A/N: I'd like to thank everyone who read and reviewed. Also, Canadian Wedding, the chapter I published just a while ago, reached 800 views! Now it's time to go for 1000. And, I'm sorry for the lack of updates for the past week. My current fic-load has gone from these two, to three and a half. I will still be updating Canadian Wedding and Lost in Space regularly though. All criticism and opinions are welcomed, so feel free to read and review. ~VLU
Standard Disclaimer: I do not claim to own Kim Possible, the character, or any characters from the series. All is copyrighted by Disney, I'm writing this without express permission, but am not making a profit at all.
Janice was holding, high above the earth, facing the space station that orbited just miles away. She was watching patiently as Ron finished climbing into the bulky spacesuit NASA had provided, while Kim sat idly at one of the two workstations flanking the copilot's.
"So, I just scroll this around like this?" Kim asked through a pure oxygen facemask. She was moving a rounded ball that was built into the console's control pad, built beside the many back-lighted keys that seemed to change with every screen she clicked on.
Harper, still far below her and twitching nervously as he waited, was watching one of his own screens that mirrored hers. He watched the mouse scroll shakily, slowly overcoming the icon that he'd told her about. "Yeah, just click that one, then type in your location. It should sync automatically with the G-P-S around us."
"Spankin'." She called as she followed his instructions. It took another minute or so, where the silence was broken by Ron stumbling through the door with one leg in his pants, before apologizing and returning to the mess hall. He didn't like NASA suits, they were a pain that could take hours just to get in. But according to Harper, the wonderful GJ armory had managed to send them nothing but female versions of their latest space suit. Not just one set either, but an entire crate of them that had ended up packed in the supply room behind the arboretum.
Soon enough Harper was watching the shaky mouse covering the icon and activating it with a double-click. The search form it brought up was just a text bar, with buttons for manual and automatic beneath it. Kim entered the address of her house, taking what seemed like forever to type it out on the keyboard at the station, at least to Harper.
"And then it's that 'manual' button, right?" She asked. Instead of answering, the mouse on her screen moved and clicked the 'automatic' button by itself. Harper either figured they were taking to long, or was tired of watching her take forever to activate the unique controls. The control pads weren't made of the regular polymers, instead they seemed to be softer rubber, with buttons that seemed to be just the slightest nubs beneath them, lighted from beneath to display what key they were set too. The mouse seemed inverted as well, just a ball with two large buttons underneath.
The screen, when she looked up, was a picture of the earth beneath them, which had zoomed to the point of cloud cover. What seemed to be a translucent grid was covering the ground beneath it, she could guess it was either inlays from the satellites, or a way of memorizing landmarks to the computer. The image morphed once, displaying a regional view from high above that seemed to have Middleton centered in it, or at least what she could see of it, and one more time to bring her to city level.
The rest of the changes to the image were gradual, moving just meter by meter, until Kim could point out the different houses on her street. At the end, she could make out the different tiles to her home. Her dad was mowing the lawn out in the front of the house, most likely whistling a happy tune that would have driven her insane when it got stuck in her head. Behind the house, Jim and Tim were both sitting around a home-built launch pad she had seen briefly the day before.
"Wow," She muttered, practically speechless. It wasn't every day you could stand on a spaceship and look down on your family from the sky. "And you can save this?"
"Oh yeah, no problem." Harper said, tapping on his own keyboard below her. She looked away briefly as Ron came out of the mess hall, now completely covered by a bulky silver spacesuit. "In fact, I'll put it right in 'my pictures', and give it to old man Possible when we get back."
"Ready, KP!" Ron shouted. He sounded muffled beneath the massive domed helmet. His arms and legs looked more like those from Robbie the Robot than she'd expected too, and she had to stifle a giggle.
"Alright, Ron, just give me a second to put on my helmet and air tank." She called.
Ron glanced up, as high as the stiff back support of the suit would allow him, and watched as Kim jumped from her seat and slid gracefully down the ladder. "You don't got those on yet? Aren't we going to be late?"
