They Say Everyone Has a Twin Chapter 12 revised, a kim possible fanfic

The Trinity Sitch – Book 1: They Say Everyone Has a Twin

Chapter 12

All quiet on the western front. The calm before the storm. Hurry up and wait. So the drag.

The tension could be cut with a knife in the Possible house. Sure, Kim thought, it did take quite a long time for Ron and her to get to some of their missions, but there was something different about just sitting around waiting. Normally Wade would have found a way to locate Drakken and Shego – he always did, but this time it was different. As long as they stayed in the Valkyrie there was no way using 21st century technology to locate them, at least as long as they kept the electronic countermeasures active.

Kim was torn. On one hand, she knew the situation was way dangerous. Usually her arch nemesis had some death ray or doomsday machine by itself. This time, however he was in possession of an integrated fighting machine, way beyond any battle-bot. The Diablos had been powerful and swift but they could be brought down individually with sufficient firepower. Their strength was in their numbers and vast deployment. Jimmy's fighter was far more than that. To hear them talk about it, it would take nothing less than a present day nuclear warhead to bring it down! It was almost completely covered with an armor called pentronium – sort of like Kevlar on super-steroids. What if this was beyond her? Was this such a dangerous situation that it needed to be handed over to the military or Global Justice?

What would such an action do to her new friends? Could either organization pass up the opportunity to get their hands on such advanced technology? Could she convince Dr. Director to help them get their ship back and allow them to return to their world? It was one thing to keep a timeline intact, but they weren't part of theirs – their future was a different one. Keeping the Valkyrie if it didn't have to be destroyed wouldn't affect them, or at least shouldn't if Justine was correct.

She sat at the kitchen table, watching Dona Argus and her mother talk. Somehow something had shifted in the woman and instead of 'girl-bonding' like she had been earlier with Kim she was now 'Mom-bonding' with her mother. It was so awk-weird looking at a woman who was at once far older than she looked and an extra-dimensional twin of her most dangerous enemy. Amazing how the different circumstances of her birth had affected her life. One small difference and two worlds had diverged in such different directions.

Shego…Sherry Godfrey hadn't met her soul-mate when she was fourteen. She never moved to a city in North Carolina to be swept off her feet by one Jimmy Argus, or in her world's case, Neil Argus.

Or had they. The look in the man's eyes when she questioned him about his relationship. He looked at once smug and sad. Could it be that they two of them had met? Was it even possible the two had been…dating?

Shego had once been a hero. It was a closely guarded secret she and Ron had stumbled onto during a visit to Go City a while back. The timing of Neil's 'teen hero' work would have coincided with that time. He also didn't look the first bit phased when Wade revealed her true name. Kim was convinced he already knew it.

Did fate bring the two of them together anyway? Then a dangerous thought occurred to her. What if they had been lovers in the past. Where were Neil's loyalties today. She didn't' like that train of thought, especially after Ron had gone on his tangent about him being the evil twin.

Where was Ron anyway?

She cast about the house, finally finding him up in her room, sitting at her computer. The "Everlot" website was pulled up, but he didn't have an active game running. Instead his head was down on the desk, the long night finally catching up to him.

Kim shook his shoulders, but he barely stirred. With a little cajoling she finally managed to get him to stand up and carefully led him to her bed. He immediately fell back into a deep slumber the moment his head hit the pillow.

Mental fatigue was starting to creep into her mind as well. She switched the computer into Kimmunicator mode, since her hand-held was still downstairs after being used for the tele-conference and curled up next to Ron, draping an arm across his chest.

Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, glancing at the clock on her nightstand. She had slept for almost two hours. Ron had rolled toward her in his sleep, somehow managing to hook one of his fingers through her belt loop.

With a couple shakes, she was finally able to wake him.

"Hey, look, I slept with you in your bed." He said sleepily, a wry grin on his face.

"Keep your dirty mind to yourself." She said sweetly. Still she gave her hatch a quick glance. She couldn't hear any movement so she figured everyone else was still downstairs. Pulling Ron close she gave him a very warm good-morning kiss. Breaking it off, she put her forehead to his. "Okay, boyfriend. Heads in the game, we're still in mission mode."

"Sure, KP." He said, pulling out of her embrace and rolling off the bed.

