For disclaimer see chapter 1.
Shego woke up to the sound of her alarm ringing and was about to jump up to turn it off when she felt a weight holding her down. Slowly she opened her eyes to find that she was still propped against the wall next to the door of Kim's room and Samantha was lying against her sound asleep. The alarm was blaring away in her room down the hallway, so to keep the others from waking up, so she carefully moved Samantha aside and quietly went into her room to turn the annoying devise off.
When she returned to Kim's room she found that Samantha was thrashing around on the floor and whimpering in anguish at another nightmare. Shego sighed at the teenage girl and knelt down next to her. Carefully Shego collected her in her arms and held her until she calmed down. Then as cautiously and quietly as possible she stood up, while still holding Sam, and carried her into her bedroom. After laying the troubled youth into the soft bed she began to make her way out until Sam woke up.
"No," she begged as if in pain, her eyes still shut as if she were still half asleep.
Shego went back to her side and laid a comforting hand on Sam. "I'll be back in a minute," she promised.
"No," she repeated in the same tone, then she grabbed Shego's arm protectively.
"I need to get you some medicine," Shego explained. "I'm just going over to your bathroom, I won't even leave your sight." Reluctantly the teenager released her grip on her arm, and Shego went to the medicine cabinet to see what GJ had stocked for them. Before the trio arrived Global Justice had been careful to stock the house with a wide assortment of medical supplies from cold medication to first-aid equipment that an Army Medic would be envious of. Everything that I could ever need, except for sedatives, she noted. Well it could have been worse, they might have forgotten something vital, like Band-Aids.
After a quick survey of the options in the cabinet she chose a simple nighttime cold medicine guaranteed to keep a person asleep for up to eight hours. In addition to her current state, this should keep her out until I get back this evening.
Shego measured out the appropriate dosage, enough for two full nights, and then gave it to Samantha. "Come on Sam," she commanded when Sam tried to push the medicine away, "drink the whole thing." It's like being back with Hego!
Finally, after several minutes of fighting with the exhausted girl to get her to take the medicine, and then staying with her until it took effect, Shego left and went back to Kim's room to check on the other casualty of whatever had happened the day before. The young read-headed woman's body was covered with bruises from the previous day, and one eye was even swollen shut. She looked like she had been in a car wreck, and that concerned Shego since from previous experience she couldn't imagine the Great Kimberly Ann Possible being hurt this bad by anything short of an Atom Bomb.
"No classes for either of you today," Shego whispered gently to the sleeping hero before standing up and leaving the room, and silently closed the door. She also made a mental note to get some answers out of Sam that evening as to what really happened the day before, whether she liked it or not. This was supposed to be an easy assignment where she and Kim would watch Sam at college, however it was only the second day of classes and Kim was lying in bed badly beaten, and Sam was falling apart.
Later though, she decided, much later. These girls need a break from yesterday.
"I hope they will be alright alone," Shego commented aloud while making her way to take her shower. As she prepared for another long day she began to wonder why she was caring so much over those two, but after considering a few possible reasons she dropped the matter in frustration and concentrated on how to balance three schedules in one day.
Shego felt like she was going to claw her eyes out as the Biology 101 professor went on and on in what seemed like a fifty minute long sentence. Now I remember why I majored in Education and not Science. Her first inclination was to do what she had always done when Drakken ranted about his 'science' and just tune him out. Naturally that idea died a quick death when she remembered that her job was to take notes on his lecture for Samantha.
After getting out of Sam's first class she then had to literally run the two miles across campus to get to Kim's Introduction to Agriculture class. When the professor announced that the only graded assignment for the class was going to be a one page paper essay final on 'What You Learned In This Class' with a guaranteed A for completion she concluded that she was in the best class of all time. The lecture itself was a basic overview of the field of Agriculture, Agriculture Economics, and basically anything and everything related to any field that related to Ag majors.
All in all Shego was actually impressed with the fifty minute intro into the class, and how well the professor introduced to class, explaining that every aspect of the food industry, the textile industry, a lot of the cosmetic industry were part of Agriculture, along with Organic Chemistry, and Veterinary Science, and medial research.
It didn't take long for her to understand why Kim was interested in Majoring in Agriculture after the class. After Warmonga, and Warhok attacked Earth the poverty and starvation levels were at a historical high, and with Kim doing her Hero thing around the globe she was in the perfect position to witness it. It didn't take a lot of thought to conclude that the young woman would do everything in her power to ease the pain she was being exposed to, and double majoring in fields that would help with both production and distribution of food to the affected areas was really just an extension of her whole 'save the world' mindset.
