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
14
Kim flew the Roth down low over the tundra, windows down, and all her scanners working. Even as her now sensitive nostrils searched the air for scents.
One in particular.
The cold air annoyed her, but her wolf was as focused as she was just then, and ignored the frigid temperatures as she kept checking between the air, and the scanners as she waited to see what might bear fruit first.
She was closing on the coordinates, but had yet to see anything.
No surprise there.
Even Drakken had been good at hiding lairs in the most unlikely of all places.
Still, something about this one seemed off.
Why take her mom, and then bait a trap by telling her exactly where to go?
Something about this one made no sense. None at all.
Especially the whole bit about knowing she was a druid, and he was going to end her interfering with him once, and for all. This, after hearing Betty confess she was apparently one. She would have asked when her world had gotten so weird, but she knew that one didn't bear much scrutiny.
Her wheels were just above the tundra when she spotted the low building just ahead. Some kind of portable building, but one made out of what seemed heavy, metallic struts. The kind sank deep into the frozen ground. The building couldn't be ten foot square, and unless it was just the entrance to yet another underground lair, she wasn't thinking there was much inside.
Then again, you never knew what you would find with some of her enemies at times.
Case in point, she never expected to get torn in half, and almost eaten by a rogue wolf. She was pretty sure even that was way out of the realm of her imagination. Until it happened.
As she closed on the building, which apparently consisted of heavy, iron beams forming a box, she was now able to pick up her mother's scent. It was strong, too. And he knew was afraid. She bit back a snarl of outrage, and reminded herself to stay calm, and focused.
Focusing her scanners, and her gaze on the building, she saw it was made of segmented, but solid construction. She swooped down over it, and saw a single hatch in the center of the roof. No other way in, or out.
Someone wanted to channel her entrance.
Too bad, she didn't play those kinds of games.
She flew lower again, and dropped onto the frozen tundra, and jumped out, reaching for her pocket where she pulled out a small, but powerful blue laser in her lipstick case. She walked up to the nearest side, and switched the device on.
A moment later, she kicked in a slab of hard iron that reverberated with the blow even as she entered the dimly lit chamber inside. She looked around, and saw her mom standing inside a large cage, but nothing else.
"Mom," she told her when she spotted her. "Are you all right?"
"Be careful. It's a trap," Ann shouted.
"Don't worry, mom, I'll get you out….."
The low chortling seemed to come from all around her, and nowhere.
Kim headed for the cage, ignoring what was pretty standard in her line of work, and waited for the rant even as she started to cut through the first bar of her mom's prison.
Right before the laser sputtered, and went dead.
"Not so fast, little Druid," the mocking voice said as Kim turned to gape at the heavy panel she had cut into rising to reseal itself as if in slow-motion reverse.
"What the hell?"
"Kimberly! Your language!"
"Mom, so not the time," she said, looking around as she realized the wall was once more, somehow inviolate.
Cybertronic construction of some kind? Or something new?
"He thinks we're witches, or something. He said he's….."
"I am the wizard Ian Mephistoles Darke, Kimberly Anne Possible. I am your doom," the shadow figure swirled into view once the wall was back in place.
Kim groaned as she eyed the cloaked figure.
"Why do I get all the nut cases?"
"You think me mad? I know the truth, Druid. I have you cocooned in iron, far from the lusher lands that give you life, and power. Now, I will destroy you. But first," he said. "Let us see your true faces, nature witches. He held up both hands, both glowing a dark violet, and growled something that sounded akin to 'Revelio.'
The word made Kim cringe, and she felt her body shuddering violently even as her mother screamed.
Kim looked back at her, then realized that she was looking down on her.
Looking down at one hand, she grumbled as she held up a large, clawed hand covered in dark, auburn fur.
"Oh, great," she muttered to herself, and the man backpedaled, staring hard at her as her mother gasped in alarm.
"Impossible! Druids cannot be influenced by such base creatures. You have to be…. You cannot be….. Not a wolf. Not a true wolf. You….. Impossible," the man roared, sounding both furious, and terrified.
Kim's lips parted, and the man gasped, and raised his hands again.
"Well, whatever you are, I can still end your interference…..!"
Kim leapt even before whatever the glowing ball was could hit her when the man flung his hand her way. Ann shrieked behind her, but Kim was busy ducking more glowing balls, and glittering, silvery blades that suddenly starting coming out of nowhere as the man flung one hand, and the other, steel and glowing balls flying with every 'toss.'
"Stand still, damn you," he shouted as Kim literally jumped, and bounced off the walls around him, just before she landed right behind him.
