mattb3671: Nope, I didn't leave anything out. What I was trying to say was that Sensei believed that greatest awaited Kim and Ron as a team, not as individuals.

continental-line: Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bill.

MatthewC: I hadn't thought about the aura thing, but it makes sense in hindsight. As to humor, I can work in a comic moment now and then, but the funny stuff isn't really my strong suit. I'll see what I can do in the future, though.

MrDrP: Yeah, the MF confront, like Kim's fall into the canyon, was something I wanted to show, but it wasn't the main point of the chapter. Glad you liked the ending.

Visigoth29527: Shego's thoughts in this chapter should please you.

Thanks to: Bobboky, noveler00, scottgrubb, Classic Cowboy/daywalkr82, demon-sword, GargoyleSama, Triaxx2, The Fourthman, Spyke the Hedgehog, captainkodak1, campy, Cold-Chaos, FAH3, Wanderer3, and bdburns7289

Early September

Kim sat down at a table in the library. In theory she was there to do research for a paper she had to write for Government class, but in practice she was looking through a stack of fashion magazines while doodling in her notebook. She was busily sketching when a shadow moved across the table and a familiar figure deposited itself in the seat opposite her.

"Monique!" Kim exclaimed. Dark-haired, dark-skinned Monique Jenkins grinned toothily at her.

"Hello, fellow senior!" Monique replied by way of greeting.

"Hard to believe, isn't it?" Kim grinned back.

"Oh, I don't know,' Monique said, her voice playfully snooty. "The first day was kinda weird, but I've gotten used to it."

Kim just smiled. Monique had a point. The first time Kim had sat down at the senior table for lunch, she'd felt a bit of excitement, but only a bit. It had been slightly disappointing, in a way, but the senior table had turned out to be just another table. There was nothing at all special about it, and sitting there certainly didn't make the cafeteria food taste any better. Saving the world on a semi-regular basis probably had something to do with it, but more likely it was just a case of the old adage 'you desire that which you cannot have' proving itself.

"Yeah," Kim said aloud, "Though what I like most is not having to put up with Bonnie 'The Bitch' Rockwaller any more." That was nice. Bonnie was attending Upperton Community College, working on raising her GPA before heading off to one of the state universities. The fact that she was now a 'college woman' as opposed to a 'high school girl' had made Bonnie even more unbearably snotty and mean, if the rumors were true, but on the upside, Bonnie hadn't come around Middleton High since the semester started. Kim had seen Bonnie in the mall a few times, but that was it.

"So what are you working on?" Monique changed the subject, leaning forward to look at Kim's notebook.

Kim's cheeks colored slightly, but she turned the book around and flipped a few pages.

"I'm thinking of getting some new mission clothes," Kim explained. "My regular ones get torn up a lot, especially my pants, since they're so loose. I figured I'd take a crack at designing some, but I find that drawing isn't one of my talents."

Monique didn't respond to the last bit, instead focusing her attention on the sketches Kim had made. There were a half dozen of them in various stages of completion. Two of them closely resembled Kim's current mission clothes, except that the pants were skin tight and her top now covered her midriff. The far bigger changes were the colors. Black, brown and olive had given way to red, blue and yellow.

"What's the deal with the primary colors?" Monique asked, looking up at Kim. One of the sketches was red with blue trim, while the other was blue with red trim. Both worked, but the blue one was probably a better choice, since it would go better with Kim's red hair.

"And what's this 'S' on the chest?"

"That's an old family symbol," Kim answered cryptically. Monique raised an eyebrow.

"Possible, or O'Rourke?" she asked.

"El, actually," Kim supplied.

"Elle?" Monique repeated. "How far back and on which side are they?"

"That's a long story, Monique," Kim evaded. "Tell you what, though..." Kim hesitated. "You work tonight?"

Monique nodded. "Four to eight."

"Stop by my place after and I'll give you the full dish, how's that sound?" Kim proposed.

"Ok, I guess I can wait that long," Monique grinned.

"Anyway," Kim moved on, "Since you're here, maybe you could tidy things up a bit, maybe make some improvements?" Monique dreamed of being a fashion designer, and was well on her way, having already won a couple of local design contests.

Monique cocked an eye at Kim. "You want me to make it, too?"

