"I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today"
Bad Moon Rising, a Kim Possible fanfic by Zombie Boy.
Chapter Two.
Owen Zastava Pitt shifted his grip on Abomination, his heavily (and illegally) modified Saiga 12 gauge, and looked around at his surroundings. He, earl Harbinger, Julie Shackleford, and Holly Newcastle were were sniffing around the former site for a mad scientists lab, now currently a smoldering ruin.
Normally, Monster Hunters International didn't bother with mad scientist- usually, they blew themselves up before they got around to causing the kind of trouble that required their services- but every now and then, one went and did something that got their attention, such as this case.
Normally, when they got involved with your typical mad scientist, it was because he was trying to create an army of undead or doing a Frankenstein. In this case, it was because it was because said mad scientist, a Doctor Drakken, had managed to get some samples of a werewolf.
Definitely A Bad Thing.
So, here they were in the panhandle of Idaho investigating the ruins of Drakkens lair, trying to determine if he had perished in the explosion or not. From what Owen had heard at the briefing, he didn't hold out much hope for that. Drakken had an amazing ability to survive explosions that by all rights should have vaporized him.
Owen watched as Harbinger melted out of the underbrush like a ghost. "You find anything?" he asked MHI's Director of Operations.
Harbinger nodded once and lit up a cigarette. "Yeah." he said. "Two people infiltrated this place. Juveniles, by look of it. One male, one female."
"Did they exfiltrate?" Owen asked as Harbinger took a drag off of his cigarette.
Harbinger shook his head. "Nope. The only tracks I found going out are a werewolf's." he said.
Owen stiffened at the mention of a werewolf. His first encounter with the paranormal had been when his pudgy and tyrannical boss had turned into one and tried to kill him. After emptying his gun into his boss, Owen had stabbed, bashed, hosed him down with a fire extinguisher, and finally ended the fight by pushing his boss out his office window onto a double parked Navigator, followed by his desk.
"Did you figure out where he went?" Owen asked, hoping it wasn't far, so they could deal with said lycanthrope in the daylight rather than at night.
Harbinger grimaced and exhaled a blue cloud of smoke. "The trail ends in a clearing." he said. "From the looks of things, I think there was a helicopter there."
"Shit- wait, what?" Owen started to swear, but the last bit information that Harbinger caught him by surprise. "Are you saying that a transformed werewolf got into a helicopter and flew away?" he asked.
Harbinger nodded again. "You got it one, Pitt." he said, then turned his attention to the ruins. "JULIE!" he yelled. "You find anything?"
"Just a lot of wrecked equipment and burnt rock." Julie answered as she climbed out of the rubble. "Did Owen just suggest that a werewolf got into a helicopter and flew off, or am I hearing things?" she asked.
"I'm afraid so." Harbinger replied with a sigh. "It looks like our good Doctor survived the lab explosion and got away."
"Well, great." was Julie's response. "Now we got to figure out where he could have gotten to before the next full moon."
"If he's got a chopper, he could be anywhere by now." Owen pointed out.
"So we're back to square one." Harbinger replied and took one last drag on his cigarette before dropping the butt on the ground and grinding it out under his heel. "Julie, climb on outta there. I'm calling Skippy for pickup."
"Got it." Julie answered.
As Harbinger got on the radio and called for their helicopter, Owen headed over to the edge of the ruins to help his fiancée climb out of them.
"Thanks, Owen." Julie said as he pulled her up with very little effort.
"You're welcome." Owen replied as he dusted the soot and ash off of her back. "What do you think happened to the two juveniles?" he asked, referring to the tracks that Harbinger had found.
Julie shrugged as she dusted the front of her off. "Dunno. Either the doc got them, or they were caught in the explosion."
Owen nodded and said no more as they headed back to where Harbinger was. There was very little that they could do for the victims of monster attacks as statistically, they were usually very few and far between. About the only thing they could do was kill the monsters themselves and keep them from claiming more innocent people as victims.
What was more pressing however, was the fact that there was now a werewolf out there that could operate machinery, something that even Harbinger, the longest lived and most self controlled werewolf in history, couldn't do.
And that was most troubling indeed.
Several time zones to the east, however, something completely different was taking place.
"NO!" Shego shouted as she sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat and shaking like a leaf. Panting heavily, she wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked down when she felt something tugging at her skin. "Merde." she swore when she saw the bandages covering the upper right quadrant of her bare chest.
