I do NOT own Kim Possible

Definition: Gadolinium-based dyes are often used for brain imaging with MRIs.

A dark nightmare in this chapter. Be warned. Just what did Jenny do to her sister.

Not much action, but Ron does design a very very big device.

Time: A week after previous chapter.

Waking up,... Jenny,... Nightmare,... Diablos,... Kim,... Night,...

The nightmare woke him again. The mutilated bodies of Kim and Melissa in a pool of blood. Unable to do anything as Shego died before his eyes. Sighing he turned and slid down to watch her face. People with comet powers were tough. Very tough. He wasn't sure even a slashed throat would have killed her. While the extremely fast healing ability that came with comet powers didn't match the Tai Shing Pek Kwar ability to directly focus the forces of the body to heal the most vital wounds first, there was some intelligence behind it. Her body would have sealed any cuts in minutes, if not seconds. Her breathing would have been quickly restored. And comet powers could heal brain damage. He was pretty sure even if he had not arrived there in time Shego would have lived. But still the nightmare came.

And even Kim might have lived. No one had ever really tested her ability to heal. She had taken numerous mild bruises and cuts on their missions, but she had never been serious hurt before. Even with the almost slashed throat she'd got quick medical attention. Who knew to what extent her body was able to heal itself. Testing someone to see if they could heal nerve damage, or brain damage, wasn't a test you did just for kicks. Not on a living human being.

Melissa would have died though. Jenny hadn't been striking to maim there, she'd been aiming to kill.

As he usually did each morning, he brushed the hair away from her face so he could watch. The slightly green tint to her skin was cute. Even before they had known each other he'd thought that. It made her look exotic. Listening to the slow breaths she took, when deep asleep, was relaxing. The steady beat of her heart was hypnotic. He relaxed and watched, patiently waiting for when she woke up. For the smile that always appeared on her face each morning when she saw him. The one that made her eyes shine. He was so lucky.

She turned on her back and stretched as she opened her eyes and looked into his. She smiled that smile and reached for him. He was so lucky.

He sat watching DNAmy work on Jenny. Doing test after test whose purpose he usually couldn't even guess at. She often talked to herself though, or to Jenny. It helped him understand at least a little of what she was doing. Over the last week she had tested various chemicals on the alien part of the girl's brain that wasn't human, carefully noting the rate at which the chemicals were absorbed and then eliminated from the alien tissue. Several of the tests she was currently engaged in was trying some of those chemicals, the ones that seemed promising, on the human part of the girl's brain. She already knew the rate at which a normal human body would process the chemicals from medical books. She had been right in her guess a week back. Some of the girl's brain was alien, some was human, and some was a combination of both.

"How's it going?" He asked. She jumped a little and looked at him. He make a note to never speak when she was doing something delicate with the brain of the teenager. She had had a hole drilled into the girl's skull. It allowed her a pathway to access the brain to try her various experiments. Looking at the contraption around the girl's head to keep it from moving, along with the seal placed over the hole, was disturbing. For one thing he could see a part of her skull. It hurt to see a kid laying there like that. He knew she was a monster, but still...

"Better than I had hoped." The geneticist spoke. "The alien tissue has a very different metabolism from human tissue. Almost any one of the dyes I've tested can be used. Even simple iodine would work, though I think I will use something gadolinium based. It won't interact with the drugs keeping her unconscious and I've already checked to see she's not allergic to it.

"How long before you try to separate them?"

The woman thought on the matter for a long time. "I'm not sure. I still need to integrate more cybertronic circuits into the mutator and it needs to be recalibrate after each circuit to make sure it works properly. Adding more circuits also means more electricity. The rest of the machine will need to be rebuilt to handle it. A week maybe."

He sat back, sighing. So long. It wasn't just the fact she was a kid with her skull opened. There was also the danger of her getting free. They had removed the titanium cuffs so they wouldn't interfere with the tests. Still, he thought trying to run around with that hole in her skull would kill her pretty quick. But who knew for sure. The seal on it might last long enough for it to heal.

