Disclaimer: I do NOT own Kim Possible. These characters belong to Disney.
Disclaimer #2: I'm NOT a writer, I'm an artist. I'm extremely inexperienced in writing fanfics, so I'm so sorry for any inconsistencies in the characters or plot!
Author: iycewing
Story developers: iycewing, PonyCrown
Rating: PG-13
Notice: This will eventually lead to KiGo in later arcs! This is the 1st arc of 6! If you don't like LGBTQ+ pairings, please don't hate. In this story, Season 4 of the show doesn't happen.
Author's preview notes: Y'all me and my friends made a Discord server for KiGo fans! If you want to be invited, send me a DM and I'll give you the link to join!
Fanart is always welcome and appreciated! Send them to the places listed on my profile!
Please read and review! Your feedback helps keep the story going! :D
Chapter 37
Monique was the first to notice the fire. It was already spreading from the cash register down to a fallen stack of flyers offering a fat reward for a missing tiger.
The inside of the quaint pet shop looked like a tornado just tore through it, followed by a bunch of rampaging animals. The employees ran around like headless chickens screaming bloody murder as they tried to avoid the fangs of slithering snakes, talons of flapping birds, and Rufus's two front teeth.
Despite it already being a couple of minutes, no one had noticed Ron or Monique through all the mayhem. The blonde boy basically blended in with everyone else as he added to the chaos by shrieking and knocking things down. Both he and Rufus looked to be having a lot of fun doing that.
Their plan to keep all of DNAmy's assistants occupied was working – until everything started spiraling out of control of course.
"Ron! FIRE!" Monique yelled, coughing through the thick smoke that was quickly starting to congest in the small store.
"What?" Ron didn't hear her through the cacophony of screeching animals and people.
"I said-"
"OH MY GOD, MONIQUE THERE'S A FIRE!" Ron gasped and scrambled away from the flames.
Monique wanted to roll her eyes, but she knew that they were now on a time crunch. His scream got the attention of the panicking employees, and after a moment, you could almost see the little lightbulb flipping on in their heads.
They recognized him in his mission clothes.
Ron gave a cheeky smile before calling, "Rufus! Showtime's over, buddy!" The bald rodent scrambled from his perch on a cat scratching post and leaped onto the boy's shoulder.
"Stop gawking and help us move the animals for God's sake!" Monique barked at the questioning employees. Ron had already smashed the windows and kicked down the doors to let the billowing smoke out.
DNAmy's workers glanced at each other and then the fire before one spoke up. "Screw this, I'm not getting paid enough for this shit."
And then they fled.
"That's right! You better run ya chickens!" Ron cheered, and Rufus pumped his tiny fists.
"Ron, let's save the animals first and celebrate later!" Monique huffed and coughed again, gently picking up a family of hamsters.
"Yes, ma'am!"
~~~~0~~~~0~~~~0~~~~
Kim rushed to the closed metal door and attempted to kick it down. Her foot struck the seemingly impenetrable surface, and she winced from the impact.
"Bad idea," she shook her head.
"Back up, Kimmie," Shego commanded and flung a plasma ball at the door. The flames spread across the walls harmlessly as they absorbed the hot green energy with ease. "Okay… so we might be fucked if my plasma does nothing."
"It's kinda doing nothing!"
Lucifer cowered behind Shego and Kim as they scrambled around the room like trapped rats. He wrapped his large tail tightly around his quivering paws, and soft whimpers escaped his lips as he hid his large head.
DNAmy stood, clipboard and pen in hand, on the other side of the glass. She watched with calm amusement as the girls tried their minimal exits. It was quite entertaining watching them, so she made no effort into rushing to the main event.
"Back to complete the tests we didn't have the chance to finish, Shego?" DNAmy asked casually.
"Of course, I crawled into your disgusting hellhole and beat the shit out of your devil cat just so I could let you rip out my fucking kidneys," Shego spat, her cold voice dripping with sarcasm.
"You've always had a way with banter, dearie," DNAmy chuckled wryly. "Now, as much as I love chatting with you, let's proceed with our tests, shall we?"
"Over my dead body," Kim growled.
