Disclaimer: I own neither Kim Possible nor the associated characters therein. Also, despite the fact that this set in no other pre-established continuity, I do not own the X-Men and their associated characters either.

Author's note: I forgot to mention in the first chapter that this is post StD. More specifically, the events start half way through the fall semester of the senior year for Kim and Ron.

Hail to the Chief

President-elect Robert Kelly walked through his campaign headquarters. The office suite was still abuzz with activity even though election day had passed with Kelly as the victor. Some would think that now would be a time to rest before the hectic days being in the White House would bring. However, the former senator had made it clear that he wanted everything ready to be put into place before he was sworn in. And that was the reason he was heading to the private meeting room today.

Four men were sitting around the large table as he entered. First was his campaign manager, Graydon Creed, with his running-mate, former Governor William Stryker. Across the table were two scientists who had a special interest in getting Kelly elected president: Drs. Cameron Hodge and Bolivar Trask. Graydon had introduced the two men to Robert shortly after receiving the Republican nomination. By the looks on their faces, the field test of their special project had not gone well, which was disappointing to the president-elect, but not unanticipated, this was only a test after all.

Kelly looked at each of the seated men in turn and then in a calm tone said, "Judging by the severity of everyone's looks, I assume the test did not go according to plan..." Dr. Hodge was about to speak, but stopped himself when President Kelly raised his hand. "I am not asking you to confirm my assumption, nor am I asking you to pass blame. What I want to know is: what went wrong; how does it affect our plans, and what can we do to correct it?"

Dr. Trask cleared his throat before starting. "In many ways our Sentinels exceeded our expectations in the Middleton test, however, in one respect that is also the reason for the failure. While they were unable to locate the two targets they had been sent to either recover or eliminate, they managed to locate a couple latent mutants and several whose DNA had been altered, though only slightly. In that respect we now know the full sensitivity of their ability to locate and identify genetic aberrations. However, this is, again, where we ran into the problem. This particular problem was in the form of a Sentinel who removed herself from our Command Matrix and attack her fellow Sentinels."

Governor Stryker cocked his head. "'Her?' Are you saying you gave your machines a female form? Was one of your designers feeling lonely?"

Dr. Hodge shook his head, ignoring the future vice president's obvious condescension. "No, the fact is a Sentinel is more than just a machine. In initial prototypes that were made it was discovered that they lacked any confines on their adaptability. Now, one might think that it would be a good thing, however, that adaptability would always eventually lead to the fully mechanical prototypes turning against humans. It was eventually decided that a human component was needed, hence why we used data collected from the Centurion Project to make our Sentinels."

"So did the one Sentinel go rogue because it was female?" Graydon asked.

Dr. Trask leaned forward in his chair. "No, otherwise it wouldn't have been just this one. Judging by the data that had been recorded by the unit before it turned we..."

It was at that moment a beeping started, though it wasn't long Dr. Hodge indicated it was his phone and excused himself.

"As I was saying," Dr. Trask continued, "we had determined from the recorded data that the biological aspect of the rogue Sentinel possessed altered DNA similar to some of those that had been rounded up before everything went wrong. In fact the scope of the change was almost identical with only one one-thousandth of a percent error, like they had been all been exposed to some genetically altering substance at the same time but for slightly dissimilar periods."

The president-elect steepled his fingers as he leaned forward. "Any idea why this was a factor?"

"Not as of yet, Mr. President."

"I'm not in office yet, Dr. Trask."

"Of course, sir. The only reason why we think altered DNA is the cause is because, as far as we can tell, it is the only difference between her and the rest of the units. We will be running some simulations on the base AI logic functions to see what we can come up with."

"Were there any other problems with the test?" This time it was the governor and running-mate who asked the serious question.

Bolivar shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He knew that the only other problem was one that would seem ridiculous. In truth he found it hard to believe himself, but having seen all the damage that had been done to the Sentinels, even though none had been killed or destroyed, and having seen the playback of the event, he couldn't deny the truth. "...bugs..." he finally said in a subdued tone.

Stryker raised an eyebrow. "Bugs? What kind of bugs?"

"Cockroaches, giant ones. Ranging in size from one about an medium sized dog to ones two or three stories high when fully raised up." He quickly continued before the former governor could scoff at him again, "From what we can tell they reside in a landfill located in the Tri-City area. How they came to be the size they are, we are not sure yet, but we are looking into it..."

------

Nathan Christopher Summers sat in the lotus position trying to focus on using a fine control of his telekinesis on a hand full of pebbles. This task was made more difficult by the fact that his excitable younger sister, Rachel, kept shouting at him telepathically.

NATE!

"GYAH!" the fifteen year-old with light-brown hair and white bangs exclaimed as the ring of pebbles exploded into dust. Don't do that, Rae! I could have hurt someone!

Yeah, yeah, whatever. She sent back through their connection. You really have to come see this!

What? More people coming for whatever this trip is? The novelty of the Xavier estate as well as all the new people showing up had worn off several days ago.

