Even in the fastest jet that Global Justice had to offer, the trip to Drakken's lair – a tiny seamount in the Pacific Ring of Fire off the coast of Chile – took hours. Before…well, everything…she would have taken the opportunity to get some sleep. Never know when you might need it, or when you might get another chance. She'd tried, but it just wasn't happening. The seats were reasonably comfortable and so was her battlesuit (if she hadn't been planning to wear it anyway, Ron, Wade, and her family would all have insisted), much moreso than a hospital bed and gown in her opinion. So the problem wasn't physical.
The problem was that this was her first mission since the battle of Middleton High (something she was actively Not Happy with Ron for), and it felt like the first time all over again, she was so keyed-up and anxious.
The problem was that she had no idea what she was going to do when she arrived at Drakken's lair. She couldn't even remember her last fight with Shego, and from what Drakken said, Shego's power had increased and her mental state had deteriorated so much since then that remembering wouldn't help her to plan a strategy. That meant that all she had to go on was…
With a sigh, she took out the Ronnunicator – they never had gotten around to "exchanging hostages" – hit a few buttons, and replayed the conversation with Drakken. Again.
----
Drakken:…latitude.
Kim: Okay, so we've got directions. Now what's the sitch?
Drakken: I beg your pardon?
Kim (Rolls eyes): What can we expect when we get there?
Drakken: Oh. Well…it's bad. The lair has suffered severe structural damage, so you'll have to watch where you step and be on the lookout for cave-ins. The security system is damaged –
Ron: Hey, that sounds like a plus!
Drakken: -and has gone completely haywire. I have no idea what's still working and what isn't, and I have no control over any of it.
Ron: Okay, minus.
Drakken: I agree. The only 'plus' I can think of is that all of the surviving henchmen have fled the island.
Ron: Henchmen? You hired henchmen?
Drakken: Of course I did, Ronald. Think! If you were Shego, wouldn't you wonder what was going on if I didn't at least make some gestures toward getting an operation running?
Ron: I don't know, I'm having some trouble putting myself into the shoes of a TOTAL PSYCHO!
Kim: Wait, wait, wait – you said 'surviving henchmen'?
Drakken: Yes. Shego killed at least one, and some others might have died in the initial blast, or the subsequent –
Kim: Initial - ? Hold on. Let's rewind. Start at the beginning and tell us what happened.
Ron: Yeah, because I seem to remember that it was your job to make sure there were no initial blasts!
Drakken (Glares at Ron): If you want me to start at the beginning, then don't ask me questions about the end!
Ron: Just give us the details on your screw-up, okay?
Drakken: Fine. We'd spent the day "testing" her powers – testing her endurance, finding her maximum output, working on her fine control, finding out if changing the heat-to-kinetic-force ratio affected any of the above…the sort of thing I'd want to know if I was planning to use her as a superweapon.
Kim: But also the sort of thing that's going to use up a lot of her power.
Drakken: Exactly. We'd just quit for the day and she'd gone to her room to shower, but….here, I'll show you.
(Drakken's face disappears from the Kimmunicator and the Ronnunicator, replaced by a black and white picture of several metal doors in a stone hallway.)
Drakken (Voiceover): This is from the security camera in Shego's hallway.
(Shego enters, and begins punching in the combination on the door's keypad. Greg Lawson sneaks up behind her and steals her gloves, setting his death in motion. After he's dead, Shego stands rigid for a few moments, then grabs her head and screams. A blazing light erupts from her, filling the screen for an instant before it goes black)
(Drakken's face reappears)
Drakken: That's when video feed was lost. I assume that the camera was destroyed.
Kim: Safe assumption.
Drakken: I can only guess that the shock of her…confrontation with Mr. Lawson –
Ron: You mean her murdering him?
Drakken: - and the fact that she was already so drained from the testing allowed Sheila to get out.
Ron: Sheila. Hmm. Is that a name we should know?
Drakken: Probably not. The last time I said it to you, you were busy trying to kill me. But do you remember me mentioning that her personality was splitting?
(Ron and Kim make affirmative noises)
Drakken: Well, Sheila is who Shego becomes when her comet-energies drop below a certain point. As far as I can tell, she's everything that Shego hates about herself.
Ron: You mean she's an evil twin? A Ms. Hyde?
Drakken: Let me clarify. She's everything about herself that Shego considers weak and vulnerable.
Ron: Ah. So a good twin, then.
Drakken: Whatever. If I could –
Kim: Wait. If Sheila is the good one or the weak one or whatever, then why is she blowing things up?
Ron: Because blowing up a supervillain's lair is a good thing to do?