The reason it had been so quiet was that everyone but the two women were now sacked out in various locations. Murky was stretched out on the big couch, the only piece of furniture big enough for him. Gary was in her father's chair, the back and leg rests fully extended. Neil was on the smaller couch in the sitting room, asleep while sitting up. Everyone had been up the entire night and it had caught up to them finally.

She looked at Neil and thought about his extra-dimensional twin in the other room. It was amazing how true the men were to themselves at one point. Both of them were heroes in their own right, only following different paths. How much of what Neil was today was the result of never meeting his "Dona" or meeting her under far different circumstances? Would he have taken her on a fateful mountain bike trip and found the hidden starship in the foothills of North Carolina?

He never went to the future.

He never found the starship.

A starship!

She found the Kimmunicator and hit the call key. A drowsy eyed boy answered a minute later. "Wade, we need a ride to North Carolina."

"I'm on it, I'll get you something fast."

"Please and Thank You." She replied automatically, striding into the kitchen where the two women were working on yet another pot of coffee. "Dona, I think I may have found a way to locate your ship!"

"Your sure you can find it again?" Kim shouted over the din of the circling C-130. The same plane that dropped Neil off earlier that day had circled back and picked them up at Middleton Airport.

The 'strike-team' once again consisted of four. Five if you counted the naked mole rat sleeping in Ron's pocket. Murky represented the Starforce and Neil the "Old School." The thick tree cover made parachuting difficult, so they were going to make their approach using jet packs and the more advance Gli-packs of her new friends. The main difference between the two pieces of technology was mainly the power plant. Kim and Ron's packs were rocket powered, fueled with his father's J200 rocket fuel. The engines were efficient enough to have an extended run time without taking up too much volume. They also relied on the lift generated by the wings.

Gli-packs were a little different. The 'wings' folded up like insect's wings and retracted up into the body, with only their tips showing. The didn't rely on airfoils for lift, instead being gravitational repulsers. The power plant was miniature ion drive, just like the ones that powered the Valkyrie. They were lighter, faster and had tremendously longer range than the teen's equipment, but that's what almost 500 years of advancements bring you.

Neil was wearing one, as was Murky. When the time came, the cargo ramp lowered and the quartet leaped, one by one, into the open sky. Murky, who seemed ill-at-ease in his lanky body from time to time pulled his body into a missile, his arms at their sides. Neil did likewise, followed by Kim.

Ron just screamed.

Kim watched as the wings on their packs extended first to the rear, then snapped open. The drive units flared to life, leveling out their descent. Kim and Ron fired their rockets next, their own wings telescoping out from the sides of their backpacks.

The Uwharrie mountains were lush and green. The flew through pockets of cool air, then thermals, the air moist with humidity. The fully leveled off just a hundred feet above the tree tops.

Despite never having used this type of equipment, Neil was flying like a pro. Murky explained the packs had a computer guidance system that made flying them almost instinctive. There was and option of a control stick that extended around the flyer's waist or, as Murky was doing, flying it by balance alone, with throttle and wind controls set into the gloves. The tall ex-Starforce officer was an old hand with the thing.

Murky took the lead and banked, following the clear-cut of some power lines. They passed over a formation of pure white quartz rocks, finally landing at an odd looking hill in a clearing just a little over two hundred fifty feet long. Low scrub had grown up over the hill. From the air, it didn't look any different than the terrain around them.

Murky had been here before. It had been the key turning point in his life.

Dona stroked a few strands of hair on Jimmy's forehead. This was almost as bad as the years she had spent in Miami with their children while he was halfway across the spiral arm fighting a desperate war. At least then there was always the thought in the back of her mind that he had hundreds of people around him that were fighting for their lives as well. Teamwork and cooperation and a cause to fight for. They were the beacons of hope, along with his undying love for her that would keep them alive.

This was different. Either Jimmy had no idea just how badly he was hurt or there was something else wrong with them. He was the first to offer an explanation about what had happened to their powers. They were, in effect, cut off from the source. Whatever means the Effurien used to grant them their abilities, it could not carry over from dimension to dimension so here there was nothing to back it up. Right off the bat she asked him how they were all able to remove their 'disguises' and he explained that there was a residual build-up of the power in their bodies. Gary and Dona were not attuned to their power to the degree Jimmy was so they didn't sense it's lack when they squandered what little they had left. Dona used hers to change Murky, Tinker and herself back, the same as Jimmy had with Gary and himself. Gary burned his up forming swords almost absentmindedly. Here they were absolutely plain, normal human beings.

