Kim Possible: The Darkness Without

Redux

Pt 10

By Eoraptor

Boring legal stuff: Kim Possible and all related characters are property of the Walt Disney Company. Disclaimers at the top of Chapter 1.

Now, on with the Story...

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Meanwhile, across the globe, in a basement in Middleton California, J and T were staring a bit dumbfounded at what they were watching on screen. Dumbfounded was perhaps not the best word to describe their expressions, but it was closest to describing the mixture of amazement, success, and shock that continually rolled across each boy's face.

It was still late December twenty-fourth in California, and their present to Monique was being put to rather stunning use already.

"I can't believe it worked…" Jim marveled quietly.

"I thought we were going to turn her brain into a tofurkey for sure…" Tim nodded his surprise at their success as well.

On the recently cleared floor of the basement gym, Monique was executing a half twist at the apex of a back flip which had taken her a good seven feet into the air. It was made all the more spectacular by the way her body flattened to avoid the basement ceiling while in mid-flip.

When she landed with her hands, she rolled smoothly to her knees, crouched, and used the momentum to vault forward across the floor as if tackling an imagined foe. With no opponent to stop her, she rolled again and brought her legs into a rather theatrical scissors-kick. Her entire body then seemed to crack like a whip, as she went from flat onto her back to standing erect, took a sweeping bow, and breathed heavily.

"Kickin!" She panted as she stood back up. Then she grabbed the bridge of her nose as her eyes went cross, beginning to stumble back and just catching herself on the weight bench flopping onto her seat. The twins were at her side in a second.

"You okay Monique?" Jim Possible swept an arm under her arms and shoulders to steady her as Tim pulled a small item from the back of her neck.

Still holding the bridge of her nose, Monique swatted at the back of her neck as the chip was tugged free, four tiny holes in her skin quickly closing as its prongs were removed. She scratched and rubbed a moment more before sighing and straightening.

"Wicked… now there's a rush." she groaned out softly, turning to look at the device in T's palm. It was round, about the size of a quarter, and dominated by a glowing red glass bubble. That light, at the moment, was blinking in a sequence that only the boys could interpret, and T made mental note of what it meant.

"Well, it is a lot for your mind to take in. Accelerating your brain's learning centers and memory so you can learn at super speed and all." J was still supporting her, her sweat soaking rapidly through his shirt as she slowed her own breathing.

"Yeah, we couldn't download stuff straight into your brain, but at least we can help you learn it faster." Tim quipped as he carefully put the chip back onto its holder, connecting it to the computer. "A lot faster. I mean, sixteen gigabytes of acrobatics in just half a day and all instead of you know, years…"

Monique, still panting faintly from the exertion of the little floor-show, nodded dumbly and carefully extricated herself from J's support. Even her muscles were now responding as though she'd spent her toddler years on the uneven bars instead of with toy curlers and candy lipstick.

"Damn… gonna have to bulk up the body to keep up with the brain," she grumbled, noticing as she stood the way that her thighs rebelled against the act. She grabbed J's shoulder for assistance and took a hard pull on the water bottle she had been handed, caving it in as she sucked the liquid gratefully from the plastic.

"Well duh… you've been using the suit as muscle, Monique." J smirked and eyed her as he kept her steady. He shifted to a slightly more comfortable position as she continued to lean on him and decimate the water bottle.

His quip was met with a rueful sand-colored eye, and he had to duck to avoid a rapidly snapped towel moving down from her shoulder. He chuckled and snatched the towel out of her grasp, snapping it back at her and inadvertently causing her to tumble over.

"…and I bet you're just enjoying the hell out of this, aren't you white-bread?" She smirked up at him, sprawled across his lap awkwardly. She peeled herself again out of his grasp after a wry moment and flopped down onto the floor in front of the weight bench, still working on not wheezing like she'd just done what she'd just done in the way of exercise.

ꜟmom alert, mom alert!

