Release Notes:
I realize that I should stop babbling so much about my stories before hand and just let you read the damn thing. Make your own judgements.
Part Five: Fastenating
The day had started out well enough.
For Charlie Phillips, junior manager of the Bolt Bin and teenage son to the store's founder, Seymour Phillips, his short shift at the world's largest fastener specialty store had begun uneventfully. He opened the store at 10 am with his father's key and made sure they were properly staffed for the Saturday. It was a lot of responsibility for a 16-year-old, but Seymour Phillips had never believed in coddling his son. If he was to earn the substantial inheritance of the Bolt Bin some day, he would have to work through its ranks from the ground up.
Even then, most employees to the specialty store would comment that Charlie got "special" treatment. His shifts were only four hours long and more often then not, few and far between. He had been promoted to junior manager and had been saddled with various responsibilities beyond his age and experience. Charlie didn't see this as special treatment, however. He was a teenager, after all, and felt like the world owed him a free ride.
Nevertheless, he got along with practically all the staff at the Bin, with the notable exception of his Manager, who obviously resented him for being groomed to be his boss one day. Charlie was a likeable boy, and oddly enough, had a knack for nuts and bolts, though he would never admit it to anyone. He was usually the go-to kid when someone needed something exotic or unusual in a fastener, having an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the field. He blamed his heritage, growing up in a nut and bolt family. His grandpa was one of the nation's bolt pioneers and had made his livelihood selling threaded fasteners door to door. His mother had been a rubber washer heiress when she met her father at a national hardware convention. His uncle was into staples... he was the black sheep of the family.
Charlie, however, tried to deny his ultimate destiny. Though he understood fasteners like the back of his hand, he couldn't help but feel there was more to life. Always a dreamer, he constantly wished for something to happen that would permanently shake his foundations. Something that would alter his life forever.
And then, she walked into the store.
Charlie had never seen anyone like her before, dressed head to toe in green and black. Long dark hair swept down her back, teasing along her hard, curved body. Her skin, the color of a pale green harbor mist, was smooth and exotic. Her lips, painted as black as her hair, were turned into a frown. She stalked through the isle, coming directly towards him. Her dark green eyes, seeming to sparkle with an otherworldliness, bored into his.
She came to a stop before him and stood with one hand on her hip. She glanced at his nametag while he continued to stare at her in shock.
"Hey, Chuck," came the smooth, if annoyed, voice that played on his backbone like a xylophone. "I was wondering if you could help me find something."
Charlie mumbled and stuttered at the woman. The only response he could formulate was the standard store greeting he had been forced to memorize and repeat to all the customers.
"Wha-ma-wa-welcome to the Bolt Bin, the worlds largest fastener specialty store, h-how can I help?" He licked his suddenly dry lips. For some reason, he felt he needed a drink of water. Cold water.
The green woman continued as though he hadn't spoken. "Yeah, I'm looking for a silver-plated, three-quarter inch, metric machine bolt. Have any?" She seemed to growl as she asked, as if annoyed at the whole world.
Charlie's mind raced. It was perfect. This gorgeous, foreign woman needed his help, and with a bolt! His lame life as a Bolt Bin kid had culminated into this one moment when his useless knowledge could be used to impress this angel, who had come to save him from the monotony that was his world.
"Um… three-quarter? Silver-plated?" Charlie rubbed a hand over his goatee and tried to play it smooth. He had been growing it for a week now. The muscle mags under his bed said that it was a chick magnet. "We may have a couple in the back. I'll have to get my manager to…"
The woman cut him off. "Oh no, don't bother." She raised her free hand and snapped her fingers with an amazingly loud pop. Charlie swore he saw green sparks fly from the fingertips.
Suddenly, all hell broke loose.
The building shuddered as twin explosions rained down debris from the ceiling. Charlie ducked and looked up to see strange-looking men in red and black suits come leaping through the newly created holes. Simultaneously, other men came charging through the aisles from all directions, shouting and chanting "Hut-Hut-Hut" as they filled the store.
He looked up at the standing woman, who hadn't even flinched during the invasion. A tiny smirk raised her black lips.
"We'll just get it ourselves."
Charlie moaned. His dad was going to kill him.
Dr. Drakken hopped from one foot to the other with excitement and hummed a merry tune. Alone in his secret lair, built into a mountain on a remote Caribbean island, he scurried from his work bench to a giant computer monitor and back again. On the massive screen was a live feed from his robotic Synthodrones that, even then, were storming the Bolt Bin a thousand miles away. Then, with mounting pleasure, he would skip over to his workbench to fawn over the two packages he had received in the morning by express post.
One had been the Reversal Drive, courtesy of Hench Co Industries. It had arrived so quickly - almost cartoonishly so - that Drakken hardly had time to fret over how easily the courier had found his supposedly "secret" lair.
"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy…" he rubbed his small hands together with an awful smile before reaching for a crowbar. "Someone has been a baaad boy this year!" Drakken practically attacked the wooden crate.
About the size of a toaster oven, the Drive was the shape of a large Aspirin tablet with various plugs and wires protruding from either end. Drakken giggled and popped the bubblewrap that had been used to safely package the device. Jack Hench knew how to do business that was for sure. The mad scientist plucked at the large sheet of paper that was wedged into the now-empty crate. Hardly taking a moment to look at it, he let the invoice drop to the ground with a distasteful grimace.
"Oh… but I havn't forgotten you," he sauntered over to a much smaller, cardboard box. "You are just as important as…" Drakken paused as he lifted the dented package. "Eh?" He shook it suspiciously. There was the unmistakable sound of loose metal.
"What the..." The blue-skinned man tore the small box open and pulled out its contents: a small metal cube. The Nuclear Capacitor Switch. He held the piece in his hands and scrutinized it carefully. There were numerous dents and scratches on the Switch and upon shaking it again near his ear, he verified the rattling noise.
"Phff.." he snorted angrily, "refurbished my butt." The Switch was carelessly tossed onto the worktable. Taking up the majority of the surface was the very weapon these parts would help bring to fruition. Drakken ran his gloved hands along the sleek surface of his invention-in-progress.
"Soon, my dearest… soon you will make the world tremble." He spoke as if to a bedded lover. "But not before you're trial run on Kim Possible!" He raised a fist into the air and struck a defiant pose. "Once my Reverse Engineering Ray is complete, she will rue the day she crossed Dr. Drakken!"
Then he blinked as he remembered something.
"Oh… right!" The mad scientist scurried over to the massive supercomputer. Taking hardly a moment to verify that the Synthodrones were operating normally, he quickly opened a window and logged onto the internet. In a few hesitant keystrokes he had successfully signed onto an online auction.
"Come on, come on… yes!" The blue-skinned man actually clicked his heels when he saw that he was still the highest bidder on the Quantum Matrix Amplifier, and with only twenty minutes to close. It was as good as his!
"Once I have the Amplifier in my possession, I will only need the bolt! And then my doomsday device will be complete!" Drakken suddenly realized that he was ranting to an empty room. He looked around sheepishly for someone to listen, but the lair was empty. He had sent practically everyone to the Bolt Bin. Shego had groaned and complained about the redundancy of sending an entire army to take over a hardware store, and for a single bolt no less. But Drakken had enough failures from the woman in the past two days that he easily overrode her criticisms and sent the whole crew on its way. There was no way that the blasted Kim Possible could stop him from gaining that final piece. Not with such a force to back up Shego.
First the Amplifer, and then the bolt, would be his. He giddily watched as the online auction counted down to closure.
Things were looking up for Drakken.
Outside the warehouse-sized building of the Bolt Bin, two large transport hovercrafts sat empty. One had landed on the roof after firing two small explosive charges. The other hand landed in the parking lot next to a minivan. It had triple-parked several handicap spaces.
On the ground, dozens of red-suited henchmen had come squeezing out of the cramped quarters carrying glowing energy batons. Though they were professional henchmen, they moved with a barely concealed chaos due to the fact that they hadn't been briefed on the operation more then five hours ago. All that Drakken had told them was that they would be storming an enemy stronghold to retrieve a valuable item. None of them had expected to be taking over a nut and bolt store. Nevertheless, they had snapped into the loose formation that their green-suited combat leader had drilled into them during the flight and they poured into the building.