Tentatively, she poked at the lump of bandages and was surprised to discover that it didn't hurt. She felt fine, with no wooziness or numbness from painkillers, so she knew that wasn't the reason why her shoulder didn't hurt.
Gritting her teeth, she pricked at the tape holding the bandages with her fingernail, working a corner loose until she was able to peel away the mass of gauze and was shocked this time to see the skin underneath perfectly healed, as if nothing had happened.
"Well, shit." she swore again, this time in English when she realized that it all wasn't a dream. Ripping the rest of the bandage off, Shego ran a hand through her hair as she considered what to do next.
Glancing over at the clock at her bedside she saw that was a quarter past ten in the morning local time, and decided that the last thing that she wanted to do was stay in bed, so she threw the covers back and swung her legs out of bed.
Standing up, she stretched and noted that for other than a bit of stiffness, her shoulder seemed fine. Rotating her arm a few times to try and work the stiffness out, Shego padded out of her room and headed for the kitchen in search of breakfast, caring not a whit that she was currently clad only in a pair of boyshorts.
Passing by one of the spare bedrooms, she heard a muffled shriek followed by a thump. Igniting her plasma she threw the door open and charged in to find Ron Stoppable lying on the floor in a tangle of bed covers.
"Sidekick?" she asked as she remembered that she had drug Ron along with her because they were both infected.
"Gah- Shego?" Ron yelped as he gaped at her in surprise before looking away, blushing madly.
"What?" Shego asked, glancing down at herself. "You never see a pair of tits before?"
"No-I mean yes, no wait-" Ron started to stammer. "Not like this." Shego merely arched an eyebrow at him.
"You've never looked at pron? You, a teenaged male with access to the internet?" she asked as Ron blushed deep red. "Okay, you have." she said, reading his body language. "You just haven't seen any bare ones in person, have you?"
"No." Ron said in a small voice.
Shego smirked as she looked down at Ron. She was enjoying his discomfort. "Well, I guess today is your lucky day then, isn't it?" she asked.
"Could we please talk about something else?" Ron pleaded, keeping his eyes on the floor.
Shego considered telling him no, but decided to take pity on him and humor him. "Okay." she said. "I was passing by and I heard you yell, and thought I'd make sure you were okay." she explained. "So, are you okay?"
Wordlessly, Ron nodded.
"Well, that's good." Shego said. "By the way, how's the arm?" she asked, pointing to his bandaged limb.
Ron glanced at his arm for a moment. "It's okay, I guess." he said, the emotion draining out of his voice as he was reminded of the events of the night before. "It doesn't seem to be hurting anymore. Why do you ask?"
Shego noted the change in his voice and filed it away for later, her training in child development kicking in. "I'm asking because my wounds are perfectly healed." she said, tapping her upper chest for emphasis.
Ron looked up again, saw her bare chest, blushed and looked away again. "I'll...I'll take your word on it." he said.
Shego rolled her eyes in irritation. "You can look at your own arm, you know." she pointed out. "You don't have to look at my chest."
"Oh, yeah. That's right." Ron said, his blush deepening. Pulling the bandages away, he was surprised to see that the bite wound on his forearm was completely healed. "Huh?" he asked. "How?"
Shego shrugged. "Unless you have some mystical healing ability that I don't know about, I'd say it's that werewolf curse that Drakken infected us with." she said.
"Well, I do have a Mystical Monkey Power, and my sensei told me it could be used to heal, but I don't think it do anything like this...." Ron said as he examined his healed forearm.
"Oh." Shego said. "That's nice to know. Anyways, I think we should start looking for a cure, because if we don't, once a month, things are gonna suck. ."
Shego grimaced at the inadvertent double entendre as soon as the last part of her statement left her lips and Ron blushed even deeper, if such a thing was possible.
The hum of the computers mingled with the whir of the colling fans along with the other lab noises into a glorious symphony of noise.
Sighing happily, Drakken leaned back in his chair with a grin and put his hands behind his head. Life, right not, was being good for him. His nemesis was dead his hand and her head was in a stasis unit, her memories perfectly preserved, ready to be bent to his will.
He had a new lab, perfectly hidden beneath seemingly abandoned Kansas farmland and he was the only one who knew where it was.
"Yes, life is good." Drakken said to himself and leaned forward in his chair as a window popped up on his monitor. "Ah, good, good." he said, reading what it told him.
The data on the screen confirmed what he already knew, that Kims head was viable and her memories were intact. Clicking his mouse, he entered a few commands into the system and it began to extract Possibles memories, to be imprinted onto clones later- along with a few 'improvements'- like obeying his commands without question.
