James Timothy Possible didn't say another word, or give Drew Lipsky a chance to do so either. He just launched a right cross that sent his former college friend crashing to floor.

As soon as he hit the linoleum, the hologram that had allowed Dr. Drakken, Mad Scientist and International Super-Criminal to enter Middleton Hospital unnoticed flickered out. But no one had the chance to notice that Dr. Drakken, Mad Scientist and International Super-Criminal, was sprawled on the floor outside one of Middleton Hospital's private rooms, because James Possible and Ron Stoppable immediately grabbed him by the ankles, dragged him into the room, and slammed the door.

They dragged him up off the floor, slammed him against the door, and drew their fists back to begin a possibly-fatal beating when Drakken cried "Wait! Wait!"

Enraged as they were, neither Ron Stoppable nor James Possible were violent men by nature, and they reflexively hesitated. Drakken took the opportunity to stop waving his hands defensively in front of himself and raise them as if his two assailants were covering him with guns.

Both Ron and James paused, confused.

Drakken slowly started to lower one of his hands toward the front of his coat.

Ron started forward.

Drakken's hand snapped back up. "Colleen," he said.

Colleen Possible started, surprised that Drakken would address her when he was in such an immediate life-or-death situation with Ron and James. For her own part, she had instinctively backed across the room, pushing her sons behind her, putting herself between her children and the threat.

"Colleen," Drakken repeated. "This coat has pockets inside it. Could you reach into the one at the left breast and take what you find there? I don't want it to get broken when they start in on the body blows."

Slowly, her wind up, Colleen crossed the room as Ron and James took hold of Drakken's arms. Carefully, she reached into the front of Drakken's coat and felt around until she found the pocket. She snatched out the contents and backed away. The two men let go and stepped back to their original positions.

She looked down into her hand.

A hypodermic needle. A big one, filled with some sort of greenish fluid.

"Could you please keep that safe for me, Colleen? Thank you." Drakken turned his attention back to Ron and James. "All right, gentlemen. Go ahead."

Ron started forward to do just that, but Mr. Dr. Possible blocked him. "What are you doing here, Drew?" He demanded.

"He's here to kill Kim!" Ron shouted, struggling against the older man. "Don't you see? That's some sort of poison, and if we hadn't been here – "

"But you were here, Ronald," Drakken interrupted. "And instead of sneaking away to come back later, I knocked on the door and let you know I was here."

Ron paused. "You remembered my name," he said at last.

"Yes. You made very sure of that, didn't you, Mr. Stoppable?"

"You haven't answered my question, Drew," James Possible interrupted. "And you're running out of time."

"Isn't it obvious?" Drakken asked. "I'm here to help."

----

The Possible family and Ron Stoppable stared in blank, wide-eyed shock at the mad scientist's sheer audacity. That shock would become rage would become violence in seconds, and Drakken must have sensed it. He pointed as best he could with his hands still up. "That hypodermic that Colleen is holding contains a cocktail of nanotech left over from the Diablos, gene therapy from DNAmy, and my own cloning technology incorporated into the nanotech."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" Ron demanded. Hearing nothing from the Possible family, he glanced over his shoulder at them. Judging by the looks on their faces, it did.

"Nanotech cloning devices," Mr. Dr. Possible said in awe. "To work on the microscopic – the cellular level!"

"Injected into the bloodstream," Mrs. Dr. Possible continued. "It could seek out damaged tissue…clone new cells from surviving old ones…rebuild the tissues, even tissues that would never heal on their own…" She raised her eyes from the hypodermic to stare at Drakken. "Nerve tissue."

He nodded. "Now you're getting it."

"No." Ron said, shaking his head. "It's a lie. It's a trick. It has to be."

"Why would I lie, Ronald?"

Ron grabbed him by the throat and slammed the back of his head against the door. "Because that's what you do! That's what you are! Haven't you said it yourself? 'I'm a very bad man'?"

"And I am. But use your head, Ronald. What do I have to gain from sneaking into a hospital and killing a crippled, comatose Kim Possible? The supervillain community itself would join in on hunting me down like a rabid animal. She's no threat to me as she is – why make a martyr instead of letting her fade into an uninspiring, resource-draining shadow of what she used to be?"

Ron slammed his head against the door again and began to tighten his grip. "You watch your mouth," he snarled.

"Ron!" Kim called from her bed.

Instantly – but reluctantly – Ron let go of Drakken's throat. Then he and the Possible family stepped aside, clearing a path between Drakken and the bed, where Kim had turned her head toward the door.

"Ah," Drakken said, rubbing at his neck. "Kimberly. Hello. I didn't think you'd be awake."

"I almost wasn't," she said. "That's so not the big right now. You asked what you have to gain by killing me, and the answer is a pretty clear nothing. But that's not the big, either. The real question here is: what do you have to gain by helping me?"