Drakken (Ignoring Ron): I don't know. The only clue I have is her reaction just before she…went off. You see, Shego never knows when Sheila is coming out. All she knows is that she has blackouts if she overuses her power.
Kim: I guess she saw her coming, this time.
Drakken: I guess that, too. I'm also guessing that she's using her powers in an instinctive attempt to defend herself, even though the "attacker" is purely mental.
Ron: Dude, the air quotes kinda ruin your delivery.
Drakken: Is this an acting class?
Kim: Boys! Don't make me separate you!
(Apologetic grumbling from Ron and Drakken)
Kim: Now, Drakken: can we salvage any of your plan?
Drakken: Quite a bit of it, actually. My original idea was to wait as long as I could so you could recover, then run a particularly grueling battery of tests. You show up when Shego is weak – or better yet, when she's Sheila. If it's Shego, she's caught completely off-guard by the team that's always been able to beat her. If it's Sheila, she takes one look at the girl she killed and probably collapses with guilt. All of that still works, seeing as how she's been discharging energy in one form or another since she killed Lawson. She can't regenerate her power very well when her hands never stop glowing and she blows something up every few minutes, after all.
Kim: So your original plan is still a go, except that Shego is freaking out and we have to dodge falling pieces of lair and malfunctioning death traps.
Drakken: Uh…well, yes. That's pretty much the size of it.
Kim (Sigh): Spankin'.
----
Kim sighed and turned off the Ronnunicator. The deck was stacked as high in their favor as it could be, but the simple fact was that they just didn't have that many cards to stack.
They'd lost contact with Drakken not long after that, and they hadn't been able to re-establish it. That could mean that Shego had damaged his communications equipment, or it could mean that he was dead. Or anything in between. Without him to keep them informed as to the sitch, they didn't know what was waiting for them. If Shego was still freaking and tweaking when they arrived and she didn't sink the island into the ocean with them on it, they had a chance. If she calmed down enough to rest up and recharge even a little, then they were bringing their bare hands to a bazooka fight.
With another sigh, she put away the Ronnunicator and reclined her seat. She was going into battle with the woman who had maimed her, and that woman was far more powerful than she'd been when she'd done the deed. And the best they could hope for was that she'd be tired and mentally off-balance.
Oh, well. It beat waiting for Shego to come to them. And lying awake thinking about it didn't help anything. Time to stop just "trying to sleep" and employ a meditative technique she knew. If she could control her own heartbeat (and she could), then sleep was no problem.
There was no anger, no desire for revenge.
There was no fear, no stomach-churning terror.
There was no desperate, world-protecting need to succeed.
There was only her heartbeat, and her breathing, and…
Sleep.
Where the fear, the anger, and the desperation weren't quite so easy to banish.
Across the cabin, Ron lay with his eyes closed, pretending to sleep and listening to the sounds she made in her dreams.
----
They never did find out for sure if Drakken's island was volcanic (although they assumed it was) or if Shego had simply blown the top off the mountain.
The inside of the lair was as Drakken had described it, largely quieting fears that this might all be a trap. Drakken was a bit too budget-conscious to wreck his own lair this completely for the sake of concealing a trap.
Of course, as he'd warned them, the simple fact that it was wrecked made it dangerous enough.
They were able to lead the lair's single remaining spinning top of doom in front of a laser array that was firing at random intervals, but the explosion brought the room's ceiling down, and they only barely escaped.
The sharks were no longer a danger to anyone, but they'd still had to risk a grappling line into the untrustworthy ceiling to swing across the pool. A live wire had fallen into it.
The trapdoors were opening and closing without any pattern or timing. You might fall through to another part of the lair. Or it might break your leg like a bear trap. Or it might cut you in half.
Then there was the time that a section of wall had simply collapsed. They were rather proud of themselves for that one – both of them had been alert enough to notice it and warn each other with plenty of time to get out of the way.
All the while, they tracked their quarry, not with scents and footprints, but flashing lights and the sounds of explosions and a woman screaming.
----
The battle at Middleton High School had occurred in late June. Kimberly Ann Possible had been gravely injured in that battle, and she had spent the next three weeks in a coma. Following the mad-scientific miracle that had restored her mobility, she'd spent six weeks training as hard as those around her would allow, trying to prepare for this day.
It wasn't enough. Not nearly. Her skills were restored, but her stamina and strength were shadows of their former selves. By the time they reached the labs, she was flagging badly.
That was one of the reasons that it happened. They were nearing their goal (to judge by the noises and the green flashes), and her attention was focused on that, and she had less alertness to go around than she thought. Worse, her reaction time was getting slower and her escapes slimmer with each trap.