Anne possible came down the stairs in time to see her son Jim blushing and flustered, but not soon enough to have learned why. She eyed Monique sitting cross-legged before him, and arched a claret brow wryly, descending the last few steps with a plate of cookies and three glasses of milk.

"Oh dear, am I interrupting?"

"Christmas cookies are never an interruption Mrs. P… No matter what your boys say about being too old for C & M" Monique grinned as she rose, having caught most of her breath and taking the tray laden with Christmas incarnate.

The women chuckled with each other before Monique attacked the glass of milk with the same fervor she'd destroyed the bottled water. The boys, of course, attacked the cookies while forgoing any protestations of being too old for such fare.

"So, Monique… how was San Francisco?"

"Frisco's always fun, Mrs. P. But I'm glad to be home in time for the holiday." Monique self-consciously wiped some sweat from her chest and neck. She suddenly realized what things must have looked like when she caught Anne's attempt to be nonchalant and looked up again.

She realized she wasn't sure which would be a worse thought for the older woman to have, that she was engaging in sweat-provoking activities with one or both of Mrs. Possible's boys, or that the boys were helping her assume Kim's role as hero. The darker woman decided to change the subject to one that always got Anne distracted.

"And has the lil girl been behaving herself over the holiday?" She eyed Anne's slowly swelling tummy warmly, taking another large drink of milk before selecting a cookie to nibble at.

"Yes… for the most part anyway." Anne smiled back. She was not fooled for a moment at the topic change; but she was happy to discuss the life growing within her. "She was a bit fussy for a few mornings, but at least Nana was here to help… I think she's hoping that we'll name the baby after her, actually. She was a bit put off when the boys were named after James, and Kim for my mother."

Monique grinned and giggled just a bit. Nana Possible was one of her favorite old people. She was equal parts Anne and Kim Possible in Monique's eyes, with a little drill sergeant thrown in for good measure; and that was pretty high praise from the fashion-designer turned detective. She could just see the strong-willed matriarch dropping overt 'hints' that she wanted a namesake.

"So, any thoughts on the name beyond 'Nana'?" The younger made air quotes and picked up the thread of the conversation.

"Well, James says he has a great aunt that he's been learning about… I'm not sure I want to name our little girl Miriam, though…"

"Huh… Mim Possible. Why am I not surprised?" Monique smirked slightly, thinking she had heard that name somewhere before.

"Yeah… that's probably the only thing it's got going for it." Anne chuckled softly and rubbed her belly.

"Speaking of things going on…" her eyes moved from Monique, to Jim on the weight bench and back in a fairly obvious manner. She hoped that Monique would take the hint and follow her to a quiet corner.

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Ron sighed as he sat in the car, looking at the Possible's house. He wanted to be in there. Wanted so badly to get that little bit of tradition back. Ever since he was six he had spent every Christmas with the Possibles, Jewish or not. Sitting round the tree, exchanging gifts, eating turkey, sweet potatoes, candied cranberries, greenbean casserole, and whatever misshapen lump Kim was calling gingerbread men this year…

The blond chuckled to himself, remembering the one with three arms and a leg that looked a little bit like… well, thirteen year old Kim's face had turned red as her hair that time. Man how she could blu-

Just like that, the sweet memory twisted and turned back on him, and Rom allowed his forehead to fall forward against the steering wheel and tears slid down his cheeks and onto the cracked vinyl. He sniffled, sobbing for several minutes as Rufus rubbed his hand and sat on the shifter knob.

"S'okay… s'okay…" he chirred as he watched his human shudder and sob.

"N- no, no its not Okay, Rufus!" Ron yelled in the confines of the car. "It was stupid of me to come out here!"

The molerat winced at the shout, but shook his small head. "Not stupid, huh-uh!"

"Oh yeah?" Ron turned his bloodshot eyes on his rodential friend and sniffed, "Then what is it?"

"…lonely…" Rufus whined, and patted the boy's hand again. He pointed one of his clawed hands up at the door to the Possible's house. "Inside… family."

