I do not own the characters named herein from Disney, and am only using them for a tale meant for entertainment purposes only.
Kim Possible: Dark Moon Rising
By LJ58
13
"This has been a very weird night," Kim yawned, and walked back into her house.
She paused, looking around, but no one was around. Only the cup Betty left behind was in evidence to show someone had even been there at all.
"You know, the harpy never did tell us how she got back here so fast."
"Well, like Gemini said, Bets is all about secrets."
"I'll say. Here we were sweating bullets about our new monthly visitor, and she already knew everything."
Shego turned and saw Kim sniggering.
"What?"
"New…..monthly visitor," Kim sniggered again.
"Funny. Real funny, Pumpkin. You know what I mean."
"Yeah. I do."
"So, my new, uh, shape didn't freak you out," Shego asked, just a little self-conscious now.
"Nope," Kim grinned. "I got the feeling that's you. The real you. The side you were hiding, and resisting all along. The wolf that represents the real Shego."
"Sometimes, Kimmie, you almost start making sense. Almost," Shego rolled her eyes, and scooped up Betty's cup, and headed for the kitchen.
"When do you think they'll decide what they did, or didn't find," Kim asked abruptly.
"I don't know. Hopefully soon," Shego murmured. "I'm just glad you made sure they destroyed all the blood and stuff they took from you before we left.
"Yeah. I think I'll call Adam tomorrow all the same. As old as he supposed to be, he might know more than even Dr. Director's brother. Even if they are supposed to be Druids."
"Yeah, that one takes getting used to," Shego agreed.
"I'm going to shower," Kim told her.
"Won't be a second, and I'll join you," the green-skinned woman told her. "I might have snatched at pair of sweats earlier, but I still feel grungy after our swim."
"Wash my back," Kim offered, more than asked as she headed down the hall.
Shego, setting the cup in the kitchen for the moment, eyed the kitchen that had nothing out of place. No fresh coffee. Nothing. So where…..?
She shook her head, and decided she didn't care.
"Okay," Shego shouted back, and headed for the bathroom.
KP
Dr. Director walked back into the office where Wade was still working, and simply eyed him.
"Working late?"
"I was….concerned over…..the mission."
"The mission is complete. The outbreak was successfully contained, and the contamination purged," the one-eyed agent told him.
"You're never going to tell me what I…..didn't see, are you," Wade asked.
"Now you're catching on," Betty almost smiled. "Go home, and get some rest," she told him. "We start early tomorrow."
"You have another hunt?"
"Oh, no. I have something you'll likely enjoy. I need some theoretical models run. Only no one else had better see them. Ever."
"Theoretical…..?"
"Tomorrow," she told him. "I need you fresh. Go."
Wade nodded, and started closing down his equipment, and monitors. He didn't try taking his new laptop, or the special flash drive in it. He already noticed that she had had the device listed as Global Justice issue, and trying to walk out with either would have likely set off every alarm in the building.
Just now, he was more worried about staying alive.
He had already seen enough to know that where Kim's missions had been downright dangerous at times, Dr. Director's new mandates were genuinely terrifying.
Even if they weren't genuinely supernatural, but logical, and rational sourced threats, they were still just line short of completely unnatural.
KP
He leaned back in the darkness, eyeing the blank wall across from his seat, and glowered.
In five years, he had managed at least nine clever moves. Nine moves that would have guaranteed the chaos, and unrest he needed to move. To finally claim genuine power, and then take control of a new government that would inevitably rise out of the old one when it collapsed under the weight of trying to cope with what none could, or even would accept was real, or existent.
Five years. Yet he failed every time.
Someone was working against him.
Which meant, someone knew.
He considered his staff. Loyal to a fault.
Well aware of what befell traitors.
He considered the law.
Self-important bumblers at the best. Even the usual national, or international agencies were little better than fumbling pretenders to his games.
Yet someone was somehow stopping every gambit he employed.
Rogue wolves. Leeches. Alien incursions he 'invited' by one means, or another. Even genuine demonic rituals that unleashed very real monsters from unknown dimensions. Every single ploy, stopped cold.
There could be only one explanation.
He considered all he knew. All he intuited. His mind swept the globe, and sought a causal agent. A presence.
Because he knew what they had to be.
When he realized what it had to mean, he was chagrinned.
How could he have overlooked them?
True, he had arranged for the early authorities of the day to eradicate them. To treat them as the menace they were.
To him.
Still, he would have thought any survivor would have run for cover, and kept their heads down.
Only it was now obvious that at least one Druid survived, and was now interfering in his plans to claim the globe as his own.
One Druid who just happened to be in place, and always connected to his plots.
Who…..?
He considered the new Wolf that had showed recently. Right in the wake of his latest ploy.
Possible, he decided. It made sense.
Already a thorn in many sides. Then she did the most unlikely thing of all, and survived a genuine, killer wolf with an appetite for flesh. Then, in an even more unlikely twist, she just happened to visit the site of the leech he had unleashed in Europe at the very start of its rampage?
He cursed his own blindness.
Possible was a globe-hopping adventurer with an over-inflated reputation for success, and false humility. She did show up at a great many locations at unlikely times, and backed by an accursed mystic, and now an allegedly reformed felon with cosmic might.
The evidence was plain. He should have noticed long before now, and yet he had overlooked her as plebian.
Well, not any more.
This was one Druid that would not continue to thwart him. He would destroy her completely, and personally.
He just needed the perfect ploy, because he had little doubt the busybody wouldn't move unless she senses a genuine threat. So, what kind of lure…?
Then the obvious struck him.
He smiled at the poetic justice of it.
Now, he considered, to plan. To plan perfectly.
KP
"Tough day, Kimmie," Shego asked, hearing her come in yawning.
