I do not own any Disney characters named herein and am only borrowing them to tell a nonprofit tale meant for entertainment purposes only.
Kim Possible: Gifted
By LJ58
19
"Kim," Shego screamed as Kim screamed herself as she felt her power flowing out of her like a literal river the moment they stepped into that room.
The girl Shego knew seemed to visibly glow, though that glow fluttered and fluctuated, not hearing the two men chortle smugly, and stood there staring blankly as ever as that ebon body drew in all the light, power, and energy around her, dimming the lights around them as Edward swore, and started backing up.
Shego was about to do something, or just threaten the pair, when that freak with the bad hair spoke first.
"You have to shut her down, Drew," Edward shouted at his cousin as he frowned at the device he held.
"But…we're winning," Drew swore, the blue man grinning manically as Kim stood there, her body radiating sheer energies that he couldn't believe she had contained. "The annoying brat can hardly move, and she certainly cannot escape!"
"Look again, you imbecile," Ed shouted at him. "They're already going critical, and if they keep on, they're going explode and implode, and turn this entire place into a crater as big as the moon!"
"Impossible," Drew swore. "You'll see. My sponge will absorb all of Possible's energy, and leave her completely helpless! Just as I predicted. You'll see!"
Kim was still screaming when the dark shape's skin began to break through in bits and pieces. And then she saw something else. Something familiar as part of the silhouette's face appeared when the ebony shell began to crack.
"T-T-Tara," Kim cried, seeing enough of the face of her long-ago babysitter being revealed by the energy that boiled away the darkness from the blonde she remembered from so long ago just stared blankly at her.
"Whoooooo," the now partially revealed young blonde teen asked, barely able to make the sound as she stared blankly at the redhead as those roiling energies seemed to generate their own sound now that was getting louder and louder like an approaching freight train.
"It's Kim," Kim cried, and somehow staggered forward, actually reaching for her now.
"No," Ed Lipski screamed in fear as Kim reached out to her. "Don't let them touch!"
Kim ignored them as Shego could only gape in confusion as the redhead wrapped her arms around the still mostly stygian body of her long-ago sitter, energy roiling about them both, and then the redhead's body seemed to explode with blinding, white light.
Ed screamed, but the growing energetic roar of the pair's strange confrontation had just gone silent just before a concussive wave seemed to rush out and knock them all flat.
Shego moved toward where they had been after regaining her feet, the weird concussive force no longer there, and saw only a large, iridescent glowing orb hovering where two bodies had been a moment ago.
"Kimmie," she cried and stared at the pulsing orb that hovered in the air before her. Only there was no sign of the other girl or Kim.
"They….inverted," Drew frowned in confusion, walking closer.
"Oh, God, Kim," Shego gasped in horror, thinking only of the girl she had sworn to help and had come to like a lot more than she had realized until it was apparent she might truly be gone.
"This is fascinating," Drew grinned manically. "A living quasar, perhaps? No, unlikely. Still, the energy must have…."
"Shut up," Shego snarled, and punched him hard enough to send him flying back to land at Ed's feet. "I should kill the both of you," she spat," and the burly blonde scientist looked alarmed as Shego actually pulled back one side of her jacket to reveal a very ominous looking pistol.
"Now, let's not doing anything impetuous," Ed said. "Seriously," he stressed.
"You. You and your kind…. You just couldn't leave her alone. You had to push…..and push….."
The orb pulsed as she neared it and Shego gasped as she heard something as if from very far away.
"Kimmie," she asked quietly, looking at the orb as it pulsed anew.
"Oh, I doubt she's still alive," Ed said as he edged toward the door. "In fact, I rather doubt…."
Shego drew, and fired on Ed in the same instant she stepped closer to the orb, and Ed howled as his left knee was destroyed by the powerful round.
"Next one goes in that so-called brain of yours, so I'd shut up now," Shego growled furiously at him as she kept that big automag pointed at him even while the woman was still staring at the glowing orb.
Ed pantomimed zipping his lip as he lay where he fell, face etched with pain.