So it was that she didn't notice the cage dropping from the ceiling until it was too late for her to do anything but go into a defensive tuck and activate her battlesuit's force shield.
The other reason it happened was because Ron Stoppable heard the faint click of the cage's release, saw it falling, and did nothing.
----
Ron watched Kim slowly pick herself up. He knew what he had to do. He just wasn't sure if he could do it.
Monkey Fist was right. He'd been tapping into the Mystical Monkey Power more and more, lately. Looking back, it was easy to see, but he'd only realized it – and done it on purpose – when he was fighting the hairy freak himself. Could he do it now, and do what he needed to do with it? The Mystical Monkey Power was a warrior's magic, but did that mean that all it was, was a weapon? Not if sensei's abilities were any indication. Maybe, then, they could give him what he needed…to protect.
He reached out his hand.
And he needed as hard as he could.
----
As she climbed to her feet, Kim Possible muttered some words under her breath that her friends and family would probably be surprised that she knew. The battlesuit only carried enough of a charge for one use of the force shield, and she'd just used it. She was sogoing to wish she still had that when she faced Shego.
Oh, well. Spilled milk. No sense crying. She reached back for her laser lipstick –
And her backpack began to move.
She yelped in surprise as the straps writhed and unfastened themselves under her fingers, but she still had the presence of mind to whip around and snatch at it as it pulled itself loose and flew across the cage.
Into Ron Stoppable's outstretched hand.
She stopped in mid-reach, blinking in surprise and confusion.
"Ron?" She asked.
"Yeah, KP?"
"Did you do that?"
He stared at the backpack in his hands like he'd not only never seen one in his life, but had no idea what such a thing could be. "I…I guess I did."
"How?"
Ron's face slowly lit up. "The Force is strong with this one, Kim. Wow, it worked! It really worked!"
Kim realized what he must be talking about, and her temper flared. "You used the Mystic Monkey Power to steal my backpack? At a time like this? Are you out of your mind?"
She started forward, reaching for the backpack again, but he leaped back, pulling it out of her reach, and the smile vanishing from his face.
She stopped, but still held her hand out. "Ron, quit playing around," she said sternly. "Give it to me!"
He paused, looked at the backpack, looked at her, took a deep breath.
And tossed it across the room.
Her hand dropped to her side, and she stared at him in wide-eyed, wide-mouthed shock.
"Ron?"
He started toward her, then stopped. He raised his hands as if he wanted to hug her, or grab the cage bars. But he stopped, and let them drop.
"I love you, KP," he said without preamble. "And I hope you can forgive me someday."
As he started to back away, Kim's shock broke as she realized what he was doing. She flung herself against the bars of her cage and reached for him, beseeching, hopelessly, trying to get him to come back.
"Ron, wait!"
"I know that cage isn't exactly 'safe', but it's safer than where we were going."
"Ron, you don't have to do this!"
He shook his head, more like he was trying to banish an unwanted thought than like he was disagreeing with her. "Yes, I do, KP. This way, forgive me or not, at least you'll be okay."
With that, he turned and ran on, toward Shego's flares and shouts.
Kim immediately started casting about for some way out of the trap. It didn't even have a door or a lock she could pick. The only way a prisoner could be released would be for the cage to be raised back up off the floor.
That didn't matter. She had to get out somehow. Something was very, very wrong.
There'd been something in Ron's eyes that she'd never seen there before.
Monkey Fist and Duff Killigan would have recognized it.
----
Ron Stoppable had seen some damaged rooms as he and Kim had searched the lair for Shego. He wasn't sure if the villainess had wandered through all of them personally during her little running battle with herself, or if the damage she was doing to the mountain itself was enough.
None of those rooms, however, had been as completely demolished as the lair's great central chamber. Not a stick or strut of furniture remained whole. Girders sagged and leaned, slowly losing the battle to support a creaking, crumbling roof as cables – some live, some too damaged to be live anymore – hung from them. The few remaining lights flickered and strobed. Unrecognizable scraps of metal that had probably been sophisticated weapons or scientific equipment a few hours ago were scattered all over the floor and embedded in the walls. Those walls themselves – the natural stone of the mountain – had gaping holes in them, and even places where it seemed they'd melted and run.
Standing in the middle of this devastation was Shego, but she wasn't shouting or exploding anymore. In fact, all she was doing was panting as if she'd just run a marathon while the last sparks of green fire flickered out in her hair and the green glow faded from her eyes. If she really had been trying to use her physical powers against her mental opponent, it seemed that fight was over.
Her hands were still lit up, though.
As the last of the (non-hand) green light faded, Shego seemed to become more aware of her surroundings. Ron hadn't been standing in the doorway for more than a moment or two before she turned to him with her trademark sneer on her face. "Oh, look," she said in a voice that was dripping with contempt. "It's the pendejo."