He swore, rolling away just before Kim's very big hand could punch through his annoying cloaked face. She did manage to tear off his cloak, and got a very good look at a bald face tattooed with purple snakes curled around his cheeks.
She snorted her disdain, and stalked toward him, her glittering eyes bright with her own fury.
"It is obvious I misjudged this matter. I shall tend you another time," he said, and raised his left hand, making the very air shimmer with that weird purple glow now.
Kim eyed the growing circle, and the weird, shimmering passage that seemed to be growing, and having seen enough vortexes in her time, leapt back toward her fallen gear where she had burst out of her clothing, and scooped up her equipment belt.
"Catch, baldy," she snarled, and flung the small, metal orb she had fished out of her belt into the passage after him.
He had time to turn to stare at the device she flung his way, and then the purple air-tunnel exploded like a soap bubble, and vanished. Taking the weird guy with it. She stood up again, and looked around, and turned to see her mom on the floor of the cage, looking up at her with stunned, but dim eyes.
"Mom," she growled, and simply pulled the bars apart to reach her when she realized several of those knives were buried in her vulnerable flesh. One in her chest, just missing her heart, and several in her arm and side where she had fallen.
Kim shrank back down, kneeling naked at her side as she gently rolled over her.
"It's me, mom. See? Hang on, I'll call help," she said, and started to lift her arm, only to see her Kimmunicator had burst off her wrist when she changed, too.
"Hang on," she said, after carefully pulling the knifes from her mom's body before she scrabbled over to where she had been compelled to change, and grabbed her Kimmunicator.
"Wade? You there? Pick up, Wade," she all but shouted.
"Kim, I hear you," the familiar face filled the tiny screen even as he answered. "What happened? Where are you?"
"At the coordinates I gave Shego. Mom's hurt, Wade. I think…. I think she's dying. We need help now!"
"They're coming. But, Kim, we're at least twenty minutes behind you. Can you hold out?"
Kim looked back at her mom.
Ann looked paler than ever, giving her a weak smile, and her lids were slowly drooping.
"I don't think so," she choked. "She's dying, Wade. I have to….. I have to save her."
"Can you fly her back yourself? We have….."
"We're trapped inside an iron box. Something drained my laser of power. Wade…."
Ann went limp, her eyes closed now, and Kim gasped, and dropped the Kimmunicator.
"Mom," she pulled her close. "C'mon, mom. Stay with me. Please."
"K-Kimmmmmm," her mom slurred, her eyes just barely opening again.
"Mom. Mom, I love you."
"Uvvvv….."
Kim could hear her heart slowly. Felt the slow, ragged rasp of her breathing on her skin.
With a ragged cry, she lifted her head, incisors instinctively growing, and sank them into Ann's left shoulder as she held the woman close to her.
Ann gave a ragged rasp, whining at the sudden pain, then fell unconscious.
Her heartbeat was still there. Weak, and thready. Still, she was alive.
Kim still knelt there over twenty minutes later, holding her mother when she heard something to her right, and the heavy, iron wall there suddenly fell in.
"KP," Ron gasped, standing there holding the Lotus Blade after slashing through the hard iron like tissue paper. "What happened?"
"C-C-Cold," she said, kneeling in the bloody ice with her mother in her arms.
"Betty stepped carefully into the opening, scowling darkly as she looked around the trap, and eyed the two women.
"Agent Fyne, get them blankets."
"Ma'am," the agent from one of her elite teams nodded.
"Kim," Ron gasped, looking down at Ann. "What happened," he asked again.
"W-W-Wizard," she shuddered, her skin almost bluish, and Ann looking paler than the ice.
"You…..bit her," Betty stared down at them, but not entering the cage.
Kim looked up at her.
"She was…..d-d-dying," she said quietly, tears flowing in crystalline tracks. "C-C-Couldn't let her d-d-die."
"Let's get you both out of here, and then we need to debrief. Ronald, you can gather her gear. Let's get out of this…..pit," she said, looking around uneasily.
Allen Fyne returned just then, and settled a large, wool blanket around Kim's shoulders.
"Do you need a gurney," he asked, settling a blanket over Ann's body.
"I have her," she said, and easily lifted her mother in her arms. "Ron, m-my laser is…..by the wall," she nodded. "I n-n-need Wade to check it. It just…..di-died when that guy did his….magic stuff."
"Magic," Betty frowned.