"Unlike Shego.." he mused, then chuckled mirthlessly. "Of course, that's what made her so valuable to me, really. Yes men and mindless minions are only good for cannon fodder. Not that I could have told her that- she would have been insufferable...."
Commands finished, he leaned back in his chair again and pondered Possibles head, and what to do with it.
"Can't just incinerate it..... that'd be... anticlimactic." Drakken mused. "There's gotta be a better way-" he stopped mid-sentence as an idea struck him. "Yesss... that would do perfectly." he said, a look of insane glee in his eyes as he called up his address book.
Shego had managed to coax Ron into the kitchen, on the condition that she got dressed. There, they found that Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum had brewed a pot of coffee for them.
"Is this normal for Synthodrone?" Ron asked as Shego passed him a steaming mug.
"For Synthodrones?" Shego asked as she sat down with her own mug. "No. In those two's case-" she pointed over to the Synthodrones in question, who were doing the Robot in an unoccupied corner of the kitchen "-Yes. They can do general maintance and repair work, along with other stuff."
"No, I meant doing the Robot." Ron clarified.
"Oh." Shego said, and took a sip of her coffee. "No, that's not normal. Normally they do the Funky Chicken. Anyways, you hungry?"
Ron shook his head. "No." he answered. "I kinda lost my appetite since I saw what happened to KP..."
Shego watched as the blond teen trailed off and visibly shuddered as he repressed the memory. "It'll help." she offered.
Ron looked up at her with a questioning look. "Since when are you kind and caring?" he asked. "Normally, you're a psycho bitch-" he stopped as soon as the words left his mouth, shocked at what he had just said and to who.
Shego, for her part, merely arched an eyebrow. "Not the first time I've been called that, but it's been a while in any case." she said. "But to answer your question, yes, normally I am a 'psycho bitch', as you so put it, but I can be a decent human being when I want to be."
"So why me?" Ron asked. "I'ms KP's partner. I thought you hated me as much as you hated Kim."
Shego snorted at Rons statement. "Actually, I couldn't care less about you. You were just doing what you were supposed to, covering your friend." she explained. "It's the Princess I hated."
"Why?" Ron asked. "Besides the obvious fact that she kept beating you."
Shego debated with herself for a few moments on whether or not to tell the sidekick the truth, and in the end decided to go with her gut feelings, which in this case told her that he was trustworthy.
"Well, there's that." she said. "Who wouldn't get pissed off over that? But the real reason, the real reason Stoppable, is that she was the embodiment of all the people who made my life a living hell and ruined it for me."
Ron blinked a couple of times as he digested that truth that she had just laid upon him. "Huh?" he asked in his usual ineloquent way.
Shego laced her fingers together and leaned forward to look at Ron. "Sidekick, before I explain things to you, I want a couple of promises from you."
"Okay..." Ron said, slightly discombobulated by the course that the conversation was taking. "Name them."
Shego held up an index finger. "One, that you tell no one about this, ever. Got it?" she said. "This information stays between us."
Ron nodded jerkily. "O-okay..." he said. "And the second?" he asked.
"That when I'm done, you tell me why the hell an uptight megalomaniac little goody two shoes like her chose to hang around you, and what the hell you saw in her." Shego answered. "There was something going on there, even if it was one sided."
Ron looked stung from her words, but nodded his consent anyways. "O-kay." he said. "I'll tell you, if you'll keep it to yourself too."
"Only fair." Shego said. "So, me and the Princess. Like I said, she was the embodiment of everything I hated growing up. She's popular, pretty, a cheerleader, da da da- da." she continued. "The very people who made my life a living hell when I was in school, and ensured that I made no friends, and tried to drive away the ones that I did have before I got this-" she lit a fist for emphasis. "She also reminds me of my two older brothers. I believe you've met them?"
Ron nodded. "Yeah, Hego and Mego." he said.
Shego nodded. "That's them." she said. "Tell me, what's you're honest, unbiased opinion of them? Just between you and me."
Ron swallowed and thought over his encounter with the two elder members of Team Go. "Well, Hego is a pompous idiot and Mego is a self absorbed jackass." he said. "Your two younger brothers seemed okay though."
"The Wegos are pretty good." Shego admitted. "I really never had any problems with them though. The other two, though, I definitely had a problem with them. You think that they were bad with just having casual contact with them?" she asked, getting a nod from Ron. "Well, it was worse being their sister.
The superhero thing was all Hego's idea, his way of proving how heroic and manly he was, and his way of hiding from the fact that he's gay."