Out of the roof hovercraft had come the much more silent, and much more precise, movements of Drakken's Synthodrones; synthetic robot warriors with the strength of four regular men and the unfeeling precision of computer-controlled logic. Durable, untiring, and infinitely loyal. They were the cream of the evil mad scientist's terrible crop. Into the holes they had dropped without a word, following the program they each had loaded into their electronic brains.
Also, as had been detailed by their combat leader (despite her being thrust into the role by surprise little over an hour ago) three of the red-suited henchmen guarded the alley fire exit of the large store. Their names were Sam, Billy and John, though they were known as the numbers 402, 676 and 379 in Drakken's private henchman army. All three milled around in front of the door, one with a cigarette in his mouth, looking anything but military. The only thing that ruined the effect of three blue collar workers on their coffee break was the identical unflattering red jumpsuits that they wore.
The henchman whose name was Sam stood facing the other two. He took a deep draw from his cigarette and exhaled a swirling mass of blue smoke.
"Susan Sarandon in The Witches of Eastwick." He said, matter-of-factly.
"Get out." The henchman whose name was Billy leaned forward on the concrete step he sat on.
"It's true. I even wrote her a letter." He took another drag.
"Michelle Pfeiffer was in that movie, wasn't she?" The henchman whose name was John stayed leaning against the wall. "I remember having the biggest crush on her."
"Aw man. That is weak. I can't believe you would pick Susan Sarandon."
Sam shrugged and took another drag.
"Me, I would go with Claudia Schiffer. I had the sweetest poster of her on my bedroom…"
"You know," John almost yawned as he spoke, "she had a couple kids."
"Well… yeah…" Billy rolled his eyes. "But that's not the point. Once upon a time, she was totally…"
"How long we gotta stay here?" Sam crushed his spent cigarette under his foot. "The witch didn't say how long this thing is supposed to take."
The seated henchman spun around to look behind him at the mention of the nickname they all secretly used for Drakken's female sidekick, as if expecting her to be listening to them at that very moment. More then one of them had felt the painful results of her short temper.
"No clue." John shrugged, still leaning. "I didn't even know we had a job until the kid here shook me awake like it was Christmas or some damn thing." He nodded in the direction of the seated Billy. He was only two years younger then them, but the pet name had stuck.
Billy snorted at him. "Well it's not my fault you sleep through role call. If I hadn't got you up, you'd still be stuck at the lair."
"Oh, heaven forbid." He said dryly.
"I'll tell you what, though." Sam grumbled. "I'm tired of being treated like a damn peon by that green-faced witch." Once again, Billy spun around to look. "The next time she snaps at me like I'm a dog… I'm gonna slap her in the mouth!"
John snorted in amusement. Billy simply looked shocked.
"She'd…. murder you." Billy almost whispered.
"Phff," Sam pulled a cigarette carton out of his pocket and knocked another white stick into his hand. "I ain't afraid of some green-skinned freak of nature. Someone needs to smack that witch right in the…"
Both Billy and John stared in shock as Sam was lifted into the air. His words cut off with a gasp and his cigarette fell to the ground.
Standing behind him, as if out of thin air, stood a figure in a black and silver, two piece biker suit. His head was covered in a matte-black helmet and they could see their own dumbstruck expressions in the reflective mirror shield that was pulled down over his face. His right arm, extended before him to hold the wheezing Sam by scruff of his red coveralls, hardly moved as the panicked henchman kicked his airborne legs. A black-booted foot came down to grind the fresh cigarette into the pavement.
The helmet turned to look up at the squirming man.
"I'd watch my mouth if I were you," came the muffled voice. "Otherwise, someone might be li'ble to break it." Then Sam went flying into the wall with a painful thump. He dropped to the ground not unlike a crash test dummy.
The other two henchmen's heads turned in sync to look at the standing biker. The helmet stared back at them.
"I need to get inside, if that's ok."
Henchman Billy sputtered and jumped to his feet. He pawed the energy baton seated next to him and lunged at the biker with a shout.
The biker, almost casually, reached forward and grabbed the man in midair. Billy was lifted and thrown overhead to land on top of the laying Sam with a cry. The man on the bottom exhaled fiercely at the impact and then moaned loudly. Both remained on the ground.
The helmet turned to look at the remaining henchman, still leaning against the wall next to the fire escape. John regarded the biker calmly. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded at the door.
"Be my guest."
Shego clenched her teeth impatiently as the pimple-faced Charlie scurried through the warehouse storage area in the back of the Bolt Bin. Normally off limits to the general public, Shego could understand why. Where the front of the store looked neat and inviting (as much as hundreds of shelves of bolts and nuts could be, anyway) the back was a chaos of boxes and exposed structure. It was a wonder that the bumbling teen even knew where he was going..
Standing around her, like silent statues, were several of the Sythodrones. The size and shape of tall, muscular men, they had no face beyond the glowing white orbs that acted as eyes. They didn't move in the slightest and would continue to stay that way until she gave them an order. She considered telling them to dance, just to see if they would do it.
Shego's annoyance grew. If she had worn a watch, she would have checked it several times by now. Instead she crossed her arms, tapped her toes, and shot daggers at the searching Charlie.
But it wasn't the fact that the teen was taking so long finding the bolt that was making her angry. The awful truth was; she felt like she had been stood up. She had been expecting someone specific to make an appearance at the robbery, besides the inevitable Kim Possible. Shifting to the other foot, she thought about the slight weight in her ankle pouch. She wasn't sure why she had even brought it. Hell... she wasn't sure why she had even kept it at all.
Growling at the absent man, as well as herself for even caring, she whirled on the silent Synthodrones.
"I'm going to go check on the henches," she spoke loud enough for Charlie to hear, "stay here and guard the boy. If he doesn't find the bolt in fifteen minutes, kill him." The greasy-haired teen, half inside a box, squeaked loudly and threw himself back into the search with increased abandon.
Shego took a step towards the swinging doorway that lead back into the store. She paused for a moment and turned slightly towards the waiting Drones.
"Don't actually kill him." She spoke just loud enough for them to hear and then exited through the doors.
Shego wandered through the interconnecting aisles of the Bolt Bin. Every once and a while she would come across a pocket of henchmen, milling around and talking amongst themselves. Upon noticing her, they immediately hushed and tried to look professional, some even snapping to attention. She would fix them with a cold stare, like she always did, and continued on her way. They would start mumbling almost immediately after she passed. Shego knew what the henchmen called her behind her back. She told herself that she didn't care. She had been called worse in her life.
Besides the henchmen and the Synthodrones who had effectively locked down the building, there were also the trapped customers and employees. Many of them continued on as if there were nothing out of the ordinary. And as long as they didn't leave until the robbery was over, Shego had no problem with that. The store was simply too big to try and police the civilians. Just as she had told Drakken when he had named her "combat leader" of the idiot task force he had assembled; all the henchmen and all the Drones he had sent with her were completely useless.
The green thief found herself in an empty corner of the store. There, she sat on the floor and propped herself up against the wall. She heard a disembodied voice call for a price check on 7/16 machine screws over the store's PA system.
Shego's anger deflated as she sat alone. The whole situation was downright depressing. A respected international super-thief, forced to steal from a hardware store. Not only that, but she was expected to baby-sit all these idiots.
And the whole reason she had wanted to come here in the first place had ended up being a bust. Cutter hadn't shown his idiot face, if nothing else, so she could punch it again.
Shego sighed. She hoped Kimmie got there soon. So she had something useful to do.
Kim Possible cranked the steering wheel hard to her left. The purple super-car squealed into a controlled power slide and made it through the intersection without loosing speed. In the passenger seat beside her, Ron Stoppable gripped onto the armrests as though his life depended on it. His brown eyes could not possibly have gotten any wider.
"Kim!" He practically squeaked. "Take it easy! We'll get there!"
Kim's own bright green eyes were narrowed into slits, her narrow jaw jutted forward in focused fury. She pushed the acceleration pedal that much harder and the car roared down the street.
Ron moaned and closed his eyes. He didn't see Kim get this upset often, and when she did he most certainly didn't like it. Not at all.
