Leonard James Da Hand, Global Justice agent, stood watching carefully, awaiting his partner's signal. He and Erwin had been placed together in action again for the first after the incident on their competence exam 3 months ago. Both had excelled in this time, and neither was considered by anyone to be a 'rookie'.

"Position." It was Bett, over the radio.

Len shouldered his rocket launcher, and stepped out around the rock he was using as cover so that he could operate it. He knelt down to brace against the recoil, and fired an intentionally 'defective' rocket at the target's decoy, an ex-military warship. It left a conspicuous smoke trail in the air, just as designed. Len waited a few seconds, but apart from the rocket hitting its target and exploding, nothing happened. He fired off the remaining two, and then started to run along the seaside cliff.

"What are you doing, Jimmy?" asked Bett.

"Either they're incredibly stupid, or they know we're on to them," he replied. "I'm trying to convince them we're not. Stay alert, Beth."

"I've got something. It's tracking. They're on you!"

"Good," was Len's only response before the tracking cannon that Bett had identified proved to be the actual target, opening fire on what they believed to be the enemy — although they were at least one step behind the two GJ field operatives.

"Contact! Get out of there!" Bett screamed into the radio, aiming her own weapon onto the stationary source – a small passenger boat on which she'd have sworn it was impossible to make a chain-loading weapon look inconspicuous on. Yet, all she could do was gasp as automatic cannon fire obliterated the ground where her partner stood.

"What are you waiting for?" asked a familiar voice from right next to her, before exclaiming "Stop!" as she fired a cluster of mortar shells into the air. Len sunk down to his knees.

"Is something wrong?" Bett asked, knowing full well that there had to be.

"There's civilians on that boat," was the mumbled reply, "some are children."

Bett's eyes widened in alarm as Len collapsed to the floor. She noticed a blue glow out to sea, and looked back just in time to see 2 of the 5 shells explode mid air, a blue corona around them. The remaining 3 still did their job effectively though, as the entire boat erupted in a string of explosions, leaving a burning slick on the surface of the water. Bett looked back and saw that Len would not be stirring soon.

"The collateral report was 47 civilians killed, and 21 of those were children. He blamed himself for it, although no-one else did," explained Dr. Director, lowering her voice as she said it. "We were pretty much on every mission together from then on. I could see it every time something went wrong, even the slightest thing. He'd break a little. I asked him about it once; he said it was nothing. Fool me, I believed him."

Dr. Director told of more events in detail as everyone listened. There were failed hostage retrievals, one of which had ended in everyone being killed except for the two, of three, GJ agents. There was a transport interception mission where entirely the wrong vehicle had been not only stopped but destroyed, lacking the armour of the intended target, and the result had been a dead family of seven. A mistargeted anti-terrorist mission had, admittedly, entirely destroyed one terrorist organisation, but the one they should have been getting at had a chance to kill 60 more people because of it — because when GJ knocked on their door with an arsenal of heavy explosives, they found out that the civilians has been volunteered to house sit while they relocated to another country.

"So, the two of you killed more innocent people than bad guys, or even stopped? That's just great," said Kim, lifting her head from Ron's shoulder. She narrowed her eyes. "What does this have to do with what you said?"

"Well, I must point out that most of these were mistakes that we couldn't have avoided personally without blowing a lot of smoke up the board's arse. But the point is, Len always took it personally. Then he stopped seeing it as good guys vs. bad guys."

"Yeah, we know that bit already. Get to the point."

"5 and a half years ago, he quit Global Justice rather dramatically. I guess that he had a nervous breakdown, but reacted to it differently from most people. He reacted to most everything differently from other people.

"We were assigned a mission to infiltrate and destroy a terrorist group. As he'd been doing for a while then, he did his own research beyond the bounds of what was needed, right into the motives behind the people who's called for GJ's help. In the end, he refused the mission, and another group was assigned. He was placed in house detention – whatever they thought that would do – and I started reconditioning with a new partner. The group that was sent on the mission were successful.

"About a week later, an entire city was destroyed leaving thousands dead. Turns out that if the group that we were to infiltrate had been allowed to continue with their plans that number would have been about thirty. The same thirty that were found dead a few days later in one room, either stabbed or decapitated. There was a note there, it said 'See what happens when you don't look far enough?' and was signed by Da Hand. I haven't seen him since the day before he broke out of GJ's holding cells. No one saw or could determine how he managed it – the only damage to his cell was a burn mark on one wall."

Right then, Josh stepped into the kitchen. He was clean and dry, although he did look somewhat strange wearing some of the spare clothes that Kim kept in her wardrobe for those occasions when Ron and she came back from a mission and Ron needed some clothes that weren't ripped, stained with blood, and smelling of sewer-water before being caught by his parents sneaking into his house at 3am. He walked over to Kim, and leaning down, he kissed her on the forehead.

"Is it alright if I go home?" he asked her, "I'm not used to this stuff, I'm tired, and, well" – he looked at Ron – "I'm not sure I have a place here, right now"

Kim actually looked for confirmation from Ron, who just shrugged, before replying. "Sure, if you don't think you can deal with this. We're not going to push you to do something you don't want to."

Josh kissed her again and left the room. Until the clicks and squeaks of the front door opening and closing, there was no sound beside his footsteps down the hall. The table turned their head to every footstep, and they simply stared through the wall at the door after it was closed. Then Shego shrugged and got back to filing her nails, Ron turned back and glared at Shego, and Dr. Director drew her breath, waiting for the question to be asked a third time.

Kim turned to face Dr. Director, her eyes even narrower than before, her temper flaring inside her. "Your point," she growled. "Are you asserting that I am going to start killing random people to get my job done?"