"It's no big, just a few seconds is all." She replied. Laying on the ground next to the airlock was her helmet and air pack. The helmet was practically half the size of Ron's, with a rounded visor in the front, a sloped mouthpiece beneath it, and sloping sides that ended in a sleek stem. Even the air pack was less than half the size of Ron's. Harper assured her it held more air though, and she didn't have to worry as long as she wasn't planning to spend the week on the moon.
"Aw, how come I have to get this inflated marshmallow again? I couldn't even fit Rufus in here…"
Kim dressed through Ron's whining, standing just seconds later fully equipped. "Don't worry, Harper promised to watch him anyway. And you remember what happened when you tried to put one of these on." She reminded him. Off at the pilot's chair, Harper waved. Rufus, still sleeping in the cup holder at its side, lifted a hand in response.
"Alright, I'll drop you guys off a bit farther." He gripped the controls, pushing the throttle down just a notch to get Janice moving. "Remember where we're parking?"
"Opposite side as Drakken's fancy hovercraft?" Ron answered.
Both of them nodded, with Harper returning to his controls, and Kim finally finishing with the last air hose, now with two plugged into either side of her helmet's mouthpiece. "Okay, check my suit?" She asked.
Ron fumbled with his hands, first pulling at the two hoses at her mouth, then various parts of her suit as she turned in a circle. It almost seemed like she was modeling for him, in some sort of latex catsuit. "All green, KP. Got a green light on mine too. You ready?" She nodded, and they both took a step back towards the airlock.
The two of them, both turning towards Harper, gave him a thumbs up, and he began to type randomly on his keypad. "Just try not too miss, and don't break your legs on the station." With a slight buzz, muted when they both flicked the valves sealed the final line in their suits, the airlock door hissed open, letting them back into the tiny room with two outside exits. The one they were facing now closed circularly, like an iris, and had a similar keypad on its side as the one behind them now.
"Alright, locked and loaded, and ready to launch some kids through space at a multiple-billion-dollar piece of junk. Depressurizing… Now." Another hiss they couldn't hear, but this time they saw the faint tendrils of rapid air leaving into the thin vents at their feet. "No light-headedness? Bleeding? Nothing like that?"
"All good." Kim replied.
"Clear here," called Ron.
"Guess those suits work after all. Good luck you two."
A second later the light on the keypad flashed green, and the door slid open into the vacuum of space. It was an automatically dizzying experience, when the gravity plating switched off and they were left floating in the zero gravity it left behind.
Even after having been in space before, the vast emptiness, and absurdly authentic presence of it, was humbling even to the teen heroes. It stretched on for infinity, all just a foot away, all lying at their feet just outside the door. Thousands of stars sparkled in their view alone, and as Kim took her first step, she could see the faint ring of orbiting trash towards the planet beneath them.
"Cables," she warned Ron, quickly pulling the clip from her belt's winch and snapping it to one of Janice's handholds. The miniature winch system was perhaps the only thing more painful to sit on than the kimmunicator, as she'd learned from experience over the last hour of flying.
She could only trust Ron to have clipped onto the ship as well, and thumbed the keypad built into the opposite side of her belt, switching on the magnetic strips built into her boots. With a physical thump, she landed on Janice's side, the rounded 'wings' of the smoothly gliding vessel, and took off in a bulky run, enough on the side to see the planet over her shoulder.
"Right behind you, KP!" Ron said through a quick burst of static. It sounded like he was already winded, probably from even moving in the old suit. With her luck, he was still struggling to get out of the hatch, or even worse, already floating off into space, in the wrong direction.
But she knew she needed her focus, and didn't dare to look backwards to check on her friend. Her clumping gait had nearly taken her to the end of Janice now, just passing one of the triple bulbs that covered the workstations. She could see Harper out of the corner of her gaze as well, sitting comfortably in the rounded protrusion that served as a cockpit.
The edge of the ship sloped off and rounded back beneath her, which she almost hadn't counted on. It was still possible, but her timing and slant needed to be just that much more perfect to make it. In the distance the space station was hardly the size of her thumb. All she needed to do was jump from Janice, disable her magnetic boots before they so much as altered her thrust, and do the equivalent of hitting a piece of straw with a bb gun from practically a mile away.
"No big," She told herself aloud, occupying the disturbing silence of her helmet that was only broken my her occasional huff. Making it this far shouldn't have been a problem, but she wasn't counting on fighting her boots every step of the way either.
