Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible.

Because I Loved Her

Chapter Two

"So you're telling me that people use letters in math?" Ron asked incredulously, as if that concept was completely new to the high school senior.

Kim stared at him as if he'd grown a third head. "How in the hell did you make it to the twelfth grade?"

Beep-beep-be-beep. Beep-beep-be-beep. Beep-beep-

"Go, Wade," the redhead answered, still wondering if state graduation requirements were set for chimps.

"Got a robbery-in-progress," the boy reported casually, his fingers flying over his keyboard. "Middleton bank. Amateur work."

Kim was already closing her Trig book and sliding it one-handed into her canvas messenger bag. "Amateurs? Then, why am I being called in?"

Wade smirked. "Because they're amateurs with really big guns."

The teen sighed and tossed the strap over her shoulder, motioning for Ron to stay seated. "Alright. Transport?"

"On it's way," the genius replied, reached out absently to grab his soda. "And your car should be out of the shop tomorrow."

"Thanks, Wade. You rock," the girl said sincerely as she exited the cafeteria, heading for her locker.

"That's what they tell me."

Kim arrived on the scene five minutes later to see the small bank surrounded by police cruisers, SWAT vans and more uniforms than she could count. She found the Chief and went to get debriefed.

She knelt beside the man on his knees has he poured over blueprints of the bank. "What's the situation so far?" she asked, taking a glance at the map herself.

The balding man grunted, pointing to the main room of the bank. "We got three perps and twenty-three hostages. That includes bank employees. Two of the robbers are here, in the teller's room. They've each got Beretta M12s. Not sure about the other one. He's here—" he pointed to the bank vault. "—with four of the hostages, included, are ready for this? The governor's daughter."

Kim's jaw tightened and she nodded. "Alright. Do you have men on the inside?"

The Chief shook his head. "I've got snipers covering all the windows," he said, gesturing to the roofs of some surrounding buildings. "But no one has a clear shot. I've also got SWAT on hold, ready to take the bank when I give the word."

The teen nodded, hearing what hadn't been said; without visual of the third man, there was nothing they could do. Apparently, that's were Kim came in. She'd have to take down the two men in the front without alerting the third then sneak down into the vault and take him down. All without one, dying and two, without someone else dying. Seemed simple enough.

"Ms. Possible," the Chief said in a gruff voice. "I don't need to tell you how delicate this situation is."

She squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. "You can count on me, sir," she vowed before slipping off the to the side of the bank where she knew a small air-duct opened up about twenty feet off the ground.

"Ain't she such a purty thing, Charlie?" one of the gunmen, a man with dark, curly hair and a neck the size of Kim's waist, said to a shorter, slighter blonde. The Neanderthal was squatting near a woman by the teller's desk, stroking her cheek with his rough fingers. She whimpered, her eyes shut tight as she flinched away from him.

"Leave her go, man," Charlie said absently as he glanced cautiously around the room for anyone trying to be a hero.

"Aw, come on," 'man' groaned, standing up, casually leaning his gun against his right shoulder. "I'm sure Mario wouldn't care if-"

"He'd care," Charlie assured him with a sharp look before again searching the room for anything amiss. "Just keep it in your pants, alright? You can have the hottest hooker in Middleton when we're done with this. I promise."

The caveman sighed as he glanced forlornly down at the pretty brunette he'd just been fantasizing about but seemed to agree that Charlie had a point and moved toward a man who was trying to inch toward one of the office doors.

Kim pulled out her Kimmunicator and brought up the blueprints to the bank vault. It was underground, the only entrance being the one Charlie now situated himself in front of. Neanderthal was leaning against a marble wall, a smug smile on his face after the sound kicking he'd given the escapee. The hostages were all lying face-down on the ground in the center of the room. Kim's mission; incapacitate the gunmen without putting the hostages in dangers. Simple enough.

The redhead reached into her utility belt and pulled out a thin laser. She turned it on and focused the beam on Neanderthal's gun, heating the metal beneath his hands. For a full minute, nothing happened and Kim worried. Was this actually going to work? Could she pull it off? Then the man started to shift the weapon in his hands uncomfortably, glancing down at it in confusion. Then, quite suddenly, he screamed and dropped the gun to the ground with a loud, metallic clang.