It had all started when Wade had interrupted their picnic date with a Drakken robbery in progress. He had been disappointed, sure, after all he had put a fair bit of work into the surprise lunch for Kim. He had wanted to do something nice and romantic for his girlfriend and all around best bud. It had just occurred to him that morning that he never really did things like that for her, like she was a real girlfriend and not just a friend that he hung out with.
But Kim, she had been infuriated by the interruption. He wished he understood why, so he could help calm her down. However, at that moment all he could focus on was not throwing up.
Another gut-wrenching turn and the high-tech automobile shot through a narrow alleyway. Barely avoiding a garbage dumpster and the black motorcycle parked beside it, they squealed into a large parking lot. There, they saw the Bolt Bin with a familiar set of hovercraft vehicles parked up front and up on the roof.
"Aw, they parked in a handicapped spot!" Ron shook his head. "That's just… evil."
"We're going in." Kim said simply. She revved her engine. "Hold on, Ron."
The blonde-haired teen stared at her incredulously. And then the car lunged forward with a roar.
In front of the main entrance to the specialty store stood four of Drakken's henchman and two Synthodrones. As the purple care came careening towards them, the men were quick to run out of the way. The Drones, however, didn't flinch.
"Hey, Ron." Kim spoke sideways. "Those guys are Synthos, right?"
"Uhh… yeah." He braced himself as the car continued to roar towards the double glass doors.
"Good." She reached forward and flipped one of the many switches on the dashboard. "I hate Synthos."
The car's bumper folded out and a thick ram bar rose into place.
"I usually use just a hint of basil. Just enough to fit between two fingers."
"Huh," the other henchmen nodded. "I'll have to get that recipe from you."
Then they heard the squeal of tires.
Almost in slow motion, both men turned to look at the pair of double glass doors they were guarding. Through it, they could see the four other henchmen outside the store quickly jump in either direction while the two Drones remained motionless. A high-pitched whine grew steadily in volume, quickly becoming recognizable as the roar of an approaching engine.
As they stared in mute shock, a purple car came smashing through the door and the two stationary robots in an explosion of metal, glass and synthogel. The vehicle came to a sudden, skidding halt not three feet in front of them. The Drones were completely splattered across the front of the car.
The two henchmen stood with their jaws agape. They blinked when car's wipers came up to clear the oily liquid from the windshield, revealing the two teens seated inside. The passenger was frozen with one hand on the dash and the other pressed into the ceiling, his expression a mirror of their own. The driver, on the other hand, glowered at them over her steering wheel.
"I have a feeling we're in trouble." Said the first henchman.
Elswhere in the store, the biker stood in a broom closet unstrapping his black helmet when he heard the explosion. Above him hung a single light bulb, still swinging from when he had pulled on its metal cord. The helmet turned to look at the doorway, as if he could see the cause of the commotion through it.
"Aw… nuts." Came the muffled voice.
He quickly pulled the helmet off his head and came out of the closet.
Charlie snapped up in shock at the sound of the crash, surrounded in opened boxes of bolts. He stared through the unflinching Drones towards the swinging doorway that lead to the front of the store. He moaned and hung his head.
"Dad is going to kill me… again."
Several dozen red-suited henchmen swarmed the car from all sides, glowing energy batons in their hands. The driver side door was kicked open, connecting hard with one of the men and sent him sprawling into a lock washer display case. Kim Possible grabbed onto the door's edge and flipped herself out and onto the top of the vehicle, hardly taking a moment's pause before leaping off the roof in a devastating spinning kick. Into the fray she went, blocking, jumping, punching and throwing henchmen left and right.
Inside the car, Ron Stoppable struggled with his own door, not exactly sure how to unlock the high-tech device.
"Uh… KP?" He tugged on the jamb. "A little help? The door seems to be…"
A large man in a red jumpsuit appeared in the window next to him.
"Ahh! Kim! Sidekick in trouble!" The henchman smiled viciously at the trapped teen, and pounded his fist on the roof of the car. Ron frantically tried flipping switches on the dash.
A large spotlight rack folded up out of the roof of the car and lit up the store, blinding one enemy enough for Kim to sweep his legs out from under him. Then a puddle of grease pooled behind the car, causing two other henches to slip and fall with a pair of shouts. And then, a cloud of pink gas hissed out from underneath the car to surround the immediate area around it. Five more henchmen went down, including the large one outside Ron's door, knocked out cold.
Kim covered her mouth, just outside the area of affect, as the gas quickly dissipated. Between herself and Ron, they had quickly incapacitated the entire first wave of attackers.
"Good job, Ron." Kim smiled at her partner, just then climbing out of the vehicle.
"Yeah, 's right!" He gingerly stepped over the unconscious bruiser to stand tall and proud. "The Ron man is in da house!"
The redhead's face hardened again. "Now, let's go find Shego so we can get back to…"
"Marco…" Came the warning call, seconds before a fireball of green plasma exploded on the spot where Kim had just been standing. She landed in a crouch, facing the new opponent.
"Polo." She replied icily.
Shego stood high atop one of the store shelves. Both her hands glowed and flared with green energy. The dark haired woman smiled just as coldly at her long time nemesis.
"I was wondering when you'd finally get here, Princess. Seriously… I was starting to get bored."
"You picked the wrong day, Shego." Kim growled. "I was on a date."
"A date?" The green woman looked incredulous. "With the buffoon, there?"
"Hey!" Ron piped up.
Shego smiled, not too unkindly. "So… what? He take you to Bueno Nacho, again?"
"No." Kim straightened and raised her chin defiantly. "He took me on a picnic."
"Ugh, a picnic?" The thief shook her head. "How cliché is that?"
"It was very sweet and totally romantic, I'll have you know." She quickly defended Ron. "And I loved every minute of it until you ruined it."
"I probably did you a favor, Kimmie." Shego relaxed into a crouch on the shelf, her hands extinguished. "Saved you from a bore…"
"Stop it!" Kim suddenly shouted, causing the green woman to jerk. "Stop talking like we're friends! We're not friends, Shego. Not anymore."
They looked at each other in silence for a few moments. Shego's expression was unreadable.
"You're right, Princess." She slowly straightened. "We're not friends." Her head raised up and she shouted out into the store. "Synthodrones! Attack!"
From seemingly all directions, the dark red forms emerged. Their glowing orbs were locked on the combat-posed Kim Possible as they closed on her.
"I'd love to stay and play, Kimmie. But I've got a job to do. Maybe next time, Kiddo." The green woman turned and leapt off the shelf, disappearing into the maze of aisles. Kim stood her ground, and Ron was quick to join her, as the robotic warriors encircled them. They moved with the controlled choreography of swarming bees.
"I really hate Synthos, Ron." The beautiful young woman spoke.
"Yeah… I remember." He sighed. And for a brief instant, he almost felt a pang of sympathy for the approaching robots.
Shego quickly made her way towards the back of the store and the stupid bolt that she hoped was back there. She had thought she was in a bad mood before, but now she was really miserable. She just wanted to get the heck out of this place.
She refused to dwell on why Kim's words had stung her. It was not like she hadn't told herself the same thing, over and over. It was not like she hadn't pushed Kim harder and harder with each consecutive encounter, further and further away. Shego didn't need friends. She didn't need anyone.
She shoved past a group of trapped shoppers, mostly men. They whined in complaint, but quickly shut up at the sight of the storming woman. They had grown more nervous since the car was driven through the wall, the reality of the situation starting to dawn on them. She hadn't seen many bolt bin employees. They were probably huddled in the break room.
Shego was going to grab that bolt, even if she had to shake it out of that kid, and get back to the lair before Kim managed to…
"Sweetpea? Is that you?"
Shego froze at the sound of that word. With agonizing slowness, she turned to face the direction of the speaker.
There, standing with a shopping basket hooked over his arm and the other hand extended towards a shelf, was Chris Cutter. He wore a pair of black leather pants with a sliver line down the length. A matching leather jacket that was unzipped to reveal a grey t-shirt with the stenciled words "What's Troubling Gus?" along with the silhouette of a polar bear silk-screened onto the chest. He stared at her, as if in surprise, with his shining silver eyes.
"Fancy meeting you here, of all places. I was just… uh" he looked at the box he had just pulled from the shelf, "buying some… bolts… and things."