She blinked at that and lost her sneer for a second, shaking her head like a horse trying to shake off flies. But a second later, the sneer was back. "So what's the sitch?" She mocked. "You here to avenge your fallen princess like some bright shining knight? Carrying your lady's token on you somewhere? Is it a lock of her hair? Or maybe a little bit of her ashes? Or is it a pair of her panties that you sniff on those long, cold, lonely nights when you miss her especially bad? I'll admit, it doesn't matter much to me," She raised her flaming hands up into a fighting stance. "But I'll give you your props: it's a classy way to commit suicide."
It surprised her that he didn't respond to her taunts. What surprised her even more was the sheer glacial coldness in his eyes. She'd expected him to be weeping and swinging wildly by now.
"You know," He said with that same icy calm. "I've had this same conversation with Duff Killigan and Monkey Fist. About how you 'super villains' just take and take, and never give a damn about the people you're taking from. My solution for both of them was to take something away from them, just to show them what it felt like. And it seems to have worked. But you're a special case. You did something much, much worse. You took Kim away from me."
And she had. For three weeks, Kim had been gone, and the fact that she'd been able to come back from where Shego had sent her bought Shego nothing. She'd murdered Kim, First Degree, murdered and – when Kim had come back and found herself broken in a hospital bed – tortured, and the fact that Kim had overcome it all was just another case of Kim's heroism overcoming Shego's evil.
It. Bought. Shego. Nothing.
"Sure did," Shego taunted. "Gonna do anything about it today? Or are you just gonna sob on my shoulder?"
Ron ignored her. "Kim is my world. She's my life. She's everything to me, and she has been since we were both four. And you took her away from me. So now, I'm going to do what somebody should have done long ago, and take everything away from you."
Shego rolled her eyes and raised her flaming hands, reminding him what he had to deal with. "You can't be serious."
"Don't believe the serious words?" Ron said. "Fine. Then – "
"Note."
His right hand flared with golden light. It was the color of –
"Serious."
Left hand. The color of…
"Face."
His eyes. The color of mystic light blazing through his once-gentle brown eyes.
The contempt finally fell from Shego's face. "Hey, that's new, when did – "
Without warning, she fired off a plasma bolt. Ron crossed his arms in front of his face in a glowing-armed block. The bolt hit and the mountain shook, bringing more dust and pebbles down from the ceiling.
Ron Stoppable slid back a few inches. Then he lowered his arms and grinned at the stunned villainess, fangs glinting where his canines had been.
"My turn," he said. Then he charged.
----
If anyone had been there to see, the first few moments would have been spectacular: the Golden Boy and the Green Woman clashing, light slamming into light, flashes and sparks and shockwaves shaking the mountain.
She was the better fighter by far, but the match was balanced by his enhanced speed and strength.
Block. Feint. Dodge. Block. Punch. Kick. Leap. A flaming, seismic dance.
Then, after those first few moments, the balance tipped.
If they'd both been fresh, the advantage would have been hers. But her power had been bled out by hours of fighting with herself, while his was in full flood. He'd gone beyond faster than she'd ever seen him to faster than human, and his muscles surged with power each time he swung. And the golden glow blazed ever higher.
Shego found herself backing away, trying to dodge or parry his piledriver blows, not daring to simply block them anymore. But he kept coming, relentless, a slight-framed blond juggernaut. As she grew more desperate, she grew more aggressive, and Ron found himself wading into an angry-cat flurry of attacks, but even that barely slowed him. A kick to the ribs brought a mere grunt, and he didn't even notice it when her claws scored his shoulder.
Then it happened.
A flaming fist shot in toward his face. Instead of simply dodging or blocking, he spun out of the way, caught her arm, twisted it, and brought his elbow down on it. Hard.
Matchstick. Snap.
She screamed.
It was a beautiful sound, but Ron didn't stop to savor it. Instead, he began punching her now-exposed side, battering ribs and kidneys. A normal opponent would have been largely finished at that point, but Shego was able to use her other hand to fire a plasma bolt over her shoulder, forcing him to duck and let go. The Mystic Monkey Power might be making him tougher than usual, but he still wasn't eager to stand still for a fireball to the face.
She whirled and backed away from him, her uninjured arm held up defensively, the other hanging uselessly. Her face was tight with pain and paler than usual, but still set in a fighter's snarl.
Ron just looked at her. "Do you think you can survive something like what you did to Kim?" He asked casually. "I don't think you can, but I'm going to find out. Of course, I can't fire artillery out of my hands, not even hopped up on Mystic Monkey Power, so I'm going to have to work much slower – "
Just then, she fired off a burst of said artillery, forcing him to duck.