Charlie whipped his head around in alarm. "What? What happened?"

Neanderthal was looking down at his pink hands, his mouth agape and small whimpers of pain coming from his throat as he fell to his knees. "My…my…my hands! The-the gun! It was…fucking burning, man!"

Charlie's eyes widened and he looked around frantically for something, someone out of place. There was nothing; not a single molecule of disturbance. The only movement in the room was Brutus blubbering in the ground over his injured hands and some of the hostages looking around from their positions in the ground in alarm. Then he felt something come down heavily on his shoulder, between the junction of his neck and trapezius muscle, sending a numb shock down his arm and causing him to drop his weapon to the ground.

Kim flipped away from the man when he retaliated with anger an fear, striking out with his left arm. She came to settle near Neanderthal Man and had to leapt straight up when the big man lunged for her legs, only managing to catch air with his effort as he fell forward onto his stomach. The teen came back down, her heels falling heavily into his broad back, successfully pulling a groan from the robber.

A cry of frustration brought Kim's attention back to the smaller man just in time to see him heft his gun with his remaining hand and clumsily point the weapon in Kim's direction. With a spurt of adrenaline, the redhead dove off the brute, falling into a roll and skidding behind a stone pillar.

Charlie's mouth twitched as his snarled, watching the teenage brat disappear behind the column. No matter; he'd blow the fuck outta the support a crush the bitch. Then he squeezed the trigger with as a sick wave of pleasure rolled over him.

Kim squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the hail-storm of bullets to come. One beat…two beats….three…nothing. The teen cracked one eye open and glanced around, thinking that maybe the bad guy was sneaking up on either side of her fortress. But no, he wasn't.

Taking a slight chance, Kim cautiously peaked around the support. What she saw brought her no measurable amount of relief. Charlie was glaring down at his gun, shaking it angrily as he squeezed the trigger. The thing was jammed, Kim surmised. The hero let out a short, thankful breath. There would be no gun-fight today.

Standing from her hiding place, Kim walked out into the open, her green eyes filled with determination. These two would be going down. Hard.

Charlie looked up from his useless gun and into the eyes of his soon-to-be capture-er. He gulped.

Five minutes later, with the two thugs in police custody and nineteen of the hostages out of harms way, Kim snuck down to the bank vault, consulting her Kimmunicator as she passed through three different locked passages before finally hearing the final intruder.

"I didn't pay you to baby her, Markus!" a deep, resounding voice shouted as Kim used a hand mirror to glance around the final turn that would lead her into the main vault.

In the corner, Kim saw two of the hostages, both of them bank employees, one man and one woman, lying dead with bullet wounds to the temples. Blood had long-since stopped leaking from them but there was a small sea of crimson surrounding them.

Kim shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the image from her mind as she focused on saving those that she could and forgetting about those she could not.

The redhead's attention was pulled back to the commotion in the room. Lying on the marble floor was the governor's daughter, her hands bound behind her back and a white strip of cloth running between her teeth and behind her blonde head as a make-shift gag.

There was a man standing over her, his long, dark hair slicked back in a ponytail at the base of his neck. His back was to Kim and he was dressed in a business suit, his hands out on either side of his body in a helpless gesture.

"Please, Mario, just let her go," Markus begged of the only other standing man. "She had nothing to do with her father's transgressions."

Mario, dressed peculiarly in a pastel purple polo and khaki chinos, pointed a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol at Markus's head, the long-haired man bringing his surrendered hands up higher in response; from the looks of things, Mario wasn't afraid of a little blood.

"But she is far from innocent," he growled without taking his piercing blue eyes from the other man. "She is no child. Remember that."

"She's barely twenty-two, Mario! What has she done to deserve this, huh? Tell me!" Markus demanded, standing protectively over the softly crying woman.

