing, she thought as she felt her pulse racing. If I was any more out of shape, I might have been in trouble.

In that second of reflection, a pair of incredibly bright spotlights flicked on and snapped on to her, and she blinked, holding a hand up to shield her eyes against the blinding light.

"Shego, the Apaches have arrived, they've got you targetted," Will called. "We're twenty seconds out - just don't do anything stupid."

She grinned. "What would you define as 'stupid'?" she asked, as the troopers around her started to recover slowly, pulling themselves to their feet, as Shego suddenly charged a pair of plasma bursts in her hands and fired them off with near pinpoint accuracy, slamming into the two helicopters, right on their spotlights, plunging the roof into darkness again.

"Make it snappy!" she called, spinning behind one of the raised sections of the rooftop to break line of sight of the attack helicopters.

"East side, we're here!" Betty called a few seconds later, and Shego heard the familiar soft whine of the VTOL in hover mode to her right. She broke from cover, then rolled. A ripping BRRRRRRRRRRRRRP noise accompanied a hail of lead from the nose gun of the closest Apache that passed over her head. As she regained her footing, she paused and sent a pair of plasma bursts back up the line of the tracers, one slamming into the cockpit without doing damage, but causing the pilot to flinch the chopper sideways enough to break the gunners lock on her, and she sprinted towards the edge.

At the last second, Betty dropped the active camo, and she only had to change her angle slightly, reaching the end of the roof, pushing off the waist high barrier around it and leaping forward into a roll that took her through the open rear hatch and past Will, holding onto one of the hatch rods with one arm, his other hand poised by the hatch close button, which he slammed the instant she was inside.

"Go, go, guhhhhhhhhh..." he shouted, trailing off as a second burst of fire from the Apache nose gun trailed Shego into the VTOL. As Shego turned around, she saw Will slide down to the closing ramp, a look of surprise on his face and a dark stain spreading in his jacket torso.

"Shit, Will's been hit!" Shego called. "Get us going, I'll grab the medical kit."

As the VTOL banked away, Shego struggled her way to the front of the rear section and grabbed the emergency supplies, pulling the medkit and walking unsteadily down the bucking deck to where Will was lying propped against one bulkhead, his colour already fading badly.

She pulled his jacket open roughly and found the blood was coming from a ragged gash in his torso. "Shit, it's a ricochet or shrapnel wound, and it's not a clean through and through," Shego reported.

"How bad?" Betty asked from the cockpit, grunting as she pulled the VTOL into a tight turn behind a pair of buildings and turned the active camouflage on as she passed out of sight of the two vengeful helicopters on their tail.

"There's a lot of blood," Shego replied. "And I'm pretty sure it's torn him up inside pretty badly.. there's no exit wound on his back which means that it's still in there somewhere."

She breathed carefully, trying to steady herself.

"He needs an ER, Betty. I can try and staunch the bleeding a little, but he needs professional help, and fast."

"Shit," Betty swore. "I can't leave him behind, he'll be picked up!"

"Well it's either that, or he bleeds to death in my hands in the next ten minutes!" Shego shouted.

"There's.. another.. option.." Will groaned. "Drop me.. Johns Hopkins.. Baltimore.."

"Why there?" Betty asked.

"Doctor Strachan is.. still there.. I hope."

"Shit, I'd forgotten about her! Alright Shego, we're going to drop him on the roof of Johns Hopkins, there's a trauma surgeon who's in residence there who used to be a member of GJ's medical staff. If she recognises Will, she might be able to admit him as a JD and keep him safe, at least for a while."

"Better than nothing," Shego replied, holding another gauze bandage to Will's side to absorb the blood that was still rapidly leaking from the ragged gash.

"Gonna be.. nice new scar..." he whispered as she frowned down at him. "Was almost.. fun.. huh?"

Shego shook her head. "Quit trying to be the tough guy," she growled, then sighed. "When you get better, I'll show you proper fun, if you're lucky."

His head lolled to one side, and she poked his good shoulder. "Hey, stay with me!" she shouted at him.

"Shego, we're coming up on the hospital now. Get him ready to go. I've had Wade send a message ahead of us, there should be a trauma team on standby on the helipad, but I'm not going to risk dropping the active camo."

"Right! Will, c'mon, wake up!" She slapped his cheek and he grunted, his eyes opening in surprise. "Just so you know, this is gonna hurt like hell."

"Wonder... ful.. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.." he groaned, as she hoisted him onto her shoulder, and slapped the hatch open button the second she felt the landing gear touch the roof. In ten seconds, she'd sprinted down the ramp and eased him onto the gurney that was waiting, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to the total shock of the surgeons and nurses standing around it.

"Take good care of him," she threatened them, then turned and dashed back up the ramp, slapping her hand on the close button and calling for Betty to go.

"What a fucking cockup," she sighed. She slumped to the floor of the jet and pulled her knees up to her chest as the aircraft angled into the sky and sped east out over the Atlantic.

KP KP KP

The ringing phone interrupted Jack's brainstorming session with several of his VP's, and he apologized for ending the meeting early as he shooed them out of the office.

As soon as the room was secure, he picked up the handset.

"It's me," a familiar voice said.

Jack actually growled. "Who else would it be? This is a two phone system, idiot."

"Watch your tone. You're still in an awfully precarious position," Senator Willard snarled.

"And I'm the one who has far more leverage on you than the other way round. Don't even think about trying to play me right now, Senator."

There was a heavy sigh. "Look, I called because I have information. Betty Director and her lackey escaped the trap at Delta site in Canada."

"I know. I told you that we'd need backup plans. Lucky for you, we've already set the ball in motion."

"There's more. There's a chance we've been compromised - the FBI lab where the body was taken was just broken into by someone matching Shego's description. She took down a whole platoon of guards and managed to escape a pair of Apaches that were scrambled too. She had help, and I'm betting it was Director... I'm not hanging around for them to come find me. I'm leaving DC, taking a trip back home."

Jack found his smile widening. Perfect. "Did you want me to organize a welcoming committee if she visits you?"

"God no! I have my own security who can handle it, thank you very much. One last thing, Betty was spotted meeting someone in Nice, and then left from the airport in a hurry a few days ago, before this shit in DC. I've got people trying to track the flight now."

"Don't bother, I can guess where they went. The Seniors are getting involved after all, and that's probably how Shego got involved. I'm guessing she got an offer from Senior to help Betty out.."

"I thought you said none of the other major players were on the table!"

"They weren't, but it looks like Senior's angling for a slice of the pie. I bet he thinks he can play Betty from her weak position, do a deal of some sort," Jack said confidently.

"What are we going to do about it?" Willard asked.

Jack grunted noncommittally. "Right now, nothing. We continue as normal, until we're ready for the next move. Stay patient, Senator. I'll be in touch. Enjoy Ohio."

He hung up, then thought for a few seconds before calling a number from memory. After the standard connection delay and the secure tone, he spoke quietly. "It's me. Level 3 is a go. Ohio, maximum one week. You know the conditions. Make sure neither target escapes."

After ending that call, he dialed another number. "Major? Make your plans for Senior Island. One week. I'll let you know the exact time as soon as I can. Prepare your men."


A/N: So, there you have it. Kim's mental state revealed, somewhat, and Shego and Betty have more info but are down a man, while Jack has plans of his own in motion, now that he knows the Seniors are definitely involved, something's guaranteed to happen. Stay tuned for the next chapter... and don't forget to review, I'd seriously love to know what you think of what I've written to this point.