"Comemierda!" She spat. Then her eyes went wide and her fire went out. "No…" She gasped. Then her eyes shut tight and she clutched her head with her uninjured hand. "Shut up!" She screamed.
"Oh, I'm done talking," Ron said, stepping forward and lashing out with a kick that shattered her left knee.
Her eyes flew open and she screamed again, but she didn't fall. Instead, she hopped back a few steps on her working leg, and raised her working arm, lighting up for another blast.
He simply ducked beneath it and swept her remaining leg.
Shego hit the ground hard, but she managed to catch herself with her good arm, sort of. Only a grunt. Disappointing, but one can't have everything.
Ron spun up into a guard position. Shego on the floor, with only one arm and one leg, was still dangerous.
But instead of trying to attack him or defend herself, Shego just started to crawl away, muttering angrily to herself. It was like she'd forgotten he was there.
Oh, well. Gift horse. Mouth. Not looking.
Instead, Ron Stoppable stepped up and started kicking.
Except for scrupulously avoiding her head, he didn't take any particular aim. Hip. Leg. Shoulder. Ribs. As long as it got a sound out of her – grunt, squeal, or crunch – it was all good.
Whatever internal argument Shego was having, she either ended it or suspended it as she fell silent and started to make a more concerted effort to get away. Can't have that. Unfortunately for her, her efforts raised her up off the ground just a little bit, just enough to –
Ron Stoppable took a few steps back, then ran forward to deliver a kick that would have made a professional placekicker proud into Shego's exposed stomach. Normally, Shego would have seen it coming and rolled out of the way, or at least tightened her stomach muscles. Maybe it even would have helped.
This time, she opened her mouth to scream and lost her last several meals onto the chamber floor.
Ron had a moment's savage satisfaction at that, but then something occurred to him, and suddenly it wasn't enough. The satisfaction evaporated.
He stepped forward, grabbed Shego by the hair, and shoved her face into the puddle of puke, like rubbing a puppy's nose into a mess it's made.
"After you put Kim in the hospital," he snarled. "Some asshole got in and took a picture of her in her bed, all stuck full of tubes, a bag of her own piss hanging down beside the bed. Her own piss!" He shoved harder. "Kim! Who used to be so afraid of a bad yearbook photo!" Harder. "Can you imagine the humiliation? I bet you can now!" He shoved harder, his voice rising to a scream. "How does it feel, huh? Do you like it?"
Harder.
With a scream of panic and pain, Shego lashed out with a flaming claw, forcing him to leap back and let go.
Lashed out with her broken arm.
Ron stumbled back a few more steps, and Shego took advantage of the opening to make another escape attempt.
Up on all fours this time.
She was healing. Her powers were healing her.
Ron's mind filled up with red and black hellfire flames. "No," he said, his voice deep and thick with hate. He stepped forward and kicked her in the ass, knocking her flat on her belly again. "You don't get away."
She apparently didn't hear him, because she started to get up again. That was when he drove his heel into her lower back.
There was a crunch of bone, a shriek of branding-iron agony that made the room ring, and Shego's legs collapsed.
It wasn't enough. There was no satisfaction, not even savage, not even for an instant. The hellfire in his mind burned it away.
He kicked her over onto her back, then dropped down on top of her, his knees pinning her arms.
"It's not right," He snarled, punching her in the face.
"Kim suffered so much-"
Punch.
"Mr. Dr. P, Mrs. Dr. P, the tweebs, Wade – everybody suffered so much – "
Punch.
"Monique is still fucked up she thinks she's a coward – "
Punch.
"Kim is scarred she'll always be scarred – "
Punch
"And it's all because of you-"
Punch.
"And it's not fair – "
Punch.
"That you're – "
Punch!
" – Getting – "
Punch!
"Better!"
PUNCH!
Maybe it wasn't fair, and maybe it wasn't right, but it was what was happening, however much he swung and screamed. As he watched, her broken nose returned to its former shape. A shattered jaw set itself, a crushed cheekbone filled out while the swelling of a blackened eye went down.
No.
He drew his arm back, and he felt the Mystic Monkey Power flowing down it, into his fist, golden light blazing to sun-white heat. So much power…no wonder Monkey Fist craved it…and it was almost like the Mystic Monkey Power itself hated Shego as much as he did.
Good. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that the next time he swung, all that would be left of Shego's head would be spaghetti sauce. The lumpy kind.
"Regenerate that," he growled.
He drew his fist back a little further…then stopped.
No. That was too good for her. It was a warrior's death. He didn't need his power to kill Shego. He didn't want his power to kill her. All he needed was his own two hands.
