Title: Under the Milky Way Tonight (15/16)
Author: Allaine
Email: PG-13
Spoilers: Takes place after "If You Build a Better Monkey". Ignores the events of "Go Team Go".
Feedback: I hope everyone who has always been so supportive will continue to write.
Disclaimers: Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, Shego, Wade, and all other characters from the Kim Possible television series belong to Disney, its television production arm, and the creators and producers of the animated series. All original characters are my invention. I seek no profit from writing this, and expect none.
Summary: The sixth and final chapter in the Unacceptable Sitch saga! Kim Possible finds herself surrounded by old and new faces as the American government drafts Team Possible to save civilization from the Worldwide Empire of Evil by boldly going where no one has gone before.
Chapter 15
Monique held the cybernetic hand up to her lips and blew across the fingertips. "Thanks for lending the hand, Virgo," she said.
"It's Gemini, and it was stolen, not lent!"
The barrier had been thick, but dozens of mini-rockets had done the trick, blowing a hole big enough for them to climb through.
"Come on, we don't have enough time," Kim said. "Let's get down there and - "
The remnants of the door slid up two feet before it stopped, hampered from going any further by the hole blown through the door.
"Kim, the power's back to normal! The door should be open now," Wade said, his voice crackling over the transmitter.
Monique looked at Kim. "He didn't just say we did all that for nothing."
Kim sighed. "Wade, at this point it would be easier if you just left it closed, okay?"
"Um . . . roger that."
"Please and thank you." Kim smiled at them, but it wasn't a big smile. "Shego must have thrown that switch," she said. "I just hope she's all right."
"She's probably just waiting down there for us," Ron replied. "Some sly remark planned for when we come in."
"That would be Shego," Monique agreed.
Kim clambered through the hole first, and the others followed suit quickly. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary - just another hallway, this one with doors at the other end. Further investigation revealed that the elevator was locked, and that they'd have to climb down. Monique chucked Gemini's hand as they made the descent.
"Shego definitely went this way," Kim murmured. She pointed to the claw gouges in the metal walls of the shaft.
"I hear something," Yori said sharply. "It's coming from below. I believe I hear Shego-san's voice, but I cannot make out the words. She does sound animated, however."
Even Kim couldn't hear Shego. Ninja training, she thought with a trace of envy. Maybe one day a sabbatical to Yamanouchi was in order – just to pick up a few skills she hadn't managed to come by on her own . . .
After a few more moments, Kim could hear her as well, though. She sounded – angry. "Junior really did push her buttons. Mine too," she thought.
Kim couldn't make out the words, however, until she was the first to drop through the escape panel in the top of the elevator car. They were muffled, as the elevator doors were shut, but she could understand them. They were also probably the last words she expected.
"Stupid bitch! . . . One time . . . both want . . . same thing . . . spite yourself to screw me over!"
Angry, yes, but there was a frenzied, almost frantic quality to it that alarmed Kim. Plus, it didn't sound like Shego was talking to a man, but what woman could she be referring to? Yvonne was lights out above, and . . .
Jaqui, Kim realized for the first time as she moved toward the doors so Ron could drop down. That sociopathic thief Team Possible had put away earlier that year, only for her to resurface as Gemini's personal bodyguard during dinner. Kim hadn't seen her since. Junior must have dragooned her into service as some kind of last-resort defense. Shego's words made no sense, however. What could they both want?
"Ron," Kim said. "Think a Lotus Crowbar could open these?"
"No problemo, KP," Ron said, hefting a crowbar that hadn't existed a moment ago. He jammed it between the elevator doors, and he and Kim started prying them open as Monique joined them in the elevator.
"Damn it, breathe!" Shego snarled on the other side of the doors. "You'll breathe if I have to tear out your lungs and inflate them myself!"
Kim gasped and stopped pulling at the crowbar. Ron wasn't paying attention, though, and on his own he got the doors fully open. What had Shego done??
What Shego had done transfixed her in more ways than one.
Shego had a woman on the floor of a circular chamber littered with machines at one end. A couple of blackened husks that Kim could just barely recognize as destroyed Bebes lay nearby. Kim couldn't see the woman's face, but her bare legs were white, withered, and pockmarked with circular bleeding cuts.
The reason she couldn't see the woman's face was that Shego was bent over her, both hands clasped together, pressing rhythmically on the woman's chest. It was the classic position of someone trying to restart a human heart.