Although Shego had never really cared for anyone beyond herself, she found herself impressed with Kim over the amount of planning that she had put into choosing her majors. She was also found herself proud of her former nemesis, and new friend. Who, wait a minute, her mind screamed. Friend? No . . . more like business partner right? Well, right?
The door to Jack Hench's office opened noiselessly as his secretary Nancy entered.
"They failed," she announced without preamble.
Jack looked up from his work and took a moment to examine her closely. "Thank you for that very informative report."
Nancy crossed her arms and cocked her hip out, as her eyes narrowed in disgust. "He is still alive," she stated in frustration.
Jack leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in a look of concentration. "Go on."
"Go on?" she exclaimed. "That's the whole story! Those morons failed to kill him, and he is probably on his way here right now!"
"Who failed to kill him?" Jack calmly asked without bothering to so much as open his eyes. He knew from previous experience that when she was this anxious about something, remaining calm was the only way to get her to focus on explaining anything. If I were to ever believe in stereotypes I would probably believe that it was her blonde roots showing.
"I managed to get the information to the GJ mole, and they sent their rescue parties just as planned," she explained almost through gritted teeth. "They even sent those phantom troops of their in addition to the two rescue teams, and someone threw in Kim Possible for good measure."
Jack snapped forward in his chair as he heard the last part of the news. "Kim Possible was there?" Jack asked in amazement.
"Yeah, it seems like the whole thing got to be too much for Gemini, as planned," Nancy continued, while starting to pace in front of the desk. "Reliable information is sketchy at best, but it seems that Gemini captured Kim Possible, set an auto destruct when the locals began to respond to the fighting, and then fled."
"Sounds good so far," Jack noted.
"That's just it!" Nancy shouted, throwing her arms up in frustration. "The plan was going perfectly, and it seemed that Kim Possible was going to be a bonus until the end. For some reason the auto destruct failed to go off, and . . . and . . . He managed to escape!"
"Have you heard from your sister about these phantom troops?" Jack asked as Nancy finished.
"No," Nancy answered. "Vivian can't even find out whether or not their connected to Area 52. She said that they are tied to GJ, and that Dr. Director is using the base as a temporary headquarters, so she believes that they work either for or with her."
"They seem too hardcore for GJ personnel," Jack mused out loud.
"But who else could they be?" Nancy asked.
"That is a good question," Jack considered. "Make it your business to find out. I want to know who they are, who they work for, and why it seems that their sole goal in life is stealing these new weapons, while rescuing Dr Director's pawns."
Shego pulled up to the house in the early afternoon and paused after turning off the car to relax. She leaned back into the car's seat and closed her eyes, and soaked in the silence. Before she left the house that morning she was too busy with Kim and Samantha to have any time for her, and after going to the school she was rushing from one class to another for the entire day. Now that she was home all she wanted to do was eat, take a nice hot bath and sleep in her warm clean bed for the next few days. Unfortunately she knew that the hardest part of the day was about to begin.
If all went well for her all Shego would find would be Kim and Samantha sleeping like she had left them. She was still berating herself over having left them for the day after what they seemed to have gone through yesterday, however part of keeping Samantha safe was keeping up the appearance of normalcy in the outside world, and she couldn't be in two places at the same time. Someone had to go to the classes or people might start asking unwarranted questions, and now was defiantly not the time for that.
After a minute of quiet solitude Shego finally willed herself out of the car and into the house. As soon as she was through the front door she was assaulted by the smell of burnt food, and the sizzling sound of someone using the stove in the kitchen. So much for them being asleep, she lamented sarcastically. She then decided to quickly throw her stuff into her room, check the other bedrooms to see if one of the two was still asleep, and then visit the horror that awaited her in the kitchen.
After flinging her bag into her own bedroom Shego went first to Samantha's room. Carefully she eased the door open and found the younger woman rolling violently on the mattress with all the covers strewn about the floor. As she entered the room she saw that Sam's face was covered with dried tears and sweat, and her expression looked like she was having the nightmare of the year, and judging by the state of the bed it seemed like she had been having it for quite a while.
Shego immediately crawled into Sam's bed and gathered her in her arms like she had done before, and after a few seconds of fighting her hold Sam settled down and seemed to relax into an easier sleep. They stayed like that until a crash of pans in the kitchen told Shego that her work was not quite over yet.
Carefully Shego eased out of under Sam and laid her back onto the mattress carefully. She then moved silently out of the room and closed the door before almost running to the foul-smelling kitchen. To think that I just cleaned it on Wednesday, she groaned when she entered the disaster area.