He shifted his seating a little. It freed Shego's arms, but it let him get his weight into it properly.
Then he wrapped his own two hands around Shego's throat.
"Still need air, bitch?"
Apparently she did. After a moment, she came awake – a little. Badical. He wanted her to know that she was dying. Her hands scrabbled and grasped at his arms, weakly, uselessly. Why didn't she light them up?
Maybe all of her energy was being devoted to healing. No big.
Her eyes fluttered open and looked up into his face. Even better. He wanted to stare into those brown eyes and know that she was seeing death coming.
Her mouth worked as she tried to gasp and her tongue started to protrude.
Yes. Just a little more.
Wait. Someone was coming. Someone was in the room with them. He sensed them with the Mystic Monkey Power, then heard their footsteps.
The henchmen were all dead or gone. That left Drakken. Ron wanted to ignore the blue freak, finish the job, but who knew what he'd do if Ron left his back turned to him. Best get rid of him quickly, then get back to business.
A tiny hand grabbed Ron's shoulder.
He exploded to his feet, whipping about in a hard backhand.
That sent Kim Possible spinning to the floor.
----
Ron Stoppable's world ended.
For an endless moment, all he could do was stand and stare as –
Everything. Everything he'd done. Every reason he'd done it for. All of it had been ruined. No, not just ruined, not even destroyed, but wiped away, annihilated, completely erased by –
- stare as Kim Possible rolled over to face him, a mark the size and shape of his own fist already turning black on her unscarred cheek.
There was shock in her eyes, disbelief, but – oh, thank God, thank God – no fear. If there had been fear in KP's eyes, fear of him, then Ron Stoppable's world truly would have ended.
He dropped to his knees beside her, wanting to reach out and touch, grab, hug, not daring to.
"Oh, God, KP, I'm sorry! Are you alright? I thought you were Drakken, what with the not seeing you and the little hands and I'm so sorry you have to believe me I would never hurt you not on purpose – "
"Ron. Stop."
"Are you all right? Please tell me you're all right, oh, God – "
"Stop!"
"Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm – "
"Ron!" Her hands shot out, grabbed him by the shoulders, and shook him. "Stop! Stop apologizing and listen to me! I'm glad that it happened! Glad!"
He stared at her blankly, dazed. "Glad?"
"Yes! Glad! It woke you up! And now that you're awake, you're going to do what you haven't done since I woke up! You're going to listen to me!"
She paused for a moment, to make sure that he really was listening. He really was. Ron Stoppable's universe consisted of nothing but Kimberly Ann Possible at that moment.
When she spoke again, it was just above a whisper. But her quiet, intense words had the same effect on him as if she'd returned his punch:
"Ron, I don't know what you've been doing this summer, but you've come a long way since I got hurt. A long way. Me, I wasn't even close to 100 percent when we started on this mission, and I'm exhausted now. If we fight, you'll really hurt me – but we're going to fight if you're going to kill Shego."
She paused to let that sink in. Like a punch to the gut. As his eyes and mouth widened, she went on. "Killing somebody in a fight, because there's no other way to stop them or save someone else? That could happen someday. I hate the thought, but I think it every time Drakken's stuff starts to blow up or the only way to get past Shego in time to stop it from blowing up is to knock something heavy on top of her. But to just kill someone? Cold blood? Judge, jury, and executioner? Especially like this? If that happens, then the Ron I love will be dead, and I refuse to lose you."
Ron just blinked. You'll hurt me, I'll fight you, I love you, I refuse to lose you. It was too much. Circuit breakers tripped in his brain, and he had no response.
Kim got up to her knees and dragged him into a fierce hug. "Do you hear me?" She whispered. "I'm not going to lose you. I'm not."
Ron shuddered and collapsed into her arms with a sigh. "How?" He asked.
"Rufus," she answered, still not letting him go. "We were both beyond tweaked, but when we saw what you were doing, we were too scared to stay that way."
"Uh-huh, uh-huh." Ron felt a tap at his knee and looked down to where Rufus stood, looking up at him with worried eyes.
Ron took a deep breath. "Well, I'm – "
"No."
All three of them whipped around.
Behind them, Shego was getting up.
They leaped to their feet and backed away, but she crawled after them, reaching out to them.
"No, por favor. Por favor, dejalo. Deja que termine. Por favor."
"Ron?" Kim asked. "What is that she's saying? Is that Spanish?" She glanced at him, then glanced again, then froze. Ron's face had gone hard and cold again.
"Ron, no!" She slapped a hand across his chest just as he started forward. Rufus ran up and began pushing against his ankle.
