Beep, beep be beep.
Yawning, Kim slowly got up and pressed a button on her Kimmunicator. The familiar face of Wade glanced back at her. "Hey Kim. Sorry to bother you while you're sleeping," he said.
"No big...by the way, don't you ever sleep?" she stifled a yawn.
"Who's that?" a female voice asked before Wade could answer Kim's question. It took Kim a moment to place the voice down. "Oh right..." she glanced over at her room-mate Darnia, who was at her computer, hammering away furiously at the keyboard while something flicked around on the monitor.
"Darnia, this is my tech expert Wade. Wade, Darnia, my room-mate," Kim said, showing her Kimmunicator to Darnia.
"Wade? As in Wade Load?" Darnia spun around in her seat and hopped off it, bouncing over to Kim's side. "I think I heard about you. Young genius who just finished his Masters in Quantum Physics and is now about to start his Doctorate?" she asked excitedly.
"Wade, I didn't know you were famous," Kim said with an arch smile, glancing at her Kimmunicator.
"Well not as famous as you but I make do. Anyways, I've got a hit on your site," he said, his tone taking on a slightly more professional manner.
"What's the sitch?"
Something's happening down at the Go City Technological Research Center. An automated alarm was tripped but it went quiet just as fast. When I went to scan the center's security systems, all I got was nothing," Wade said.
"Nothing? What do you mean?" Kim asked as Darnia sat down on Kim's bed and tried to peek at the Kimmunicator.
"Exactly that. The entire security was either wiped out or taken off the grid."
"Have you tried calling the center directly?"
"Already did and I got a dead tone."
"Sounds serious. Get Ron a ride here while I go check it out," Kim said, standing up quickly and accidentally bumping into Darnia's chin as she did so.
"Owww!" the other girl complained loudly as she rubbed her sore chin.
"Oops...sorry..." Kim turned around to look at her sheepishly. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah...I'm fine...my fault for looking over your shoulder...who's Ron?" Darnia asked curiously.
"Oh? He's my boyfriend..."
"You bring your boyfriend with you on your missions like this?"
"We do this all the time. It's no big really," Kim said lightly as she got up again and went to grab her mission clothes from her closet. "I think it's almost five, six years now?" she mused aloud as she headed to the partition to change.
"You've been in the hero business for that long?" Darnia asked, almost in awe.
"Yeah. You wouldn't believe the kind of stuff that happened to us," Kim said with a grin, as she stepped out from behind the partition dressed in her purple shirt and black slacks with purple lining.
"You think I can come with you right now?" Darnia asked suddenly, watching her intently.
"Er...no...sorry..." Kim said quickly. "Not that I think you'll be a bother or anything but it might be dangerous, y'know?" she explained.
"Okay...well...good luck on your mission then," Darnia said, sounding a little crestfallen.
"Thanks and don't worry. It's probably just a guard tripping over the computer system and they're putting it back right now," Kim said reassuringly.
PB
Minutes later, Kim was outside the Go City Technological Research Center, studying it carefully. As was with most research centers she's visited in the past, this one had a rather sterile, practical design that said 'We are so smart, we can't be bothered with pretty designs.' On the plus side, it was also a rather shiny building.
"How much longer until Ron gets here?" she asked Wade.
"ETA 20 minutes. Might be too late by the time he gets here, Kim."
"Gotcha. Can you upload a blueprint of the center into the Kimmunicator?" she asked.
"Kim, what makes you think I have a blueprint of the center with me at all times?"
"Don't you always?"
"Heh...you got me there. Alright, I'm uploading it right now."
"Please and thank you," she smiled as the Kimmunicator beeped, indicating that the upload was complete. She pressed another button and the blueprint was displayed on the screen. "Hmmm...any idea what the bad guys would want to take from the research center?" she asked.
"Could be anything. There's at least a half dozen top secret experiments going on at the center at any time. Usually those experiments are conducted here." A red dot appeared on the Kimmunicator screen.
"Basement levels. Of course," Kim sighed. She made her way towards the main gate and headed for the security checkpoint. She stopped at the console first and pressed a button. "Hello?" she said tentatively. A brief burst of static greeted her, followed by the strange sensation of something crawling on her hand. Glancing down, she immediately regretted the action: ants were crawling all over her hand.