As soon as she started down the slope, she focused her eyes just past the station and jumped, thumbing the pad for her boots as soon as her feet left the ground. The tether behind her was already halfway used up, giving her just another half a ship-length before she would have to disconnect it, and risk flying wide and into space, or let it bound and pull herself back to Janice's safety. Anything in the middle, and her bounce would be tether less, and in the complete opposite direction.
But her jump felt smooth, at least as far as she could feel in space. The disconcerting feeling of not being able to feel her surroundings was still edging at her, as well as the fact that her organs were floating randomly in her body, and everything felt like it was flowing backwards. It was one of the things she hated about space. Even Ron, though he wasn't a good comparison in the first place, had sounded like he threw up a little when the gravity plating went off.
Another quarter of her tether gone, and she still couldn't tell whether she was flying straight, or if she was aimed just slightly too high. She couldn't move her head enough to see the line, still reeling backwards on the winch strapped to the back of her belt, but she felt like it was getting close.
"What I wouldn't give for rocket boots right now," She muttered. With one hand, she pushed down hard on the side of the reel. She couldn't feel it click or not, the gloves felt like a layer of rubber around her hands, but another dozen meters later and she was still floating straight. As she got closer, she could see clearly that she was about a foot too high. It wasn't too bad because the familiar circular shape of Drakken's hovercraft was still in her way, but if it hadn't been she would float right past.
"No kidding, KP. Feels like I have anvils in my feet." Ron replied, practically a minute after Kim had spoken. Every other word was paused for a sharp breath, which she counted as a good sign since he hadn't flown away yet. It still meant he was less than halfway across Janice though.
"Oh, snap," Kim hissed, as close as she could bring herself to a curse.
Ron, still puffing, called worriedly, "What? What's wrong?"
"I'm going to hit the top of Drakken's hover-" Before she could finish she did, bouncing off the rounded glass-like dome that covered the top of his two-seater. Her hands gripped wildly at it, the rough texture on the palm doing its best to slow her. All it managed was to turn her around, flipping her feet with her head, and tilting her towards it.
That was just enough for her boots to pull her the rest of the way, but not enough to alter her trajectory to hit the dormant hovercraft. She ended up twisting through space, arms flailing as much as they could in the spacesuit. Luckily the ship hadn't strayed any from the docking pylon.
Kim hit the pylon hard, smacking down bad enough she could feel her tailbone and the sensitive skin behind her liver bruise. She couldn't see, or even feel, the station beneath her fire a quick burst of it's stabilizing rockets, but the hovercraft above her didn't stray any further from her sight.
"KP! You okay?" Ron asked through the static.
A quick check made sure that her feet had connected to the station, and she hadn't broken anything on herself, or beneath her. "Yeah, no big." She replied as she stood, pushing herself and letting her drift straight.
Sometime or another she'd gotten herself turned around, something that was more than easy to do when up could just as easily be behind you as above you. The long tube used for docking and as an airlock, which she had originally thought to be on the top side, was actually facing down towards the earth. She was still standing on it, and looking away from the bright blue orb showed the sixteen identical solar panels, half on each side, stretching away like a dragonfly's wings.
"Alright, just have to go through the Pirs dock and reach the Destiny labs," Kim told herself. She wasn't exactly sure about the names, but from what Wade had told her originally, that was the space-lab Doctor Drakken had been trying to open for the past several hours already. "Piece of cake."
Turning back down towards the planet, Kim jogged her best down the side of the Pirs docking compartment. As soon as she hit the end, she reached down, grasping hold of the corner of the airlock, and flipped into a complete full circle.
"Oh, wow," She managed breathlessly. Looking down from where she was hand-standing, she could see the entire planet sprawled out beneath her feet, like she could just let go and fall through the sparse clouds that covered the western hemisphere. The entire image was surreal, looking down at the Americas, and parts of Europe. She could make out the Rockies, and the Grand Canyon to their east, even a small dot along the east coast she could just imagine was New York.