"Please," Shego said despairingly. "I need Kimmie to be able to look at me the same way!" She shifted position, held the woman by the nose, and breathed into her mouth.
"KP, what – " Ron began to say as Kim's face grew even whiter. Once the woman's face became visible, she immediately recognized her as Mrs. Acceptable. Naturally Junior had resurrected her as well, then left her down here as some kind of nasty, horrifying surprise – the trap Gemini had spoken of, Kim thought absently.
She rushed forward. "Shego!"
Shego looked up. She looked equal parts guilty, frustrated, anguished, and frightened. "K-kimmie," she stammered. "It's not what it – I had to – he wanted you to kill her again! But I, I had to – but we can bring her back! We have to!"
Kim stared at her dumbly. "Shego, what happened here?"
"I HAD TO!" Shego wailed. "Even more than you had to! You were just saving a baby, I had to - but I can take it back for both of us if - " She turned her eyes on the dead Mrs. Acceptable, and her face blossomed with rage. "If this selfish, psychotic witch would fucking breathe again like she's supposed to!" Then she started pounding on Mrs. Acceptable's chest with one fist. Kim couldn't tell if it was CPR or just Shego lashing out. Or both.
By pure instinct Kim caught Shego's fist before she accidentally put the woman beyond all hope of saving. "Let me take over, Shego," she said. "How did she die? When did she die?"
Shego opened her mouth, then closed it, like a fish. "She suffocated. I, I suffocated her. Kimmie, you weren't here, you don't know - a couple minutes maybe - "
"I'll take care of it. It's going to be all right," Kim interrupted. She sounded calm and professional, because this was a crisis and that was how she was supposed to sound. This was routine for her. She'd been in this situation a hundred times before. Well, okay, maybe not this exact situation. Normally the person she was trying to save wasn't already dead. Normally she wasn't in love with the person responsible.
So perhaps it was good that part of her was reacting by rote. The rest of her was on the verge of a panic attack as she was overwhelmed by a host of sudden questions. What if she died? Would Shego have to go to jail? Could you go to jail for killing someone who was already dead? Were clones the same as people? What about all those clones of Drakken's that she'd melted years ago? Oh God, had she been a murderer long before she killed Mrs. Acceptable? For God's sake, the woman she killed was right in front of her and Shego had killed her! Why had she done it? Was there something Kim could have done to prevent it? What if -
Kim took a few seconds she probably didn't have, drew a deep breath, and ruthlessly choked those questions off. There could be time for questions later. Right now was about bringing a life back. Still, she looked down at Mrs. Acceptable's face and was unable to suppress a shiver of disgust. This was who she had to save?
Shego's attempts at CPR, for what she'd seen, had been textbook but unsuccessful. Suspecting she'd need something a little more drastic, Kim reactivated the WEE communicator she'd taken earlier. "Wade, can you read me?" she asked, moving quickly again as she stripped away Mrs. Acceptable's blouse.
"Loud and clear, Kim. What's going on?"
"Wade, remember before when we left? Remember you said the Battle Suit could function as a makeshift defibrillator?"
"Yeah?" he asked carefully.
"I need you to walk me through that. Now!"
Meanwhile, Monique had taken Shego aside while Ron and Yori watched Kim work. Shego, Monique thought, was entirely too docile now. "Shego, what's the sitch? What are those things?" she asked, pointing at the two wrecked robots. "And how the hell did that crazy bitch end up here?"
"I put her there when I started trying to revive - "
"No, no," Monique said, alarmed. Shego had been frenzied when they entered, but all the energy seemed to have vanished from her, leaving her looking and sounding empty. She was probably psychologically exhausted, Monique guessed. Kim had already told her about the trap Junior had sprung on them. "I mean what is she doing here? How did she die?"
"She - it was another trap. She said the bomb was rigged to monitor her heart rate," Shego said mechanically. "The only way to stop it was to . . ."
"Stop her heart," Monique finished for her. Damn. "So that's why you suffocated her then. So you could revive her once the machines shut down?"
Shego's face darkened with shame and guilt. "No, I, uh . . . I didn't think of that until after."
Monique wasn't sure how to respond to that.