"Ewww...gross..." she shook her hand, flicking away most of the ants. Her eye caught something and she leaned in closer towards the console, gingerly prying it open. A swarm of ants rushed out of the console, revealing a badly chewed up mess of circuit boards and wires.
"Wade, take a look at this," Kim said softly, lifting up her Kimmunicator to show him the mess.
"Whoa...that is weird..." he said. "I'll do a scan for criminals with this type of MO. Shouldn't be too many of then," the screen switched back to the blueprint of the center.
"Yeah, don't want too many other surprises later on," she said. Good thing Ron hadn't shown up yet. He'd probably freak out badly.
PB
Getting into the center wasn't a problem: the front door was open and judging from the door's electronic lock, the same ant-messing method was used to bypass it as well. Inside, the center was dark and quiet; apparently whoever it was that broke into the center had taken out all of the power in the building. Kim reached into her backpack and rummaged around for a bit before she pulled out a set of goggles and slipped it on. Just a push of the button and the world took on a greenish tint, allowing her to see better in the dark.
"Gotta love night-vision. Thanks Wade," she said softly as she began to make her way to the basement level, following the blueprints that was still showing on her Kimmunicator. As she moved through the center, there was one thing that she couldn't help but wonder: why did all the night staff go? She had yet to run into a single person in the center and honestly, it was a little creepy. "Wade, can you hear me?" she raised her wrist to her lips, speaking softly as she scanned the area for the entrance to the basement level.
"Yeah, what's up Kim?" His voice was a welcome relief to the disheartening quiet.
"Nothing. Just need to hear someone's voice. It's too quiet in here. I haven't seen a single guard yet," she said, spotting the entrance and she darted quickly and stealthily towards it.
"That bad? I'll see if I can get Ron to hurry up," he said. Moments later, a familiar voice piped up, "KP! Sorry I'm late! There's this thing going on with some chickens and a cow in the jet and you don't want to see it at all 'cause it's just sick and wrong!"
"I'll take your word for it. How much longer before you get here? I might need the assist. Whoever that's behind this sitch is a pro. No one in the building at all."
"Five minutes if I get off the jet now and start jumping around."
"Then take off now and start hopping to it," she ordered. The entrance to the basement, a set of elevator doors, was now before her, forced open and the security console next to it was similarly wrecked, just like all the consoles that she had encountered so far.
"Starting to really not like this sitch at all," she murmured to herself as she stepped into the elevator. The buttons inside were smashed, as though by something rather large and there was a hole in the ground, which Kim had avoided stepping into purely by luck. She glanced down at the hole before launching her grappling hook into the ceiling of the elevator and she dove through the hole. According to the blueprints, the elevator went down for about sixty feet; Wade had reassured her that her line was a hundred feet long.
Soon she could see the ground and she pressed a button on her Kimmunicator, causing the line to slow down and allowing her to land on the ground quietly. A second button pressed and the line started to reel back in. She glanced around and saw the elevator exit, a large gash torn between the doors.
Beep, beep be beep "Go, Wade."
"Got a possible suspect who's MO fits the whole use-ants-to-break-into-places schtick. His name's Antropy and he's a small time villain here in Go City. Team Go has tangled with him before but their last confrontation was several years ago, back when Shego was still with them," Wade started to say.
"Did he had, by any chance, super-strength?"
"Nope. The file indicates that he uses an extreme low-frequency sound emitter that mimics the sounds that ants make in order to confuse them and get them to obey his commands instead. Why?"
She turned the Kimmunicator screen towards the elevator door.
"Uh oh."
"We're going to need back up. Get through to Team Go and ask them to pitch in for this. And check on Ron for me, make sure that he's prepped and that he knows what he's in for," she said before she turned her attention towards the door and nimbly climbed up and through the hole.
"Already tried to contact Team Go earlier, Kim but I got their voicemail instead. Something about finally going on a superhero cruise around the world together as a family minus Shego. Know anything about that?"
She sighed and shook her head. "Guess I'm going to have to go this alone until Ron gets here. I'll call you if I need anything," she said before she cut the call.
This sitch was looking to be a lot more interesting than it had a right to be.