But now was the time to be saving the world, not enjoying it. Without another glance, she bent the rest of her weight, shifted her hands, and used her frictionless motion to bring her feet down on the rounded bottom of the airlock. What she expected was another Global Justice keypad, but reaching down for her belt didn't give her the kimmunicator she used to open those. Not to mention what she found looked far more like a safe than it did any airlock she'd ever been through.
"Wade, I need some help here." She called into her helmet, receiving only static.
The person who answered wasn't Wade, but the twitchy pilot she could hardly see from the corner of her vision, "Probably can't get radio without tapping it through NASA's communications. I can help, you know." As Harper spoke, Janice drifted beneath the station, far over Kim's head, and under her feet. She could make out the familiar image of Ron's spacesuit still attached to the hull still.
"I need someone to open the airlock so I can get inside." Kim said, still looking down at the complicated safe at her feet.
The static kept her company for another minute as she tried the various handles attached to the door, not managing to budge a single one. "Alright, it should open up in just a second." Harper informed her.
"Spankin'. Should I like, get off it or something?"
"Eh, I wouldn't worry about it, might want to grab onto something so it doesn't catapult you to the stratosphere though. Harper out." The scientist called, cutting off with another hiss of static. Seconds later, Kim was left in the abysmally empty void that occupied her helmet. No doubt Ron hadn't even noticed he'd turned his radio off, or even knew how he had it on in the first place.
It took only another minute for the hatch to hiss the last of it's air out, barely visible against the shimmering white of the station, and pop loose. It didn't try to buck her off though, instead sticking against the thick seals inside. Kim had to pry it open the rest of the way, pulling as hard as she could with her hands, and pushing the same way with her feet, before it finally opened.
She climbed in and shut it, spinning the wheel it offered on the door until she could feel it strain against her hands, suitably tightened. That just left her with looking for the handle to the other, similarly thick and confusing, door on its opposite side.
Several minutes later, and after having found out that none of the handles, levers, or buttons around did anything remotely useful to the door, Kim's oxygen indicator flashed blue. Blue, as far as she knew, meant that the cabin she was inside was filling up with air, which just left her another several minutes to wait until it was finished.
In which time Drakken grabs the drive, busts out of here, and warps us all to a different galaxy, Kim thought with a huff. She would parachute over this any day. In fact, she'd rather parachute from this. One way or another it'd still be faster.
She was partway into her thoughts and more than frustrated enough when the hatch finally hissed and popped open. It was just another struggle against the seal before she was out and into the cramped tubes of the space station.
"Let's see, they said it was to the… Left. But wait, what side did they expect me to open the hatch from?" Kim looked left, through the thin connecting tube, and then right, through a mirror image. "They could've at least given me a door number." Kim muttered as she removed her helmet, keeping the pure oxygen breath mask on.
Checking the left tube didn't reveal anything amazing, so she curled up in the tube and pushed herself down the opposite way. She swam gracefully, using her hands more than her feet to crawl along the walls and push herself from handhold to handhold. That part was actually sort of fun, compared to the spacewalking or waiting in a tube.
Finally, down the forth tube she checked, she found her arch-foe and his sarcastic sidekick. They weren't still breaking into the lab as NASA first reported though.
"No, Shego! Twist it." Drakken fumed. "Not that way, the other way."
Shego bit down a snarl and glared at the man over the massive box of wires and tubes, with what looked to be a circular generator in the center. "Which way? Clockwise or counterclockwise?" She huffed, barely able to contain her anger now.
"Clockwise!" Drakken yelled, pushing harder against his side of the drive.
Shego twisted it clockwise, while Drakken had the same plan over on his side. "Wait a second. Your clockwise, or mine?"
Drakken leaned over the drive, panting but too tired to try for now. He had managed to imprison himself in the smallish Destiny Lab module, trying to push the drive out as it was. The drive core Harper and James had invented was too large for the entryway though, and in the last three hours they'd pushed it all of halfway through, with the rest of the time spent opening the door without Shego's skills.
"Need some help?" Kim asked from behind Shego, floating in the middle of the tube with her arms crossed over her chest.
Shego whirled around, a sneer on her face. "As a matter of fact," She growled, lighting both hands with sudden flickers of green plasma, "No!"
"Shego! No plasma, you don't want to damage the instruments!" Drakken yelled. All he could do was reach one hand hopelessly through the tiny opening the drive had left, but Shego let the green flames die anyway.