"Long night," the redhead countered as Shego came out of the kitchen, still drying her hands as she walked in from a long day of classes. "The day didn't help. But, at least I have the next four off," she grinned. "So, what do you want…."
Kim eyed the phone that rang just then.
It so rarely rang that she eyed it for a moment, then shook her head.
"Hold that thought," she told Shego who grinned at her expression, and watched the redhead pick up the phone.
"Hello," she chirped, and then her expression immediately sobered.
Shego frowned as Kim held up a finger, obviously listening to something that upset her, and then slowly hung up.
"Kimmie? Princess? What is it?"
"Some…..freak kidnapped my mom. I have to show up at some secret meet alone, or she's going to die."
Shego gasped.
"They got Ann? How?"
"I don't know. But…..I have to go. Shego, if they hurt her….."
"Where?"
"In the arctic," she said. "I have coordinates, but if I'm remembering the globe right, there's nothing up there but icy and tundra," Kim frowned.
"And an obvious trap."
"Yeah. That, too. I have to go….."
"I'll….."
"Alone. He has people watching. If I don't show up alone, without anyone, then mom dies. I can't risk that, Shego."
"And if he's more than you can handle," Shego asked uneasily.
"I'm not exactly helpless," Kim huffed. "There's not much I can't handle."
"Damn it, Kimberly," Shego swore, "What if it is?"
Kim walked over, and hugged her. Hard.
"If necessary, I will tear everyone I find into little pieces, too," she growled softly.
Shego gasped at that.
"This is my mom," she said. "Besides, meanwhile, you're calling Ron, and Dr. Director, and feeding them the coordinates. The freak said I had to come alone. He didn't say I couldn't have backup waiting," she smiled.
"Princess….."
"I know you're worried…."
"Am not," she huffed unconvincingly.
"Shego, you never call me Kimberly unless you're worried about me."
Shego sputtered.
"Ann! I'm worried about Ann! I like her," she complained.
"So do I, Shego. Give me five minutes to lead any eyes or ears off, and take a walk. To my basement. There's a spare Kimmunicator down there. Call my boys, and the Cyclops. Tell them what's going on. And, Shego. Tell Dr. Director this guy thinks I'm a druid."
"What," Shego hissed. "You mean….? Like….?"
"Someone added two and two, and got five. Only it didn't sound like anyone I know. Get Wade to trace the call, analyze the voice, and find out what he can. Tell Ron and Dr. D. to just….do their thing. I'll try to stall, but first thing, mom gets saved. I don't care about anything else."
"Sounds like a plan," Shego murmured. "You can count on me, Kimmie," she said quietly, and hugged her back before letting her go. "Still, be careful. If this guy thinks he can manage a real druid type, there's no telling what he has ready."
"I'll bet it's not enough," she said, going to her room to switch to mission gear, her wrist Kimmunicator, and a second band that looked like a common bracelet. Then she loaded her pockets with everything imaginable, or so it seemed to Shego. "Whoever it is, they are going down. No one touches my mother."
Shego nodded, and watched her walk out, climb into the Roth, and fly away at high speed, leaving a sonic boom that likely rattled windows for blocks.
Then she went inside, locked down the house, and headed for the basement.
KP
The cloaked man sneered as he eyed the trembling figure in the old-fashioned cage in the middle of the chamber where he walked around it. Iron, simple iron, he knew, could disrupt a druid's powers. Leaving them helpless.
He noted a lot of newer buildings of late were no longer built with iron. That, he felt, was telling.
Maybe there were more survivors than expected. He knew they passed down their taint through the maternal blood. Which meant the woman before him likely was a druid, too. Perhaps she was not practicing, but she obviously gave her daughter a gift of power that she had learned, and used with clever effectiveness.
Well, that would soon end.
His cell phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of the fold of his cloak, and raised it to his ear.
"Yes," he snapped.
"Sir, the redhead is on her way. She departed the house alone, and flew directly north. We intercepted no calls, or other suspicious activity."
"And the felon?"
"Went back inside, and remains quiet. No phone calls. No computer activity."
"So, arrogant, and powerful," the man sneered. "Well, she will learn true humility before I am done with her. Just as you will, Dr. Possible."
"I don't know what you want, but you made a mistake," the shivering redhead told her, the chamber being rather cool since he didn't bother to heat it. Why bother, he had asked himself, when he was only going to use it as a tomb.
"You can play coy all you wish, but I know the truth," the lean, cloaked man hidden in the shadows of the dimly lit room sneered. "Tell me the other members of your coven. How many survived?"
"Coven? Listen, I don't know who you think I am, but I have no clue what you're talking about. If you have my daughter coming, though, you'd better just give up now," she warned.
"Ah, but I've planned for her, too. She is coming, true. But only to fall into my trap. Just as you did. And frankly, while I favor cooperation, you're both going to die. I don't need any loose druids upsetting my plans any longer. Understand?"
"Druids? You mean those old nature-priests in Celtic legend? Are you serious," Ann Possible asked him, wishing her doctor's coat was a little better insulated. She was really starting to freeze here. The cold, iron floor of her cage wasn't helping.
"Very serious. I know the truth, woman. You need not deny yourself."
"I'm a neurosurgeon, not a….Celtic priest of any age," Ann huffed. "Honestly, I thought Kim was finished with your type. She said she was taking a break from fighting lunatics," she huffed.
"I, woman, am no lunatic," the shadowy figure sneered. "I am Ian Mephistoles Darke. Greatest of the dark wizards, and a scion of hell itself."
Ann eyed the man, and tried not to roll her eyes. Because he was sounding very serious, and very sure of himself. She couldn't stop herself from shaking her head all the same.
"You think I'm only mad, woman," he spat. "You will see. When your clueless child arrives, you'll both see."
To Be Continued…