"Shego!" Dr. Drakken pounded on the door to his laboratory in vain. The door in question had become wedged shut in a sudden, and quite unexpected, earthquake, which had hit only a few minutes before.

"Shego!" his voice took on a whiny quality as the door remained shut. "Get me out of here!" When he received no reply, he slid to the floor, pouting. The ceiling had partially collapsed in the quake, crushing his computers and destroying his latest plans to take over the world and destroy Kim Possible. As he sat on the floor, dejected, his lower lip began to tremble. How was he going to take over the world if he was trapped in this lab?

"You bellowed?" he looked up to see Shego's face framed by a hole in the ceiling. As he watched she melted the rock surrounding her, widening the hole so that she could drop down into the chamber.

"It's about time!" Shego ignored him, brushing dust and debris off of her clothes and checking her hands for broken nails. "I mean, REALLY, where have you been?!" he continued to rant as she combed her fingers through her hair, dislodging some pieces of rubble. Finally, satisfied that she looked, in her opinion, as stunning as ever, she turned to glare at Drakken.

"Yeah, well, you know my favorite soap was on and I wanted to see if Joe and Gloria would...where do you THINK I've been?!" Her hand began glowing green, and Drakken backed away nervously. "In case it escaped your immeasurable intellect, we JUST experienced an EARTHQUAKE!! I kinda had to dig myself out before I could get to you, now, didn't I? I don't know why I didn't just leave you in here. HONESTLY." She turned, her ire forgotten for the moment, as she surveyed the damage done to the lab.

"Um... Shego..." She turned back, raising an eyebrow in a gesture that clearly stated "do you REALLY want to be talking to me right now?" Drakken fell silent and she returned to her perusal.

"Well...I guess THAT scheme won't be working now," she grinned, adding under her breath, "not that it would have before the quake anyway." The room trembled with the force of an aftershock, and Drakken whimpered, looking around at the walls, afraid they would come tumbling down on them.

"Oh, come on!" Shego grabbed Drakken and shoved him through the opening she had made earlier in the ceiling. She leapt up after him, narrowly avoiding another shower of falling rocks. After a few minutes of slow, painful crawling on hands and knees through the treacherous building, the duo emerged to find the outside world looking little better than the interior of the collapsed edifice they had just exited. The sky was dark, with angry clouds churning close to the ground. Trees and buildings were in various degrees of disarray, and lightning flashed nearby.

"O-k. Looks like we're not too much better off out here." Shego observed.

"Ohh! And my lair! It's ruined! Do you know how much money I'm goingt o lose on the deposit!?" Shego rolled her eyes and started to walk away when something caught her attention. She carefully made her way over to a pile of rubble where she had spotted a flash of silver. Lifting a few pieces of debris off the top, she revealed the hovercraft lying intact, relatively unharmed. A wicked grin lit up her face as she powered it up and activated an interactive touch screen on the console.

"Come on already, Dr. D!" Drakken turned and saw the disk hovering a few feet off the ground. His face lit up, and he scurried over the uneven ground to where Shego waited.

"Yes! Perfect!" While Shego maneuvered the craft up and away from the destruction, Drakken accessed the ship's computer systems. "Aha! I've found the origin of the earthquake....Shego! Take us to these coordinates."

"And I would want to do this...why?" She stopped their momentum and folded her arms across her chest.

"Errr, ahhh...grr! Just do it, ok?! That earthquake was not natural, I tell you. See?" he pointed at some information on the screen. "There aren't any faults or tectonic disturbances anywhere near here! So that means SOMEONE is trying to get rid of me, and I intend to find out who!"

"Paranoid much?" Shego asked, not impressed. "There are other reasons for unexplained natural phenomena than that someone's out to get you." Drakken ignored her. Shego sighed and turned back to the controls, intending to steer them to the coordinates Drakken had provided.

"Umm...are you SURE this is the location of the epicenter of the quake that just hit here?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Drakken snapped, annoyed at how she always had to question his orders and his doomsday plans and his reasons for... "Out of curiosity, why do you ask?" he told himself that he was only pretending interest to let her feel like she was contributing, though he really knew more than she did.

"Oh, no reason really, except that you have us traveling to the OTHER SIDE of the WORLD!!"

"Huh?" Drakken looked down at his screen. "Africa? But...but...but that IS where the quake originated!" Shego snorted derisively.

"Right, sure, uh-huh. Who's ever heard of an earthquake reaching over 6000 miles??"

"I don't know!" he whined, "but that's where it was, see?" Shego glanced down at the information he was presenting. For some reason the area on the map seemed vaguely familiar...

"Hey! Isn't that where Kim Possible and Monkey Fist were teaming up earlier today?" She pointed to a position a few miles of the coast, only thirty miles from the epicenter.

"Hmmmm? Yes...yes it is! I TOLD you the quake was to get rid of me, Shego! Kim Possible must have set it off in order to thwart me in my latest scheme!"