She had no idea how any of the stuff on the station worked, but she wasn't going to find out what happened if it didn't work just yet. "Alright. You and me, Princess, hand to hand."
Kim raised her hands up, palms flat for quick chops and jabs. She didn't show it, and neither did Shego, but she wasn't used to fighting in this environment. Everything worked different when your feet could just as easily be where your head was.
"Gladly. No plasma?"
"No sidekick?"
Both women nodded determinedly, one smirking, the other staring down her opponent with pursed lips. Kim was already braced for the upcoming attack, and Shego was coiling her legs against the wall behind her. "Deal," They said together, a second before the two impacted like a freight train against a steel barricade.
Drakken pulled his hand from the opening, kicking the drive core in a childish fit. The kick not only stubbed his toe, but sent him pirouetting about in the cramped lab.
The inept hunk of metal had beat him, for now. But people didn't call him the brilliant Doctor Drakken for nothing, and he had a plan for this nuisance.
Scraps of metal, combinations of screws, bolts, nuts, and all forms of wiring and casings, floated through the confines of the station. They bounced off the walls, slowing them slightly, but never stopping except for the few that lodged themselves behind instruments and tubing.
It looked like a spaceship had exploded inside the station, which made Ron very uneasy that he had taken off the clunky suit of space armor he'd been cursing for the past half an hour. Off to one side of the station he could hear the telltale sounds of heated combat, not-so-feminine grunts and growls. Every once in a while, it sounded like a car hitting a person, or vice versa, when Shego or Kim would launch the other into a wall like a bullet.
Despite having lost contact with Kim over half an hour ago, Harper assured him she was already inside anyway, she didn't seem to be doing any worse than if she'd just started a fight. At least, it seemed that way to him. He'd never really got Kim and Shego's fascination with fighting anyway, or the subtle nuances the two seemed to pick up from each other.
He did know his part in this play though, and that was to find and stop her most prolific rival, Doctor Drakken. With that in mind he set off away from the two fighters, and towards the source of the debris-field that was starting to get on his nerves and in his hair.
Picking another stray bolt from his blonde tresses, Ron crawled his way across the floor, or roof, and into the adjoining compartment. From there, he picked was way through the debris and down into another junction, with what seemed to be an airlock off to one side. Larger pieces, supports and crossbeams that were still slightly smaller than his arms, filled this junction. The smaller pieces had already ricocheted themselves into other wings of the station, which suited him just fine. Ron already had a screw nudged between his shoulder blades, and that alone was going to drive him nuts for hours.
It took little time to find the source of the wreckage, still wedged in the door that lead to the Destiny laboratory. The drive core, at least it looked like what Ron thought one might look like, had been practically torn in half. It looked surprisingly like something had burrowed through a corner of it; disconnecting tubes, unscrewing all manners of bolts, and removing large portions of the protective frames to form a perfect half-circle, just large enough for a grown man.
"Well, so much for stealing this," Ron muttered, peaking inside the lab once to make sure it was clear. Sure enough, the entire section of the station was still lifeless, and Drakken was nowhere to be seen.
The blonde crawled back through the junctions, checking the corners he hadn't turned down just in case. He was headed back to help Kim, which seemed to be the only thing he could do, but Drakken was still no where to be seen, and that was starting to unnerve him.
When he finally found her, she and Shego were still in the middle of their fight, eyes set on only each other. The two were bouncing around at one of the far ends of the station, giving Ron the opportunity to search every compartment he could find, before he finally got to the galley where they were situated.
Both women, now bruised and bleeding from practically every bit of skin visible, were relying entirely on the walls around them to fuel their attacks. They would bounce to the nearest wall, build the tension into their legs, then spring themselves at the other and launch as many attacks as they could, arms and legs a blur just to get any hits off.
After half an hour of a standstill, Kim had finally gained the upper hand. With a particularly devastating roundhouse kick, Shego was sent flying back across the galley, ricocheting off the wall and straight into Kim's follow-up clothesline.