"Ah, Kim Possible, it's such a pleasure to see you again."
"I, unfortunately, can't say the same for you," Kim said icily.
"What a shame, you always make my experiment trials quite interesting, to say the least. Might I ask why you're accompanying Shego to her inevitable demise?"
"She's my friend," Kim declared, more confident in her answer than she ever was before.
"But this has nothing to do with you," DNAmy pointed out.
"This has everything to do with me! You have to be more insane than you already are to think I'd hand Shego over to you as if she were some inanimate test subject," Kim retorted. "You mess with her, you mess with me."
"God, can you do us both a favor and stop being so cliché today, Kimmie?" Shego sighed, feeling slightly embarrassed.
"Sorry, I've been watching way too many romcoms lately," Kim shrugged, her face still steely.
"I know, you make me watch them with you," Shego grumbled under her breath.
"As I was saying," DNAmy interrupted, exasperated. "I-"
"You don't get to say jack-shit you sick bitch," Shego cut the geneticist off. "We're gonna take this litter box home back from where you stole him from, and if you're lucky, I won't kill you too slowly in the process."
"Huh, how ambitious," DNAmy remarked distractingly as she pressed a few buttons on a keypad.
"Why are you doing this?" Kim demanded, trying to buy them some time to search for an escape route. She tried to ignore the fact that it didn't even look like they had any escape routes, to begin with. Shego was still testing her plasma on every inch of the cell while Lucifer crouched as low as possible to the ground, trying to avoid her frustrated spurts.
"For science of course," DNAmy beamed.
"You're working for someone else," Kim's tone made it sound more like a statement than a question. "Who are you giving the information on Shego's powers to?"
"That's none of your concern," DNAmy narrowed her dark eyes. "What matters is that I'm an evil genius! I've transcended scientists and physicists and geneticists worldwide by discovering a new form of radiation, one that will make me more famous than I already am. I'm absolutely brilliant!"
"Yup, she's definitely insane," Kim muttered.
"Already knew that. Any brilliant ideas on how we get out?!" Shego scanned the cell, resisting the urge to punch the thick glass in frustration. It would do them no use, and conserving her energy, as well as all of her fingers, would most certainly be useful right now.
"Air vents!" Kim suddenly remembered how Ron had broken into this same cell before.
"We can't fit a fucking giant hairball up there, Princess!" Shego retorted, feeling more than frustrated at this point.
"Mroww-" Lucifer whined, his eyes wide with fear.
The slow whirring of gears caught the panicking girls' attention, and even Lucifer perked his ears at the grinding noise. Mechanical arms had begun cracking open the seals of the yellow bins, most definitely containing radioactive waste, and the still air turned foul from very faint green fumes.
"Oh, fu-" Shego didn't get to finish her sentence. Her plasma reacted by igniting against her will, and she grasped her head as her ears started ringing.
"Shego!" Kim gasped, attempting to reach out towards the villainess.
"Get back!" Shego commanded in a warning tone. Green flames were making their way up her uniform sleeves, slithering around her arms like snakes.
The mechanical arms worked steadily as they peeled sealed lids off of the containers, releasing more and more fumes into the air. Kim coughed and staggered behind Lucifer's massive cowering body, feeling her head start to spin from the radiation. She only needed a few seconds of breathable air.
As she was being shielded by the mutant tiger, she could feel his body shake and press itself tighter into the corner. His ears were flattened against the back of his head, and his large scorpion tail was wrapped around his front legs like a protective barrier.
Inhaling the fumes seemed to suddenly spark something primal in Lucifer as his eyes morphed into tiny slits. His gentle expression turned beastly as he, too, started losing control.
"Wade!" Kim yelled into her Kimmunicator. The computer genius immediately picked up the phone and noticed her strained expression. "I need you to shut down the power! The whole facility!"
"On it, Kim," Wade knew better than to ask questions, especially after hearing the anxiety and desperation in the teen's voice. He kept his voice calm and collected as he typed furiously into his computer. It wouldn't help the blatantly dire situation if he started panicking as well.
But from the look on Kim's face, DNAmy's round figure in the background, the distressed screeching of what he assumed was Lucifer, and the strained howls of Shego as she became a literal human fire tornado, he rationalized that it was okay to internally panic.