Ron choked on his coffee when Shego said that. "You mean he really is gay?" he sputtered.
"What was your first clue?" Shego asked in a deadpan tone.
"Ah, when KP and I first met him he was singing a Brittney Spears song." Ron answered.
Shego actually laughed at that revelation. "Trust me, that's the tip of the iceberg. If you saw him in his civvie clothes, you'd know." she said. "No heterosexual male would ever wear as fabulous of shoes as he does."
"Oh." Ron said. "So you don't like-" he asked.
Shego shook her head. "Oh, it's nothing like that. I don't care that he's gay. I have a friend of mine who's as gay as Paris in the spring." she said. "It's just that his hiding in the closet is the primary reason for his screwing up my life."
"You didn't want to be a superhero?" Ron asked.
Shego shook her head again. "Oh, hell no." she said. "Me, I wanted to be gymnast or a dancer."
"So that's why you're so acrobatic." Ron said.
"You got it." Shego said. "Anyways, like I said, Hego wanted to be a superhero to prove that he wasn't gay, and Mego, well, he went along with it just because he's a narcissist at heart and this was a great way for him to massage his ego. You know, the old save the city, get all the glory and the girls, etc."
"So how did you get roped into it?" Ron asked.
Shego sighed and looked into her coffee cup for a moment before she answered. "They bullied me into it, unbelievable as it sounds." she admitted. "And to answer the question that I know is coming, I was fourteen when this all happened.
They were my older brothers, and they still had a lot of influence over me at that time. So it was pretty easy for them to push me into it. I really didn't develop a spine until years later- that's when my Papa's influence made itself known."
"You're Hispanic?" Ron ventured, noting the accent she had put on her reference to her father.
Shego shook her head. "Contrary to every rumor monger on the planet, my parents are not Mexicans. My Papa is a Basque. My Mama is French, specifically half French, half Vietnamese."
"Interesting genealogy." Ron commented.
"You have no idea." Shego quipped. "We spoke French around the house, Mama yelled at us in Vietnamese when we did something wrong, and Papa grumbled in Spanish. I speak all three fluently."
"Oy vey." Ron said, and rubbed his eyes. "So, to get back to the subject at hand, you hated Kim because she reminded you of the kids who tormented you in school and your two older brothers, who dragged you into something that you wanted no part of, is that right?"
"Uh-huh." Shego said. "And now it's your turn." she said, turning the tables on Ron. "What was with you and the cheerleader?"
Ron gulped.
Back at the headquarters of Team Haven, one of Monster Hunter International's Western Hunter teams, Julie Shackleford pulled her glasses off and rubbed her eyes in frustration. She'd been scouring the net in search of information about 'Doctor' Drakken, and most of what she'd been able to find was just rumor and hyperbole, but she'd managed to ferret out some concrete facts.
One was that he was perpetually trying to take over the world. A second was that he was continually thwarted in his endeavors by one Kim Possible and her sidekick, who for some reason went by a surprising variety of names.
Personally, Julie was of the opinion that the various names put out for her sidekick were the wrong ones, but there were no corrections that she had been able to find, so odds are they were all wrong.
Remembering the tracks that Harbinger had mentioned finding, she'd looked up Ms Possible's website and had sent an email stating that she had been at the site and asked if they'd gotten out, including photos of the site as proof that she wasn't just some spammer or troublemaker.
The sudden ringing of her cell phone jerked Julie away from her thoughts, and she picked it up without thinking to look at the display.
"Julie here." she said as she put her glasses back on.
"Miss Shackleford?" a young male voice that she didn't recognize asked on the other end of the phone.
"Who is this?" Julie asked, suddenly alert.
"This is Wade Load- I run Kim Possible's website." the young male voice answered. "You sent that e-mail?" he asked.
"Yeah." Julie said, her brain kicking into gear. "Is she okay?" she asked.
"That's why I'm calling you." Wade said. "I haven't heard from her ever since she went out after Drakken. I was hoping that you might have something."
"No, I don't." Julie said as she brought up the photos from the investigation. "All we found were the tracks of her and her partner going in, none going out."
"Oh." Wade said in a small voice at the unsaid implications of Julie's statement. "Well, Global Justice hasn't found anything yet, and I was hoping you guys at Monster Hunter International could-"
"How do you know that name?" Julie asked. "I never said who I worked for when I emailed you."
"I hacked your laptop." Wade answered. "I am a master hacker, Miss Shackleford."