"That's easy," Drakken answered. "You're the only one who can help Shego."

----

For the second time in as many minutes, the Possible family and Ron Stoppable could only stare at Drakken, dumbfounded. This time, it was Colleen Possible who regained the ability to speak first. "You think…" she said, her voice thick with rage. "That you can come in here…claim that you can fix the damage you've done…" She held up the hypodermic in a shaking fist. "And we'll help you and your monster?"

Drakken's chin came up at the word 'monster'. "I think that Kimberly will do just what she's always done:" He said with icy dignity. "Come after me and Shego, and bring us down. If she follows my plan, we can do it in a way such that no one gets killed. In exchange, I'm offering your daughter her body back. Use that hypo, and years of physical therapy in order to twiddle her fingers – maybe – suddenly turns into months to get back to where she was before."

Silence. Again.

"Let me get this straight," Kim said at last. "You want to help me, and in exchange, you want me to capture you and Shego. According to your plan. No tricks, no escapes, you want to go to jail."

"That pretty much sums it up," Drakken agreed, nodding.

"Sounds great," Ron said. "Except you left out the part where this is a trap."

Drakken sighed in frustration. "Ronald – "

"Why go to all the trouble?" Kim finished for him. "What could he do to me that's worse than what he's already done?"

"Thank you."

"Most assuredly not welcome."

"Why?" James Possible broke in. "That's the part that you are leaving out. I think you had better explain, and that you'd better be both fast and convincing."

Drakken held his chin-up, coldly dignified pose for a moment longer. Then he sighed, and his shoulders drooped. "Shego needs help," He said. "Mental help. She's going insane."

Ron sneered. "Because she was so stable before."

"She was," Drakken insisted. "She was a hot-tempered bully, but she was very realistic and pragmatic…well, except for the 'working with me' part. But now…her powers have been growing for months – "

"We kinda figured that part out," Ron interrupted.

" – and it's doing something to her," Drakken continued, with a venomous look at the blond teen. "The closest comparison I can think of is 'roid rage: the more powerful she gets, the more psychotic she becomes. She's gone past bad-tempered and mercenary to random acts of terror and destruction."

"Kinda got that, too."

"But more than that," Drakken said, "Her personality is splitting while I watch. Whenever her power is low, I get to talk to 'Sheila'. Who, you might be interested in learning, is absolutely guilt-stricken."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. The heart is just bleeding."

Drakken glared at him. "Enough. You have no reason to care about us, so care about this: there is an unstable powerhouse back at my lair who will be wandering the world like Hiroshima on two legs within a few months if you don't help me get her into a Global Justice psychological ward."

Ron stepped up to him and matched him glare-for-glare. "That would be too bad. But I have an idea how to prevent it without making a deal with the devil. We've already got your stuff, so why don't we just take you prisoner right now, and help her like they helped Old Yeller?"

Drakken froze. "I won't help you kill her," he said. "And without my help, anyone you send will die."

"No."

Man and boy both ignored the voice from the bed.

"Maybe not if they bomb the shit out of the place from two miles away," Ron countered. "Some people aren't as nice as Kim and I, and they have ways of getting your lair's coordinates from you."

"No."

"I wouldn't count on even that keeping them safe," Drakken said. "Besides, Shego's body is saturated with a completely unknown form of radiation. How do you know that killing her won't set off an explosion that – "

"NO!"

Every head turned toward the bed.

"No," Kim repeated, more quietly. "No one dies. Not on my watch. Not if there's some way I can stop it. Not even Shego. I accept."

"KP – "

"Kimmiecub –"

"I accept," Kim repeated more strongly. "Unless you want to take advantage of the fact that I'm in this bed to make me helpless? By taking that decision away from me?"

Kim's father's mouth closed with a sigh. He covered his eyes, and his shoulders dropped. All of the furious power went out of him, and he looked just as tired and old as he had the first night Kim was brought in.

"No," he said. "I won't do that."

"But KP," Ron protested, much more weakly this time. "What if there's, like…mini mind-control chips or nanobombs in there, too? So that after you do what he wants, you have to keep doing what he wants?"

"Yeah," Jim agreed, finally feeling safe to enter the conversation.

"What if?" Tim finished.

Drakken looked genuinely stunned. "What amazing ideas," he said. "I never even thought of that. No wonder 'Zorpox' was a better supervillain than me."

Ron flushed in embarrassment and anger.

"But no, I don't think I would have had time to do it anyway. It was pure luck that I was able to get this done under Shego's nose as it was."

"I have another concern," Mrs. Dr. Possible said in what most of those present had come to think of as her 'clinical' voice. "What you're trying to do with this," she held up the hypodermic. "Is essentially very rapid cell reproduction – "

"Yes. Kimberly will be ravenously hungry for weeks. She'll need lots of protein and calcium."