"All I could think," Shego went on helplessly, interpreting Monique's silence as condemnation, "was that I had to - kill her before Kimmie arrived. Before Kimmie had to make that decision herself. It had to be up to me, Monique! But it was so hard! And once it was done . . . "
"Clear!" Kim ordered, as Ron fell back. She placed the palms of her Battle Suit on Mrs. Acceptable's chest, and the stripes on her Suit briefly flashed blue. The dead woman's body jumped, then lay still again.
"I knew Kimmie wouldn't understand," Shego went on miserably. "Knew she couldn't forgive me. But either that or choose between the world dying and Kim sacrificing her beliefs – my own personal fucking happiness never did count for much."
"Clear!"
"There's the lesson for you, Monique," Shego said. She sounded hopeless.
"Shego – "
"Heroes and villains – they don't get to be happy. I learned both ways. Don't forget – "
"We've got heartage!" Ron called out. "Boo-YAH!"
Shego started. "What?"
"Wade-san's technology is truly amazing, Kim-sama," Yori said, checking Mrs. Acceptable's pulse. "She needs medical treatment, but she is out of danger for now, I believe."
Monique looked at Shego while Kim wiped her brow with her Battle Suit sleeve. "Maybe when Kim asks you if this is why you suffocated her, THIS time you should say yes, Shego," she said quietly.
Shego shuddered. "No. No, I don't think so. Besides, I'd still know." She saw Kim trying to catch her eye, and she turned away.
Kim sighed when Shego did that. They would have to talk about this later, of course. She needed to hear Shego's explanation for what happened here before she could make any kind of decision on where they went from here. Obviously the trap Gemini had mentioned had involved either Mrs. Acceptable killing her, or the other way around, and Shego had been caught instead.
But Shego couldn't believe that Kim would be so hypocritical that she'd stop loving the former thief for committing the very same crime that Kim had committed last year?
From the way Shego had been acting when Kim got out of the elevator, she evidently did.
Kim yearned to comfort and reassure Shego until she smiled again, but that would have to wait. Kim wasn't sure she was mentally prepared for that conversation herself. Monique seemed to have it in hand anyway. The mission, this damn mission that had caused them all such heartache, couldn't end until its architect was taken care of.
The glove hand of her Battle Suit crackled with electricity as she clenched a fist tightly.
Let Junior fear the moment when she got him in her hands.
Junior exhaled as the corridor doors to the hangar bay finally opened. His final plan had been nearly flawless, but it had also been a hasty one. So he hadn't entertained the notion that the only way to get to the WEE spacecraft was through an automatic door - automatic, that is, unless all nonessential power in the station was being fed into the device they'd set up in the moon's interior.
Whoever decided doors were "nonessential" would have to be dealt with. It wasn't until you worked with these halfwits long enough that you appreciated the value of being able to drop people into holes.
At any rate, he'd been forced to wait outside the hangar until one of two things happened - either Kim Possible murdered Mrs. Acceptable and shut off the energy flow from the station, or she failed and the device went off. In either situation, power would return to the doors.
To implement that, he'd given Gemini relatively straightforward instructions. Make sure that Ms. Possible entered the corridor first, while keeping the others too occupied to follow. Once Junior received confirmation that someone had crossed the door's threshold, he activated the bomb and locked down the door.
Of course, the second step had proven redundant, but if the end result was the same, what did it matter?
There had been a chance that Gemini had botched it and allowed someone other than Ms. Possible to enter. That the energy bomb hadn't gone off - and everyone on the station would have felt it if it had - proved that it was indeed Ms. Possible. Only she had a chance with her preternatural ability to overcome any obstacle, even the Bebes and their super speed.
Junior was relieved. Despite the satisfaction it would bring from knowing Kim Possible had failed to thwart his scheme, having the bomb detonate was not his best-case scenario. Where would he live, for starters? He was in no rush to live through the apocalypse.
The true point of this whole exercise had been about power, about seizing it and holding it over the heads of others. That way everyone would know that you were someone to be feared, not someone to be trifled with. The lunar device had been intended solely as a sword with which to hang over the world's head, to bully it into giving him what he wanted.
And, of course, giving him a world stage onto which he might lure Team Possible, for its inevitable defeat. Once again this would send a message to the governments of the world that Señor Senior Junior was not someone who could be stopped.
Of course, now the world's initial reaction wouldn't be to see it that way. They would see it as a defeat, one that ended with him skulking onto a spacecraft while Team Possible was occupied with saving the planet AND its moon. Time would tell, however. Ms. Possible's reputation would suffer once people realized she was two times a murderer.