"Yeah...not exactly her style, Dr. D. She's more of the beat 'em and book 'em type, rather than a sneaky murderer." Shego said wryly. "Probably why it's so easy for us to escape and try to take over the world time and time again!" she added under her breath.

"Shego," Drakken began in a patronizing tone, "you obviously have no grasp of how desperate she must be to stop us! She knows that it is only a matter of time before I succeed in taking over the world!!" Shego grimaced, realizing that she wasn't going to be able to win this argument, as Drakken had obviously made up his mind. Taking control of the hovercraft once more, she plotted the course and set the disk in motion.

"Auugh!" Ron Stoppable ducked as an enormous shard of rock flew by his head. He and Kim had left the relative safety of the mole rat colony in order to see if they could salvage their hovercraft and the Kimmunicator, which had fallen from Kim's pocket when the energy blast from the phoenix had struck her.

"Come ON, Ron!" Kim grabbed him by the arm and dragged him after her as they made a mad dash across the savanna. The storm had grown immeasurably worse; the wind nearly blew them off their feet and lightning struck swiftly, creating a nearly inescapable web of energy. Debris flew about their heads, loosened by the lightning strikes and kept aloft by the hurricane force gusts. The earth trembled beneath their feet, churning as if it would either toss them to the wind or split itself open and devour them whole.

"KP!" Ron clutched Kim's arm, trying to get her attention and at the same time attempting not to fall. He pointed at a flash of light a few yards away.

"The Kimmunicator!" Leaning on each other for support, they picked their way across the rubble. Kim reached down, brushing dirt off the device, and examining it for damage. She didn't see any, but a more thorough examination would have to wait, as the storm was intensifying. She glanced around, but couln't see any indication that the vehicle was still intact. Grabbing Ron again, she scrambled back towards the rocks and the safety of the underground tunnels. As they neared the entrance, she spied Blaze waving frantically, and she veered right, just in time to avoid being skewered with a flying tree branch.

"Thanks, Blaze." She sighed as the stones closed around them and the howling of the wind died, the sounds unable to penetrate the thick rock. They hurried back to the main chamber, where an army of mole rats, or Kirrnans, she supposed, were hastening to get their sip in working order so that Kim and Ron could travel to... well, she wasn't sure where. All they had told her was that they needed to find the "birthplace".

"Does it work? Does it? huh?" Ron peered over Kim's shoulder, trying to catch a glimpse of Wade.

"Back off, Ron. I haven't tried it yet." She pressed a button, waited, fiddled with it a little, and pressed the button again. "Drat! It isn't... HEY!" Blaze had jumped from a nearby stone formation and snatched the Kimmunicator from her hands. He started taking it apart, muttering to himself. Kim and Ron watched silently, hoping the little guy could get it to work

"Ta-DAA!" Blaze held up the Kimmunicator. Kim reached for it, just as the screen lit up, revealing Wade's relieved face.

"Kim! You're all right! Where's Ron? What happened?"

"Long story, no time. Here's the short version... evil energy being destroying the world unless Ron can get to somewhere called the "birthplace" and magically conjure up all the Earth's ancient mystic powers." Wade blinked at her, once...twice.

"Um. Ok. I'll get right on that."

"Please and Thank you!" Kim said absently, one of the Kirrnan workers catching her eye and gesturing for them to follow him. He led them through the maze of machinery and into the ship. Kim and Ron had to get back down on their hands and knees, as the ship's corridors were too small to let them walk upright. They entered a larger room, one which had obviously been hastily redesigned to accommodate their larger bodies, which resembled a bridge off of any science fiction show's ship. Their guide indicated that they should sit down, on the floor, unfortunately, since there were no chairs large enough, and proceeded to "debrief" them.

"Start. Stop. Up...Down...Turn." He pointed at each control as he listed them. "Coordinates set. The council summons Shioa... you fix the energy, OK?" Then he scampered out, not waiting for their reply, and the door slid shut behind him. Blaze grinned and hopped up to the controls.

"Ready?" Ron shook his head violently, but Kim and Blaze ignored him as the craft rose into the air. It hovered for a moment, then rocketed skywards.

"Aaaagh! We're gonna crash!" But Ron was mistaken, as the ceiling parted, allowing them to shot out of the ground and into the sky, fast enough to avoid damage from the storm.

"Hey, Wade..." Kim held up the Kimmunicator, waiting for the young man to reappear on screen.

"Yeah?"

"Here are the coordinates we're headed to. Any info?" Wade clicked on another monitor and typed furiously.

"Can't tell you much, just that it is deep in the Amazon. Uncharted territory, so there isn't a lot of information."

"Ok. Thanks." The ship was hovering above the storm, waiting for the command to continue to its destination. Kim reached up to press the button, but hesitated as she noticed something out the viewport. "Drakken and Shego?" she shrugged, knowing there wasn't time to look into it now. She hit the button and the ship zipped away, disappearing over the horizon.

To be continued...