Shego stood frozen in astonishment. She could not believe that he was actually pretending like this was an accident.
"So, um…" He leaned against the shelf, trying to look conversational. "What're you up to?"
Shego exploded.
Charlie was left alone in the back. He had heard the green demon woman shouting and then the seven robot men were gone, the double doors swinging in their wake.
The greasy-haired teenager had a few moments to consider his next move. Should he run? Should he hide? Should he keep looking? What? For all he knew, the robots would come back any second and tear him limb from limb if he didn't have the bolt. And if he ran? Where would he go?
Charlie kicked the pile of boxes in front of him in frustration. He had been sure there was a silver-plated, three-quarter inch, metric machine bolt in the back. They were unusual enough that they never ordered them in bulk. He had been so sure.
Then, the whole floor shook vilolently. Charlie gaped as the double doors swung outwards and a cloud of smoke and debris blew through. Something had just blown up in his father's store.
Charlie moaned in anger. He kicked the pile of boxes again and again and then fell to the floor in resignation.
Above him, the tower of cardboard shifted and teetered.
The teen had hardly a moment to scream when the whole pile fell on him with a crash. He pushed and kicked, gasping for air as he came sputtering out of the pile of nuts and bolts. He could not believe he had not been crushed. His whole measly life had flashed before his eyes. He collapsed, half out of the heap of fasteners, and then… focused his eyes on something right in front of him.
A sliver- plated bolt.
Kim rolled under a swinging punch from one of the Synthos. She knew from experience that they could quickly overpower her if she didn't find an advantage. Regular hits were simply absorbed by the liquid-filled machines. They had no bones to break, and no brains to knock unconscious. And each time she met them in combat, Drakken had managed to improve their fighting skills just a little bit more. They did have one major weakness though.
"Ah! Bad touch!" Ron shouted as he was lifted into the air by yet another drone.
Kim came out of her roll tossing a handful of what looked like everyday bobby pins. Like slicing knives they cut through the drone's one arm, causing the oily goo inside to leak out. The robot quickly lost the strength of the arm and dropped a squealing Ron to the floor. Kim jumped up and kicked off the one-armed drone, sending it sprawling to the floor. She landed next to her boyfriend as the rest of the Sythos came in.
"You have more of those pins?" Ron sat himself up.
"Not nearly enough." The crouched girl held her arms at the ready.
That's when an explosion rocked the store, knocking over several tall shelves and showering them with rubble. Kim raised a protective arm and saw veritable mushroom cloud billow up to the ceiling from somewhere in the middle of the giant room. Even the Sythos paused to process this new development.
Out of the hazy aisles came fleeing civilians, many of whom carried handfuls of fasteners and other store items under their arms. They all had the look of panic stamped on their faces and funneled through the hole in the wall, not even taking a second look at the purple car parked inside the store or the group of unconscious foot soldiers lying around it. One particular looter slipped and fell with a shout on the slick of grease behind the vehicle, his handfuls of stolen goods scattering about.
"Holy crap." Was all Ron could say.
The drones didn't give them more time to wonder. They quickly turned their attention back on the trapped pair.
Shego stood in the center of a blackened, smoldering crater. She held her arms tight to her sides and breathed heavily through clenched teeth. To all sides of her, the once highly-organized shelves of the Bolt Bin had been reduced to rubble.
The focus of her outburst was gone, as she had half-expected he would be. Cutter was nothing if not spry.
It had been a good, long time since she had exploded like that. Not since when she was much younger and much less in control of her power, as well as her swirling emotions. Back before she understood what she was capable of. Before she knew what she had been made for.
She had long since developed a tight reign on the destructive power inside of her. Rarely did it flare up so fiercely. But this was the second time it had done so in the past two days. Why did that bouncing idiot make her snap so readily?
The shifting of rubble brought her back to the world.
Cutter's dark hair was covered in dust. He pushed the collapsed shelving unit off of him with a strained grunt and coughed loudly. His leather jacket was torn along the sleeve.
"Son of a…" He pulled himself up and looked at his arm. "This was my favorite jacket."
"You…" Shego growled. Her gloved hands ignited in green fury. "You meddling… dork!" Cutter froze in place and stared at the angry woman apprehensively. "Who are you working for? Tell me NOW!" The power practically leapt from her hands.
Cutter hopped and quick-stepped along the piles of rubble, deftly avoiding her blast. He poised up on top of a thin rail of metal, protruding from the mass like a balance beam.
"I'm not working for anyone!" He shouted back at her, annoyance clear in his voice. "I'm a free agent. Work for the highest bidder, Sweetpea."
Shego snarled at the pet name and came rushing at the crouching man, firing fistfuls of fire at him as she did so. He backflipped along the rail, twisting and rotating free of the onslaught. Along the top of the rubble he scurried, sometimes on all fours, moving with feline liquidness. Shego hopped up and followed him, not slowed down at all by the chaos of twisted sharp metal. When she could, she threw a screaming plasma bolt at the bouncing idiot, only to have it explode to either side of him. Nevertheless, she managed to herd him into a corner where he found himself trapped. She faced him across an aisle of still standing shelves.
"Then who hired you to follow me?" She shrieked at the silver-eyed man. He looked back at her with dread plain on his face.
"I…" he paused as he looked at her. He licked his lips nervously. "I don't know if now it's such a good time to ask you anymore… since you're obviously in a bad mood."
"What?" Shego practically shouted in confusion. "Ask me WHAT?"
Cutter winced and shook his head, almost talking to himself. "No. Definitely a bad idea. Stupid, stupid, stupid." He looked at her in anger. "Why are you always so pissed off?"
Shego screamed and leapt at the man with her fiery green hands. Cutter jumped backwards and landed on the wall, undoubtedly intending to scale it with his bizarre lizard-like ability that Shego had witnessed a dozen times before. This time, however, his booted feet slipped and slid down the wall. She saw him hang by his bare hands and try to scuttle along, but with limited success.
"Friggin' stupid-ass boots!" She heard him curse, before he simply dropped down onto the floor. She had seen him barefoot all those times before and now this verified it for her. He needed his hands and feet exposed in order to climb the sheer walls.
"Looks like you're fancy little pumps aren't so stylin' after all, Champ." She sneered down on him from the top of her shelf.
"Shut up," he growled. "You ever tried riding a motorcycle barefoot?" Cutter quickly tried to pull a boot off while he hopped along on one foot like some sort of comical joke.
Shego almost casually sent a searing blast at the floor in front of him.
"You're going to tell me what I want to know," she smiled icily at the man, "or you won't have a foot left to put in a boot."
Wade Load had been running in electronic circles for the past few hours.
He had only been half-concentrating on the events at the bolt bin, having full confidence in his teammates. Reports had filtered through that there had been an explosion a few minutes ago, but a quick glance at his constant system link with the Kimmunicator showed him that the team was ok, if a little preoccupied. If they needed his expertise, Kim would call him and he'd be with them in a microsecond. For now, he needed to gather as much intel as possible for their benefit.
It had been a game of cat and mouse between him and his online opponent. He had been fishing for hits from the algorithm by setting up false info and mirror sites, testing the limits of the A.I. program that was actively deleting any information about the Worldwide Evil Empire, and ultimately, the enigmatic thief that had teamed up with Drakken.
Things were progressing agonizingly slowly, but they were progressing somewhat. Wade was confident that he could unravel the algorithm, not unlike unraveling a knot of string, if given enough time. But time was never a luxury in the world-saving business.
The young boy sighed and leaned back from the one computer screen, only to turn and stare into another. Kim and Ron looked to be in deep, but it would do no good to call them now when they needed concentration. He tapped on his keyboard and did a quick scan through the Kimmunicator's sensors. He grimaced. Kim hated Syntho Drones. He almost felt sorry for them.
Hopping between tasks like a computer himself, Wade spun around and tried to do further analysis of the equipment Drakken had been trying to steal the last couple days. The combination of items could make a myriad of different machines, none of them good. He frowned at the screen. Then, almost on a whim, he did a quick online search for the items in question. Naturally, the Reversal Drive could be found for sale on the Hench Co website. A quick peak into their system inventory made him groan in exasperation. Apparently Hench had gone and sold the item to Drakken, even after he had sent Shego to try and steal it unsuccessfully. Hench was never one to frown on making a buck, no matter the cliental.