In a few seconds, the whirring of machinery stopped and the bright overhead lights died. It would've been completely dark if it weren't for Shego's glowing body standing dead center in the room. She illuminated the cell room as if she were one tall, green candle, bursting with burning energy.
Though the mechanical arms ceased exposing the girls to more radioactive waste, jade fumes still lingered in the air. Shego's plasma only grew as she grasped her head with flaring hands, trying to fight the pounding in her skull and twisted jabs of her stomach. She felt like screaming, vomiting, and dying all at the same time. The last option was beginning to fancy her the longer she was exposed to the radiation.
"Is that DNAmy?" Wade gasped, squinting at his screen.
"Yes! I thought you said you saw no one down here on the security cameras!" Kim replied anxiously. She didn't mean to yell at the computer genius, but with her anxiety rising, it was getting harder to stay calm.
"I didn't! I double-checked all of the cameras, and I didn't even see any camera footage for this room!" Wade protested. "She must've been blocking my signal so I wouldn't see her hiding in here!"
"Wade, I gotta go!" Kim quickly hung up and stashed away her Kimmunicator before it melted right in her hands.
When Shego looked up, her mouth was slight agape in a silent scream, and her once sharp and sparkling green eyes turned brighter, almost into a ghostly white. Her lithe body was slightly hunched over as the swirling plasma shrouded the unmistakable catsuit that was weirdly starting to singe.
Her vision clouded as well as her mind, making any rational thoughts or decisions feel foggy and so unlike her. It was if her body was succumbing to the radiation, twisting her very being and making her lose whatever control she still had over her powers, her thoughts, and her sanity.
Though she could see Kim's faint outline and bright red hair through the green flames, she could barely process who she was. Lucifer's raging figure was practically nothing to her; she just couldn't focus on any solid thoughts long enough.
They just kept getting less and less clear as they faded quicker than her mind could grasp them. Single words, let alone sentences, were unable to construct in her brain and only felt like echoes of whispers that she couldn't hear. All she saw was the green, almost icy white, chaos she was reigning and feeding.
Her body glowed like a burning white orb of energy as she struggled to resist the temptations of letting herself yield to the overwhelming pressure of her stored power, and ultimately, DNAmy. She didn't want to give the twisted geneticist the satisfaction of seeing her spirit crumble till only a pile of ashes was left behind. It was hard, though, when she felt like she was losing every part of herself that made her human.
"Shego! SHEGO!" Kim cried as she watched Shego's pale skin start to burn.
She's hurting herself!
The pale villainess almost looked like she was losing any tangible form she possessed as she flickered behind the hot ribbons of light. Green flames consumed her entire form, the center of the fire being a piercing white. It was like she was existing behind a screen.
Her ghostly eyes focused on nothing yet everything as they stared blankly at Kim, and her face was calm, giving off an eerily feeling of acceptance and something un-human. Her expression was so unnatural that it was making Kim's skin crawl.
The teen hero felt her head start to spin as she took a daring step towards the older woman. "SHEGO!"
The intense heat proved to be too much as Kim felt her nose start to blister. Sweat was pouring down her forehead like a running faucet, and her distraught face glistened against the blinding light.
Lucifer roared and rampaged around Shego, knocking down the unopened bins of radioactive trash and allowing more radiation to fill the air. The ringing got louder for Shego, and she gave an ear-splitting scream.
Waves of plasma shot out from every inch of her body as she cried out. But the walls couldn't absorb it, and the last thing Kim could process was an earth-shattering explosion as she instinctively ducked and covered her head. The ground quivered as if a group of elephants was stampeding around them, but the cacophony only lasted for a split second.
Shego's powers barely missed Kim and Lucifer thankfully. The redhead felt a beef moment of relief for what she considered that to be a blessing from the universe. The edges of Kim's clothes caught fire, but she quickly did a tumble and rolled to put them out.
