Kim surveyed the scene through light enhancing glasses. The light enhancement in itself wasn't particularly useful - the automatic adjustment meant it didn't actually do that much to the morning haze, but the IR overlay told her more than she needed to know. The place was crawling with synthetic versions of herself.

"I have an approach plan." she announced quietly.

"Below the ridge and through the front door?" It was still a question, but Len asked it as though it was rhetorical.

Kim nodded. "That's your route. I'm taking the roof."

They crept forward, and around to the base of the steep ridge. They continued along the base of the ridge unnoticed, but had to stop when they came to where they had to switch to a ridge on the other side. A synthetic Kim was standing exactly where they wanted to be.

"Let's see, what else is there?" Kim started to look around.

"It's the only way through." stated Len. His hand disappeared into his robe, and a moment later the synth fell to the ground dead, a throwing knife lodged in the back of her sternum.

"Do you have to do that?" asked Kim before they started to move on around the edge of the natural court. They hadn't moved far, though, before a collection of Kim synths appeared suddenly around every conceivable nook in the landscape.

Len drew his sword, just before a mass of green fire was launched at them. They danced around the missiles, Len deflecting those that came too close, or his sword apparently absorbing their energy.
Finally they reached cover in the form of the space between some rocks and a moat, and only one synth in the way. Len thrust his now green-glowing sword into her chest, and she fell into the moat, spewing green fire out of her mouth.

"'ve never seen that before," Len offered to the falling body. Kim, outside of his vision, grabbed onto her chest before falling to the ground. When he dropped to the ground next to her, she was rubbing her temples.
She didn't let on, but every time one of the synths was injured, she felt it slightly, and she wasn't just imagining it. It was real physical pain.

"There's something about the way they reacted to what you did," she said, looking down to the ground, "it's almost like..."

The two looked at each other, both narrowing their eyes. "Hive mind." they said in Unison. Then Kim picked up her phone, which had just started to vibrate in her pocket.

"Go Wade.
"Hive mind? Really?
"Sorry; We just worked that out for ourselves. It's no big."
She turned to Len. "Most metal melts or burns when exposed to that." She stated, but there was a silent question attached to it.

"That would be implying this is an ordinary blade," replied Len, "I'd have thought you'd know better than that."

Kim opened her mouth to speak, but heard footsteps approaching. Instead she whispered into Len's ear, "Draw for me?"

He nodded. "Get to the roof."

With that, he spun up out of the cover, and thrust a long dagger into and out of the sternum of the synth that was now on top of them, and followed this up by removing her partner's head with his sword. Moving along the edge of the moat, he ducked up and down, cutting and weaving, and occasionally throwing a knife at a slightly more distant synth. His finale consisted of a high back-flip over a synth on the footbridge at the lair's gate, who turned and caught his sword just in time, but failed to stop him from twisting her over behind him and forcing the again glowing sword through her neck, all the time entertaining the idea that hopefully Kim was tougher to fight than these abominations. This one expulged the green fire on to the bridge, and Da Hand was lucky to swoop into the shadows inside the lair in time. It provided for quite a distraction, and none of the synths noticed original Kim swinging across the moat and up the side of the building on to the roof.


Ron woke up with heavy arms. Looking up, he saw that this was because he was hanging from his hands, that were cuffed to a wall, along with his feet below him.

"So, what do we do now?" Ron look to his left to see Josh Mankey, frustrated, also cuffed to the wall.

"Well, normally at this point, Kim would point out to Rufus which button to press to release us."

"And?" Josh was still more anticipatory than angry with Ron.

"And regrettably, in my rush to fall into a trap, I left the little guy at home."

"Great."

Ron diverted his attention from Josh to the female figures that were guarding them. "Hey, Kim," he started, "What's up?"

"Forget it, Ron. I already tried. They don't seem to be anything like Kim mentally. They look pretty hot in those suits, though...."

Ron looked the nearest one up and down, and whistled. Indeed, in the dark green and black jumpsuits that Shego had assigned them, the synthetic Kims did look pretty hot. "You'll never get her to dress up like that, man," Ron said, turning to him, "not in a million years."