Sniffling, he looked up towards the front door, with its jolly holiday wreath. "Really?"

"Mhm, mhm!" the molerat nodded emphatically. "Go on!"

With another long, shuddering sigh, Ron opened the door, with a rusty creak, and stepped out into the cool Christmas evening. He ascended the slanting walk-way and raised his hand towards the door, to knock on the little brass knocker in the center of the wreath.

Until the door opened, and his knuckled wrapped against Monique's forehead.

"Owe! Ron!" She hissed and clutched her face, shooting him a slightly annoyed look between her fingers.

"Monique! What are you doing here?"

She gave him another appraising look, and rubbed her forehead a bit, "developing a bruise apparently, baby boy. What about you?"

Well…" he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, trying not to sniffle at the smell of the gingerbread cookies that came wafting out the door at him.

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Shego was not sure how she was supposed to be feeling. She descended the spiral staircase out of Señor Senior Senior's spacious apartment, down into the hangar to face someone who seemed to have her powers, even her style.

'How do you deal with that?' she briefly wondered as she rounded the last turn of the staircase.

As she descended the step and walked down the corridor entrance to the hangar, the door was blown in before her. It roiled briefly in a sheath of green and black plasma as it rocked back and forth to rest. A boot stepped through to still it a moment later.

The boot, for its part, struck her as pretty fearsome by itself. It was a glossy black, and down the shin was some kind of metal guard. That brassy guard ran from above the knee all the way to the top of the foot, where it split into three clawed talons which wrapped down over the toe of the boot.

A similarly adorned glove wrapped itself around the door frame a heartbeat later, brassy clawed and spined fingertips gleaming against what Shego thought must be polished black steel. She looked down at her own metal-tipped gloves, one green and the other black, and ignited them to assure herself that she still was in possession of her own abilities.

She was about to hurl a warning shot across the portal when the figure stepped fully through, freezing her in what couldn't be with apprehension, not at all.

The person, if there was a human being in there, was slightly shorter than her, but that made them no less imposing. They looked for the entire world like a demon in a green and black suit of armor. The intruder's hands again drew Shego's attention as they tightened.

Now that she could see them in all their glory; they were less gloves than full gauntlets. The black of the gloved hands each gave way at the wrist to a two-sectioned green and bronzed armor plate that went to near the elbow, with a paldron extending beyond, and wrapped around the forearm. The green sections seemed to have a faint snake-skin pattern embossed into them, causing them to glisten and catch the faint light in the hallway all the more menacingly.

The upper arms of this demon were black, and dived below a pair of two-tiered shoulder pads that were similarly bronze-and-green with embossed scales. Shego noted that the bronze strip that ran up the outside of each arm almost seemed to glow with an inner energy; this tickled something in her brain, which she ignored for the moment as unimportant to what was immediately before her.

Whoever this intruder was, or whatever; they were female. As her eyes moved over from the shoulder-armor, Shego saw breasts in the glossy black of the Demon's chest covering. They were well hidden, though, beneath a massive bronze breast plate that took the form of a hideous mandible, a demonically toothed lower jaw that bound to each shoulder plate and then up her collar, hiding most of her breasts and neck from view.

That mandibular breast plate was matched by an equally demonic helm. Shego's eyes took it in and somewhere deep inside a part of her shuddered, wondering egotistically if this was how others saw her. The helm's face was as wide as the breastplate and equally fanged, hiding its owner's true mouth and features in shadow. Two gleaming red eyes were set into the helm, and they glowed with some inner energy, light flickering within the faintly outlined facets there. Cresting the helmet was a long thick mane of silver-green hair running at least to mid-back, and a pair of massive gold and green banded horns swept up and back from the temples of the troll face.