It wasn't enough to take her out, or even enough to injure her beyond some minor whiplash, but it was just enough to suspend Shego in the air. Kim jumped back, latching herself to the nearest handrail, as Shego started to flail wildly. Just seconds in she let out a frustrated grunt, crossing her arms over her chest. She glared at Kim, who only smirked back.
"KP! Nice shot," Ron shouted, sounding overly exuberant. He floated over beside the redhead, clapping her on the back once.
Only then did Kim actually turn to face him though. Until then she'd been practically ignoring Ron, and even now her eyes never left Shego, returning the villainess' glare and then some. "Thanks, Ron. Did you catch Drakken?"
Ron chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, about that. I couldn't find him."
"What?" Kim shouted, wheeling on Ron. She shot Shego a hot glare when she caught her smirking from the corner of her eyes. "He was trapped in the laboratory just a few minutes ago."
"Yeah, well he isn't now. I went over the entire station, and he isn't here. Harper would have said something if he saw Drakken's ship moving anyway," Ron said. He was looking more for instructions than excuses.
"Wait, if he's not on the station, and he's not on his ship…" Her eyes widened, and she looked at Ron. "Did Harper dock?"
"Yeah, we docked at the Quest just a few minutes ago. Why?" Kim slipped past him, entirely ignoring him and Shego, while realization slowly set in.
Shego chuckled where she was floating, though Ron didn't notice that bit by bit, she was approaching the table beneath her. "Didn't think that one through, now did you?" Without saying a word to acknowledge the henchwoman he turned and followed his friend, slipping quietly through the next hatch. "What, you're not even going to help me out here?" She shouted behind them.
With her free hand Kim drew her kimmunicator, tapping directly into Janice's channel as she floated through the station. Her breath had never settled since the start of her fight, and now even seemed to pick up a bit. Without Janice they were stuck, and even worse, her father had trusted her with that ship.
"Harper, come in. We think someone might have just snuck onboard." She spurted out quickly, still not stopping to take a breath. It was much easier when you could relax at full speed, anyway.
"Oh, everything's safe here, Kimberly." Her kimmunicator called back, and she stopped at the next junction to glare at it. The voice was poorly disguised, sounding more like an old woman than a young scientist. "No need to check up on me."
"Doctor Drakken," She growled, all too dramatic.
"Bah! You think you're all that, Kim Possible? Well you just brought me what I was trying to steal, and then some! We'll see who's all that now," The doctor said, cackling loudly right after.
Kim could just barely hear the voice in the background, shouting, "Wait, you don't know what you're doing!"
"Ron, get Harper!" Kim shouted. She launched back into action, speeding through the next two junctions in two jumps, and then launching herself up through the large double-compartment of the Quest airlock. It had been rigged to stay open, which left only the more modern door of Janice's airlock in the way.
She flew easily through the compartment and promptly face-planted when she passed into Janice's gravitational pull. In just seconds her blood rushed back through her body, filling her head as she foolishly tried to stand, and pumping through her limbs loud enough for her to hear it. The dizzying circles the airlock was making made her want to vomit, and she felt bile rise in her throat.
"Oww."
"You good, KP?" Ron asked as he floated in behind her, quickly making the same mistake. He tumbled into a pile beside her in the airlock while she was already standing, steadying herself with one of the handholds on the side of the door. Ron could hardly push himself up.
"I'm good. This can't be good for us though."
Ron rose to his elbows, raising an index finger, "Agreed," He managed, before passing out altogether. Kim, resting almost all her weight against the handrail, looked down and gave an annoyed huff.
"Ron…" It really wasn't unexpected though, but watching him faint, pass out, or lose his pants at all the wrong moments wasn't getting old to her. Especially when he was supposed to be protecting a scientist from a certain mad one.
Turning back to the task at hand, Kim pressed the largest and most bottom-wise of buttons on the keypad. Thankfully it wasn't locked, and the electronic door slid open with no trouble, leaving her back in the main hub of the ship. The first thing she noticed was Harper, tied up in a corner with a nasty bruise developing on his temple. The second was Drakken sitting at the pilot's main console, looking over the various buttons, readouts, and levers with a raised eyebrow.
"Let's see, if this is the main ignition, and this is the manual-pilot, then which one is to undock…" Drakken muttered, just loud enough for her to make out. "Well, when all else fails. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe," He sung, hovering his fingers over the control pads.
