DISCLAIMER: This tale is my entry in the "2nd Annual Snow Daze Holiday Story Contest." Nothing belongs to me if you've seen it on TV. There's a lot of Christmas stuff I don't own, either. Who knows how much of that will get dragged outta the attic. Soundtrack for this chapter: Sounds Like Christmas by The December People; Danger Man score by Edwin Astley; The Girl Who Was Death by Devil Doll. Merry Christmas!
The Superior Mine lay nearly fifty miles from Middleton. During the years of the Silver Standard, it had been the hub of the state's economy, and the mining town that sprung up around it had become a center of industry, merchandising and homespun sin. Then the United States had switched to the Gold Standard, and now Silverton and the mine that birthed it were no more than footnotes in history books.
The Sloth descended from the cloudless skies to rattle through the ghost town's unpaved streets. About two miles from Silverton, the little car came to a stop; Kim and Ron Stoppable disembarked, stepped quickly into the shadows of the mine entrance.
"I knew you'd crack that code," Wade Load told them, as they entered. The young man had a backpack on; he'd obviously been prepared to stay in the wild a while.
Kim was relieved to see he was all right, even under these strange conditions. "It was no big, Wade. I read Kruber's Kryptografik in college. Once you've plowed through that, you can decode about anything."
"How'd you get here?" Ron asked, nervously surveying his foreboding surroundings. The darkness above them was rustling faintly. Bats. He hated bats. Or maybe snakes. He hated snakes, too. Could be scorpions, for all he knew. Didn't like those either.
The young man laughed. "You know, I can drive now."
"We circled the town before we landed. Didn't see your car anywhere."
"And you won't. Uh – hid it in one of the abandoned stables. If they'd spot it –"
Kim broke in. "Wade, who are 'they'? Who are we up against?"
He hesitated before answering. "GJ."
"Global Justice?" Her tone revealed her disbelief. "They're on our side."
"Not this time, Kim. I don't know what I got into, but it brought them down on me like a ton of bricks." He produced a small metal box. "I can prove it was them. Look at this. Get in close; it's only going to last a second. I don't want to waste my evidence and then be told you were too busy watching the bats overhead to see it."
"Snarky, aren't we," Ron grumbled.
"Sorry, man, I've been through a lot. Yeah, shouldn't have snapped like that."
The three of them huddled around the box as the lid was lifted.
An instant later two of them were on the ground, gasping for breath. Kim, struggling to stay conscious, managed to get to her knees, saw Wade's form shift, melt, become someone else entirely. She tried to form the name, but all she could do was groan as she joined her husband in oblivion.
Camille Leon closed the box, amused by how easily they'd fallen for the ruse. She waited a full five minutes to remove the filters from her nostrils; they were irritating, especially during shape-shifting, but they did the trick. It would be humiliating to take them out too soon and fall victim to the knockout gas herself.
She pulled out her cell phone, rang a certain number. "Honey, both turkeys have been purchased at the store. We'll need to send someone around to pick them up."
"I'm sorry, dear," came the reply. "The dog was barking. Please repeat that."
She muttered something unpleasant, pulled a small book from her backpack: Global Justice Code Protocol. Sometimes she wondered what GJ had been like when Betty Director was Chief. Some of the older agents longed for those days, when being an agent had been an adventure. The new Chief was absolutely obsessed with following every tiny detail to the letter, and that obsession had filtered down through the entire organization.
It had improved the organization's competence considerably, but not their morale.
She thumbed through the book, recognized her error, tried again. "Honey, I purchased both the turkeys at the store. Someone needs to drive around to pick them up."
"I'll send Sammy around immediately," was the innocuous reply. "Goodbye…oops, I mean 'Later'."
The copter would be there in twenty minutes. Good; she didn't want to wait around here any longer than necessary. She considered both the turkeys sprawled on the cold, wet mine floor with distaste. They were the reason she was in Global Justice; once the story of the Lorwardians' destruction got around, supervillains everywhere scrambled for new employment. GJ had been very eager to hire someone with her abilities. A shapeshifter would be very handy in the field. Someone was always trying to endanger the world.
This time it had been Team Possible.
She permitted herself a bit of a sinister grin.
"Wh—where am I?" Kim returned to consciousness in a fluorescent-lit room filled with strange control banks and ominous devices. A gigantic monitor screen filled one wall; at present it simply showed a map of the world, along with various data readouts that meant nothing to her. She tried to move. "Chained up, of course," she mumbled. It had been a long time since she'd found herself in this sitch.
Beside her Ron also hung from manacles, still unconscious. Before she could say his name a voice came from behind her, a voice she hadn't expected to ever hear again. "We're keeping your boyfriend asleep for the time being, Possible. Tai sheng pek kwar isn't on the menu tonight." There was laughter. "You've both been out a while."
"It's Stoppable now. He's my husband, not my boyfriend," she told her unseen captor. "And, okay," she added angrily, "what's the sitch?"
"Husband? You married him? I hadn't heard." Will Du stood before her, two GJ agents at his sides. "The sitch, Kimberly, is simple. Wade Load, your husband, and yourself have been subdued by Global Justice for attempting to steal top-secret information from the Global Justice vaults."
"What? Let me talk to Betty. This is some sort of mistake." She favored Du with a glare. "Or set-up."
"Dr. Director retired three years ago. I am now the Chief of Global Justice."
"We haven't tried to steal anything."
"Yes, you have. The most evil thing we have under lock and key." One of the agents handed him a DVD; he held it up for her to read the label. "DANGER," she said, annoyed at having to play Du's game. " DO NOT WATCH. WEAPON XIII-666." She waited; Du said nothing. Just stared. Finally she had to ask. "Okay, what is it?"
