Revelations:

All characters teh property of their respective creators. Protectors are copyrighted by Larry Niven.

Now.

I don't have a choice. Kim thought. She'd put some measures in place, but she didn't have a choice. She was fast, strong, probably (at least for now) the smartest being on the planet...but she couldn't be more than one place at once. She needed help.

Drakken, I'd kill you but I have a bad feeling I won't have too.

Finally she accessed the Kimmunicator. Oh not the physical unit, that had long since been distributed among her gadgetry, but the com routines were copied over to her own computer, since they were...effective.

In a crude way, mind you, but effective.

"Wade."

"Kim...KIM!" the young genius's voice echoed in her ears. "Why can't I see you, were are you, you've been missing for two weeks, what's going on-"

"Meet me at my parents house. Do not call them. Go there personally and tell them. No further communication and make certain Global Justice isn't there- if they're within a mile of the house I'm not showing up. If they aren't, I'll be there by 8 tonight."

Kim shut off the comlink without bothering to say good bye.

Sorry Wade, but you're just wasting your time if you're trying to track this. She'd routed the signal through a hundred subsidiary links, after all.

"You certain it was here?" Slim asked.

"It sounded like her." Wade said, "A bit of a lisp, but it was here."

"Why wouldn't she want us ta call GJ?" Joss asked, the 12 year old sitting between Jim and Tim. "I mean, they're the good guys, right?"

Outside, Monique and Tara were lurking. The two girls had made the decision to come over, but the house was sealed up tight- windows with the drapes pulled, outside lights off...it turned on Moniques SIRWH sense (Something is Really Weird Here.).

"Maybe we should just knock?" Tara asked.

"I don't know-what if they're being held hostage." Monique said, "I think we should call the cops."

"But-"

"Girlfriend, this isn't like the Possible's." Monique pulled out her cel and blinked .

"No service?"

"Nope." The voice behind them caused the two to start spin around, but before the motion was half completed, two arms, each one stronger than a bears, held the two girls, lightly scented pads over their mouths and noses. Moments later, Kim stared down at the two. Sighing, she picked them both up and after scanning the street with her eyes (and a variety of equipment that spy agencies would have cheerfully sold their mothers for.), quickly moved to the door.

A knock on the door led to the door being cracked open. Kim looked in and saw her father at it...and several people behind him. The sensors in her harness also detected a truly impressive amount of weaponry pointed at her.

"I'm your daughter, dad."

"Who are you..."

"Monique and Tara decided to spy a little." Kim said as her father opened the door and let her in.

"Hold it, James." Nana said quietly, "I don't recall full body cloaks and hoods being among Kimberly's fashion choices."

Kim paused and smiled, "And does your rest home know about that hand cannon?" Nana blinked at her grand daughters amused voice. "I always wondered why you carried a big purse like that... and dad, you might want to take lessons from your mother- if shooting did break out, she's the only one in a position where you all won't be getting in her way...like you would be getting in each others way." She easily put the unconscious teens on the ground, "They'll be awake in about 10 minutes."

"KP...why are you wearing that?" Ron asked.

Tension's high, but given how many times I've been cloned, I can understand why. Kim thought. She sighed, "I... Drakken changed me. I'm not that pleasant to look at, but I'm not crippled and I'm not crazy and we really don't have time for hysterics. I'm going to drop my hood and cloak now, but please don't freak. I'm not kidding, we really don't have time for hysterics."

To their credit, they didn't. Joss gave a horrified gasp, Dad paled and Kim saw tears start to fill his eyes as he whispered "Kimmie-cub." Slim swayed, his hands whitening on that big ugly .44 he carried when out ranching... Ron seemed to have gone blank. Surprisingly, Kim noted, her mother and Nana seemed to be the least severely affected.

Don't think like a human. She chided herself, Mom's a surgeon and Nana's fought in about 5 wars, not counting 'incidents'. They've both seen worse.

"What...what did Drew do to you?" James asked.

"A little knowledge, dad." Kim said, "Let's go into the dining room, this body takes a lot of stoking, and I'm starved."

"KP...where's your hair, where's your..." Ron turned red and averted his eyes. "where're your clothes, you're just wearing a..."

"Harness. Secondary and primary sex characteristics went away as a part of the metamorphosis." Kim paused, "I'm about as sexual as an eggplant now, Ron. Not just physically, but mentally. Sorry...Looks like we're never going to get to 3rd base."

"Third base? Third base?" James rounded on Ron. "You mean you and Kimmie-Cub..."

"Eep!" Ron dodged around the couch where Monique and Tara were slumbering, as Ann looked annoyed at her husband's antics.

Divert some of the stress. Check. Kim thought, then noticed Nana looking at her with an understanding glint in her eye. And remember that no human is as smart as you, but that doesn't mean they can be clever and very sneaky...and possess a lot more experience than you have.

"Cuz..." Joss said, "What happened?"

"It was mad science, wasn't it?" Jim said, "Why are your joints so big?"