Ron's head snapped back to the Kim synths as one fell to the floor. A short knife was planted neatly in her chest. The synth was clearly dead. The other one that was standing swivelled around, and was rewarded by a curved blade striking her in the side of the neck. She fell gracefully to the floor, also dead.

"Where are you, little fighter man?" the third one put a device down on the desk next to her, but didn't yet stand. "You can't be by the entrance, or by the basement door, because those are where the knives came from. So, that way!" Now she jumped to her feet, and taking a defensive stance to the remaining quadrant that was not taken by a wall with two prisoners attached to it, prepared for any attack from that direction.

Instead she was assaulted from above by an aggravated cheerleader. "I believe that's mine." Kim said, removing the Kimmunicator from the desk before departing skywards. Kim somersaulted off her bungee line, and landed lightly in front of a control panel on the desk. For some reason, the bungee line broke near the top, causing a synth that had started to slide down the rope behind Kim to instead descend at speed to her doom. As she fell, Kim didn't move, studying the array of controls on the desk carefully.
The synth, realising her impending death, determined to take Kim out with her. She flared up along her whole body. Just before she landed, Kim, apparently coming to a decision, stepped forward out of harm's way to release the two boys. A chair broke the synth's fall, but also, audibly, her neck. The fallen synth, the chair, and the now-coming-to synth next to the chair, were all consumed in a green hell.

"Thanks, KP!" Ron exclaimed as she turned around, and he and Josh dropped to the floor from their bindings. Neither had seen her collapse after the two synths burned. It seemed to her that because they were closer to her, the pain was worse. Plus two of them had died in an excruciatingly painful way. Josh walked up to embrace Kim, but she pushed her hand against his chest, and her head was tilted to one side.

"Sometimes she needs to set a plan just after escaping," offered Ron to the confused Josh, but in truth he couldn't say he'd seen Kim do this before.

She let her hand down and back-flipped over the desk, and didn't stop moving around in a fast leg sweep until a synthetic version of herself was that had been approaching from behind was on the ground. She then dropped her knee, her full weight behind it, into the synth's back. The crunch was sickening. The synth wasn't dead, though, only broken. Kim didn't kill as a rule. Besides, the pain that writhed through her own back was bad enough.

"Come on, let's get out of here," she motioned to the boys. Ron followed quickly and relatively athletically over the desk, but Josh had to pause and clamber over it. It wasn't actually that he was physically unfit, Kim told herself, but he hasn't done it often enough yet to have the confidence.

The three of them scurried across the floor to where Da Hand was waiting by the exit, sword at ready. They entered the hallway, only to see more than a dozen synths ready for them.

"You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you, Princess?" Behind them, Shego's voice was disturbingly calm, and her speech carefully executed. Len keep a careful eye on the synths in the hall, but the three teenagers turned to see more synthetic Kims on the main floor, and yet more on the upper level. Shego herself, standing between Drakken and DNAmy, didn't move a muscle.

"How many Kims are there?!" exclaimed Ron.

Da Hand shook his head. "We can't get out of this one easily. We're going to have to fight." He paused for a moment, then looked directly at Kim. "We're going to have to kill."

It was Kim's turn to shake her head. "The good guys never kill," she said, "and I certainly won't".

Da Hand sighed. "This is more complicated than Good versus Evil, Miss Possible. In a way, it always has been, but you refused to accept that. Somehow, you got away with it.
"You have to fight evil with evil, sometimes." Len started, drawing a small sword from in his robe, and handing it to Josh hilt first. "Often, evil can look like good, and vice versa." he continued, offering a slightly longer, but lighter sword to Kim, whom he knew had the agility to handle its tricky blade. She frowned, but accepted the sword anyway. "Sometimes, you have to weigh between a lesser and greater evil.
"Now is one of those times. Trust me, we all of us need to survive this." And he gripped his own Claymore with both hands.

"Hey, don't I get a weapon?!"

Len blinked at Ron. "You have your own sword." he stated, and his eyes widened; "Behind you!" he exclaimed in an urgent tone, before turning back to his own task, the Kim synths heading down the entrance hall towards them.