Kim had made it halfway across the hall by then, stealthily slipping by him on her way to Harper. The ruffled, and rather handsome in the right light, scientist was hardly stirring in his bonds. But just as she was about to reach him, only a few feet left, he slumped further against the wall and let out a groan to protest his throbbing head.
Kim froze, and Drakken snuck a look over his shoulder at his captive, before turning back to his console. It was nothing to worry about, just his prisoner and red-headed foe. Foe?
She was still standing stock still, hoping he would just pass it off as a trick of his mind, when he rose from his seat and swung in a circle. He pointed a single, overdramatic, finger at her, shouting, "Kim Possible!"
Just like old times. "Doctor Drakken," She growled, falling into her fighting stance once again. "You're not going to get away with this."
Drakken took a step out of the pilot's niche, scanning the room for anything he could use. Shego would be perfect, but instead he saw a limp, blond, form sitting out in the airlock. "Of course I will, you'll be too busy saving your sidekick, after all."
"Ron?" Kim asked incredulously.
Drakken nodded, a vicious smile gracing his face. "Of course. With this button," Drakken started, flicking a safety-cover off a wide silver switch, "This ship will detach from the space station. Anyone caught out in the airlock will be released into space." Drakken let off a long maniacal laugh, only what could be expected from him, and Kim's mind raced into overtime.
A quick look told her that Ron was still passed out, Harper was still bound, though still regaining consciousness, and Drakken was really threatening to flip the switch. Her boyfriend came first, of course, but she wasn't going to go home telling her dad that she'd handed over his priceless spaceship to her worst enemy. That left one option, stop Drakken. Hopefully Janice would have a brief warm-up period where she could stop the ship from detaching too.
She looked into his shark's smile, still grinning toothily at her with a hand over the switch. It could have just as easily been a missile launcher, with the yellow-striped cover, but she couldn't risk that either. "Hasta la vista, Buffoon."
Kim rushed, and he flicked the switch, already halfway to him by the time it rested in the opposite position. Seeing the cheerleader rush him made him very nervous though, no longer the false façade of exuberant bravery that he had been; he cowered and jumped out of the way instead. It gave Kim just enough time to make it to the console by the time the lights dimmed, now tinted red and giving the entire ship a 'Red Alert' feel.
The doors hadn't closed though, and besides the slight mist that was shooting from the vents, the ship hadn't even moved. Success! She thought triumphantly, flicking the switch back into its resting position.
The mist, the lights, and now a dull droning from the back of the ship. It all stayed where it was, and nothing seemed to revert like she hoped it would.
"Priming engines. Drive core powering. Ship will enter slipstream in One Minute." It was Janice's cold, mechanical, voice again. But now it was filtered through the entirety of the ship, echoing in from the rooms opposite them as well.
She turned to see Drakken's eyes darting from spot to spot, fear apparent in his quivering lips and face. He returned her angry glare with a apologetic smile. Harper stirred behind them.
"Ship will enter slipstream in Fifty Seconds." Janice informed them. It was just enough to wake Harper from his slumber, and his eyes cracked open to the voice. It was more than apparent that he was still disoriented though.
"Slipstream?" He mumbled. His eyes shot open, and he threw a hand to his face to grasp his throbbing temple. "Oww. Slipstream? No, no! That's bad."
"Harper, get up here and stop this!" Kim shouted back.
He almost pulled himself to his feet, before slumping back to his wall with flailing arms. "You have to… I-" He clutched his head a little more, eyes scrunching in concentration. "I can't remember."
Drakken gave another sheepish smile, and a dry chuckle. "I might have given him a slight concussion."
Kim's frustrated death-glare was his reply, besides an angry snarl. "The ship will create a miniature wormhole around it. It'll rip the I-S-S right out of space if it's too close."
"Forty Seconds."
"And you can't stop it?" Kim asked. She felt like her heart was going to beat out of her chest. Normally this was a thrill, but she was surrounded by technology that she didn't even understand, and two scientists that couldn't even help.
"I don't even know who I am right now." Harper hissed. "You can detach her. I remember that! The knob, just above your left shoulder."