Glass, concrete, and metal rained down, but thanks to Shego's still raging plasma, the shards were burned to harmless ashes as they cascaded onto the girls and Lucifer. The walls, glass, and radioactive waste bins had been destroyed, and the ceiling was barely holding up from the swaying support beams. Burn marks streaked the concrete ground, and the heavy metal door that originally locked them in was now melting into a heap of already hardening steel.
As the air cleared now that the room wasn't even a room anymore, but a wide empty space, the fumes in the air dissipated. Once the underground facility stopped shaking from Shego's explosion, Kim looked up and immediately felt concern for the pale villainess.
She didn't even seem to notice that DNAmy was nowhere to be seen anymore. The desk behind the shattered glass was in flaming pieces, and Kim couldn't see anything else behind it due to the lack of overhead lights from the power cut.
Though the atmosphere was now safe and free from any toxins or radiation, Shego looked no different than before the explosion. Her powers fought for dominance uncontrollably around her, shielding her, no, trapping her in a cage of pain.
"Shego! Snap out of it!" Kim sobbed in a cracked voice. Strands of wild, melted crimson hair were plastered against her shiny face, and the wounds on her shoulders were now open and bleeding again. Fallen ash and shrapnel mixed into the deep gashes and bubbling blood, making the cuts sting. That all didn't matter to Kim though.
Shego couldn't hear Kim. She couldn't hear anything except for the endless ringing in her head.
Lucifer, now-calm and back to his affectionate and gentle self, mewed and hid behind Kim. The teen hero dared not hide.
She was done hiding.
Kim stepped closer towards Shego and was immediately being warned away by the burning pricks of green flames. She never listened to warnings, so she inhaled sharply as another step took her to where she was only a foot away from Shego's standing, blazing form.
Powerful waves of heat rolled around Kim's petite body, absorbing and evaporating the sweat that responded. The white around her olive eyes almost matched the color of her tousled crimson mane, and the slots on her dry, cracked lips were starting to tear more.
The older woman looked at Kim blankly, her white eyes giving away nothing as plasma swirled around the two girls.
"Shego! I know you're still in there, fight it!" Kim whispered, her voice determined and desperate.
Shego only continued to stare with those blank, dead eyes.
Kim reached out and took Shego's ablaze, limp hand. She wanted to step closer and pull the older woman into a hug, but the teen knew that if she got any nearer, she would burn to death. Her skin was already feeling like it was being sliced off.
She gave a gentle squeeze even though the green fire dancing around the villainess's unresponsive fingers was starting to melt Kim's glove. The redhead tried to ignore the multiple burns her body, especially her hands, was receiving.
"You weren't kidding when you said we'd be jumping right back into a hellhole," Kim gave a weak half-laugh and then smiled a tiny bit. "But truth be told, there's no one else I'd rather dive head-first in with than you."
Shego blinked, and Kim felt a tiny spark of hope from a reaction that was so minimal, she didn't even realize the super-powered woman hadn't blinked in minutes.
"Okay, I'm trying to do that thing in the movies where they try and bring a person back from talking. I see what you mean with me being cliché today," Kim made a sound that she hoped passed for a chuckle.
"No shit. I'm gonna… add cliché to my list of insults for you," Shego croaked in a low tone.
Her fingers intertwined with Kim's as she finally squeezed the teen's hand back.
"Stop insulting me, this is serious- oh my god, SHEGO?! You can hear me?!" Kim was taken aback. She didn't expect the villainess to give any response to her futile attempts to get through to her head.
"I-I think so," Shego stammered and swayed, her tired, icy white eyes regaining their lush forest-y color. She blinked furiously as her moving pupils tried to focus on the petite figure in front of her. "Kim?"
"That's me," Kim confirmed with a small smile, overjoyed that Shego was returning to herself again.
The heat clinging onto their forms dissolved as the villainess found control of her powers, and her body fought to clean itself of any other traces of radiation. Her arms extinguished, revealing patches of peeling pale skin.
Despite the fire still raging around them, her body felt numb and cold as she crumpled to the ground. She hadn't let go of Kim's hand, so the teen was dragged to the concrete ground with her. Kim grunted from the rough impact but knelt in front of the older woman.