"Whoa, calm down there, Princess," interjected Shego before Dr. Director could respond, "she gets a bit edgy when you start to get angry with her."

Dr. Director closed her eyes and exhaled. "You're reacting to it in a different way than him, but I can see that something similar is now happening to your psyche," she said to Kim. "I hope you can handle it, but we'll be checking up on you every so often, just in case." She took a file folder from her satchel, and placed it on the desk. She opened it to a page titled "Kimberly Ann Possible" and put a check mark next to something that neither Kim nor Ron could read upside down and from that far away.

"Run a psychological profile on Kim Possible? Good luck," Shego smirked.

Dr. Director snarled and rolled her eyes, resting them on Shego. "There's a chance that she might come out of it the same way as Da Hand did. We don't want that to happen."

"You don't want her to disappear from public view, helping out non-government crime fighters and trying to fix up the world the way she sees it being destroyed? Or you don't want her to stop doing GJ's dirty work on occasion? Oh yeah, I've seen your fallout that's on her government file. Did you do that to your boyfriend, too?"

"Enough!" yelled Dr. Director, standing up quickly. She aimed her weapon at Shego's head. "You're going down, right here, right now!"

Shego simply ignited the hand she was filing the nails of. "Try it," she started, but Kim did something more astonishing.

"Put the gun down," she commanded, standing up. "One thing I've learned about Shego, is that if she says that much, she means what she's saying. She doesn't open her mouth without thinking about it first."

"Hold up! Kim Possible, the Kim Possible, is threatening someone? With a gun?" asked Shego – and indeed, Dr. Director turned her head to find herself looking down the barrel of the Beretta. "The head of a government sanctioned 'justice' agency, and everything," Shego continued. "Let me get the popcorn!"

Kim glared at Shego before repeating, "put the gun down, Betty. Then I'd like you to explain your… accusations, or leave."

"Kim," Ron whispered, just loud enough for her to hear.

"Not a word," she warned.

"But–"

"Uh-uh," Kim chided.

"Right, not a word. Got it."

"You're not going to use that," stated Dr. Director.

"How confident are you about that? You have 10 seconds to work it out."

Dr. Director closed her eyes, and put the plasma gun on the table. Then she reached for the folder.

"Leave them," growled Kim, reaching for the papers herself with her free hand.

"If you touch them," warned Dr. Director, "you void your government protection. Future and past. They'll come here with the largest force they can, and you'll be in prison until you're dead, and that's if you're lucky. 220 or so criminal violations, Kim. That's a big number. And that's only what they have written down."

"Fine, whatever!" sighed Kim. "Take your damn files. Just go."

Dr. Director picked up the files and did so. "Don't come crying to me when you get yourself killed," were her final words as she closed the front door.

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen," retorted Kim.

"I'm impressed," remarked Shego. Looking at the gun in Kim's hand, "and disturbed. Picking up a gun a threatening someone with it wasn't something I'd expect you to do in a million years."

"Me neither," replied Kim, shuddering and setting the gun down on the table. "I figured the only time I'd ever pick up a real gun and point it at a person, it's be because Ron or someone needed that person to have a bullet in them right then. I expected it to be someone like you!"

"That makes three of us," said Ron. "You had me worried there, KP."

"What about geek boy?" laughed. Then the Holo-Wade snored briefly.

Kim squeaked, and looked at the Holo-Wade. Wade was snoring – he still wasn't adept to getting up at 3am. She let out a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness he didn't see that," she said. Then she turned back to Shego. "You seem to know more about Da Hand since he left GJ than Dr. Director wanted to admit?"

"Sorry, Princess," replied Shego, "I've told about all I know."

At this point, the phone's ring pierced the air. They'd been speaking with no background noise for the last 2 hours, so it was several decibels above their conversation levels, and made the three of them jump.

"Possible Residence," Kim answered in a bright tone.

"Everything's fine, mom," she lied to the phone. "How are things at the Lazy C? … That's good. Monday? I'll survive without you.&hellip I can look after myself, mom. Love you too, mom! Bye!" She sighed in relief as she hung up.

"Didn't you promise you'd never lie again, Kimmie?" asked Shego sarcastically.

"Don't you start,"Kim replied bluntly.

"I'm gonna go get cleaned up," said Ron, making for the stairs. "I hope I can trust you two not to kill each other.…"


I haven't updated in too long. The curse of the thirteenth chapter lives on. Actually, I didn't so much run out of plot ideas as hit a bottleneck in them coming through, and while I was trying to work out exactly what to put in this chapter, which was the only thing I didn't have any of the details for, I was hit by a rather nasty stomach bug. Add to that the fact that has been too busy every time I've tried to do anything with it, and you have a recipe for inactivity. I should logically have the story finished by now according to my plan, but it just wasn't gonna happen. Heck, I didn't even get more than one chapter finished in this time. 2091 words though, so it's not too bad! :D

I know that the story is getting harder to read at this point. Sorry. If it's any consolation, it's getting harder to write, as well. That's what happens when you start to insert lots of dialogue.

I realise that Kim is stepping further and further out of character, but this story is largely about change. There's some big ones still coming, and I guarantee you're not going to like at least one of them ;) In fact, you're probably going to hate it.

Next chapter: [Insert random plot deviation here]. I think we need some comic relief here. As such, I'm considering trying to get a ghost writer for the next chapter – I'm all out of plausible comic relief that fits this story. Email me if you're interested (if you want to, send your ideas and/or chapter if you're confident), and we'll see what happens. If I don't have any responses within 2 or 3 days (Seems harsh seeing as how I haven't updated in nearly a month, but it's because I really want to get this moving along again), I'll just put a super-sarcasm contest between Kim and Shego in or something.… Or, maybe you'd like a Ron Stoppable Shower scene ;) evil laughing