"Kim," she called again as she put the weapon away, and again, she now heard a faint, distant echo of a familiar voice.
Steeling herself, Shego stepped forward and daringly forced her right hand into the glowing orb that seemed to swallow her arm to the shoulder before she realized it.
"Take my hand, Kimmie," she shouted, feeling something trying to pull her completely into the strange haze as she fought to keep herself from being swallowed now. "Do you see it? Take my hand. I'm here! Come back! Please, take my hand, and come back," she shouted, finding herself crying.
Then she felt a strong hand clamp down on her own, and she cried out again, and fell back, pulling as hard as she could. She strained, and then to her shock, Ed Lipski was there, pulling, too, in spite of his knee, and then they both staggered back, and when they did, Kim and a pale, naked blonde teen fell out across them. Even as they appeared, the shimmering, white orb just popped like an oversized bubble.
"Shego," Kim cried and embraced her where they lay. "I heard you! Wherever we went, I heard you," she smiled through her own tears, hugging her fiercely.
"How's your friend," Shego asked, sitting up as Ed just stared at them in genuine shock.
"Tara. She was my babysitter that day," Kim told her as she rose to her knees, and looked over the unconscious girl. "They must have had her locked up all this time, too. Bastards," Kim growled and looked over at Ed with cold, green eyes.
"Kimmie," Shego said, eyeing her now in earnest as they sat up to study the skinny unconscious blonde laying sprawled nearby. "Don't look now, but I think you changed again."
"I did," she frowned and lifted her hands.
She gaped because her skin was no longer that sickly pale white it had been for so very long. She looked so darkly tanned she looked almost bronze. Or even golden. She looked at herself and realized her lean, almost skinny body was now hard with muscle beneath that new golden skin, and she felt better than she had in years in spite of her powers.
"What…happened," she said, still staring at her hands and arms in wonder.
"I don't know, Kimmie. Still, all things considered, maybe we can just get out of here now, and pretend we weren't here. What do you say?"
"Global Justice," a loud voice shouted just then. "No one move."
"Well, it was a nice idea," Kim sighed and looked down at Tara.
"You think she's okay?"
"I hope so. She must have had just as hard a time as me. I remember she was always so nice, too," Kim murmured, brushing the young teen's blonde hair back from her face. "Wow, she still looks so young, too."
"We kept her in stasis until recently," Edward Lipski said trying to bandage his knee with his own torn shirt even as a grim, one-eyed woman with an eyepatch over one eye stared at them as she and her men surrounded them.
"All right, who wants to tell me what's going on," the woman demanded. "Because until three minutes ago, we were detecting some major dimensional activity disrupting the continuum coming out of this place. The unstable kind of activity that worries people like me," the somber woman scowled at them.
"Blame him," Kim pointed at Ed. "We just want to go home," she said.
"Oh, yeah, and you have a major terrorist over there," Shego pointed at the other Lipski. "Calls himself Drakken, and tends to leave a lot of serious messes behind him," she scowled.
Dr. Betty Director eyed Kim and arched the brow over her good eye as she took in that still distinctive red hair streaked with bright colors.
"You seem to have changed again, Kimberly. Because you obviously don't quite look the way you appeared last time we met," she told her blandly.
"Ah, would you believe I have a new self-help program," Kim suggested.
"Indeed," Will Du, a lean, wiry man with a bland expression remarked. "I wager that is far from the truth, Possible," the man declared. "Why don't you just come with us," he told her, holding out a pair of handcuffs. "It's time to curtail your antics before you…."
"Go…..away," Kim snapped, and Shego stepped forward, and between them even as Kim began to tense with a very familiar anger as even her eyes glittered ominously now.
"Back off, errand boy. After all that we just faced, the last thing you want to do is to piss Kimmie off," Shego told him.
"Yes. But we do need to talk to you ladies again. All of you," Betty said as another agent put a blanket around Tara's body, and carefully lifted her onto a gurney that had been produced.
"Where are you taking her," Kim demanded, moving to stop them from leaving.