"Well, that might not be possible," Kim answered. At the slight scowl that flickered across Monique's features Kim dug in her backpack and produced a swatch of red cloth. "This is what I'm going to have it, or rather them, made out of," Kim explained. As Monique took the cloth and began to examine it, Kim went on. "It's a super-tough fabric my Dad got from a research facility out East. It's resists tearing, cutting and puncturing; it's fire and acid resistant; it's, well, it's really, really durable. It's also really hard to work with. You need a special machine to cut it, and another machine to join the seams. I could call in some favors to get them out here, if you want to try..."

"Oh, I want to try all right," Monique confirmed excitedly. She was dragging her nails file across the swatch of red cloth, trying to make an impression on it and failing.

"For the technical challenge?" Kim wondered.

"A little," Monique admitted, "But more because I'll be able to brag that the world famous Kim Possible wears Monique Jenkins originals," she finished with an impish grin.

"Oh, so it's an endorsement deal you want," Kim teased. "I was just going to pay you," she sighed.

"You can do that too if you want," Monique giggled. Her face went serious then. "How much does this stuff cost?"

"Five thousand dollars a yard," Kim answered bluntly.

"F-f-fi-five THOUSAND dollars a YARD?" Monique yelped.

"And I'm getting it at cost, too," Kim nodded. "But then, it's still experimental. If and when they start mass producing it the price is sure to come down."

"Well then," Monique said, swallowing, "I'll work out the final pattern in other cloth, then take it apart and use the pieces as the pattern for cutting this stuff."

Kim nodded. Monique was mostly talking to herself. Her plan made good sense though. "I'll tell my Dad to arrange for the cutting and joining machines to be sent to the space center. That'll probably take a few weeks, and you'll have to go there to use them..."

"Not a problem," Monique assured her with a shake of her head. "I'll get started on refining your designs tonight, and maybe cook up a few of my own." Monique flipped to one of the sketches in the middle pages of the ones Kim had been doodling on. The top was a long sleeved cropped shirt like her normal mission clothes, but blue, with the 'S' prominently center-front. Snug red boots that came up to just below the knee contrasted with a blue pleated skirt that reached down only to mid-thigh. Topping the ensemble off was a red cape, of all things.

"What is this?" Monique demanded as Kim's cheeks went red.

"Just a little flight of fancy," Kim blushed.

"Looks like something out of a comic book," Monique snorted. Then, giving Kim a severe look: "No capes!"

Mid September

Shego yawned and stretched. A glance at the clock told her it was nearly midnight.

"I gotta get some sleep," she muttered to herself. Tomorrow was a big day. Dr. Drakken had finally developed a version of Jack Hench's synthodrone technology that satisfied him, and they were going to begin a series of field tests to see if they would measure up to expectations. Shego was too experienced to expect the 'drones to perform flawlessly: that almost never happened the first time out of the gate. Still, the tests they'd run in the lab had been promising. Externally, the drones were indistinguishable from normal humans. They could even be given individual features, though Drakken had seen no need for that yet. All synthodrones were expendable, but these were even more so than usual, so there was no point in wasting the time and effort.

Shego started closing down the terminal she was working at. She'd spent several hours this day studying the puzzle of the DNA they'd recovered from Possible's teeth. It was fascinating stuff, wherever it had come from. Unlike human (and all other earthly life) DNA, which used the same four nucleotides to build its structure, Possible's DNA used six, only two of which resembled Earthly amino acids closely enough to called by the same name. The others were like nothing Shego had ever heard of, let alone seen. And she had seen some weird stuff. Amino acids could be found almost everywhere: in thermal vents in the ocean depths, at the bottom of perpetually frozen Antarctic lakes, even in the rocks miles beneath Earth's crust. They had been found in meteors and comets. The Ares astronauts, midway through their year and a half stay on Mars, had found amino acids in ice caves there, and the Zeus Pathfinder probes, scouting the Galilean moons of Jupiter in advance of the Zeus manned mission, had found amino acids there.

So the notion that Kim's DNA, and by extension Kim herself, wasn't from Earth originally wasn't so hard for Shego to accept. In fact, it was almost a no-brainer given what Kimmie could do. The problem was that the stuff was like a siren song, drawing her and Drakken away from more immediate priorities. Mapping Kim's genome would be worth a Nobel Prize all by itself. Proper research into the structure and mechanics of the molecule itself; discovering how the genes expressed themselves; comparing and contrasting it to human DNA: each would be a life's work, but unfortunately they couldn't spare the time. Nor did they care to farm the work out to henchmen the way they did other projects. By unspoken agreement, the mystery of Kim's DNA belonged to her and Drakken alone.