There were dozens of hits on Nuclear Capacitor Switches. They were not terribly uncommon for a piece of high-technology. Drakken could have easily gotten several if he needed them besides the one that was stolen from the first research facility, the one that Shego and Chris Cutter had apparently trashed.
Wade then did a scan for the Quantum Matrix Amplifier. The only one in existence had been at the National Engineering Center, which Cutter and Shego had easily taken, by eyewitness accounts.
Then, Wade's eyes narrowed as he scrolled over another hit on his search. Oddly enough, this one was on Ebay.
Quickly scanning through the corresponding webpages, his eyes widened again in shock. There it was, large as life. A photo of the Amplifier up for grabs. Wade couldn't believe it. He looked at the seller, one "scissorkid33". His merchant profile showed a 98 feedback rating. Looking through the list of comments, he saw a lot of the typical "Very Satisfied, Thanks" and "Prompt and Courteous" responses. But what really surprised him were the items that had been bought by these bidders: "Crown Jewel Blue Diamond" and "Super Secret Stealth Jet Blueprints" or "Priceless Monet Painting". In fact, the only item that wasn't a big ticket robbery was a "Slightly Used Motorcycle Helmet" to which the buyer had given scissorkid his only bad review, citing that the helmet had been scratched.
It was painfully obvious to Wade that scissorkid33 was Chris Cutter. Several of the big ticket items where ones from some high-profile robberies that he had already managed to link to the thief before he hit the brick wall that was the WEE. But apparently, the A.I. hadn't caught this one loose thread, not making the connection between Cutter and this stray Ebay profile.
Wade quickly went to see who the highest bidder currently was for the Quantum Matrix Amplifier. His face twisted in confusion upon reading the online handle.
Drbluebad666.
He wasn't surprised by the obviousness of the name. Drakken was nothing if not obvious. What made him scratch his head was the fact that Drakken was bidding on the Amp from Cutter. Kim, Wade and even Ron all thought he had been working with the megalomaniac, despite the fact that WEE never worked with rogue villains. After all, he and Shego had been spotted at all three robberies at the same time and…
Wade smacked his forehead as things suddenly fell into place.
In a move that was half-cheerleading and half-martial art, Kim Possible landed on the Synthodrone's shoulders and hooked her legs under his arms. Following through with her momentum, she managed to actually flip herself forward and send the robot flying into the wall. She came to rolling stop in time to watch the drone bounce off the surface and land on the floor. Of course, the stupid thing just got back up again.
Ron faired little better, running in panicked circles around a cash register followed by two other Sythos, one of them with only one arm. The rest of the robots were sparring with her. Back and forth she spun and cart wheeled through them easily, scoring a multitude of hits and jabs. If they had been human, they would have fallen quickly. Instead, they warped and bent with every connection. It felt like fighting one of those inflatable smiling clowns.
Not for the first time, she cursed herself for accidentally leaving her laser lipstick in her purse. She could have made short work of the liquid-filled drones with that in her hand. Instead, she had to look to the environment around her.
She hand sprung over a couple unconscious henchmen, grabbing their energy batons as she did so. Coming up, she whirled the weapons in each hand like a pair of fighting sticks, their glowing energy leaving red trails in their wake.
On the Synthos came, heedless. Kim swung and connected with one in the head in a shower of light. Its entire neck snapped over into a sickening angle with the force of the blow. She struck another in the leg, causing it to practically spin to the floor. The batons were not sharp enough to break the reinforced skin, but they packed a heck of a punch.
Surrounded by reaching robots the cheerleader stood alone, feet spread wide. Her hands moved in a spinning blur of red, highlighted by the occasional burst of light as she connected again and again. Drones went flying and whirling to the floor only to pull themselves back up, usually with limbs bent at bizarre and unnatural looking angles.
Kim pressed on. Sweat started to bead on her forehead. The robots couldn't break through her defense, but she wasn't taking them down. And she couldn't keep this up forever.
She needed something sharp.
Ron threw a shopping basket at the approaching drone. Naturally, it bounced off of him harmlessly.
"Man!" He moaned, and dug through the register desk, trying to find some sort of weapon. His hand closed on a standard office stapler, probably used to staple customer receipts.
"Ahh!" He shouted as he wielded the tool like a pair of nunchucks. Rotating it around him in a dizzying display. The pair of robots didn't flinch and continued their advance.
"Hai yah!" The blonde teen leapt at the nearest foe, smacking him directly in the forehead. The faceless robot actually stopped. A tiny indent was visible where the staple had been imbedded. As Ron watched, a tiny dribble of sytho-goo leaked out of the hole.
The robot continued his approach.
"Er.. nice synthetic soldier." Ron dropped the stapler and backed into the register. "We're cool, right?" The drone reached for him. "Ahh! Kim! Help!" Ron turned to look for the unmistakable sight of her red hair. Instead, what Ron saw was a large cluster of Sythodrones around an unseen opponent, slowly pressing in.
"Kim!" Ron shouted in alarm. An iron grip on his shoulder. "Let go!" He snarled, punching the robot ineffectively. Desperately, he clawed at the desk. His hand grabbed onto something wedged in beside the register. Ron looked at his hand.
A pair of scissors.
With a vicious cry, he stabbed at the robot's arm, tearing a gaping hole through which poured the greasy liquid. The arm quickly deflated like a balloon. Ron kicked off the drone's chest and managed to flip over the register. He ran towards the compacting cluster of drones screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Kim! Kim! I'm coming!" The young man sprung onto the back of the first Syntho he saw, stabbing the scissors into its neck. The goo spurted up into the air like something out of a horror movie. The robot lurched and sent Ron falling to the floor. He scrambled out of the way as the seizure-induced drone nearly dropped on top of him. He looked back into the fighting mass.
Ron still couldn't see any red hair.
"Kim!" He cried out. "Kim!"
Then, he heard a shout from within.
"Ron!"
The teen snapped to his feet, intending to rush headlong into the throng. But he was stopped as two Synthodrones went flying over his head. He saw flashes of red light as more drones were sent tumbling away from the cluster. Then out of the chaos leapt a messy-haired Kim Possible, bashing foes to either side of her as she rolled free and causing a stumbling mess in the Syntho's ranks.
Ron rushed up to meet her and they collided in a clinging embrace.
"Are you ok?" They asked in tandem. Kim looked wide eyed and concerned.
"I heard you shout. I thought you were in trouble." She looked over Ron frantically as if expecting him to be missing a limb.
"Me?" Ron almost laughed. "You were the one in the middle of that." He nodded at the tangled mess of Syntho Drones, even then starting to reorganize themselves. He brushed a stray lock of red hair out of her beautiful eyes. "I was so worried, that I..."
Kim pulled his lips to hers in a passionate kiss. Ron felt her tongue meet his, tentatively, over their teeth. He felt weak in the knees and nearly dropped right there onto the cold concrete floor. But he held her so tightly that he couldn't have fallen. And then the kiss broke, like a wave on a rocky coast.
"Maybe now is not the best time for that." Ron gasped. He saw an unfocused look in her eyes as she also struggled for breath.
"Maybe you're right." Kim shook her head, seeming to struggle to concentrate. The focus returned to her eyes. They pulled out of the embrace awkwardly and faced the mounting threat.
"Oh," Ron smiled at his girlfriend, "I got you something." The cheerleader looked perplexed until she saw the pair of scissors being offered to her. She smiled deviously and dropped one of the batons.
"Aw, Ron," she took the sharp implement in her free hand, "you buy me the nicest things."
"Just don't, you know… run with them or anything." She gave him a sultry grin that heated his cheeks.
The first of several freed robotic warriors came at the pair. Almost playfully, Kim slashed out with the one hand to make a vicious cut along the drone's thigh, making him tilt over sideways as the leg lost its fluid.
"You heard the joke about the one-legged man at the ass-kicking contest?" The taunting cheerleader smashed the robot over with the baton.
Charlie came slinking out of the swinging doors and whimpered at the sight before him.