At the stove was a much disheveled Kim Possible still in her night cloths that Shego had dressed her in, and who seemed to be working with something in a skillet, and all around the Kitchen was what Shego would have liked to classify as the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Shego navigated her way over to the red-headed hero, careful to avoid the mess on the floor, and was halted in surprise by Kim's expression. The young woman was staring blankly at the skillet, on which were the blackened remains of what might have been eggs a long time ago. Her expression as totally blank, her eyes never moving from the skillet, it seemed as if she was completely unaware of Shego's presence.
"Princess," Shego carefully asked. Kim seemed to not hear her and continued to move the burnt food around the skillet. Shego was unsure what to do next, it wasn't like she had ever dealt with someone in this kind of state before. While working with Drakken she had never cared about the welfare of anyone including the blue villain, and even then he had never suffered this kind of breakdown. Even with Team Go her brothers had never closed themselves off when they were hurting. Like most teen boys she knew they either cried and then got over it, like Drakken, or pretended like nothing was wrong.
Deciding to simply take the initiative Shego reached out and grasped Kim's hand to stop her from stirring. "Kimmie I think it's done," she said with a small smile.
"No," Kim snapped, jerking her hand free, "I can do this."
Shego reached out again and grabbed Kim's shoulder pulling the smaller girl around to face her. "Kim it's alright," she told her firmly, not even knowing herself what she meant by the old line.
"No!" Kim screamed trying to pull out of Shego's grasp. "It's not ok!" Shego fought to hold Kim by the arms as the younger woman fought her.
"Kim stop it!" she ordered, and almost froze as Kim burst into tears.
"It's my fault!" She wailed and then collapsed. Shego caught her and lowered her to the floor, and held onto Kim, as she began to chant through tears "It's my fault, my fault, my fault."
Shego found herself shaken by what was happening with Kim. She had never experienced anything like this, outside of some movie, or TV show, but this was real life. She had seen Kim defeated before, she had actually helped to capture her, but she had never seen Kim so utterly destroyed like this, and she just did not know how to deal with it. The only thing she knew was that she found herself wanting to help her, and she did not understand that reaction either.
"Kimmie," she whispered as kindly as she could, "what happened?"
"He's dead," Kim sobbed, then she buried her head into Shego's shoulder as another wave of crying started, "I killed him, it's my fault."
"Kim I know that's not what happened," Shego replied.
"Yes it is!"
"No it isn't," Shego firmly retorted. "You aren't capable of killing anyone! Now tell me what happened yesterday."
Kim did not even bother to answer. As soon as Shego mentioned 'yesterday' she just went back to crying again. This isn't getting me anywhere, Shego considered in frustration. She took a deep breath to collect herself and pulled Kim out to arm's length to look her in the eyes. "Kimmie look at me," she bit back a growl when Kim looked down. "Princess I said look at me!" slowly Kim looked up into Shego's and appeared to be about to cry again. "Oh no you don't!" Shego retorted. "You've already don't that, now tell me what happened."
"I-I went on a mission," Kim began.
"Yes I already got that part."
"Well I got a ride with the military, in one of their jets to the place at an old airport," Kim paused as she almost broke down again.
"Take your time," Shego encouraged, "There's no rush."
"We flew over the airport and the pilot," she paused as a thought hit her, "Shego I can't even remember his name!"
"Easy Princess," she assured her, "just continue."
It took a moment for Kim to compose herself, but the reassuring feeling of Shego's presence seemed to calm her enough to go on. "Well, he did not want to land, but I-I-"
"Kimmie its alright."
"I insisted! He told me that it was dangerous and my decision and I told him that I still wanted to go!" She looked directly into Shego's eyes and wailed. "If I had only listened! He would still be alive if I listened!"
"Kimmie, whatever happened WAS-NOT-YOUR-FAULT!" Shego stated as firmly as she could. "Now please go on." She was beginning to believe that Kim needed to tell what happened as much as she needed to hear it. Kim had apparently twisted the events around to where she was solely responsible for what had happened, and by telling it, maybe, Shego could help her straighten it back out.
"Before the pilot could do much we were shot at by someone on the ground," Kim knitted her brows in concentration as she tried to recall the event. "I think the first shot hit us, but it was the second or maybe a third that actually caused us to go down. The pilot and I both ejected, and we landed near one of the hangers." She paused for a moment and shut her eyes as the memories began to flood back. Shego was afraid that Kim was about to cry again but then she continued. "I landed first. I saw an open door and ran for it. Once I was in I saw him. I think he saw where I had gone so as soon as he was loose from the parachute he ran after me." She paused again as the tears began to flow. "They shot him right in front of the door! The WEE henchmen MURDERED him! The shot vaporized his whole body!"