The intruder's body was clad in some green and black cloth, with was piped with bronze lines, which like the arms, seemed to faintly glow with their own light. The green and black sections fairly alternated, giving the impression of plates of armor, though it clung to her body more like thick leather. Each green section shimmered still with embossed scales, and each black section glistened like latex. Around the form's slender waist was what looked like an honest-to-god utility belt in yellow, with multiple large compartments.

Shego shuddered again, a lot of her typical bravado seemingly absent in the face of this ghastly doppelganger.

"Well… Fancy meeting you here." The voice was obviously electronically altered to be deep, rasping, and it faintly echoed as the intruder turned to face her. The red eyes of the helmet, Shego noticed dumbly, pulsed in a slow rhythm akin to a heartbeat.

"Y-yeah… fancy that." She stuttered for a moment. After a moment though, Shego grabbed herself mentally by the collar and shook herself out of the stunned stupor.

"Wait a minute, who the hell are you anyway?" She scowled now, trading shock for irritation at her seeming counter-part.

"Hmmm. Hadn't really considered that..." That deep rattling voice emerged from the helm once more, echoing across the middle distance metallically.

Shego suppressed the shudder which accompanied that voice. These theatrics were working, she thought. 'A lot better than Drakken's ugly lab coat or Dementor's stupid little helmet.'

"You can call me… The Green Wraith." Shego was a bit busy trying to evaluate this intruder and their seeming imitation of her to realize that the figure seemed to be making it up on the spot.

"Um… Wraith… right…" Her own gloves ignited again and she hurled two bolts at this Wraith, charging to one side as much as the hallway would allow. Best to get this done ASAP.

The Wraith raised her own hands, and swept aside the bolts as though they were nothing. Each talonned gauntlet then ignited in a brighter shade of the same energy and hurled bolts along right behind the jinking mercenary.

Shego growled, feeling the heat and small explosions right at her back as she ran; half along the wall and half the floor, trying to close with her demonic double. Just as she got within arms' reach, however, the wraith switched tactics and punched her with right across the jaw with remarkable speed. It felt like she'd just been clubbed with a metal baseball bat.

The taller woman was sent sprawling against the remains of the hangar's hallway door, and recovered without a second to spare as she leapt away from a bolt of roiling energy that followed her down to the floor of the corridor. She whirled and threw bolts of her own at the head of the demon-armored intruder as she fell back, still off balance.

Those clawed gauntlets flew up, again blocking the energy as though it were nothing more than a water balloon. The pause, though, gave Shego the chance to regain her feet and launch herself bodily at the wraith.

A mechanical growl sounded from beneath the helmet and she saw a woman's jaw grimace as she tackled the Wraith. Unfortunately for Shego, the Green Wraith didn't go down under the tackle. She staggered back a few paces, and then raised her arms over the two of them as they became entwined.

Shego grunted as her grasp on the Wraith was broken. She felt an electrifying dizziness rack through her body as a pair of armored elbows came down on the back of her neck. She ended on her hands and knees, staring at the boots of the Wraith and wobbling, her vision doubled, if not tripled. She groaned inwardly as she watched in slow motion a claw-tipped boot come towards her face, then all was blackness.

"Well, that seemed vaguely familiar," The Wraith's mechanical voice rasped out into the sudden stillness. The voice was followed by a harsh metallic rattling, the Wraith clutching one hand to her breastplate.

Her other hand reached up and the helm was tilted back slightly, revealing one irritated jade green eye and one black satin eye-patch. She scowled, clubbing the wall of the corridor with an armored fist in frustration at her body's steadfast defiance. After a moment spent inhaling from a small delivery device hidden within her collar, she slipped the helm back down over her face and continued down the corridors, growling as much at herself as at the resistance she faced.

The spinning battle tops and hovering laser guns proved even less trouble than Shego, and in a few minutes, Sara had cut a swath through them and into Senior's private hoarde. She'd commandeered a helicopter, and filled it with antiques and gold coins, chuckling at the former owner's tendency towards the anachronistic. Spanish doubloons and gems instead of banks and electronic currency. As if!