"Por favor, es lo mejor para todos. Por favor, por favor, por favor…"
Ron started forward again.
"No!" Kim placed herself squarely in front of him, planting her hands on his chest.
Receiving no answer to…whatever she was saying…Shego lurched to her feet and staggered away.
"KP, you don't understand! She's not begging for mercy, she's – "
"I don't care! It's not about her!"
"Unh-uh, unh-uh!"
Shego fled through one of the chamber's blasted-away doors, her stagger reduced to a slight limp.
"KP! She's getting away!"
"No, she's not! I'm going after her! And if you can control yourself, you can come with! Do you understand?"
Ron looked away from the doorway that Shego had fled through and met her eyes. Hard. Cold. Instead of being warm with Ronshine, his eyes had frozen solid.
"Do. You. Understand?"
Ron nodded. Once.
It was the best she was going to get. With one last, wary look, she turned and ran down the hall that Shego had taken.
----
Kim was right about one thing. Shego wasn't getting away. She wasn't trying to. And besides, she wasn't Shego right now.
Sheila staggered only a little way down the hall before dropping to her knees.
Kim Possible. She'd seen Kim Possible. But that wasn't…well, possible. She had to be a hallucination, a shadow of her own guilt. Or maybe she really was a ghost – why would a hallucination have the scars of her murder?
Kim's boyfriend could probably tell her. He probably knew. He had screamed at her – at Shego – when he was killing her, but the only word she'd been able to understand was Kim's name. The rest had been en Ingles. He'd probably been telling her wonderful things about Kim, giving her details about the person she'd murdered.
But then, just before the end, he'd stopped short. Stopped short of doing justice, stopped short of saving the world from her evil, stopped short of ending her guilt.
Stopped short, and left it up to her. To finish it herself.
She looked down at her hands – her murderer's hands – and called up Shego's fire. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, Shego roared and screamed in outrage, but Sheila ignored her. Their hours-long battle, and the battle with Stoppable, had made this moment possible. The power had been drained with blasting and healing. All that was left was draining into the fire in her hands. Her flesh was vulnerable in a way that it hadn't been since the comet struck. It would have taken days for her energy to rise to even Shego's normal levels, but Sheila didn't plan on living beyond the next minute or two.
Shego's fire would burn through her eyes…she would inhale it through her nose and mouth…up through the moist linings into her sinuses…and it would boil her brain in her skull.
And the world would be safe from her.
But she didn't try to fool herself, any more than she would fool Jesucristo. It would still be suicide. Protecting the world from the green-black hellfire that was burning and building inside her was just a side effect of the fact that she hated what she'd become. She would still be damned. But then, she was damned anyway.
She took a deep breath and began one last prayer. Not to Jesucristo, but to the one person who might forgive.
"Dios te salve María llena eres de Gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita eres entre todas las mujeres y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre…"
----
Kim and Ron rounded the corner at top speed, only to stop short and stare at the sight before them.
"What is she doing?" Kim asked.
"She's – I mean, I think she's praying," Ron answered.
"But why would she be – oh, God," Kim started forward, but Ron grabbed her shoulder.
"Wait, KP, this is perfect!"
Kim turned and stared at him in disbelief. "Perfect? How is this perfect?"
"All we have to do is nothing, and the problem sorts itself out!"
The disbelief turned to dawning horror. "The problem's name is Shego, and I promised that I wouldn't hurt her or let her get hurt if I could help it."
"You made that promise when you were paralyzed in a hospital bed and Drakken was waving those nanites in front of you! It was blackmail! You don't have to – "
"You don't understand," she interrupted. "I didn't promise to save Shego so I could get the nanites. I agreed to the nanites so I could save Shego."
Now it was Ron's turn to stare in disbelief.
"…ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amén."
Kim only recognized the last word. But that was enough to know that it was the last word.
"No!"
Kim leaped, catching Shego's wrists and sending them both tumbling.
Ron started forward, but found he couldn't go more than a step or two. He couldn't do this. He couldn't break KP's trust again, but he couldn't help Shego either. Couldn't. He turned away, in spite of Rufus's tugging.
Both women instinctively tried to come to their feet after the roll, but Kim refused to release the other woman's wrists, and the furthest they could get locked together so was their knees.
Shego started to pull away, then froze when she saw who had tackled her, her dark eyes widening.
"Eres tu. De verdad, eres tu. Eres un espiritu, has vuelto para castigarme?"
"Shego, just turn the fire off, and let's talk about this."
"Perdona me. Creame, por favor…estoy…pero mira! Aqui esta tu justicia."
Shego tried to bring her hands to her face again, but Kim jerked them away.
"Ron, I don't think she can understand me! Drakken forgot to mention that 'Sheila' only speaks Spanish!"