Ron turned sharply, and his arms, of their own accord, formed into position to catch something. There was a sudden sensation of movement and Ron's body swung through without him. He was rather surprised when all four of the synth Kims that were attacking him were struck down at his hand. He looked down to see the Lotus Blade shining golden in his hands.

"Somebody stop me!" he turned, grinning, but seeing Kim's scowl his whacked sense of humour immediately faded.

The four of them fought, the boys and Len more enthusiastically. Even thrust, every strike against the synths, Kim winced in pain. She didn't see, but Shego, above them, also writhed, albeit less so. Dr. Drakken and DNAmy were the only ones to notice Shego's flinching. Amy looked thoughtfully at Shego, and then shrugged, wandering off. Drakken was more concerned with it, but any pain of others seemed like good pain to him by now, and he had to stop himself smiling at her pain.

The four fighters were not making fast progress, but they were out-fighting the seemingly weak synths. Every one of the synths visibly flinched whenever one of them was killed, and while the three male fighters noted this of the synths, still none of them saw Kim's pain. There came a point where the three of them were each immediately only facing one synth - which both sides knew handed advantage to the swordsmen. Seemingly in unison, they thrust their blades through the sternum of their respective opponents.

Kim's shriek of pain entirely masked Shego's own whimper from above. She collapsed to the ground, dropping her sword and her body moved in throes on the ground. Pure and synth alike were distracted, and both sides looked to her writhing form. The synths, however, were not distracted long. Lacking in, but not devoid of individual conscience, they tolerated the pain better, and before she had stopped moving, they attacked. Two on each man's back, the remainder piled on top of Kim, tearing at her.

Two people trying to gain killing space on one man's back doesn't generally work out well. Ron elbowed one of those on his back in the gut, which sent the other off and into his sword. The torque on his body spun him over whether he wanted it to or not, and he used this to his advantage, wiping his assailants off on the floor. Len took a much more direct approach, and both his attackers fell to the ground with slits in their throats. Josh was facing away from a close wall, and all he had to do was accelerate into it. Both synths dropped off and he only had to turn around, his sword at ready, and they were beheaded.
None of them knew that these actions caused Kim to fall into a deep trance.

The pain was excruciating. No longer just the physical pain of her genetic inheritees' wounds and death, but the pain of a million disconnected thoughts pounding through her head. It must have been because she was so physically close to them. She saw and felt herself falling into her best friend's sword, her lover cutting through her neck, twice at once, and the mysterious man who might be neither a friend nor stranger stabbing her in the heart. Those images weren't what pained her though. One chain of thought smacked hard into the very paradigm of her existence. Her Genius, her guiding spirit, shattered, She was free to see. The synthetic beings she loathed were torn between good and evil; They didn't know which they were, or how to be either. They were controlled entirely by others, and killed because otherwise they would die. That was how it was, and it now made a chilling sense.

Another mind had a presence here too. It disturbed her that she could perceive that it felt the same way as the drones, but had a tinge of hope in self-direction on top of it. Its trust in hope was almost completely gone, though there was something there that called, seemingly crying for help.

Wandering back to the synth's thoughts, there was an air of death about them. Their soulless existence didn't want to be alive. All she could do was pity them. There was a power building up through them, too. Yes, something that could be used. She drank of the power, and a recently departed memory came back to her. She had a being. She had a name. She was Kim!

The pile of synths flew from Kim's body. Eyes closed, growling softly, she rose to her feet. She opened her eyes, and they burned with a green flame. Kim screamed again, but this time, it was not a shriek of pain. It was the Primal scream. Death. There was no Good, no Evil, just purpose. The synths, too, screamed a welcome to their own death. They burned away in a green and red flame. Kim closed her eyes again, and when they slowly opened, her eyes were still aflame, but they were human.

She felt the tortured soul she'd found drift to the ground behind her. She turned to see Shego rise to meet her eyes. They both took defensive stances, Shego's hands aflame, Kim as determined as ever. Their steely eyes could have destroyed worlds.