And she herself might not be able to come to grips with her actions. Then she would surely break, and it was he who did it to her.
"If you thought I was just one of the Acceptables' victims, you were wrong," Junior murmured as he slipped into the hangar.
He didn't like leaving Father behind, but he believed it was firmly established that his father had not been involved in the plan. Team Possible, hopeless do-gooders that they were, would treat him . . . properly?
"Father?" Junior asked, surprised.
For he had left his father in his personal quarters, and now Junior found him sitting on the floor, his back leaning up against a crate. Surely he must be seeing things.
But his father turned his head to look at him. "Ah, my son," he whispered. "I was hoping to find you here."
"How did you get here?" Junior asked. "I asked you not to leave my rooms."
"I wished to speak to you one final time, Junior," Senior Senior told him.
"Final time? Father, you are not making sense."
"Ah. That may have something to do with the heart attack."
Junior took a step back in shock. "What?!"
Senior smiled wanly. "You did not know this, Junior, but I developed a heart condition when you were a prisoner of the Acceptables. The doctors said it was likely stress-related."
Those Acceptables . . . yet another reason why he enjoyed being their master! Junior clenched his fists in rage. "Father, we will board a spaceship and fly you to the nearest hospital!"
His father raised an arm, as if to wave him off, but his arm fell back limply. Junior realized with dismay that he didn't have the strength or the mobility to do more. "Junior, it is too late for that. Either I will recover, or I will die. I felt the symptoms even before I reached the hangar."
"But, but - didn't the doctors give you medication?"
"Yes, Junior, they did. But when your men abducted me, and I awoke to find myself on the other side of the moon, I did not have my pills on me. And I did not think you could send a craft back to Earth for the sake of my heart medication," Senior told him. "Plus - I did not want to burden you with my medical troubles. I have always tried to protect you. Too hard, as it happens."
Junior couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Come Father," he said, approaching him. He would pick his father up if he had to, and carry him into the nearest spaceship. "While you recover, I will get us as far from Team Possible as I can."
"Ah yes, Team Possible. A delightful group of people. You know, I met that African girl earlier. The Oryx? She came to my rooms. Or your rooms, rather."
"The Oryx? She was in my rooms?! Why did you not tell me this?!"
"It was rather like closing the bag after the cat was out of it, Junior. Also I did not think you would appreciate the fortuitous nature of her visit."
Junior had been in the process of bending over to pick his father up in his arms, but he paused now. "Fortuitous how?"
"Junior, I have always done what I thought was best for you. Too often - hiring someone to do your homework for you, for example, or encouraging you to join me in villainy - it seems I was wrong," Senior Senior said gravely. "In time, I hope you will realize that what I have done today, I did it in your best interests. And this time, I will meet my maker believing I was right."
"Father," Junior said quietly. "What have you done?"
Senior shrugged. "I merely gave this Oryx girl the location of the elevator leading to the computers controlling the moon machine. I may have, in a roundabout manner, given her Ms. Shego's gloves as well." He paused. "Oh yes, and then I gave her Kim Possible's special suit."
"You did what?!"
"I did have an opportunity to retrieve the gloves later, actually. Perhaps not one with a high likelihood of success, but still a chance. But I passed. I had no regrets. They WERE in frightful need of them, I thought."
"That's because they're the good guys, I'm the bad guy, and they needed them because I was trying to have them killed! How could you betray me like that?"
"As I said," Senior Senior said wearily, "it will be up to you to decide some day if I have really betrayed you - or if this was an end to all my past betrayals of our family." A tear slid down his left cheek. "I see now that I betrayed you most cruelly after you were rescued from the Acceptables."
"Father - "
"I wanted so much to believe that you were all right once you were recovered physically. I should have realized that you were scarred emotionally as well. That your recovery would require more than a few weeks' bedrest. Maybe if I had, you would not have embarked on this destructive path, Junior." Senior sighed. "For that, I ask you to forgive me."
Señor Senior Junior looked down at his father. He wanted so much to be angry with him - how could his own father, after giving him so much, turn away from him on the cusp of his great success? Unlike those Acceptable bastards, he had loved his father all his life. What had he done to deserve this?
His rage shriveled up and died, however, at the sight of his father lying there. He looked gray and shrunken.