"I expected that. What I'm worried about is cancer risk."

Drakken shook his head. "I don't know about the long-term health risks – mad scientists don't have FDA testing – though I don't expect they're any worse than a life in bed would be. She won't be bursting with tumors two hours from now, if that's what you're worried about. The nanites only live for a few minutes."

She nodded. "That's the best I can hope for, I guess." She turned to her daughter's bed. "Are you sure about this, honey?"

Kim took a deep breath, bit her lip, and nodded.

Without another word, Colleen Possible inserted the hypodermic needle into one of her daughter's IV bags and depressed the plunger. The greenish, vaguely glowing fluid swirled and mixed with the saline solution for a moment, then began to flow down the IV tube of its own volition. Then she withdrew the needle, drew back the plunger, stepped across the room, and, without warning, grabbed Drakken by the neck with one hand and put the needle against his throat with the other.

"I just filled this with air," she said. "If what I just gave my baby hurts her in any way, you have a massive heart attack."

"Don't do that, Colleen," Drakken said calmly. "If you do, it'll deprive James and Ronald of the pleasure of kicking me to death. You can join them in that, if you feel the need to."

Colleen Possible was stunned enough by his response that she allowed him to raise a hand and move the needle away from his neck.

By then, all of the greenish fluid had filtered down the IV line and into Kim's body. "Is anything happening?" She asked. "I don't – " Suddenly, her eyes went very wide and her mouth dropped open.

"James, Ronald, hold the door," Drakken said. "Don't let anyone in. Boys, out of the way. Colleen, take her other side."

Surprised, they all obeyed as he crossed the room to Kim's bedside.

Her mouth was no longer simply hanging open. It was moving. Shaping the words "Oh, God" over and over again.

He took hold of her left hand where it stuck out of the cast that wrapped her arm. "That's right," he said soothingly. "That's how it's supposed to work. Everything is going just fine."

Her eyes were shut tight by now, and she was beginning to force some breath into her words. "ohgodohgodOhGod…" Her head began shaking back and forth, slowly at first and then gaining speed, as her voice slowly rose to a scream. "OhGodohGodohGodOHGODOHGODOHGODOHGODOHGODITHURTS! It hurts it hurts IT HURRRRRRTS!"

Colleen Possible looked desperately across the bed at Drakken, but he ignored her. "Of course it hurts, Kimberly," he said. "That's your nerves growing back, your bones knitting, scar tissue forming over your cuts and burns. It's going to hurt. But you're going to be all right."

There were running feet and shouting voices in the hallway, then a pounding at the door.

"Dr. Possible?" A voice called. "Dr. Possible!"

"Stay out!" She shouted back. "You can't come in here!"

"Dr. Possible!" The voice called again as the door handle was tried. Ron and James Possible put their shoulders against the door, though, and wouldn't let it open.

"HURRRRTS!"

Jim and Tim huddled together in a corner, terrified, not wanting to watch, unable to look away, wishing wishing wishing that they could do something anything.

Then they noticed something. Was Kim's body moving a little more than could be explained by her head moving? Was her back arching? Was –

Her left arm tore itself out of Drakken's grip and smashed itself down onto the bedrail, shattering the plaster cast. There were gasps and shouts of surprise, but Drakken acted like he'd known this was coming, recapturing Kim's arm and putting down the bedrail.

Colleen Possible took that as her cue to do the same to the bedrail on her side, which was fortunate, as Kim chose that moment to begin thrashing in earnest.

The next few moments were the most bizarre combination of horrible and wonderful than anyone in the room could remember experiencing. Tubes, needles, and pins were torn out, bandages ripped off, braces broken and flung away. Kim screamed. She thrashed.

She kicked.

Dr. Drakken and Dr. Colleen Possible struggled to hold her down while Ron and Dr. James Possible struggled to hold the door closed against what seemed like several burly orderlies on the other side. The boy and the man started to slide backward across the floor, bulldozed by main force as the door edged open.

"Keep it closed! James, Ronald, for the love of God keep them out of here!"

Both pushed harder, but they were still being driven backwards. Then Ron gave a roar of effort, and power surged in his muscles. Shoulders. Legs. Back. Only he was at an angle to see the light that flared briefly beneath his hands, but his eyes were closed.

The door slammed shut, and there were cries of surprise and the sound of falling bodies on the other side of the door.

"We're being idiots," James Possible panted. "Boys!" He barked. "Chair!"

Finally given something to do, Jim and Tim Possible scurried across the room, grabbed one of the chairs from the bedside, and hurried it to their father, who jammed it under the door handle.

There was one final, shattering scream behind them. Then silence.

As one, the fourmembers of the male sexwho loved Kim Possible more than any others in the world ever could, turned to see.

She rose from the bed like a wounded Eve rising from the grass of a bleeding Eden, raw and new from the inside of Adam's ribcage. Like a broken Venus from a storm-wracked ocean. Like Athena, fresh and bloody from Zeus's skull.