"Look on the bright side." DNAmy told him.

Ron looked at her. "Bright side?"

"A week ago." She answered. "I didn't think separating them was even possible. Now I'm pretty sure it is."

"That is good to know." Ron admitted. "Wonder what she will be like though. She's spent her whole life as a blood thirsty monster, joined at the genetic level with an alien creature."

"Pretty sure the creature has the same genetic code as a Lorwardian. We will know for sure when we separate them." The geneticist told him.

"They're so big. When you join two animals, their size increases. So why isn't the girl giant sized?"

"Not sure. But the alien creature in the girl and the Lorwardians are pretty similar genetically. Maybe it's just something similar to a Lorwardian, like a chimp is similar to a human. We will find out."

Ron nodded and studied the girl some more. Despite the contraption around her head she looked better than she had a week ago. The burns had started to disappear. They might leave some marks, but nothing disfiguring. Her hair was shaved around the hole DNAmy had made in her skull, but was otherwise a bit longer. They made sure she'd been getting enough nutrition through a feeding tube.

He noticed a single tear run down the girl's cheek and looked closer. He wondered if she could dream in her drug induced sleep.

"When she cries it's a sign her body is adapting to the drug." DNAmy explained. "When it does we automatically increase the dosage. She starts to wake up and we put her back under."

"I wonder what she's dreaming." Ron said.

"From her brainwaves I would say it's more of a nightmare than a dream." DNAmy answered. "And we won't even let her wake up from it." She looked at the girl. "At least she can't dream, or have nightmares, when the dosage is upped again. It prevents dreams."

"That's good. Ron answered. And it was. He doubted the girl had anything good to dream about.

She was in the nightmare. The worst one of them all. No one ever came to visit this late in the day. She would have the whole night to play with them. The something loved that, but she just cried. The something was painting images over those of her family, and she was driven to make those images real. She threw up and wished something would kill her before she could carry out the sickening compulsion. The something loved what she was feeling. The horror, the disgust, the desperate desire to die. It loved her pain as much as it loved the pain she'd inflicted on those animals. The pain she was about to inflict on her family. The sister she loved more than the world.

It wouldn't be the first time she'd hurt a person. But before that had been minor. A broken bone, a few cuts. As a girl she'd found she could do whatever she wanted, within reason, to a boy and get away with it. Who would take a twelve year girl old beating up a seventeen year old boy seriously. The differences in size, and strength, was just too massive to do anything other than laugh. But she was strong. And fast. Those she targeted had no chance. She'd been hauled off to the principal's office any number of times for fighting. Nothing had ever come of it. They weighed twice what she did, and she picked people who were in clubs like boxing or karate. Athletes. That she could hurt them was insane. She had ended up getting suspended a number of times, but any judge that saw the cases had just laughed it off. The sweet, innocent, girl sitting before them could have never beat up the boy who was nearly a man twice her size. And as for her mutilating animals, the various judges had claimed that had to be a mistake.

But now she sat beside her sister and watched her mother and father. She had tied their hands behind their backs and looped a rope around their necks. Each stood on a different side of a door. One with a window in it so they could see each other. She periodically got up and kicked one of them down. When she did the rope pulled tight around both of their necks. Eventually one of them wouldn't be able to stand. When that happened the rope would choke them both. They would watch each other die. Meanwhile...

She turned to her sister who was well tied up. The something inside her painted an image of her sister mutilated, just like she had mutilated those animals. The need drove her and she had to make that image real. Tears ran down her eyes, but she just wiped them away. She reach out and broke one of her sister's fingers. Not once, not even twice or three times. She broke the finger until it was shattered. The screams she heard coming from her sister's gagged mouth wrenched at her heart. She turned and threw up again. But the need drove her and she turned back to start on her sister's second finger. Looking, she saw her parents staring at her in horror. She couldn't blame them. She wished she'd been aborted. She bet they wished the same thing now.