"WEE?" Shego echoed in disbelief. "Gemini killed him?" Even though WEE had always claimed to be the ultimate evil organization on Earth, few had ever heard of them doing much worse than stealing candy from children or harassing Global Justice by interfering with their projects. In fact the only times Shego had ever heard of Gemini was after jobs where he had stolen something from GJ. The thought that they had murdered a military officer on one of Kim's missions was- Wait.
"Kim did this mission have anything to do with GJ?"
Kim looked up into Shego's gaze in confusion. "Uh, yes, I was supposed to rendezvous with several of their agents, why?"
"I suspect that you may have just ended up in the crossfire by accident."
"I already knew that," Kim retorted, "but that only makes what I did worse. There wasn't any reason for us to have even been there."
Shego scoffed at Kim's answer. "Come on now Kimmie, are you telling me that you are going to pull a thorough background check before responding to every emergency from now on?"
Kim stared at Shego as if she wasn't understanding a word that was being said.
"Kim listen to me, and listen good," Shego continued more softly, "No matter how well nerd boy screens your mission requests, no matter how well you prepare, or how many precautions you take, things will go wrong occasionally."
Kim shook her head in defiance of what she was hearing, "But nothing like this ever-"
"Princess your parents, uncle, even your creepy brothers are all geniuses, so I know that some of that intelligence made it into you. Are you telling me that you never, ever, considered the risk of the missions you take? Or even considered how close that you and that dolt have come to this happening hundreds of times in the past?"
"But we always made it out in the end," Kim started to object, before she saw Shego's stern expression. "Alright," Kim conceded, "I've thought about it before. During the Little Diablo incident I even thought that I would die, that I failed, at least until Ron brought me out of it."
"Who knew that he was actually good for something," Shego muttered sarcastically. She shut up when Kim shot her a look and smirked at the expression. "Just kidding. If it wasn't for Stoppable we would probably still be dealing with Warmanga, and Mr. Warmonga."
"Sorry," Kim sighed, "I'm still a little sensitive in the Ex department."
"No problem," Shego waved her off. "The point of all this nauseous-ness is that, and I really can't believe I'm saying this, you did the right thing by going to help those people. The fact that Gemini has completely lost his mind doesn't change that."
"But what about the pilot?"
"You learn," Shego emphasized. "And when you see those psychos again you will have learned what to avoid. If they shoot you down on the second pass, then parachute on the first, or better yet do what you do best and sneak in from a distance."
Kim sat still for a minute, her mind deep in thought. After a while she shook her head a sighed, "It's just that I never had anyone die on one of my missions before."
"You mean no one you knew," Shego corrected.
"Huh?"
"You may have won every time in the end but that doesn't mean no one got hurt," Shego explained. "When the Lowardians attacked they defeated the whole planet. Many people fought them, armies, police, regular citizens, and they all failed. I think Drakken used the phrase 'In less time than it takes to order a pizza.' Also when the 'Little Diablo's' incident happened they were terrorizing the whole world with plasma, and their huge feet and claws. Now tell me don't you think that someone got hurt in all of that?"
Kim looked down at her lap again in dejection, "I never considered . . ."
I cannot believe that I am doing psychiatric counseling for a nineteen-year-old hero, not to mention former nemesis. "Kim, consider this for a minute," I am definitely washing my mouth out after this, "The world needs you. You may have failed this time, however you survived. In this world almost everyone in a position to make change seems to be out for themselves, yet you aren't. You have the power to make change. Sure people have been hurt in the past, maybe even killed by the bad guys, yet you're actions have saved many more. Yesterday someone died because he believed that you needed to be exactly where you were that day to help others. He knew the risks, but he accepted them because acting on that risk meant that others would be saved."
"But-"
"No buts Kimmie," Shego interrupted covering Kim's mouth. She smirked again as another thought occurred to her. "However now it seems to me that someone has something important that she needs to do."
"What?"
Shego eased herself and Kim to their feet and looked down at the smaller woman. "Well for one, you stink and need a bath."
"Shego!"
"Hey I'm just being honest here," Shego stated, holding up her hands to emphasize her point. "And also since when are you allowed inside a kitchen unsupervised. Didn't Barken and Stoppable have like a restraining order put on you to keep you out of all kitchens or something after the Home Ec class?"
Kim opened her moth to protest, but closed it instead of trying, "You win for now Shego, but I know where you sleep," and with that she left to take her shower.
Shego watched her go and once she was out of earshot she mumbled, "Strangely enough that prospect actually scares me."