"Leverage." Kim responded, quickly finishing off the roast she'd appropriated.

"Kimmie..." Her mother quietly said, "I think we need to take you to the hospital- that actually looks like arthritis."

"No." Kim responded. "No time and you have it the wrong way- Arthritis is actually an example of an incomplete Protector Change." She tossed a plate onto the table. "The information is there, but we don't have time for me to tell you how to access it, but here it is-I-"

"Omigod...Kim?" Tara and Monique had woken up.

Good. Kim thought, She knew how she could make use of them, but it required them to hear what she had to say.

"In the somewhat changed flesh." Kim quietly said. "Sit down and listen."

"But...but...but..."

"Sit down, Dear." Nana told Tara. "Kimberly, go ahead."

"Good. There's a planet in towards the galactic core- it is...well not the homeworld, but A homeworld for a race that calls itself Pak." Kim's beak made a clicking sound. "There are three stages- child, breeder and the final stage, catalyzed by eating a root with a symbiotic virus, called Protector."

"I-"

"You'll understand Ron." Kim cut him off. "The changes in the Protector include the loss of all sexual characteristics, the development of survival oriented modifications- a second heart down by the crotch, larger joints for leverage, strength that is on the average 5 to 8 times that of a human...and of course a very large, very powerful brain. Oh, the original form of the breeders? They look a lot like Homo Habilis."

"You're saying..." James shook his head, "Kimmie, this can't be true- mankind has a very long history on this world."

"Oh, certainly, that's why I specified A homeworld, not THE homeworld for the Pak. They're obviously a very old species, and the writers on that tablet either didn't know or didn't care about the full breadth of their history- they were in fact lying at least a little." Kim shrugged, "They claimed that they were part of a colony mission and the Thallium Oxide they needed to catalyze the Tree of Life mutation didn't work- so the Protectors died out and left the breeders to their own devices. An obvious lie."

"Why?" Jim asked. "Yeah," his brother added, "I mean, if they didn't..."

"Because Protectors can live for thousands of years, and they don't need tree of life- it's just needed to initiate the reaction. Even a base line Pak Protector is about 3 times as smart as a human and they had an entire STL starship with them." Kim shrugged, "They could have been running and left the breeders without Pak as a way of distracting whatever it was they were running from- that was over three million years ago, so file it in the "interesting but not vital" folder. In any case, it's likely that mission wasn't the first, and given the presence of Pak related mammals and hominids, we can date the species back a long, long, way."

"And you?" Nana asked.

"Broke into Drakken's Lair, didn't think to ask why Shego and Drakken were wearing bio hazard suits, they gave me a big whiff of his mutated Tree-of-Life virus and I lost interest in anything but eating." Kim couldn't smile, but her voice was sardonic. "It's a good thing I'm asexual now, because if I wasn't, I'd be mortified at how much I packed away."

"We have to get you fixed!" James burst out.

"Can't. The change is irreversible. Besides we have far more important things to worry about. Drew would have done this for one reason- he wants to make an army."

"My God." Ann looked shocked, "That would be horrible..."

"Yes, but not for the reasons you think." Kim said quietly, "I doubt Drew will live very long...and..." Suddenly her voice was angry, "What the hell were you thinking, dad, you and your friends?"

James blinked at the seeming non-sequitor. "What-"

"Didn't you ever consider that Drew had to have been utterly desperate to build those robots in college? You're supposed to be intelligent, and none of you ever even thought about the level of humiliation you put him through by never letting it go? Now I'm having to clean up your mess."

"Now dear..." Ann said, coming to her husband's defense. "I seem to remember a problem with Ronald and the Cheer team..."

"I had just turned 16. I'm supposed to be stupid. Dad was an adult. Next baseless justification, please." The others looked at her, as James blushed, but didn't argue.

Monique, looking from father to...daughter, blinked.

It's like she's the adult and he's the kid.

Kim shook her head and continued, "Given Drakkens..oh hell, Drew's, level of inferiority complex and especially his problems with the Bebes, I doubt he realizes what he has- he thinks he's getting tough goons . He's not. He's getting Protectors."

"So?" Ron asked, "Big smart Goons."

"No, Ron, the base Protector, something coming from a non-sentient breeder, is two or three times as smart as a human, much faster on its feet, and insanely vicious. I'm a lot smarter than a base Protector. Just like anyone he puts through the change will be. If they don't kill him, they'll be using him within hours."

"Vicious..." Nana asked, "How, Kimberly?"

"The original Protectors were dedicated to their bloodlines. As far as anything else goes- think a homicidal maniac, an utterly brilliant sociopath. They will kill anything they see as threatening their bloodline- the Tablet had a historical synopsis of nearly a million years-and not one year on the Pak world was without war. Not one. And every war was to the death. Conventional, biological, nuclear- there were tactical alliances, but "peace" is a concept no Protector understands save in the context of the complete extermination of the enemy."

Silence filled the room.