Shego let go, sunk to her knees, and stared at her trembling hands with dull, emerald eyes. A few seconds ago, she appeared almost demon-like as she harnessed power beyond human comprehension, but now, as she shivered in front of Kim as if she had a fever, she only looked like a small, scared child.
"Jesus fucking Christ. I'm a monster…" Shego whispered.
She remembered how trapped she felt in her own body as her powers practically consumed her very being. She could only watch helplessly behind bars as she almost destroyed the one person she had grown to admittedly care about. She couldn't even see Kim through her downward spiral into what she was sure was insanity.
Kim blinked, feeling a slight twinge of déjà vu since she had uttered those exact same words to Shego when she had broken down apologizing. She reached out to take the distraught villainess's hand again, but she flinched away. The younger woman took that as a sign that Shego didn't want any physical comfort right now.
"I consider you a lot of things," Kim started gently as she retracted her hand. "A warrior, a determined, independent woman who doesn't take shit from anyone, the strongest person I've ever met, but not, never, a monster."
Shego looked up at Kim and took in the burns, cuts, and gashes donning her slim body. She noticed the ripped clothing and charred gloves, revealing bright red skin underneath. The teen's face was slightly swollen and flushed, almost resembling a tomato whose outer skin was peeling off.
She glanced behind the girl at Lucifer, whose orange pelt now appeared a dark gray due to ash and smoked fur. He looked at Shego warily as he shook his head and whined, trying to clear his own head from the alarming radiation. Bits of shrapnel and glass littered his musty pelt.
Shego then scanned the destroyed room and surprisingly softened her expression as her gaze landed on Kim. She looked almost ashamed like she was pleading for the teen to tell her that she wasn't the cause of all the destruction and Kim and Lucifer's wounds. The villainess loved causing chaos and mayhem, but no, not like this. "Did I… burn you?"
Kim glanced at her red hands where blood had started to deep out of the peeling skin. Her charred mission gloves were barely hanging by a thread on her blistered wrist. She quickly hid them behind her back, even though Shego had already seen the damage she'd caused to the younger woman.
"It's no big," Kim gave her best nonchalant shrug despite her slashed and injured shoulders screaming for her to stop the minimal action.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Kimmie. I really didn't. I couldn't control my powers or what I was doing. I couldn't even control myself. I could hear you, but it was like I was trapped inside my own body. There was something in me that made me almost lose myself. I-" Shego stammered anxiously.
"Hey, it's okay," Kim cut her off. "You don't need to explain yourself. I already know you weren't really yourself back there."
Shego nodded. "Doy. You sure you're okay?"
"Shego, I'm fine. It's not like you haven't burned me in any of our fights before."
"Not on purpose, though. I just wanted to scare the shit out of you, to be honest. If you ever got any burns, they were always on accident," Shego said defensively.
"And so was this," Kim countered and gestured around the demolished cell. "This isn't your fault, so stop thinking it is. We can worry about injuries later. Because right now, we've got to worry about changing Lucifer back."
Shego nodded, wiping away the mixture of blood and sweat dripping down her cut forehead. "Out of all the crazy things that happened, I never thought in all my life that I'd feel less like shit thanks to Kim Possible."
Kim grinned and helped Shego to her feet as the fire died around them, making it safe to move around. "Well, anything's possible for a Possible." She then bit her cracked lip and hesitated. "I've never seen you get burned by your own plasma before. Are you feeling… better?" She made sure to choose the word carefully. She really wanted to ask if Shego was 'all there' in her head.
"I feel like fucking garbage right now, but if you're wondering if I'm going to spontaneously combust into some demon creation from hell, I feel a whole lot more stable now so no, not likely," Shego reassured with a shaky cough.
"I'm more worried about you than your plasma powers," Kim murmured.
"Don't be, I'll survive," Shego said firmly.
The cell room, or what was left of it, was fairly dark except for the stubborn green flames that have yet to be put out. They didn't seem to be spreading or hurting Lucifer, and they illuminated the place, so neither girl rushed to put out the small, sporadic fires. Their vision was washed with a dark green overlay due to this.
Shego ran a hand through her tangled raven hair, but she stopped midway as a realization dawned on her. She peered into the darkness behind the fallen glass barrier to see that DNAmy was no longer standing there.