Kim turned around, slumping into the pilot's chair. It was her first time sitting here, and the entire thing overwhelmed her. Dozens of screens, each with their own controls, spread out like a dome above her head. Many were on mechanical arms, but the knob, a little pull-lever she could swear she'd seen on a bus before, was easy enough to spot. "This one?" She asked, grasping it firmly.
"Yes! Wait!" Harper managed to get himself onto his knees, at least. "If you pull it, you'll only have ten seconds to get out. You have to set the port thrusters right after."
Kim nodded, swallowing her tongue. "Alright. Drakken, get Harper and Ron out of here." To that, he nodded.
"Twenty Seconds."
Kim bit her tongue in her mouth. "It's the console right over your knees, I think. Just hit the port arrow, and run for it."
"Okay. Go!"
The two shuffled out as quickly as they could, slowing only momentarily to lift Ron and throw him through the zero-gravity hatch. She watched, and waited, until she saw them disappear.
"Fifteen Seconds."
"I know!" Without wasting another second, she pulled the knob down hard, quickly seeking out the left-most arrow on the screen Harper had told her about. She pushed, and was rewarded with a monitor above her flaring to life, a little bar that looked like it could have just as easily represented health, filling up a section towards the left side.
She pushed out of the chair, making a mad dash for the port airlock. It was in mid-step towards it that she heard Drakken call, "Shego, wait!"
Shego? Just great. As soon as she turned the corner, Shego was there staring at her. The villainess had a feral glare on her face, hands burning the bright-green of her plasma. Her nose was still bent, turning a bloated purple, from the clothesline blow Kim had caught her with.
"Ten Seconds."
"Shego, we don't have time for this." Kim pleaded quickly.
Her rival wasn't having any of it though. "Leaving me there is going to be your last mistake, Princess." She growled. Without another word she pounced, arms high, like a cat attacking a ball of yarn. It was all to easy Kim to counter though, just rolling onto her back, grasping Shego's wrists, and kicking her up and over with her own forward motion.
She jumped to her feet, but Shego was still just as fast. Instead of being on her feet, Shego was on her hands, kicking out towards Kim's head with both her feet. That, Kim had to counter with her wrists, pushing her momentum to the side.
After her counter, Kim had just enough time to duck around her rival, jumping at the airlock, just as it slid closed. She hit the door hard with her shoulder, bouncing right off and back into the ship.
"Five Seconds."
In a short two seconds, Kim managed to pound on the door, hit the 'open' button, and pull as hard as she could on the manual latch. Just after, she was brought back into her current predicament by another quick jab from Shego, that she just hardly managed to push away.
The ship's automatic systems detached the docking ring just before the thrusters fired, opening the stark-white airlock to the harsh darkness of space. The air that was inside had no choice but to flee out, escaping in a quick spurt of mist from the vents, before they too closed.
All this was lost to the two women inside, still trading blows right outside the airlock. The lights had dimmed even more, and they relied more on the dark-red reflecting off the white steam to see, bathing the entire cabin in an eerie glow.
In the final second they jumped apart, crouching and coiling, before the two launched at each other. Both were posed midair in a jump-kick; Shego, slightly too high and sideways, was off by centimeters, and it would have been clear that Kim would hit first and harder from her better angle.
Deeper down inside Janice's belly, the drive-core had been warming up for some time, a mass of wires, tubes, and mechanical riff-raff far from the prying lights and consoles. For the last minute, it had been letting off a uncharacteristic blue glow, slowly growing from just a slight shimmer, to a full-blown flare.
At the last second, the space around it began to ripple, like a rock hitting a pond's surface. They stretched away from it, bending the metal that held it, the air around it, even the space outside the ship's aft. It rippled farther and farther, encompassing the ship, while Shego and Kim still posed, mid-air, ready to kick each other.
Time slowed, and had either of them had the mind for it, they would have noticed the sudden sluggish feel to the air, to themselves. They were approaching centimeter-by-centimeter, but their brains were running just as slow, never noticing the changes that surrounded the ship, or invaded the instruments.
Just as the two were about to collide, time finally stopped. Janice, much to the horror of the occupants of the space station, watching from their tiny viewports, folded into itself and vanished.