Boilerplate Disclaimer: Disney owns all the characters from the Kim Possible series.

Interlude – Making Up Is Hard to Do, part 3

"What's wrong," Wade called as he, Vivian, and Drakken came running.

"System failure, she's losing it, losing control--" Joss hugged Bego tightly, trying to share the blue's girl's consciousness. Trying to share the pain. She couldn't, and that scared her even more.

As Wade questioned someone who had seen what happened to Bego Drakken grabbed an MIT professor connected with the cybernetics conference, "We need a lab, NOW!" he barked.

"I don't--"

"NOW!" Drakken screamed.

Considering that the group had just saved them, the professor reacted quickly, "Closest one is this way." He spotted a faculty colleague, "Seth, need your lab."

"Can I--"

"No, we've got an emergency."

The milling students and scientists weren't sure what was happening as they waited for the police to arrive. But Drakken and Wade half dragged - half carried the unresponsive Bego in the direction they were led while Vivian put an arm around Joss's shoulders and followed.

The MIT scientist whose lab they borrowed quickly realized he could do nothing but get in the way and left them to work. Joss stood in the corner, desperately afraid and wanting to do something, but unable to think of anything which could help.

Vivian and Wade had Bego open and were working frantically. Drakken asked occasional questions that Joss couldn't understand, and seemed satisfied with the answers the others gave him.

Joss felt like the professor who left for fear of getting in the way. She was afraid to say anything for fear she would distract the others. But she couldn't leave without knowing something. Wade and Vivian were talking as they worked, but Joss was too far from the two to catch more than one word in five. However their concern was obvious. Finally the pair straightened. "All we can do for now," Wade sighed.

"Is she…" Vivian wondered.

The young black man shrugged, "I don't know. Look, go back and see if there's anything still going on with the conference. I'm going to see if Doc has any ideas."

Joss grabbed onto Dr. Porter's arm as the scientist left. Vivian was taking it hard. All her work with the blue girl had made her a close friend and Joss could tell the older woman was as upset as she was about what was happening.

"What's happenin'?" the student demanded.

Vivian had a grim expression, "Not sure. Massive system failure of some sort. Kind of like a domino effect, or series of organ failure in a human. As one system went down it created interference and eventually took down another. We disconnected everything."

"Is she goin' to be okay?"

"I don't know," Vivian confessed. "We tried to isolate her brain. If the failure reached that far…"

"If the failure reached that far?"

"She's dead."

"You can't tell?"

"We had to disconnect it all. Bego is blind, deaf, and dumb at the moment - if she's even alive. Until things are replaced or repaired we won't know." Vivian answered.

The two leaned on each other as they returned to the lecture hall. The police had arrived and things had started to calm down. Statements were taken from both Vivian and Joss. Most of those attending thought the evening was over for the conference and many left, but some of the organizers wanted Vivian to finish her talk. The blonde woman tried to beg off, but Joss whispered, "Please. You need to do somethin' normal. I need to do somethin' normal."

The blonde had some trouble returning to her speech, but everyone there was more than willing to forgive her under the circumstances. She received a thunderous standing ovation from those who had remained for the lecture.

"Can you answer a few questions from the audience," the moderator asked her as the applause died down.

"No, I really need to get back to my friend."

Joss winced on returning to the lab and seeing Wade tinkering around inside Bego, it made the metal girl seem dead. Joss had somehow hoped that Drakken and Wade could have fixed the blue girl while they were gone. Drakken had ransacked a desk for paper and was frantically drawing diagrams. The two fell silent when the women entered the room.

"Any news?" Vivian demanded. Joss wanted to know also, but was afraid to ask.

Wade looked up, "Possible piece of good news. She was hit in the left arm." He showed them a diagram in Drakken's handwriting and began to point to systems and sub-relays as Drakken had them listed. "Her systems attempted to… Heck, I'll cut to the chase. I'm afraid to check her brain, scared I'll damage something." He pointed to a line on the diagram, "The virus, or whatever we're going to call the feedback loop, didn't reach everything. It's dangerous to assume anything, but… Sorry, I keep wanting to slip into unnecessary detail. We disconnected every system. I've tested a couple of the later systems. Not everything was affected. The brain is what's important." He took a breath and let it out slowly. "Joss, we need you to try and make mental contact with Bego… If… We'll take it from there."

Joss quickly grabbed the blue hand of the lifeless figure. Her face mirrored her shock, "Oh, God," she whispered softly.

"Stay calm," Wade told her. "Should have warned you, with so much shut down that might not work." He took Joss's hand in his and guided hers into Bego's open chest. The girl's stomach felt funny as she reached inside her sister. "Here," Wade told her and put her hand down on a metal part. His left his hand on hers, warm and comforting, in case Bego had died.

Instead Joss broke into broad grin that released everyone's tension. Neither Joss nor Wade had noticed that his hand stayed on hers, but in the general relief he gave her hand a gentle squeeze. Suddenly both aware of what was going on Wade jerked his hand back as if he'd placed it on a hot stove.

Vivian and Drakken were both asking questions at once, and Wade was getting ready to open his mouth when Joss held up her hand for silence, "Let me talk with her for a minute, okay? I've told her you disconnected 'bout everythin' on her. She wants to know when you can get her put back together."

"Too much damage," Drakken began.

"We'll have to take her back to Middleton," Wade finished. "Doc and I will--"

"You'll be giving her a new body?" Vivian broke in. Drakken nodded. "Joss, tell her that I have some things I want to try out. Much greater touch sensitivity, to both heat and cold and also tactile sensations."