"Que mas quieres de mi?" Sheila pleaded. "!Deja que lo haga y tendras tu vengancia!"
Unable to raise her hands to her face, Shego tried to lower her face into them, but Kim jerked them away. Then she twined her forearms around the other woman's and threaded her fingers into the flaming claws. Shego's arms were pinned against Kim's armor and she was blocked from her fire.
"Por favor!"
"I can't understand her either, Ron – I took French!" She glanced at Ron, and her blood ran cold. He was pacing like a lion in a cage with bratty boys poking sticks at him. Shaking his head, stepping toward them, then stepping back. Rufus tugged uselessly at his pants cuff.
"Por favor! Perdona me! Solo dejame hacerlo!"
"Ron, you have to help! My hands are burning!"
Ron started forward, a murderous snarl on his face, then stopped, shaking his head again, still the animal tormented to the edge of madness.
"Es lo mejor para todos! Soy una monstrocidad!"
"Ron, you have to make her understand!"
"Me?" Ron asked, his voice thick and rough.
"Soy brujah! Soy una diabla!"
"Yes, you!" Kim said, her voice cracking like a whip. "You learned how to speak Bug from spending a day and a half with Roachie, but you didn't learn Spanish from Zita? I don't think so!"
Shego's hands blazed higher, and Kim cried out in pain.
Ron took another step forward, then stopped again.
"Soy mala! El mundo sera mejor sin migo!"
Kim could feel her armor heating up, the skin on her hands reddening. The green-and-black flames were too close to her face. This was going to kill all three of them.
Then she knew what she had to do. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. She just hoped Ron could forgive her for doing it.
"Ron!" She called. "Ron, help! KP in trouble!"
Ron's paralysis broke. He leaped forward, his hands glowing gold –
And laid them on Kim and Shego's clenched hands, dousing the green fire.
Shego's night-colored, tear-filling eyes looked up into his. Something strange had happened to her face. It was like all the green was draining down into her hands, into the fire, revealing another color beneath. A darker color.
"Por favor." She begged. "Yo humeresco morir."
"Oh, yo estoy en acuerdo contigo," he said. "Completamente. Pero yo soy solo un hombre. Esta muchacha aqui…" He nodded down at Kim, who was still looking at Shego with a desperate hope in her eyes. "Ella no es hombre, ni espiritu. Ella es un angel, y angeles quieren salvar a todos."
Shego's fire went out. Whether by her choice or because she finally ran out of energy, neither teen knew. And then, the woman thatKim Possiblehated the most in all the world collapsed, sobbing, into her arms.
With no clue what else to do, Kim began patting her back and stroking her hair. "Drakken?" She called. "If you can hear me, I'll spare you that beating if you come out here and do something about this right now!"
Warily, Drakken limped out of the shadows, the blood from his scalp wound drying on his cheek. When he saw that neither the teens nor Shego intended to attack him, he simply walked up and injected something into Shego's shoulder. A moment later, she went limp.
"Thank you," he said as he knelt to gather Shego up. "You can call Global Justice now."
"They're waiting outside," Kim said quietly. "How did you think we got here?"
"If I knew how you got around," He said as he stood up – had Shego always been so small and light? – "Would I always be so surprised when you show up?"
"Well, that's how we did this time. They're waiting at the front door," She pointed.
With a nod and another "thank you," Drakken walked off toward his imprisonment.
Ron started after him, but Kim caught his hand. "Ron – "
"Yes?" His voice was harsh and strained. She didn't quite dare look up into his face. It might be, too.
"What was she saying?"
"She was begging you to let her die. Talking about how evil she was, how much she deserved it, that kinda thing. She thought you were a ghost, come back for your revenge."
"And what did you tell her?"
"I agreed. But I told her that I agreed because I was just a man. But you're not a man, and you're not a ghost. You're an angel, and angels want to save everyone."
"Oh."
Kim wanted to tell him how little she felt like an angel at that moment. How she was sorry for making him do something so very hard, for making him help someone he hated so much. She wanted to tell him that it hadn't been easy for her, either. She'd woken up in a hospital bed paralyzed and scarred because of Shego – how could she do anything but hate her? But to do anything else – to kill her or let her die, no matter how they felt about her, would destroy them. There was only one thing that she knew more deeply and truly than she knew that, and that was that she loved him.
But in the end, she was too exhausted and heart-sore to say anything, and she let him walk away.
Author's Note: I hope the changed rating didn't put anybody off. However, there are things other than sex that demand an "M" rating, and I think Ron's brutality in this chapter definitely fits that bill. Honestly, the depth of the boy's rage surprised and frightened even me.