Half the store was demolished from what appeared to have been some sort of cataclysmic detonation in the middle of the building. Not to mention the twin holes that had been blown into the ceiling. Smoke and dust floated through the air, giving the place the appearance of something out of a post-apocalyptic landscape. From across the room, he could hear the sounds of fighting near the store's entrance. He cowered as sudden flashes of green light bloomed far to his right followed by the shudder of even more explosions. The place was a war zone.
Charlie had tried to sneak out the loading bay entrance, but had found it guarded by more men in red jumpsuits. They hadn't seemed too concerned about the pandemonium reigning inside, but had been quick to kick him back inside the door. "Under orders" they had said. There was no other way out, except the front or the fire escape. Both of which were only accessible through the main store.
With the sliver bolt secure in his vest pocket, Charlie scurried along the wall towards the emergency exit. Chances are it was guarded too, but Charlie would rather try his luck there then at the main entrance. Once outside, he could call the national guard or something. Then his mom. He would let her break the news to his father.
Moving as quietly as he could and as quickly as he dared, the teen ducked into on of the many aisles. Customers often became lost if they didn't pay attention to where they were going in the Bolt Bin, and many times over the years he had come across a worry-eyed patron he had to escort back to the cashiers. But he had wandered the maze-like store since he was a child and knew instinctively where he was going.
Charlie rounded a corner and was struck frozen by what he saw.
Up high on a shelf stood the green woman staring down on a dark-dressed man on the concrete floor. Dancing green flames engulfed her hands casting her sinuous body and flowing black hair in an otherworldly light. Her stance was relaxed, looking as one might look upon a bug they were about to step on. Charlie had thought she had looked stunning before… but now she looked like a goddess. A terrible, terrible goddess.
"Well?" The goddess sounded displeased. "Who was it?"
The dark man was struggling with his boots, seemingly trying to kick them off. Why, Charlie couldn't begin to fathom.
"Who was what?" The dark haired man didn't speak with the respect due to a goddess.
"The one who hired you?" She shouted. Charlie cowered as the glowing fire around her hands grew larger.
"Dammnit, woman!" The man pulled off one boot and tossed it at the shelf in front of him angrily. "No one hired me!"
"Bullshit!" She spat. "I know you were in the lair! You stole the list! You've been at every freakin' robbery I've done for the past two days! Someone has got you shadowing me! Who is it?!"
"Arrgh!" The man grabbed at his face in frustration. "Would you listen to me for one damned minute?! You… you frigging psycho!"
The goddess screamed and roaring green fire erupted from her hands.
Charlie screamed too and ducked behind the corner. He took off running down the corridor away from this hell on earth.
Kim would never admit the pleasure she took as she slashed the Syntho's throat, or at least what would have been a throat if it had been a real person. A little less then a year ago, she had her emotions toyed with by one of Drakken's Synthodrones. It had been built and programmed to pose as the perfect boy and sent into her school to distract her. And, like an idiot, she fell for the disguised robot. Its name had been Eric.
To Kim, every Synthodrone was an Eric.
She rode the melting robot to the floor. Standing over its corpse, she squared off against the remaining nine drones. Her baton had run out of juice a couple bodies ago. All she held in her hand was the scissors, dripping with synthogel. It was all she needed.
Then, her wrist beeped insistently at her.
"Ron." She tossed the scissors underhanded to the young man, standing out of the way a few feet to her left. "Hold them off for a sec. I better take this."
"Wha…?" The blonde teen juggled the scissors clumsily, trying to avoid the sharp end. He faced the drones, which had learned enough to avoid the pointed instrument. They grouped together, almost cautiously. Ron snipped the scissors at them dramatically. "Yeah! That's right! Who wants it?" Kim had to bite her tongue to keep from giggling at the cute display. What the heck was wrong with her?
She lifted her wrist Kimmunicator and answered the call.
"Go Wade."
"Kim!" The dark face was wide-eyed. "I got it! It makes sense now!"
"So not the clue, Wade." She frowned at the younger boy. "Try making it make sense to me."
"They're not working together!" He smiled at that. "This Cutter guy's been stealing from Drakken even while he's been stealing from everyone else. He hasn't been helping Shego… he's been competing with her!"
Kim's eyebrows furrowed. "How can you be sure of that?"
"Because, Drakken doesn't have the Quantum Matrix Amplifier! Cutter does! And he's selling it online to the highest bidder, whether or not it's Drakken."
Kim frowned thoughtfully. "But he and Shego were both at the National Physics Center, and at the Hench Co plant, they…" her eyes widened "…they were fighting when we got there!"
"Exactly!" Wade snapped his fingers in triumph. "Two different thieves sent after the same thing! WEE isn't working with Drakken!"
"But why?" The cheerleader scratched her head. "Why would the Empire send Cutter to compete with Shego?" Behind her, she heard Ron yelp as the Synthos pushed forward warily.
"Don't know," Wade admitted, "but it can't be good. I'm going to keep trying to dig up info on them. I think I've got a lead that I'm working on."
"K, thanks Wade. Keep us posted." She turned back towards the retreating Ron.
"Oh, and Kim?" Her wrist rose again. "Just so you know… Drakken did manage to buy the Amplifier online before I could pull the plug. He'll probably be in possession of it soon."
"Great…" she sighed. "Thanks, Wade."
The boy shrugged and the tiny screen went black, just as another explosion bloomed from further in the store. Kim instantly realized that the two thieves were fighting between themselves even then, like they had been at HenchCo and undoubtedly at the R&D facility before that. She winced as she remembered the huge amount of destruction that had resulted from those little quarrels. Her arm reached for the backpedaling Ron
"Whaa! Kim!" He screeched as he was pulled into the aisles, the Synthos slow to take up pursuit.
They had to get over there before those two brought the whole store down around them and the people still inside.
Cutter rolled away as nuts and bolts showered down upon him. Once again, it had all gone down the toilet. His favorite jacket was ruined, his expensive boot was lost, and his entire strategy had gone up in green flames. There were no more plans now. All he knew was that he had to get the hell out of here; that was the only certainty left for the silver-eyed man.
The fire roared overhead and he dived between the shelves to come smashing through the other side. From there, he took a frustrating moment to pull off his remaining biker boot with an angry grunt. He stood and threw the damned thing back over the top of the aisle, hoping that it hit the stupid woman in the head. Then he shot down the corridor on his bare feet.
He heard the sound of explosions behind him as the infuriating woman came crashing through the hallway in pursuit. He cursed loudly.
Carrying his momentum into a leap, he bounced off the shelves to his left and reached out to grab the edge of the metal structure to his right. His entire body swung perpendicular around the corner of the aisle and released into a rotating flight that sent him straight onto the wall. However, instead of careening into the surface and falling to the floor, clawed hands and feet shot out to grip onto the plaster and he veritably loped along the vertical face. He passed two more aisle entrances before jumping out from the wall to spin and hop off one shelf and then the opposite before landing in a bipedal sprint down the corridor.
As he came to an aisle intersection, he awkwardly pulled the leather jacket off his shoulders, grumbling obscenities as he did so, and tossed it sideways down one alley before dodging down another. Several more times he weaved through the maze-like hardware store, randomly selecting his directions, until he was practically lost himself. Turning a final corner, he came to a sudden halt. He cocked his head to the side. He listened.
Cutter heard a great many things but he focused on the sound of running footsteps, punctuated by the odd swear from a female voice. He could hear the distinctive thrum of glowing green plasma, rising and falling as she stormed down the corridor a couple aisles over. He held his breath.
The footsteps receded behind him. He waited a few more moments before releasing the air in a deflating sigh that dropped him to the ground. He propped himself up against the shelf and swung his head back to smack against the metal structure with a resigned "bong". He closed his eyes.
This was, without a doubt, the single most stupid thing that Cutter had ever done. He mentally kicked himself for being such an idiot. He couldn't have possibly screwed this whole situation up any more. It was turning into a repeat of last night. Why didn't he learn his lesson then?
"Stupid, stupid, stupid…" he knocked his dark head against the shelf before dropping it forward to look at his bare feet. As he did so, he flexed certain muscles to make small retractable claws push their way out from under the surface of his tip toes. Just as quickly, they disappeared back under his skin and his feet looked human again. Cutter sighed a second time.