"You hacked my-" Julie began in an outraged tone, but got hold of herself before she lost it. "Look, you'd better not tell anyone about what you found on my laptop, otherwise the government is gonna kill you."
"I know." answered Wade. "I have it from a very reliable source that's SOP for the Monster Control Bureau. Trust me, I'm not gonna tell anyone about this. I was just hoping that you might have found something that showed that Kim and Ron were alive, that's all."
"Well, I haven't." Julie said. "Sorry about that."
"Don't mention it." Wade said, sounding very, very tired. "Call me if you do find anything."
"I will." Julie said before breaking the connection.
"You want to know why Kim and I are-" Ron's voice cracked and he took a moment to calm himself and beat back the torments that threatened to break loose and rage o=behind those blue eyes of his "-I mean, were, friends." he asked.
"Ah, yeah?" Shego said somewhat flippantly.
Ron nodded. "Okay, well, to begin, we became friends all the way back in kindergarten, when she saved me from some bullies."
Shego arched a brow slightly in surprise. "That's a surprisingly... enlightened attitude you've got there, sidekick." she commented.
Ron merely shrugged. "I've always tried to never be normal." he said. "Anyways, like I said, she saved me from some bullies, and we became fast friends. I've always stuck by her, and she did the same." he added, glancing down at his coffee mug.
Shego took a sip of her coffee as Ron gazed into the murky depths of his coffee. "You ever try to ask her out?" she asked. Ron jumped and looked up at her with a slightly panicked expression on his face. "I'll take that as a yes." she said. "And that she shot you down."
Ron slouched into his chair and took a drink from his mug. "She shoved me into a janitors closet." he said in a slightly hurt tone.
Shego grimaced. "Ouch. That's cold, even by my standards." she said, actual sympathy in her voice. "So how long were you in there?" she asked.
"All weekend." Ron answered. Shego's eyes bulged in shock.
"All weekend- what the hell was her problem?" asked Shego.
"The usual. Date, drama, Drakken I think." Ron answered.
"And you stayed friends with her why exactly?" Shego asked.
Ron shrugged. "She's been my best friend forever." he said. "That, and I've just as bad when I wrote a few articles in the school newspaper about her."
"Okay, that makes sense, in an odd adolescent sort of way." Shego said. "So, who did she go after? The top jock?"
Ron snorted in disgust. "Her and Brick? Hardly." he said. "No, she went after Josh Mankey."
"What was he like?" Shego asked, wrapping her hands around her mug.
"He's a pretty boy, sensitive, artiste type." Ron answered with a scowl. "I hate his guts."
Shego blinked. She'd seen actual hate in the boy's eyes where she'd never seen anything approaching that before, even when she was trying to kill him.
"So I've noticed." she said. "I take it you think he was wrong for her?" she asked.
Ron gave her a deadpan look. "Shego, I've face down whole a lair full of henchmen and managed to stop Drakken's machinery in his bid to take over the world while she battles you, and she'd rather go out with a prissy little pretty boy who sits in his studio and paints abstract paintings because he cant handle representational artwork?" he said, a snarl coming into his voice and Shego could have sworn she saw his eyes light up briefly with blue fire "What do you think? As a matter of fact I think Monkey Boy would probably pass out from shock if if all you did was mess up his hair."
Shego snorted in amusement at Ron's opinion. "Well, that answered my question." she said. "So even after all that crap, you still put up with her?" she asked. "Damn, that's devotion."
"Hey, she rescued me from Adrena Lynn even after I wrote all of those articles." Ron defended. "I'd say she earned my loyalty."
"I'd say so."Shego had to admit. "And one other thing, you mention Adrena Lynn. You were the one who wrote up that article and shot that video that proved she rigged her stunts?"
"Yeah." Ron said. "Why?"
Shego smirked. "Your exposing that loudmouthed fraud was some of the most entertaining reading I've had in a while." she explained.
"Oh." Ron said. "Thanks, I guess."
"You're welcome." Shego said and took a sip of her coffee.
Sighing, Ron looked at his coffee. "So, you happy now?" he asked.
"Not quite." Shego answered. "I gotta ask: How the hell did someone like you stand her goody two shoes act? Nobody's that squeaky clean."
"I didn't mind, really." Ron said, wiping away the tears that threatened to fall. "It's what made KP what she was."
"Hm." Shego said. "I think the filters in the AC are going bad. I'm gonna have to have Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum look at them." she added, giving Ron an out to explain away his tears.
"Yeah." Ron said. "Must be. Is there anyplace I can go outside and clear my head?" he asked. "All this talk of KP really got me worked up."