She'd lost her gown in her struggles, but not even the most libido-driven of teenage boys could find her nakedness sexy now. Drakken's formula had not been a magical healing potion; it couldn't do everything. She was terribly thin and wasted, her body used up as repair materials for the nanobots. The left half of her body, from mid-calf to shoulder, was shiny and tight-skinned with burn scars. The entire right half was covered with an angry red webwork where the glass had cut her.

Still, as she took her first step forward, she was the most beautiful thing that any of them had ever seen.

She took another step, then faltered. All four adults in the room rushed forward to support her, but Drakken got there first. At first, when she turned to look at him, she was dazed. Then her eyes focused, and she drew back a trembling fist. He gently reached out and stayed it with his hand. "Don't waste your strength on me, Kimberly," he said. "You don't have much. Hug your family. Kiss your boyfriend. Beat me to within an inch of my life when you come for me and Shego, when you can actually hurt me."

Her eyes still blazing, so much so that he half-expected them to light up like Shego's, she lowered her hand.

"But I want a promise from you, Kimberly. I want it from you, because I don't trust anyone else in this room to keep it. I want you to swear to me that when you come for us, you will neither harm Shego, nor…" He looked darkly around the room. "Allow her to come to harm."

"Kim –"

Kim held up a trembling hand. "It's okay, Ron," She said. Then she turned her attention to Drakken. "I swear that if your plan is real, if you can give us an actual chance to capture Shego even with how powerful she's become, then we will. I won't hurt her any more than usual, or allow anyone else to." Her face darkened. "But I also swear to give you that beating you mentioned. Just to make up for it."

"Good enough," He said. "And I can give you that actual chance. Because we have one very important advantage: the new lair is very secluded. No TV. No magazine subscriptions. I monitored outside communications, but Shego didn't bother."

"So she watched DVDs for the last three weeks," Ron said. "How does that help us?"

Kim, on the other hand, understood. Her eyes had gone very wide. "Because Shego still thinks I'm dead."

"Right," Drakken nodded. "Now, I think I've delayed the family reunion long enough."

With that, he released her to totter, as she had when she was much younger, into the waiting arms of her mother. Then the Possible family descended on her in a weeping, hugging mass and the rest of the world went away.

----

Smiling grimly, Drakken stepped over the window and hit the "Call" button on a remote control that he'd taken out of another pocket. The hover-saucer would arrive in minutes. Good. Trying to leave through the hospital, even if his image inducer hadn't been broken in his fall, just wasn't going to happen. Just as well; the only picture he'd had for the image inducer to use was from college, and he'd hated it anyway.

He was pondering how well the afternoon had gone when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Yes?" He turned around, straight into a solid punch to the stomach. He turned around again just in time to vomit out the window instead of onto Ron Stoppable's shoes, or his own.

"Mr. Dr. P already got his chance," Ron said lightly, by way of explanation. "And you promised KP that she would get one. I just didn't want to miss mine."

Drakken spit out the window one last time, then turned back around, a hand on his stomach and a pained grin on his face. "Well, thank you for choosing someplace Shego wouldn't see, anyway. If she knew I'd been here, forget about the plan."

"See, here's what I'm wondering about your plan," Ron said. "What happens once we bring you in? Do you really think that you'll be able to arrange for a nice little hospital stay for your walking bomb? Do you think that the government will be as merciful as KP?"

"Merciful? No. Easier to bargain with? Yes. They dealt with Nazis for less than I have to offer. I could blow up schools every week and they'd let me go, as long as they weren't American schools, and I could hand them a vial of what I used on Kimberly here today. And I don't even want to be let go."

He wasn't even smug about it. Just matter-of-fact.

Ron wanted very much to show him what it was like to deal with someone who wasn't merciful and couldn't be bargained with. But no; eyes on the prize. Shego was the one who'd actually blown Kim up.

"If you have no other questions, Mr. Stoppable?" Drakken said. He was already halfway out the window, one foot in the hover-saucer that was floating outside.

"Actually, I do," Ron said.

Drakken actually stopped, looking at him expectantly.

"Since when is this you? Showing up here, all by yourself, knowing that we'll beat the shit out of you? That was almost brave. And you're talking like Mr. Dr. P, not some twelve-year-old who's trying to be cool. You invented something that works, even if you needed a little help, and you have what sounds like a halfway smart plan. What the Hell is going on?"

"I could ask you the same questions, Ronald. Maybe I'm going mad, too. Or maybe I'm going sane. Or maybe it's just that you and I are more alike than we like to think: utter buffoons with one person in all the world that we can pull ourselves together for."

Ron stared at him, his face a mask of horror and disgust.

"It's like Colleen said," Drakken said as he ducked the rest of the way out the window. "She's my monster."