He had been a fool, but no more. It was time for him to leave. It was time for him to retreat. Sitting there, contemplating the reality of his situation, Cutter decided it was time for him to give up.
Cutter was about to pull himself to his feet when he suddenly became aware of another presence. He froze and listened to the mumbling of another person in the aisle next to his.
"Dumb, dumb, dumb…" the words echoed Cutter's own. "Should have just said no, no we don't have any in stock. You knew she was bad news. From the beginning you knew." He turned his head and tried to peer between the over-stocked shelves. He saw the back of a greasy sandy-brown head, shaking back and forth as it spoke.
"Psst. Hey, bud." Cutter spoke. The head froze in mid-shake. "Over here, behind you. Through the shelf." The head rotated around, and a pair of wide blue-grey eyes looked back at him.
"Who are you?" The young male voice murmured nervously.
"Just some guy." Cutter answered with a smirk. "Trapped in this hell hole, just like you I imagine."
The eyes seemed to relax slightly. "Oh God…" he groaned. "It's all freakin' crazy, man. It was just a regular Saturday morning. Easy going until it all went to shit."
"You work here?"
"Phff.." The eyes rolled. "Not for much longer I figure."
Cutter snickered. "Yeah, I hear ya." He raised his eyebrow. "Where you just talking about a girl a second ago?"
The eyes seemed to suppress a shudder. "If you could call her that. I'm starting to think that she is the devil."
Cutter snorted again. "I know exactly what you're saying, my man."
"Thing is… she's, like, the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. More gorgeous then any of the girls in the magazines, you know? She's just so… I dunno. Striking I guess is the word."
Cutter laughed out loud. "I know a girl just like that. Striking is exactly the word."
The eyes seemed to smile and then narrowed in confusion. "Hey, you got weird eyes."
"Contact lenses," Cutter responded without hesitation. "Into that kinda thing, you know?"
"That's cool." He shifted position. "I wanted to get a nose ring, but my dad wouldn't let me. Says that it isn't the kind of thing a store manager would wear."
"Store manager?" Cutter raised both eyebrows. "Of this store?"
"Well… assistant manager, but yeah. My dad is the owner. Though I think this might be the end of that. I'll be lucky if I can leave my room to take a pee after he finds out it all got trashed."
Cutter smiled. This kid was pretty funny. He felt more then a little guilty about the store, since half of it had been blown up because of his presence. One more reason for him to leave and never come back.
"It's not your fault, dude. I'm sure you're dad will understand that you couldn't have stopped it. It's not like you're a superhero or something."
"A superhero?" The eyes crinkled in thought.
"Yeah, when a supervillainess attacks your hardware store, it really isn't your responsibility."
"Supervillainess?" He repeated. The eyes seemed to focus on something far away. His head turned slightly.
"Uh huh." Cutter smiled. "So don't sweat it, bud. Just stay out of the crossfire and…"
"Oh God." The eyes bulged.
"What?" Cutter frowned. "What is it?"
"It's her!" The voice practically cracked in panic. "She's here! She's going to… oh God!" The eyes disappeared.
"Kid? Kid!" Cutter called out.
They reappeared just as suddenly and locked onto his. "You need to take this and keep it away from her. She wants it. She said she'd kill me for it!" A hand shoved its way between the shelves. Cutter's head snapped back reflexively. A medium-sized silver bolt dropped onto the floor in front of him. "Go on! Take the fastener and run!"
Cutter reached down and picked up the shiny bolt in confusion. He heard a commotion through the shelf and the sound of running footsteps as the kid took off down the corridor. The dark haired man raised his silver eyes to peer through the opening where his companion had just been.
Two glowing emerald irises stared back at him between long dark eyelashes.
"You…" hissed a voice that was both smooth as silk and cold as a glacier. Shapely eyebrows furrowed deep into her face, narrowing her eyes into vicious slits.
"Aw, hell…" Cutter moaned as a blinding green light began to bleed through the gaps in the partition.
Kim and Ron raced through the maze towards where they thought Shego and Cutter were battling. Ron had to admit, he had been surprised with the revelation that the two thieves had been enemies all along. It sorta made sense, he guessed. The first time he met Cutter, the man had been on the receiving end of a very angry Shego. He and Kim had even gone as far as trying to save him from the green woman, much to Ron's embarrassment when the dark man turned on them.
The blonde teen looked up, where five Synthodrones silently kept pace on top of the shelves. He knew the other four were not far behind.
Kim probably could have dispatched all nine of them quickly. But Ron had accidentally dropped the scissors when she had grabbed and pulled him along with her. Once again, they were weaponless and it was all his fault.
At least the drones themselves had been content to only follow for the moment. But once Team Possible stopped moving, they would undoubtedly be surrounded.
Not for the first time, Ron wished he had Rufus with him. It was in these seemingly hopeless situations that the tiny rodent would really step up to save the day. Somehow, Rufus always seemed to balance out Ron's bumbling antics. But not this time. Ron was alone on this one.
He looked at the bouncing red hair in front of him. No… not alone. Never alone when Kim was there. His friend, his partner, his… lover?
Ron almost stumbled at that thought. Girlfriend. Kim was his girlfriend. They went on dates, they held hands, they kissed but they didn't… well. No, they didn't do anything. That would be weird. With his best friend since forever? Major weird.
But the teenaged boy found himself thinking about those things more and more. And after this morning, after the picnic, things felt… different. There was this strange feeling in his gut that wasn't there before. Exciting and terrifying. And every time Kim got near him, it got worse.
"Left, Ron!" The red haired cheerleader dodged into another intersection. She held her Kimmunicator in front of her, following a store map that Wade had provided with them. Ron, his train of thought derailed, lurched after her.
Smoking ruin greeted them. Parts of the corridor had holes blasted clean through them, their contents reduced to melted slag. Kim hardly paused before leaping through a man-sized hole to the next aisle over.
"Looks like we're going the right way." She said sardonically.
They ran through a series of twists and turns. Ron felt his head spinning. Kim moved with confidence, one eye on the map. He hoped they would be able to find their way out again.
Another turn and the pair nearly crashed into a running boy in a green vest. Ron yelped almost as loudly as he did.
"Help me!" The pimple-faced teen clawed at Kim. "She's a demon! A demon I tells you!"
"Let me guess." Kim practically sighed. "A green-skinned woman?"
The teen blinked at her.
"Don't worry, my man!" Ron tried to reassure the frazzled young male. "This is KimPossible! She's here to save the day, and look totally hot while doing it."
"Ron!" Kim actually blushed. "So not the time, remember?" Though she smiled bashfully while she reproved him. Ron's own cheeks heated. Why had he said that?
The sandy-haired teen looked at both of them in confusion, but seemed to calm a little at the mention of the name. "Kim Possible? Here? Oh thank God! I thought I'd never escape the…"
The Synthodrones chose that moment to drop down in front of them.
The greasy-haired boy's reaction was practically instantaneous. He screamed like a twelve-year-old girl and sprinted down the hall in the opposite direction. Kim and Ron watched him and then looked at each other with a mutual sigh. They dodged down a different route, following the trail of plasma burns.
The Synthos silently took up the chase.
Drakken hopped and skipped in between moments of actual constructive work. The Reverse Engineering Ray was coming together nicely. A little adjustment here, a little solder there. He hummed the tune to The Girl From Ipanema as welding sparks flew from the machine.
"Yes!" He stood back and tore the welding goggles from his head, leaving white raccoon-eyes on his dirty face. "It is almost ready! Now all I need is to place the final two pieces: the Quantum Matrix Amplifier and the adjustment bolt! Then all will bow before me!" He threw back his pony-tailed head and laughed into the cavernous room.
A steady pulsing tone made him cut his laughter short and he spun to look at the giant computer screen in confusion. He had left the web browser open while he counted down the minutes as the online auction closed, securing his ownership of the Amplifier. A small window was blinking incessantly in the corner.
Drakken approached the supercomputer tentatively. More times then not, he would mix up controls and commands and cause something bad to happen. And not bad in a good way. The mad scientist cursed himself for being so computer illiterate. It was embarrassing, especially for an evil genius. He hoped that this little blinking window didn't mean that he was getting more junk mail. Because that would just suck.