She wondered if there was once an ancient race of intelligent beings in this universe who ascended to a higher plane. That's what the Effurien, of the Fury as most people called it, really was. It wasn't some mystical force, it was a consciousness that existed beyond space and time as humans thought of it. Sure, Arkonian religion centered around it, but they were not like they really were gods. They were simply a different kind of people.

People who were had come to defend and protect the planet that had birthed their race and was now home to humans who had been brought there under mysterious circumstances almost ten thousand years ago. The beliefs of those people divided the Effurien into three distinct aspects: Wisdom, the Hand and the Sword. She did not know how she had become the avatar of the sword, it was like the blade had actually chosen her. When Gary held the sword it seemed somehow bigger, suited to his style of combat. With her is was just as long, but seemed a more slender weapon, perfectly balanced for her. Somehow it granted her a measure of grace and skill with the weapon. She wondered if holding it would somehow restore her link to her powers. The point was moot, for the time being. It was in a storage locker on the Valkyrie. One simply did not march up to a city in the 21st century with a sword strapped to your back.

Absently she played with a ring hanging from a gold chain around her neck.

Murky cleared some brush away, revealing a round hatch. He found the latch mechanism with little trouble. Expecting some resistance he leaned into it, pushing the round handle inwards and twisting it clockwise. The hatch split into four equal parts, retracting inwards, revealing a plushly carpeted interior. The floor was tilted about 20 degrees.

Unlike the first time he had seen this ship, Murky knew where he was going. With a grunt he pushed the doors to the crew staterooms open and made his way forward to the bridge. Handing his flashlight to Ron, he seated himself at the main pilot's station and went to work taking a panel loose on the console. Just like Tinker explained to him, he disconnected a series of wires.

"There, I don't think we'd want the automation system taking over the ship until Tinker gets his hands on it. I don't think we want to end up four hundred fifty years in the future." He got up out of the seat and found a panel on the floor. Inside were a series of switches that looked for all the world like circuit breakers. In a sense, that's exactly what they were. "Cross your fingers."

Unlike household breakers, these were remote switches for a more complex power distribution system. They couldn't just be switched on all at once. He slowly flipped each switch to 'prime,' then, starting again from the top, switched them fully over to on. Lights flickered to life and the console lit up, all except the panel Murky had disconnected.

He waited. Kim watched a look pass over him. She wondered what kind of memories doing this would bring back to the man. This was, in his world, the ship that had ripped him from his time into a future he could not at first comprehend. He was obviously feeling something akin to deja-vu, as if he was waiting for something to happen. He saw her look and explained. "Right about this time the artificial gravity created a bubble around the ship and blasted all the dirt and debris piled on the ship off of it and righted it. Then the Ion Ram Scoops started whining as the engines powered up. Jimmy and Dona were able to get into the seats up on the bridge, I wasn't so lucky. The hatch snapped shut, the Phantasm took off and next thing you know, we're leaving the atmosphere. Well, that wasn't the end of it, the ship executed its last order, which was to return to the future.

"Something went wrong. We now know this ship came from a time closer to the one we just left behind. Instead we ended up at least 30 years earlier, back at a point where the Arkonian war was starting to heat up again. That panel right there is the automation system. The main computer was damaged and the memory core wiped clean, so the only thing the ship actually knew was programmed into the automation. It executed that last order. Since I disconnected it we can safely power up the ship and fly it back to Middleton."

"How are you going to be able to do this by yourself if the automation system is offline." Kim said.

"Don't need it." He replied, again taking his seat. "Find yourselves some seats and figure out the harnesses. We're headin' back to Colorado." He started flipping switches, bringing more systems to life. The ship shuddered and there was a sound like an explosion. He touched a control and the windows of the bridge opened up, revealing the bright afternoon sky. Dirt, shrubs and other vegetation was raining down around them. The floor shifted as the ship's landing struts extended, finally righting them.

A low 'thrum' rumbled through the ship, followed by a loud screaming sound. Minutes later Murky hit the engine start controls and the two large, stainless steel shrouded Ion Lock-In engines roared to life.

The they pretty much assumed was this universe's version of the X.S.S. Phantasm was free of the Earth and lifted into the skies, this time not streaking into the heavens but westward, in a sub-orbital hop to Middleton.

A/N Revised 2-26-06