Shego padded down a hallway in the residential part of the lair, deep in thought. She was headed for her quarters but still turning over the problem of Kim Possible in her mind. If Kim really was an extraterrestrial, then the 'official' story of her birth was a lie. Or was it? The public record said that Kim had been born at a campsite at Lake Middleton when a meteor shower frightened her pregnant mother into labor. Was there a real connection? Had she come along with the meteors? Or perhaps the other way around? If so, could the meteors give a clue as to her point of origin?.

Shego reached her quarters almost without realizing it, opening the door on autopilot, heading for her private computer terminal even as she kicked off her boots and slipped out of her jumpsuit. She knew she really should get right into bed, but she also didn't want to abandon a promising train of thought. It was one of the downsides of being brilliant, she knew. You couldn't just stop thinking, no matter how much you might want or need to.

Fingers alternated between tapping keys and moving the mouse. Drakken maintained an extensive database on Kimmie and her friends and family and was always adding to it. Shego sometimes wondered why Drakken felt it necessary to have Kim's second grade report card, for example, but in general she agreed that there really was no such thing as too much information.

Working quickly Shego set her search parameters: Kim Possible and meteors. In moments the screen came up with a number of entries. Shego skimmed through them quickly. Two caught her eye and she read them carefully. One was an official government report about the meteor shower itself . Apparently the meteors had come in on an usual trajectory, and there hadn't been a lot of them, which led the government scientists who studied the shower to conclude that it had been a one time event involving material from outside the solar system. Interesting.

The second was a paper published by the Princess' very own Daddy, about a 'rocky mineral of meteoric origin'. According to Dr. Possible, the stone had been found at Lake Middleton and was possibly related to the so called 'Great Middleton Meteor Shower'. Inorganic chemistry wasn't Shego's strongest skill set, so she didn't really understand most of the technical aspects of the paper, but that hardly mattered. She made a note to tell Drakken about it, and maybe see if one of their coven of hired scientists could interpret the paper for them.

Shego was about to log off when she noticed a link to a related article at the bottom of the page. A click of the mouse brought up a newspaper story.

"Teen claims mutation by meteorite," Shego read aloud. "A teenager charged with kidnapping, terrorism and assault with intent to cause bodily harm is claiming he was mutated by a small green stone he found while swimming in Lake Middleton. In a statement issued by his lawyers, Gilbert Norris says the stone, which later proved to be both mildly radioactive, and of meteoric origin, is the cause of his physical mutation, with led directly to his becoming mentally ill..." Shego read the last with a sneer. "Claiming you aren't guilty because you're whacked in the head, huh?" Her words dripped with contempt. If you were going to do the whole evil thing, you should be proud of it. This Gill person was clearly a poser. But wait. What was this? Possible hadn't been the one to take Gill down? The sidekick had had to do it, because Kimmie fainted? Shego could hardly believe that.

A few more clicks brought up the original news reports. Sure enough, Kim had fainted. According to one of her fellow cheerleaders, who witnessed the whole thing, Kim had headed straight for Gill, only to stumble over her own feet and collapse.

Shego sat back, thinking. According to the articles, Gill had been wearing the stone as a necklace at the time of the confrontation. Possible had fallen down as she approached Gill, but had had recovered with no lasting ill effects. Had the stone...? Nah. It couldn't be. Low level radiation didn't cause immediate debilitating effects. Not in humans anyway. But if Kimmie wasn't human, and the rock came from the same place she did...

Shego thought her notion was pretty far fetched, but decided to look into it anyway.

Late September

Monique loved The Fabric, as she'd come to call it. True, it was frighteningly expensive, but Kim had allowed enough extra material for Monique to practice with, knowing that it was necessary to do so. In practicing Monique had learned how to cut and join pieces of The Fabric, and more besides. Officially designated Project AN2598/3 by the company that had developed it, The Fabric was more versatile than Monique had imagined was possible. The seaming machine also had a texture manipulation function that could alter The Fabric until it was as soft and light as thin silk, or as tough and stiff as leather, or anything in between. That had been a terrific boon, and Monique was making full use of it. The design Kim had finally settled on had initially been a simple body stocking, but upon Monique's discovery of the texturing ability, the design had been altered to more closely resemble boots, trousers and jacket, both in look and feel, while still remaining thin, light, and close fitting. Already Monique was imagining the things she'd be able to do with The Fabric, if and when it ever became commercially available. Visions of the high-end clothing market swirled through her head, even as the seamer went busily about its work, attaching the stylized red-on-yellow 'S' to the front of the outfit's top.