Drakken opened the window, and to his surprise the Synthodrone uplink filled the giant screen. He had almost forgotten about it in his work. He peered at the live status of his robotic warriors. His eyes almost instantly widened and his jaw dropped in shock.
"What?!" He shrieked. All but nine of the twenty Synthos he had sent with Shego had been destroyed. And the remaining nine were in pursuit of…
"KIM POSSIBLE!" He brought his fists crashing down on the computer console. "You ALWAYS wreck my stuff! Aaargh!" He tore at his black hair in fury. "You think you're all that, Possible! But you'll soon find that my improved Synthodrones are more!" And with that, Drakken executed a hidden command that sent a special signal to all five of the remaining drones. It was a little experimental upgrade that he had installed into this latest batch of synthogel. True, he hadn't really had a chance to test it. But what better way then against the terrible teen herself!
"Let's see you deal with my Berserker Drones, Kim Possible!" He spat at the screen as the live uplink temporarily shut down each drone in order to reboot their systems with the upgrade. Their bodies would metamorphose as the gel went through a complex chemical reaction. Soon they would become walking juggernauts with a simple, but effective, search and destroy protocol. Their lifespan would be greatly decreased and their higher cognitive functions would shut down, but for that short period they would be practically unstoppable.
As Drakken turned back to his doomsday ray, chuckling deviously at his own evil genius, he did not see the live uplink sever as the drones went offline. Nor did he realize that the Synthodrones, once operating free from the master computer, would run their simple seek-and-destroy protocol autonomously, without external command.
They would, quite literally, be running out of control.
Cutter went crashing into the shelf only to drop to the floor in a shower of lag bolts. Shego stepped through the hole she had just made, one hand leaping with power. She snarled at the dark man, who stayed seated on the floor, a painful expression on his face. She had him now.
"I'm going to ask you one last time." She reached down and gripped Cutter by his grey shirt, pulling him forward so that they were face to face. She held her one glowing hand above her. "And then I am going to turn you into Cajun cuisine. Why were you hired to follow me?"
Cutter raised his silver eyes and met her own. The look he gave her made her blink. It wasn't angry or arrogant or even scared. It was… defeated. He looked like a man who had just lost a fortune in a bad hand of poker.
"I give up, sweetpea." He said deadpan. "I'm done." He held his hands out to his sides. "You've beat me. Whoop-dee-doo. I don't want to do this anymore. You win. I lose."
Shego worked her jaw for a moment. She hardly registered the annoying pet name. What was his game? She pulled at his shirt again, and snarled even more menacingly. "Answer my question: Why were you hired…"
"I told you." Cutter sighed and slumped even lower. "I wasn't hired by anyone."
"Then why?" Shego hissed. "Why did you follow me? Why did you steal my marks one minute and then help me the next? Why?" She reached down and heatedly pulled a small object out of her ankle pouch. She raised it in front of his face and practically spat. "Why did you take this?"
Something sparked in Cutter's eyes as he looked at the object in her hand. Smooth and round, like a polished metal stone. It shined and reflected the light, almost like his strange irises. He looked back to her, a mixture of surprise and confusion.
"You… kept it?" He spoke softly.
Shego was suddenly confused. The way he looked at her. It made her feel strange. He almost looked… hopeful? She felt her grip on his shirt soften. What was this bouncing idiot thinking? She opened her mouth, not knowing exactly what she was going to say.
"Show's over Shego!" A familiar voice shattered the moment. She turned to see the princess squaring off, her idiot boyfriend right behind her. He was watching the seated Cutter with disdain. "Drakken's plan is done with. Whatever it is."
The green woman groaned. She had practically forgotten her mission. That Charlie kid had been looking for the silver bolt and instead of chasing him down she had been too busy pounding on this meathead. Yeah, real professional. Now she had to deal with Kimmie before getting things back on track. What a freaking mess.
"I don't even know where to begin, Pumpkin." She responded honestly. "Do I take the time to kick your ass or do I go find that stupid bolt for Drakken. Decisions, decisions."
"Bolt?" Kim narrowed her eyes. Shego groaned again. Of course the teen didn't know about it. And now she had gone and told her. She was really off her game at the moment.
"Oh…" Cutter suddenly piped up. All heads swerved to look at him, still gripped in Shego's fist. "You mean, like, this bolt?" He lifted a hand that held a large silver machine bolt. Shego stared at it with her mouth open. "That kid said you wanted it. I wasn't sure if he was just a little nuts. He was talking about…"
"You…" Shego hissed, her face slowly twisting into a mask of fury. "You lying piece of… you were here to steal my mark all along!"
"What?" Cutter's eyes widened. "No no no! The kid! He gave it to…"
"A bolt?" Kim shook her head in amazement. "You mean to tell me that Drakken sent the mini army to steal one stupid bolt?"
"Well," Ron shrugged, "it is a nut and bolt store. I guess if he needed one, this is where he'd find it."
"I can't believe I fell for your idiot act!" Shego screamed at the man in front of her. "You've been playing me since the beginning!"
"No!" Cutter exclaimed. "That's not what I…"
"I'm going to tear those silver eyes right out of their sockets!" She raised her fist into the air, the metal lump still gripped in her gloved fingers.
"Wait!" Cutter offered her the fastener in his hand. "Take it! I don't care about it! Just take the damn…"
"I don't think so." Kim raised her fists. "We'll be taking the bolt, thank you."
"You stay out of this, princess!" Shego snarled. "This is between me and the idiot!"
"Alright, guys. Time out." Ron raised his open hands in a T. "Why don't we all settle this like mature, responsible…"
It was right about then that the aisle exploded from all sides.
Ron dived down to the floor with Kim as thousands of nuts, bolts and washers of different sizes peppered the air. Pieces of shelving unit spun over them, hitting the floor with a clang. He reached out for the woman next to him, his only thought being to protect her as the impacts of tiny pieces of machined metal rained down everywhere. It sounded like he was inside a metal box during a hail storm.
And, just as suddenly, it all stopped. Ron lifted his head. He saw Kim rising to a crouch, always prepared for the worst. He breathed a little easier when he saw that she looked unhurt. The next place he looked was over where Shego and Cutter had been. They too were prone on the floor and quickly rising. Cutter stayed on four limbs and looked ready to pounce, his head quickly turning about. Shego's own movements seemed to mirror Kim's. Seeing that the other three were looking out, he followed their stares.
On all sides, standing silently as if they had always been there, were the nine Synthodrones. Giant gaping holes had been torn through the towering shelves as if they had been toilet paper.
But, something was different. The drones didn't look the same as when he and Kim had left them behind in the maze of corridors. They looked… bigger. As if something inside them had swelled and mutated, bulging outwards all around their synthetic bodies. Their stances were no longer the straight-backed soldier at attention. Now they looked hunched and hulking. Their glowing white orbs had receded into their metamorphosed heads, becoming narrow pinpricks of bright light. Ron felt their malevolent gaze like a change in air pressure.
"What the hell?" Shego growled. "What has that blue moron done now?"
"Shego…" Kim sounded only the slightest bit concerned. "What's wrong with the Synthos?"
"This is new to me, pumpkin." The green woman faced the nearest drone. "Synthodrone! Stand down!"
In response, all nine robots took a threatening step forward.
"Hey!" Shego yelped. "Uh… stand down, please?"
Another step forward.
"Great." Cutter growled, still crouched on all fours. "Rampaging robots. Where have we seen this before, sweatpea?"
"Phff." Shego rolled her eyes. "Same crap, different pile. I know how to deal with these gel-bags." And with that, she leapt forward to take a vicious swipe at the drone in front of her. Her clawed hands slashing deep gouges in the synthoskin. "See… they just deflate like…" She froze in confusion.
No synthogel leaked out of the cuts. Instead, Ron could see how the greenish liquid had solidified into a jello-like consistency. The drone didn't even flinch.
Another step forward.
"You were saying, Shego?" Kim backed away from the closing robots. Ron followed her lead.
"Uh, KP." Ron finally managed. "Maybe we should call Wade."
Another step forward.
Oh my! What will our brave heros (and non-heros) do to get out of THIS sitch? Hell if I know! I know I said this would be the final chapter of the first arc, but I lied like a… liar, of some sort. One more after this, methinks. Stay tuned.