"To medical, Kimberly," Betty told her. "Once we are certain she's okay, and if there are no other reasons to hold her, she can go home."
"And us," Shego asked far too casually to be that relaxed.
"We definitely need to speak to you two after all I suspect just happened here," Dr. Director told her. "However, I give you my word that so long as we have no other concerns surrounding you, the both of you can also depart once we clear you of this obvious…..mess."
"Hey, they started it," Kim said again, pointing to the Lipski cousins that were now being taken in hand by the arriving agents, though Drew was still out cold.
"Kimmie is right. We were minding our own business until they decided to restart an old game. Stupid game, but an old one," Shego huffed.
"I'm still bleeding here," Ed whined, holding his makeshift bandage around his knee.
"Want me to stop it," Shego growled at him with a sharp gleam in her eyes.
"Say no," Betty told him knowingly as the man eyed Shego in confusion. "And you still have a certain report due to certain officials in DARPA, as I understand it," the woman told Shego.
"Nah. I still have at least fourteen months before I have to play with those posers again. Just about the time Kimmie makes it to college, I think," she grinned.
"College," Will Du exclaimed, eyeing the redhead. "You actually think she is going…."
Kim glowered as she narrowed her eyes on him, and snarled, "Are you saying you think I'm too stupid to make it to college," she demanded of him, one hand rising in a fist as a shimmering green plasma openly roiled around that appendage.
"I'd be careful of your next words, errand boy," Shego grinned at the man.
"I believe, Miss Possible, that college was never considered simply because others feel you were….expected to follow another path," Dr. Director pointed out.
Kim huffed and dropped her fist.
"Well, they can keep expecting all they want. This is a free country, and I didn't volunteer for anything. So….nyah," she huffed again, and turned to follow the men carrying Tara away to a still open medical clinic as if knowing its location all along.
"Yeah, she's still a brat," Shego grinned and nodded at Kim. "Better let me stay with her. Unlike you lot, she trusts me."
"Indeed," Will Du grimaced at her.
"Stand down, Du. Take in our prisoners, and be sure you get them interrogated before you put them in a cell for review."
"Prisoners! But we…."
"Were ordered to stand down, and relinquish all authority and operations over four months ago. Correct," Betty Director asked Ed as agents went to drag the still unconscious Drew away as two more men pulled Edward to his feet, though he dragged one leg.
"I had to keep an eye on….."
"You'll be allowed to explain," Dr. Director told her as she turned to follow the three women that most concerned her. "In full detail," she added pointedly before she went after Shego and Kim. "I look forward to hearing why you conscripted a known terrorist madman for your efforts."
"And we're very good at getting the details, even if you favor not sharing," Will smiled thinly at him.
"What about my knee," Ed moaned.
"What about my brothers," Shego growled and put a hand over her pistol on her right side again.
"We don't have them. We only faked an abduction, and then blacked out area phone services with our remaining resources so you couldn't reach them to expose our efforts," Ed told her uneasily, his eyes fixed on that big weapon. "I swear. They're still safe at home. I swear."
"You'd better be very glad you never touched them. Very glad," Shego growled and walked off with Kim and the agents carrying Tara off to be cared for just then.
"My leg," Ed moaned again as two men jerked him to his feet.
Will eyed his blood leg, studied his sullen face, and remarked dryly, "It doesn't seem critical. So the faster you cooperate, the faster you get to see a medic."
"This is coercion! Inhumane! This is….."
"And what did you try to do to Possible," Will Du asked bluntly as the cousins were led into a small room, and the door closed on them as Will and two agents remained inside. "Let's start there," he said curtly as he sat down in the only chair, and eyed Edward. "Do be concise," he demanded.
Ed groaned as he eyed Drew, and shook his head.
"We were following orders. Really. We were still trying to control that….girl. You don't realize how dangerous she can be," he sputtered.
"Tell me," Will said blandly as ever. "Tell me everything," he said firmly.
Ed, with little choice, began to talk.
To Be Continued….