Early October

"Now?" Kim's voice asked, floating down from the top of the stairs.

"Now," Monique commanded from where she stood at the base of the stairs, slightly off to one side.

Gathered in the living room of the Possible home, where they would have a good view of the stairs, were Kim's 'rents and brothers. Ron was there of course, with his Mom and Dad, along with Wade Load, who had left his room for the first time in ages a few weeks previously during Team Possible's run-in with Team Impossible, and his parents. Monique's own mother and father were in attendance too, at Kim's insistence. The onlookers were seated on couches and chairs, watching expectantly.

It was a Saturday, just before lunchtime. Monique had arrived an hour earlier, a garment bag slung over her shoulder. Kim had practically dragged Monique up to her room, giddy with excitement.

"Well," Monique had ordered, "Don't just stand there, get undressed!"

Kim obeyed, stripping down to her underwear while Monique opened the bag and pulled out the various pieces of Kim's new mission togs.

"Bottoms first," Monique suggested, handing Kim the item in question. Kim gazed at them curiously for a few moments, then started pulling them on. The legs, which had seemed a bit on the small size to her, amazed her by stretching like spandex, while having the feel and texture of a weird hybrid of silk and denim. When they were on Kim studied the result in her mirror. The bottoms were as snug fitting as any pair of tights she had ever worn, clinging to every curve, but they looked (and to an extent felt) like trousers. They were blue, with red piping down the outsides of the legs, and Kim turned from side to side and then around, looking over her shoulder to check out the view from behind.

"I'm liking it, Monique," she smiled finally. Monique grinned.

"Now for the top," she announced, pausing only to tell Kim to take off her bra, as the top had one built in so it wouldn't show through. Kim obeyed, and was pleased with the result. The top had an identical look and feel, with the red piping running down the arms, and clung just as closely. The only exception was the chest area. The bra Monique had built in provided adequate support, and it, along with the 'S' symbol, kept the top from looking completely painted on.

Finally Monique produced the boots, glovesand utility belt she'd made. All were red, andresembled another weird hybrid, a canvas/leather cross.

"The belt has pouches for your various gadgets, per the specs Wade gave me," Monique explained, "A holster for your grapple gun, and an attachment point for your Kimmunicator."

"Monique, this is totally spankin'," Kim gushed when they were done.

"You're welcome, Kim," Monique said, bowing grandly.

"Presenting Kim Possible and her hot new action ensemble from Monique Jenkins Designs," Monique proclaimed as Kim descended the stairs. Kim blushed, even more so as the audience burst out in applause. Her folks were there, along with Ron's and Monique's. Jim, Tim and Ron rounded out the crowd, the Tweebs looking a bit jealous, Ron just staring wide eyed. Kim suppressed a giggle and did a slow pirouette so he could get a good look.

"It's lovely, Monique," Kim's mom gushed, examining the outfit closely. Similar comments came from Mrs. Stoppable and Monique's mom, who was seeing her daughter's handiwork for the first time. Her dad, Kim noted, looked considerably less enthused than his counterparts, and Kim could guess why: her new outfit, while it covered everything, did quite a bit less to hide her assets, as it were.

There was only one other person whose opinion Kim really wanted to hear, and she turned to him with a smile.

"Well, Ron, what do you think?"

Ron smiled, a touch nervously she thought, though she could understand his apprehension. The two of them had talked, and had decided that Kim's new outfit wasn't the only thing that would be revealed this day.

Ron crossed to were Kim stood, his eyes roaming blatantly over every inch of her, his head nodding in approval.

"You are smokin' hot in that outfit, K.P.," he judged, placing his hands on her hips and drawing her in. Kim couldn't help but notice the sharp intakes of breath of the people around them, especially her father, as she lifted her face toward Ron's, lips parting to receive his as he kissed her. Then, as suddenly as it had turned on, her super hearing shut itself off, and it was well it did. Otherwise the shrieks of horror and disgust her brothers let loose might have deafened her.