"Yeah." Shego said and pointed at the Synthodrones, now doing the Hokey Pokey. "This place has an outdoor pool." she explained. "These two will show you the way."
"Thanks." Ron said and got up from his seat.
"Before you go, you want anything?" Shego asked.
Ron stopped to consider her question for a minute before he answered. "I'm not really that hungry, but maybe some cereal?" he asked.
"I'll see what I can find." Shego said as he left, following the two Synthodrones.
In his office at the Middleton Space Center, Dr James Possible sat at his desk staring at his computer screen for several long moments. On screen, the cursor sat at the top of a blank page, taunting him with it's steady blinking.
Conceding defeat, James removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes as he leaned back in his chair. His Kimmie Cub was missing, and his work was not providing the distraction he'd hoped to find to keep his mind off her absence.
The director had told him that he could take some time off if he wanted, but James had just said that he wasn't worried, that his little Kimmiecub would show up unharmed but his work was proving to be woefully inadequate for keeping those dark thoughts swirling at the back of his mind at bay.
"Crap." James muttered to himself. "I should have stayed at home.... no, it's be worse there. More things to remind me."
Drumming his fingers on the desktop for a bit, James wondered what he could do, and his gaze slowly drifted down to the bottom drawer of his desk, where he kept his vices, a small humidor and a fifth of Scotch.
There was nothing more that James loved in the world (with the exception of his family) than a good cigar and a glass of single malt on the rocks. Unfortunately, with Anne being a physician she'd raise holy hell if he even thought about having them in her presence, so he had to keep them in his office and enjoy them sparingly- his wife having the nose of a bloodhound.
All things considered, with his daughter missing for going on two days now, James figured that a man in his position was due for a drink and a smoke, and slid open the drawer. Grabbing the necessary materials, he then stole out of his office and down the hall to where the nearby smoking area.
Forty five minutes, one Honduran cigar with a Scotch chaser, James was feeling much better and headed back to his office. When he got there he was surprised to find that the mail room had deposited a large Fedex box on his desk.
"Huh, I don't remember ordering anything..." James said, giving the box a once over. "Especially not from Drew Lipsky of all people." he added, looking at the return address.
Putting his glass on the desk, James dug a box cutter from a center drawer and slit the packing tape sealing the box and opened it. On top was an envelope, addressed to him. Slitting it open with his box cutters, James took out the sheet of paper within.
Dear James, it read.
It's been a while since we last talked. As a matter of fact, we were both studying for our Doctorates the last time we talked. Anyways, the other day I was thinking about how we parted all those years ago, and how that lab accident set me on the path I've taken, and I realized that I never did thank you for your part in that.
Thanks to you, I was kicked out of school, ruining years of extremely hard work going to college and working full time, dashing my hopes of ever attaining the American Dream. But I'm glad to see that you did okay, James.
And I realize that my above paragraph should have elaborated more, so here goes: I never really told you where I came from James. I was born in New Jersey, part of a very small community of Polish immigrants in the midst of a whole community of Italian Americans.
My father and his brother were the two surviving members of their family, everyone else having died from first the Nazi and then the Russian occupation of Poland. They arrived here in America with just the clothes on their backs and a determination to start a family and give them a good life.
So, after a lot of hard work, they opened a junkyard, and spent the next twenty five years fighting off the Mafia and making their business grow.
My father worked long and hard to get the money for me to go to college, James, and when the lab accident occurred thanks to the fact that you forgot to carry a freaking one, and thus got me kicked out of college, it destroyed him. He died of a heart attack six months after I left school.
I hope that clears things up for you.
As I was saying, I was thinking of you, and I thought I'd send you a thank you gift. Enjoy.
Drew Lipsky.
James blinked a couple of times as he thought back to his old college buddy Drew.
"That's funny, he never mentioned an error in my math." James said aloud, and put the letter aside.
Reaching into the box, he felt around in the packing peanuts until he found a large, round, heavy object. Getting a grip on it, he pulled it out in a cascade of packing peanuts and saw that it was a cylinder of some kind, made out of a clear composite with metal caps on either end.
There was a layer of packing peanuts stuck to it with static cling, but from what he could see that it was filled with liquid. Brushing them off, he shifted the container to let the light in so he could get a better look at the contents.
And when he looked inside, the world as he knew it shattered into a billion glittering fragments, for within the container, suspended in the liquid, was his daughters severed head, her face frozen in an expression of horror and fear.
End.