But, Nate, judging by how Uncle Bobby and Uncle Hank are keeping daddy from running it has to be HER

Nathan quickly got to his feet and dashed for the front of the mansion. By the time he got there he saw that his father, Scott, had resigned himself to whatever fate was in store for him since he saw that neither of his father's old friends, Henry McCoy and Robert Drake, were trying to hold him in place. He didn't see the infamous redhead, Jean Grey, though from what he heard from his mother it was Jean Possible now, until he felt fury emanate from near the SUV that had parked near the fountain in the front of the large estate. He guessed that all the telepaths on site felt it since he saw his mother, who had just stepped out to greet the new "refugees," wince and heard his thirteen year-old sister looking out the window of her guest room "Eep."

Dr. Jean Possible had prepared herself for seeing, as she referred to him in her mind, Scott "scum-bag" Summers and had resigned herself to treating him with terse politeness. However, that resolve went away when she saw not one but two teenagers whose appearances were clearly similar to not only the man she'd at one time loved but also her one-time hated rival, Emma Frost. Now her intention was to storm up to him and demand to know why he had been willing to have children with the "Ice Queen" while he had decided to throw she and her unborn child to the wolves. And storm she did, but as she approached he just had to open his mouth.

With a nervous laugh he stuck his foot in his mouth. "Hey, Jean. Not still angry are you?"

Jean growled at Scott as she connected with a right hook, knocking him out and his red-glasses off his face. Hank and Bobby looked down incredulously at their unconscious friend and groaned, "Yes, Scott, of course she is."

Kim and Ron had been stretching near the SUV when they saw the event happen. All they could do was stand there stunned, their mouths agape. They had never seen Kim's mother so angry that she'd belt someone out of the blue. To them she'd always seemed like a fountain of endless patience. The shook themselves out of their stupor as Mrs. Dr. Possible stepped over the comatose man after acknowledging the other three adults, though she couldn't help but notice the coldness in the greeting she gave the blonde woman.

She was so busy trying to process what she had seen and heard the past couple of days she almost missed hearing the blonde say, "Nathan, go show your big sister and her friend inside. I'm sure they will want to get cleaned up before lunch."

All three teens blanched at the woman's statement. "Big sister?"

------

Dr. Cameron Hodge closed his cell phone. He was furious. One of the data analysts had discovered the faulty Sentinel was no ordinary model. She was the XJ-9 unit. Dubbed the "Wakeman Production Proof," she was to be used as the template before he and Trask had gotten control of the project three months ago. They had been assured that XJ-9 had been disposed of before Trask had stripped many of the useless, hardwired protocols from his "Master Mold" unit, the XJ-10.

How could she still exist? Why had she been a part of the Command Matrix when it had not even existed when she was built? But what made Hodge the most concerned was: could she eventually take over control of the other units and send them against us? There were to many questions, and all he could bring himself to do was whisper the hated name, "Nora Wakeman."

------

In downtown Middleton, the rouge Sentinel sat in a dark alley, hugging her knees to her chest, crying. This wasn't what she wanted. She'd wanted to be a hero like her friend and captain, Kim. What she got was fear and disapproval, in spite of the fact that she had turned against the command she received when her Sentinel parts went active. She wanted to curse her mother for her part in this, but she doubted that she'd known how the Sentinels would be used when she'd been the first. She wanted to curse her fellow Sentinels, but she knew they had no real control and that she'd been lucky to find a way out at all. So she resigned herself to cursing her inability to have an identity. She could no longer be Tara Jennifer Wakeman, she lost that when she became a Sentinel. Nor could she continue being Sentinel XJ-9, she gave that up when she went rogue. She was no one, nothing.

She heard the footsteps and looked to the end of they alley. Her tears only made it possible to see that the figure at the end was human in shape. Good, she thought as the figure walked toward her, someone's come to get rid of me like the rest of the trash.

She felt the figure gently lay a hand on her, heard it sigh and then a familiar voice, "There you are, Tara, we've been looking everyone's been looking for you."

The Sentinel sniffed. "I'm not Tara anymore, Bonnie." She winced at the sound of her own metallic voice.

"Oh yeah? Then who are you."

"I'm no one. Just a piece of useless trash."

Bonnie scoffed, "You're right. You can't be Tara. As gentle as she was, she'd never give up like this. Never put herself down. Especially not after pulling off a heroic stunt worthy of little miss perfect, Kim Possible." The cheerleader looked at her friend and sighed. "I'll ask you again: if you aren't Tara, who are you?"

"I don't know. I can't be who I was as a human. Nor can go back to following those awful commands. I just don't know who I am anymore."

"Well how about this for a start... you're my friend. You are the friend of the infamous Bonnie Rockwaller." They both laughed at the over dramatic nature of her statement.

"Thanks. But I still don't think I can call myself Tara anymore."

Bonnie nodded in understanding. "That's fine. How about I call you TJ? Just until you decide who you are."

Rogue Sentinel nodded. "Okay."

------

To Be Continued...

End notes: Some of you will probably be upset with the choices I made, like the bit around Scott leaving Jean when she was pregnant. Some of things were necessary to keep from overloading this fic with characters while still holding to the cannon established in Kim Possible. Some of it was because of what I have planned for the future of the story. The rest was just to get past something that was becoming tedious but still trying to give the information that I want the readers to know. I really hope I having munged things up to much with this. Any way, please critique as well as give some ideas as to what you want to see in the future of this universe. Next time, Kim's mom has some explaining to do. Till next time, "true believers."

Edit note: I'd like to thank CylonOne for catching my typos.