"The product of a malign foreign power, intended to undermine and decimate our country from within. You know Weapon XIII-666 as The Six Tasks of Snowman Hank."
For the first time in her whole life, she knew the exact meaning of the word 'flabbergasted.' "You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
"That outfit is a bit ridiculous –"
"This is the most potent brainwashing tool ever created. The subliminal signal encoded within it is devastating to the human mind."
"That's crazy, and I'm not buying it. Where's Wade?"
"He's already home. With his beloved technology. All traces of Snowman Hank research have been removed from it, of course. And our own Dr. Ludovico has also removed all traces of your request or his search from his mind. The technique is foolproof. He'll be fine now." Du and his men shared a laugh. "No longer a threat to the world."
A sick feeling began churning deep in Kim's guts. "You – you really mean this, don't you?"
"GJ agents don't have a sense of humor, Kim. It's surgically removed when we sign up. Of course I mean it."
"A subversive children's cartoon. Hard to believe." Was nothing sacred anymore? "And a Christmas special to boot. "
"Were you a Snowman Hank fan?" The GJ agents watched her coldly.
"No. No one in my family cared for it. We only watched it because Ron liked it so much," she said, and realized too late that she'd said too much. She winced.
The GJ men looked at her unconscious husband in disgust. "Only weak-willed people fell victim to it. Everyone else saw it for the cluster of sugary clichés it is."
"Evidently you want to gloat. You would have made a good supervillain, Will. I notice you've got one on the team now."
"Camille? A very effective agent. She brought Load in, too." He spoke to the other agents, quietly, in a tongue Kim didn't know. "Ask your questions, if you want. I'll answer. You aren't going to remember any of this, anyway. Dr. Ludovico is very good at his work. And he hardly leaves a scar." He paused. "Physically, that is."
"Where'd it come from?"
"Nothing's certain. Another country. Another regime. We traced it to a terrorist base in Eastern Europe, something you wouldn't know anything about –"
A shocked understanding dawned in Kim's eyes. "Colony Three."
"What – but how –"the Chief of Global Justice spluttered. "There is no way you can know about Colony Three."
"They play hardball. How many men did GJ lose there, Du?"
There was no answer, but Du's reddening face told her she'd found a chink in his armor. While I'm on a nerve, she thought, let me hit it another good whack. "The Colony Three connection led you to a village in Wales."
Du and the other GJ men spoke together briefly. When Du turned back to her, he was visibly shaken. "Ah – yes. Yes, it did. It was abandoned."
"Was it." She laughed bitterly. "Don't fool yourself."
Again there was a brief conference. "How do you know all that?"
"Drakken was deep into mind control. It pays to know your enemy. You can't do much real research on the subject without discovering Colony Three and the Village."
"It's not like they're on Wikipedia. How did you –" Then he remembered Wade's special talents, and knew the answer. GJ might need to bring him in again. On general principle. After they were done with these two.
"They specialized in electroshock therapy, hallucinogenic drugs, subliminal broadcasts, mind exchange and dream manipulation. Snowman Hank must be poison from beginning to end." Unexpectedly, like a panther pouncing on its prey, a long-forgotten song from the show sprang from her memory, its sappy lyrics repeating in her head: "It's not the turkey and the stuffing/Or the gifts around the tree/It's a warm and fuzzy feeling/That begins with you and me!"
She shook her head, trying to make it stop.
Du watched her with amusement as she moaned. "Having a ringlin', jinglin' Kris-Kringlin' Christmas?"
It was her turn to answer with silence. And an angry glare.
Du spoke to the foreign GJ men; the three of them laughed. Their sense of humor might be gone, but their sadism was obviously intact. He turned back to Kim. "It fights back. And you didn't fall under its spell. Imagine what it did to the people who swallowed it hook, line and sinker."
She considered Ron hanging helpless in his shackles, remembering all the Christmases they'd watched Snowman Hank together. Remembering all the crucial blunders, all the catastrophic help, all the disastrous failures at all the worst possible moments. Remembering all the lost pants.
And then there was Zorpox.
"Why do you think the whole United States has gone insane?" Du asked. "That thing spewed its venom across the nation, unhindered, for twenty years. We're reaping the harvest now. Crazy politicians, deranged snipers, general demoralization, fiscal ineptitude, supervillains, mad scientists – you can lay it all at Snowman Hank's door. The ultimate weapon." Du's expression suddenly hardened. "And you wanted to turn it loose again. For Christmas."
"I - I didn't know! I –"
"Everyone always assumes the Government is up to no good. In this case, we're protecting the world from an incredible threat. You mentioned Drakken - if someone like him got their hands on this, who knows where we'd end up?" He turned the disc in his hands, watched it glitter. "You know exactly where."
"So why haven't you just destroyed it?"
He was silent so long she thought he wasn't going to answer. "I didn't say the Government was completely altruistic." He held up the disc, so seemingly harmless. "Global Justice has uses for this, if we can ever crack the mystery of the signal. It could have very important effects in the, ah, international arena."
Without warning two blasts of seething green force hissed through the air, sent Du's assistants flying across the room. "Is that so," cooed a voice all too familiar to Kim. "And I thought I was just shopping for a Christmas present. Hand it over."
Du whipped out a pistol, just as quickly lost it to another blast. It skidded across the floor, fused and shattered. Without hesitation he hurled a ballistic knife at his opponent with deadly force.
A gloved hand caught the lethal weapon in the air.
"You must like living on the edge," jeered Shego, smiling, examining the finely balanced blade. It suddenly vanished in a violent flash of green light. "I appreciate that in a man. Now give me that disc."