He looked like he was going to die. And Junior was the one who separated him from his medication.
Junior had never had to think very hard. He had his father and servants and minions and jailers to think for him. Now, more than ever, he wanted to understand. "But why, father?" he whispered, crouching in front of him. "Why them and not me?"
Senior smiled sadly. "Son, I will love you with my dying breath, but I suppose . . . I wish you were more like Kim Possible."
Junior was so stunned that he didn't hear Kim brake as she came running into the hangar. He did hear her gasp, however, when she heard his father's last words. Junior turned on her. "You!" he shrieked. "You couldn't stop by stealing my victory from me! Now you must steal my father as well?!"
"Junior," Kim said, then stopped. She had no idea what she'd just walked in on, but she didn't have the least idea of how to respond to what she thought Senior Senior had said. All she knew was that it looked like she'd walked in on Junior's last moments with his father. Seeing the others catching up with her, she held out a hand and put a finger to her lips. The other members of Team Possible all stopped.
"Junior," Señor Senior Senior murmured. "Take care of - Ricardo - for me."
He closed his eyes, let his head slip down, and silently died.
"No," Junior said, staring at him. "No, no, no!" He put his fingers to his father's neck, then felt his chest for a heartbeat. "Father, you cannot die!" he sobbed as he pulled his father into his arms.
Kim took a few quiet steps backward. "Wade," she whispered. "Quietly, tell me if you can you make absolutely sure that nobody escapes from this hangar, either on foot or by spaceship?"
"Other than someone piloting a spaceship through the hangar bay doors, which would probably kill them and everyone on the station, no problem."
There was no telling what Junior might do in his grief. Kim hated intruding on him, despite everything he'd done to her and Shego and her family and her friends that night, but it was too dangerous leaving him alone. "Okay, we'll wait here. Ron, why don't you guys start making sure the WEE agents aren't able to make trouble when they wake up?"
"I'll do it," Shego said.
"Don't you move," Kim said quickly. Shego still wouldn't look her in the eye!
"Good idea. Why don't you all not move?"
The silky whisper was all the warning they had before a shape emerged from the shadows and held the razor-sharp edge of a metal fan to Ron's throat.
Ron spoke first after a moment of shock as everyone took in the slim figure standing behind him. "Uh . . . yeah, not moving sounds doable."
"You!" Monique said as Kim swore. She'd remembered Jaqui while down below, and then promptly forgotten about her again. "You're Gemini's flunky!"
"What, you thought I'd just follow on his heels and take you on with the rest of those fools?" Jaqui sneered. Her flawless beauty was marred by the vicious snarl that twisted her face into that of a rabid animal. "Once I heard you escaped, I was the only person on the station who remembered what every villain on Earth knows - Kim Possible gets away, Kim Possible engages villain, villain loses. My mission was about getting out of this, and if that means taking a hostage onto a spacecraft and flying out of here, that's what it has to be."
"We'll never let that happen," Kim said. "Besides, Ron doesn't even know how to fly a ship, do you?"
"Strangely not offended, KP," Ron said.
"I bet your sweet little self-automated spaceship would love to help darling Ronnie here," Jaqui retorted.
"You'd be surprised," Shego said dryly.
"I am sick and tired of this damn mission," Monique growled as she estimated how quickly she could put her foot through Jaqui's nasal cavity. "When the hell is it going to be fucking OVER?"
"If you don't move," Jaqui shrieked, "it's going to be over for Stoppable right now!"
"No!"
Twin voices spoke, and neither were human.
Dropping from an air duct, Rufus and Ruby landed on Jaqui's shoulders. Rufus latched onto her ear with his teeth, while Ruby dug all her claws into the side of Jaqui's neck and twisted.
Jaqui squealed in pain and terror. She spun clockwise, the metal fan leaving Ron's neck as she twirled and flailed about, trying to dislodge the two pink rodents. "EEEEE! GET THEM OFF GET THEM OFF!!!!!"
Kim thought that if she kept spinning another minute, she'd start flying like a helicopter. "Any of you feel like taking care of her? I'm beat. In fact, I don't know about you guys," she said, looking at Shego, "but I just want to take Shego home so the two of us can crawl into bed."
Shego looked shocked. "Hey, I thrive on action," she said weakly, but for the first time, and in spite of herself, she seemed hopeful.
To be concluded (forever!) . . .