Joss showed visible excitement. "I don't have to tell her, she's hearin' through my ears right now… Doc, Wade, she wants to know if she can be taller - says she's tired of lookin' like sixteen."

"Should be no problem," Drakken said, looking to Wade to see if he agreed.

"Like Ms. Shego looked at 'round twenty-two or so…" Joss suddenly blushed, "She wants to be a C-cup."

Wade chuckled and Drakken pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, "My little girl is growing up."

Joss looked shocked and there was a moment of silence as the two girls carried on their internal dialog. The girl from Montana looked uncomfortable when she finally spoke, "Uh, Dr. Porter? I'm not goin' to say nothin' here in front of Doc and Wade. But, uh, Bego has some places where she wants more sensitivity to touch."

The men looked slightly embarrassed as Dr. Porter laughed. She turned to Drakken, "Your little girl is definitely growing up."

Vivian looked slightly puzzled, however, when Wade brought up the work Drakken had frantically sketched.

"Doc's had a brainstorm," the black man told Joss and Bego.

"Hallelujah! I'm guessin' that's one for Bego," Joss answered. Wade nodded. "I always say, 'better a brainstorm than a braindrought'."

Drakken looked mildly offended and Vivian raised an eyebrow, "Braindrought?"

"Drew sometimes gets the most incredible ideas in the world, and sometimes he gets them finished. Sometimes he'll go weeks without that spark of genius and leaves the Possible brothers or me to figure out how to make his ideas work. Zita's going to give him a kiss for this one. He's got a circuit design that should not only keep something like this from happening again but may even let Bego fix herself - sort of a healing process. Firewall, circuit breaker, and electronic first aid kit all rolled into one."

Vivian let out a whistle, "I want those for Oliver."

"Everyone here will want them," Drakken pointed out.

"I don't want you using Bego for a test dummy," Joss complained.

"We'll test it before we use it on her - but it looks really good on paper," Wade assured her. "And Doc had another thought on how to protect her mind."

A worried look crossed Joss's face, "Bego's not so sure about that one."

"We won't do anything without talking to you first," Drakken told the robot girl.

Joss stayed with Bego, serving as her eyes and ears, until the blue girl was loaded on a plane for the flight to Middleton. Joss wanted to come back, but Bego told her to stay and work on classes - and record a couple television programs the blue girl watched.

For the two weeks until Bego could return to Boston Joss called Wade twice a day, early and late, to find out what was planned for Bego that day and check the results at night.

Wade called several times after Bego returned to find out how things were going for her. Sometimes he talked with Bego. Sometimes he talked with Joss for her opinion.

"She's kinda clumsy," Joss told him in a worried tone. "Sometimes she knocks things over. She never used to do that. Is she okay?"

"She's a little taller now," Wade reminded her. "She didn't 'grow' into her body and it'll take her a little time to get adjusted to it."

"Yeah, and did you have to make her so dang tall?"

"She's five-seven, that's not all that tall."

"Well sometimes she musses my hair and calls me 'little sis', it's annoyin' as all get out."

Wade laughed, "I'm going to come out next Thursday and check up on her… Can I take you both out for dinner?"

"Heck yes, it'll be great! You still owe Bego from the conference - an' I want all the details on her upgrades."

As soon as she got off the phone and looked at the calendar she saw Thursday was Valentine's Day. Had Wade done that on purpose or was it coincidence? She sighed and called Nick to tell him their date was off. She'd have to do something extra special to make it up to him next time they went out.

Joss and Wade slipped into a pattern of one calling the other every weekend. Joss made a point of not having any guy in the apartment on Sunday afternoons while she waited for Wade's call.

The calls became even more important to her that summer as she and Bego went back to the ranch. After a year of big city the ranch seemed almost unbearable. She might call Kim, or the twins, or her aunt and uncle and twice she even called Zita to talk with her - but mostly she called Wade and talked, sometimes for hours at a time.

Wade's visits to the east coast became more frequent that next fall, and Joss spent more time in Middleton. As her second year at MIT progressed Joss became a lot more selective about the guys she went out with, and what she did with them. She wondered about kicking her relationship with Wade up a few notches, but he had grown curiously shy around her. Twice, as visits came to a close, she had given him passionate kisses, pulling him close and rubbing herself against him while her tongue explored his mouth. Both times he had pulled away in fear. Was it his problem? Should she give him time to work through it? Was it her problem? She needed physical intimacy, and could always find someone willing for that. But she wanted shared emotional intimacy as well, and no one meant as much to her as Wade.

Bego and Joss stayed in Boston the next summer.

In early September Wade received a call at three in the morning.

"Yes?" he groaned.

"Wade? It's Bego."

Wade snapped awake, "Bego? Is everything all right? How's Joss?"

"Not good," Bego answered, her voice breaking. "Neither one of us doin' good."

"What's wrong? Can I help?"

"Can… Can you come out? Nana died… No, don't come out - we need to get to Montana… The funeral will… I'm sorry, Wade, I'm not thinkin' very clear just now."

"I'll come out," he told her quietly. "I'll call the airlines now. If either of you need me, I'm there for you. Want me to set up flights to Montana for the three of us?"

"Thank you, as soon as you can."

"I'll be on the first plane east this morning. You and Joss pack. We should fly back in the afternoon."

--End Interlude-