"Yet you aren't." Nana quietly said.

"Don't be too sure. If someone threatened you, I'd kill them off the bat- the thing is, however, I started out sentient- we aren't animals when the change hits so we have a already included ethical context- at least most of us do." Kim raised a hand, before Slim could say anything, "Don't get overly confident- Hitler had an ethical sense- one that any Pak Protector would have understood quite well. I'm lucky, I'm very very lucky- Mom and Dad spent my entirely life teaching me that we have a responsibility to everyone, and I've been able to internalize that. But what sort of people do you think Drakken will be using? Goons. If they're loyal to anyone, at least Loyal in any way that would survive the change, it'll be to a family-and they'll likely act a lot more like traditional Protectors."

"Well we have to capture-" Ron started.

"No. We have to kill them. We have to kill them all, and we have to make damned certain we get every last sample of change virus." Kim had some of her widgets out on the table and was setting up a complex array of screens, flicking through information too fast for anyone else to understand it.

"Kimberly Anne Possible!" Her father said angrily, "I'll hear nothing about Killing in this house. You say we've given you a moral code and to talk about-"

"Would you prefer Jim and Tim die? What about Joss?" Kim cut him off. "They're smart, but not smart enough stop a Protector- just smart enough to cause trouble. Protectors have one solution for trouble. They're a competing bloodline- by existing they are a threat."

"We could capture them..." Slim said.

"Yeah- GJ could hold them," Wade started.

Kim's Roar stunned them all, "NO GJ!" She gathered her temper. "Don't you understand? It's not just Drakken- the moment GJ hears about this, they'll realize that this is the key to producing the next generation of super officer-and they'll chose some bright, morally rigid person and give him the virus...and then..."

"They'll get super Du?" Ron said. Kim's look shut him up.

"No. They'll get someone smarter than you can imagine, someone who is utterly ruthless- a sociopath with no higher morality save whatever goal it feels is vital." Kim looked at all of them, "They'll put procedures into effect to keep their pet genie tied down, but I am- just like it would be- far, far smarter than you. As an example, even if you handed them every weapon in the world, and started tied up...how long would it take you to be running the show in a first grade class?"

"Would it be so bad?" Joss asked. Kim's cousin looked troubled, "I mean the world is pretty messed up..."

"You missed the part about 'sociopath'." Kim said grimly, "For example, why do we need people in the middle east? The ideal population of the earth could range from 200 million to about a billion...the rest are excess baggage."

"You mean..."

"I worked it out on the way here." Kim said casually, "Hybridize a modified form of ebola with the flu- make it contagious but asymptomatic, and have its final phase be triggered by another virus... then you release the second virus after say a year of spreading the first- and suddenly people are melting. Rig it right and anyone exposed would die in seconds. No time to make a fuss. No time to damage the physical resource of the planet."

"You wouldn't." Ann said, looking at her daughter in horror, who had just spoken so casually of killing most of mankind.

"No. I can empathize. But I am unusual." Kim spoke without pride, "But there are a lot of people who could see this as a good idea- what if Drakken converts a racist? The Protector change doesn't make us moral- quite the opposite. Ask Nana about how many evil men- or good men committing horrifying deeds for some 'higher purpose' she's dealt with."

"More than I care to remember." Nana quietly said, "Some of them supposedly on the side of the angels." She shook her head, "And many of them quite intelligent."

"Are you sure you're that intelligent, Kimmie Cub?" her father finally said, "I mean, you're a brilliant, ah, girl but..."

Kim gestured at the computer equipment. "I built this out of DNAmy's lab." She lifted a large unit from her back pack and sat it on the table. "And there's this."

"This is..." Suddenly James blinked. "Why aren't we all dead?"

"What?" Monique asked in shock.

"It's a fusion reactor, if these readouts are right..." He looked at them and paused, "Well the ones I can understand, its putting out...well we should all be dead from Gamma Ray and neutron exposure."

"No. It's aneutronic." Kim said, "Remember Drakken's Graviometric ray?" She winked at Wade, "And thanks for leaving all the scan data in the Kimmunicator's on board memory- saved a lot of time, Wade." Kim pointed at the device, "Anyway, I have a high gradient G field that twists the gamma rays back on themselves using a-" She paused, and looked annoyed, "Never mind, I had to come up with some new math to work it." She looked at her mother, "And in the category of doomsday weapons, I can rig it to start a carbon cycle fusion reaction- the containment won't hold, so you'd get about a 250 megaton explosion. Pretty clean, though."

"Fine." Her father said, "I can't convince you otherwise."

"No." Kim said, "You can't. We have to kill them all."

"And then I have to die."

Drakken was looking down at the first few to start coming out of the change.

"Isn't it wonderful Shego? Look at those muscles!" He said. "Kim Possible will never-"

There were 8 in the infirmary, with the other 92 still unconscious. They'd woken up, looking at each other... and then suddenly, as if they shared the same mind, they leaped, one going for Drakken, seven for Shego.

TBC