'Oh well, it all fences the same.' Sara thought to herself as she piloted the purloined 'copter away from the private island. The helicopter carried her away with surprising swiftness, and she decided she'd probably keep it after she unloaded the haul.

The elderly owner of the island, and former owner of the helicopter and its contents, had seem most of what the intruder was doing from his now bunkered and shuddered apartment. This 'Green Wraith' had swept aside his defenses and his impromptu security guard as though they were nothing. All she needed, he thought, was a cape flowing dramatically in the wind to complete her dramatic escape.

In her new helicopter, Sara Smith was thinking the same thing.

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-Two weeks later-

Dr Al Norm was not happy. Actually this was an understatement; he was livid. His face, usually a pale smooth white, seemed now a patch work of different shades of angry red. He yanked at the oddly angled and colored clumps of his hair, hurling his clipboard to a nearby wall in frustration with his free hand and glaring wickedly at the whiteboard he was working at.

First, this Monique person not only seemed to not be failing, but she had actually found flight records showing his helicopter and crew taking off from across Lake Michigan on the night of the incident. It was not much to go on… but it was uncomfortably close in chaotic reasoning charts.

Now Shego's arrest warrant had been nullified by a court in California. Apparently some copy-cat calling herself 'The Green Wraith' was claiming to have beaten Drakken over a sour business deal. She was also claiming several other crimes perpetrated by Shego.

This irregularity meant that he could no longer have Shego hunted down openly. Additionally; now this "Wraith" had stolen weapons from the elder Senior. At least Shego seemed to have diverted her attention from GLE agents in the last month or so. That was perhaps the once optimal aspect of this entire situation.

All of this was simply not normal! Two Shego's! A brown-clad ninja! And just now came word that someone was hacking into Global Justice Enforcement, or trying to at least; but they could not determine who. Whoever it was was also targeting Shego's records with hard attacks.

"Abbey!" Norm practically screamed as he stalked out of his office in the basement of Global Justice Enforcement headquarters. His mismatched boots clip-clopped on the concrete flooring as he stormed through his little annex, fingers clenching and unclenching.

"Abbey! Where are you?" he screamed again, looking for his assistant in an awkward neck twisting manner.

"Over here… no need to shout doc." His assistant, who could be no more than eighteen, was sitting back with her long legs up on the desk, and was leaned forward painting her toe nails an obnoxious blue, occasionally blowing across them.

"Abbey, get your feet off the desk, it's not normal, or proper for an office environment!" the doctor, in his patchwork lab-coat, snapped at her. He picked up another clipboard and eyeing it as if to dare it to give him more bad news.

"Geeze, what decimal got out of place this time, huh?" She eyed him and slowly withdrew her feet from the top of the desk. Sighing when she saw that he was not simply ranting and walking on by, she screwed the brush back into the nail polish and dropped it into the pocket of her own, much more orthodox lab coat.

"Things are not going as predicted Abbey… Call our friends down in the division… We need to massage the numbers… again." He scowled at her, pointing to yet another clipboard. Sometimes it seemed to her as though he could summon those things forth from the ether.

"…yeah, sure thing doc… you're the boss after all." She blinked. She disliked this, especially going behind Director Du's back; but the doc could be very persuasive about why it needed to be his way and his way only. He had this way about him of making you believe that everything would turn out just the way I said it would on those trusty clipboard of his.

She put in the call to Slim and Shorty, and explained, after she was handed the clipboard that told her what to say, that Shego needed to be brought in; SSCA.

Then Abbey sighed even more heavily and flopped back into her chair. She reached towards her pocket for the nail polish again, but then a better idea crossed her min, and a matching smile crossed her face. She punched in a five digit extension that very few people in or out of GLE had or even knew existed.

"Will, its Abbey… Got plans for dinner?"

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Redux! And a new scene to boot! I think I really managed to smooth over this chapter and give it a degree of flow and polish.

Please follow the three R's... Read, Review, and Recommend!