Mario's jaw tightened and, sensing this dispute was about to become even more bloody, Kim quickly dove into the room, her kick aimed at Mario's gun-hand. The weapon flew from the startled man's grip as the teen's shoe made contact and he called out in surprise and pain.

Kim turned her attention briefly to Markus, catching his jaw with the back of her hand and sending him sprawling before looking back at Mario. The tanned man, seemingly over the loss of his gun and the pain in his hand, made a grab for the girl who moved swiftly out of the way. She spun into a kick, kneeing the man hard in the lower back. He cried out again, arching with the pain and falling to his knees. Kim spun again the opposite way, burying her other knee in his face. His nose crunched under the assault, blood spurting from the orifice, and his head snapped back before he fell, unconscious, to the floor at Kim's feet.

"Please," Kim heard behind her and turned to see Markus on his knees by the crying blonde, still held tightly in her bounds.

The man was looking pathetically up at the redhead, his right hand resting gently on the bound woman's arm, absently stroking the soft, pale skin in a comforting gesture while his eyes held Kim's fiercely, pleadingly.

"You have to understand," he begged. "This wasn't my idea! Please don't tell them I was involved, please! I love her! You have to believe that! H-he wasn't supposed to touch her! No one was supposed to get hurt!"

Kim straightened her back, squaring her shoulders as she glared down at the man. "I won't let a criminal go free and I won't be the one judging you," she informed him evenly. "No used pleading you case to me. Now, if you really do care about her, you'll take her back upstairs where there are police waiting to take you into custody, alright?" At the very least, Kim did believe this man loved the governor's daughter and she didn't think he'd do any harm to her, thus, Kim's decision to allow him to escort her to the street.

Markus squeezed his eyes shut in defeat but nodded. He then set to the task of unbinding his love and removing the gag from her pretty mouth. Almost immediately, the blonde launched herself into the dark-haired man's arms, crying helplessly into his shoulder.

He wrapped his arms around her slim body and rocked her. "Shh, it's alright, Chloe. You're alright," he murmured into her hair as he nuzzled his face into her silky smooth neck.

Despite the fact that this man had been involved in a plot to rob a bank and kidnap a politician's child that had resulted in the death of two innocent people, Kim couldn't help but be moved and warmed by the depth of the young couple's love. Her mind briefly tried conjured up an image of her and Ron in the same passionate embrace. She tried to see herself being held by the boy and losing herself in him as these two lost themselves in each other but she couldn't do it. The picture didn't come out right. It was blurry, unfocused…forced. She didn't feel it, that thing that bound Markus to Chloe. She didn't feel the warmth that should have accompanied such a picture. She didn't…feel. It was almost like-

A slight rustle of fabric was Kim's only warning as the teen spun quickly, catching a wicked hard punch to the stomach as she did. Pain blazed through her torso as she felt her ribs fracture just beneath her skin and muscle. She let out a strangled breath as she fell backwards, her feet slipping out from under her in her moment of disorientation.

Mario towered over the teen, glaring down at her with a wild look in his eyes as his own blood stained his face. He raised his gun, retrieved in Kim's moment of distraction, and leveled it with the hero's head.

Kim's eyes widened with fear as she stared at the muzzle, pointed directly at her forehead. She was going to die…

Without conscious thought, something that would later unnerve the young redhead beyond words, Kim lifted her hips and reached behind her back, her fingers curling around the textured grip of her Smith and Wesson 638 revolver. She jerked it from it's hidden holster beneath the waistband of her mission pants and brought it around, aiming it automatically at Mario's chest. Bang! Bang! Bang! And the criminal fell to his knees, a dazed look in his eyes as his gun fell uselessly beside him. He looked down at this chest, which was quickly dripping blood. Then he looked back up at Kim, confusion clearly written on his face. He fell unceremoniously to his side, his heart unable to continue beating around the bullet lodged in his left ventricle.

Kim laid there for a long moment, her eyes wide as she stared at the place the man once stood, the small gun shaking in her hand.

AN: That's obviously the end of chapter two. What did you think of Kimmie killing that man, huh? And why did she have a gun? Chapter three should be up soon. Until then, tell me what you think of it so far.

Review!