"Looked like it to m-me," she said, carrying Ann outside to set in the Roth, and quickly turning on the heat to help warm them both after she pulled out spare clothes from the pack in the back seat.
Ron set the torn clothes, and gear from the trap in her car without saying a word, but was looking past grim.
"Agent Fyne, take Ronald back. I'm returning with Agent Possible. We need an immediate debrief on this one."
"Yes, ma'am," he said as Betty carefully put the woman in the back seat before sliding into the car even as Kim pulled her boots back on.
"And, Fyne. Blow that pit to pieces before you leave."
The man nodded, and headed for the GJ hoverjet.
Betty pulled the seatbelt in place as Kim now climbed into the car, and closed her door. The heat began warming them all the more the moment the door closed, and she glanced back at her mother, who was still pale, but was breathing a little easier.
"So, you had to bite her?"
"She was dying," Kim murmured, already recovering herself once out of the cold.
"I'll let you explain that one to Jacob. I'm more interested in your wizard."
"Your wizard. He said he was Darke. Ian Mephistoles Darke."
"Doesn't ring a bell," Betty said, eyeing her dash as Kim threw switched, and the car hummed as it began to rise into the air, turning on its small, but powerful thrusters before Kim pulled back slightly on the wheel, and the car rose into the sky.
"He seemed to think I was a Druid."
"I got that message."
"He thought the whole iron cage bit would stop me. Then…. He said something, Dr. Director. Just said something, and I turned. I couldn't help myself."
Betty eyed her.
"A revelatory charm, likely. Common, but surprisingly hard to manage. Can you describe him?"
Well, it was hard to say with the freaky cape thingy he wore, but he looked kind of lanky, maybe about as tall as Ron. Oh, and he was bald. Not even eyebrows. But with some kind of purple snakes tattooed around his face, with the heads on his cheeks."
"Purple….vipers," Betty tensed.
"You know this guy?"
"I know of him. He's a genuine wizard. A dangerous one. How did you drive him off?"
"He didn't like my wolf. Said I wasn't a true wolf, and kept yelling impossible. Then he made this purple doorway, like the pan-dimensional vortex, and took off." She smirked then, and added, "I tossed an EMP grenade in after him. I hope it gave him indigestion."
Betty stared at her.
"You tossed an EM device into an open ethereal portal?"
"Uh, yeah," Kim nodded. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
Betty sighed.
"We definitely need to talk. Still, he said you weren't a….true wolf?"
"Yeah. I got the feeling he was mad about it. And scared, too. I didn't know why. I was too busy trying to save my mom."
"How bad….?"
"He was throwing knives all over the place. I was so busy ducking, I forgot about her, and she….. She got hit bad," Kim said, looking back over into the rear seat.
"You'd better all Adam. You may need him again if you're going to…..help your mother. And, maybe yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"Kim, it's possible this wizard sensed the first changes the blood virus is creating in you. It's possible you're still changing. And that was what scared him. Wizards, I can tell you, are of two classes. Posers….."
"I get that one."
"And the real thing. The kind that traffic with darker forces beyond our dimension. If you scared one that may be the real deal, then something is inside you that made a man that deals with real devils very worried. I think we'd better start calling in help."
"I just don't get why he thought I was a druid," she huffed. "He was so sure that stupid cage was going to….."
Kim frowned, belatedly recalling Betty's reaction.
"It would have trapped you, though. Wouldn't it?"
"Let's not talk about it."
"Dr. Dir….."
"At all. Kim, there is more to the world than you realize. I believe I already told you that. You just stepped into an even stranger part of it."
"You already told me that."
"I gave you the watered down version. Ready for the advanced version?"
"Something tells me I'd better be."
"And something tells me Will isn't going to like the fact I'm already raising your security to Alpha."
"Really?"
"But this level, Agent Possible, is extreme need to know. Only….."
"No one needs to know?"
"Got it. Oh, I'd better call home. Dad was already freaking, and if he let the boys know….."
"Call home. Then stall them. The last thing we want is for them to get involved at this point."
"Agreed," Kim said quietly. "Man, I just hope Jacob isn't a jerk about this. It's not like I wanted my mom to end up like me."
"I'm sure he'll understand. We'll take her to my place, and let her clean up. She doesn't need to wake up covered in blood."
Kim glanced back again, and noted Ann was looking more herself. Color was coming back, and her breathing was even, and her heart strong again.
"Yeah, mom would freak. Then again, I'm pretty sure after seeing me, a little blood may be the least of our issues."
"I think, Kimberly, that goes without saying," Betty told her in a wry tone.
To Be Continued….