"Hold up, where'd that silly bitch go? I'm gonna break both of her legs and then eat her fucking kneecaps for this little stunt she tried to pull," Shego stomped over the shards of glass. From her enraged expression and balled up fists, she looked ready to beat the life out of someone and coldly enjoy every second of it.
DNAmy laid passed out a few feet away from the desk. Her lab coat was completely shredded and blackened from what Shego assumed was her massive plasma blast that exploded the room. Her chubby arm was twisted at a weird angle as it still clutched her snapped clipboard. It was probably broken. A thin pool of blood lapped the edges of her round body, staining her torn lab coat. The slight rise and fall of her chest signaled that she wasn't dead, only unconscious.
Kim swiftly leaped over the hunk of metal that used to be a door to see Shego holding DNAmy's limp body by her throat. The black-haired woman's glasses were broken and hanging off one ear, and she had dropped her clipboard. Shego's right arm was raised as if she were winding up for a punch, and her left hand clenched the geneticist's neck tightly, preparing to choke her.
The enraged villainess gave an animalistic snarl. It only took less than a second for Kim to suddenly realize that when Shego said she was going to kill DNAmy for what she did to her, she wasn't being sarcastic.
"SHEGO! DON'T!" Kim exclaimed. She stumbled forward so that she was standing a few feet away and Shego could look directly at her. "You can't kill her!"
"Yes, I can. I could snap her neck right now like the boneless chicken she is," Shego growled, still staring straight into DNAmy's half-closed eyes.
"Okay, you shouldn't kill her."
"And why the fuck not? She tried to kill me! You! Us!" Shego argued heatedly. She was even offended that Kim was trying to save the twisted geneticist who treated her like a lab rat.
"Because you're not a killer. You've got honor, unlike the other villains."
"Don't you remember what she did to me? Don't you remember what she tried to do? Hell, you don't even know half the shit she put me through, Kim!" Shego said in a pained voice, at last deigning to look at the tense teen. Her squinted eyes glinted from the horrific memories replaying in her mind.
"I know I don't know. I'll never truly understand what you went through. But revenge isn't worth your innocence, no matter how horrible the things she did to you were," Kim reasoned, her voice calm.
"Are you out of your little teenage mind? You're seriously taking her fucking side right now?!" Shego nearly screeched. She just couldn't believe what she was hearing. Maybe she really wasn't all there in her head yet.
"There are no 'sides,' Shego," Kim stated. "A woman whom I'd admire so much once told me that the world isn't divided into sides, black or white, good or bad, whatever, but instead a gray area," Kim took another step forward. "This is the gray area."
That seemed to get to Shego and she hesitated, her clenched fist shaking just inches away from DNAmy's slumped-over head. Fire danced in her eyes as she looked at the geneticist with utter hatred.
"Don't do what I did. Don't let your anger control you and make you do something you'll regret for the rest of your life. You don't want to live the rest of your life with blood on your fingers, knowing you killed someone - Trust me, you don't know how horrible it felt when I thought I killed you," Kim urged quietly, swallowing hard.
"B-but she-"
"Shego, you're better than that. You're better than her."
Shego looked at Kim for a long moment before finally sighing and dropping DNAmy as if she were a trash bag.
"Hey, I didn't say you shouldn't give her a well-deserved kick or two," Kim said.
The villainess grinned and pivoted her foot into DNAmy's side, earning a very loud crack. Before she could deliver another blow, Kim stopped her, not from the fear that Shego would injure the middle-aged woman further, but from a bright orange light growing at the end of the dark hallway.
A tied-up Cheshire seemed to notice too, and he craned his head to look. Lucifer had also poked his head out of the demolished wall to peer into the darkness.
As the light became more evident, and the underground facility was washed with dangerously warm hues, Kim finally started to smell smoke.
Shego was the first to react. She facepalmed. "… Fuck my life."
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Your feedback helps keep the story going! :)
Author's notes: Y'all, me and my friends made a Discord server for KiGo fans! If you want to be invited, send me a DM and I'll give you the link to join!
Guys there's only 1 more chapter left in this arc, I'm getting weirdly emotional ;0;;;;;;;;