She rose and kicked her father down, watching her mother's eyes bulge before he managed to get to his feet. Then she kicked her mother. She watched before turning back to her sister. She started on her third finger. She was glad that sometime her sister faded into unconsciousness. That, for a few moments, she wasn't able to feel the pain. Slowly, meticulously, she denied her sister the ability to paint forever. Finished with the fingers, she set to work on other bones. Her sister had fallen into shock long ago, but still she worked, destroying bone after bone. Then, as her parents, now barely able to stand, watched she stared into her sister's eyes one last time. At those beautiful eyes she thought were like jewels. She destroyed one of those eyes.

She rose and turned around to look at her mother and father. She wouldn't let them die. That wasn't what the something wanted. If they died they couldn't suffer. And that was bad. She went to work on them.

The dosage of the drug increased, finally sending her back into the comfort of the darkness.

Ron watched the girl. Eventually the tears stopped. She was a monster, yet in his heart he ached for her. He wondered if maybe the death she so craved might be the best solution after all. With all that she had done, how could ever hope to live. He rose and turned. He had an idea he wanted to talk over with Dr. Betty Director.

He entered her office to see her sitting at her desk, with Wade's image on a large screen. Drakken was sitting to one side.

Ron studied the man. For some reason he didn't seem so blue. He wondered if it had something to do with working at Global Justice. He was still a prisoner, but he was currently working on any number of projects for them. And they were respecting his genius. Sure, his plans always had a flaw, but in the sort of environment Global Justice provided each plan wasn't just rushed into. There were steps and procedures meant to spot and eliminate flaws in major projects. Here, Drakken was treated as an equal, even if he did go back to a cell each night and had to wear security devices while out of it. He had provided enough help that his cell was anything but sparse. It was more like a room a Global Justice agent would have. Just locked.

"Morning." Dr. Betty Director greeted. "Since you wanted to talk about the Diablos I decided to have Wade and Dr. Drakken join us."

Ron nodded. He noticed how the woman had use 'Dr.' when referring to Drakken. It was the respect his colleagues had never given him. "I have a plan that might find them, but it has a major flaw in it. And a minor one."

"What's the plan?" Dr. Betty Director asked.

Ron sat down in front of her and pulled out one of the scanner they were using to find the Diablos. He took it apart and held up a small sheet of white material. "As you probably already know the devices don't use antennas as such. Instead they have this material which reacts to the cybertronic energy each Diablo gives off. Each device hold several sheets. A camera scans the sheets and spots the black dots that appear in response to the Diablos. The dark spots tells when a Diablo is near. The intensity of the spots tells how far away it is."

He held up a thick metal sphere about five inches in diameter that had thousands of small holes in it. "This gives the direction. The energy from the Diablos is blocked, except where the holes let it through. Cameras scan the pattern of dots on the sheets. Analyze the data, and you have a very basic scanner. An electrical current clears the sheets sixty times per second. Unfortunately it's only good for five meters."

"If Shego hadn't fried that console we would still have the command codes for them." Drakken muttered.

"Whatever." Ron answered. "She did what she had to do. We can only try and fix the problem as best we can."

"Go on." Dr. Betty Director instructed him.

"Making the scanner larger would give better performance but it's very sensitive to vibrations. That's why the sheets need to be cleared sixty times a second. Even something like a passing car or truck is enough to mess up the readings. Since it doesn't scale very well, the orignal decision was to make scanners that were easily transportable. What I'm suggesting is the opposite. A large scanner that can scan a million square kilometers at a time."

"Won't work." Drakken and Wade spoke up together.

"Buffoon." Drakken added.

"Problems with it?" Dr. Betty Director looked at Wade and Drakken.

"Hold on a second." Ron held up a hand. "I'm not planning on building it on earth. That would be unworkable. I'm planning on building it in earth orbit."

Both Drakken and Wade blinked.

"I can still see some problems with it." Wade pointed out.

"I know." Ron answered. "And for most of those problems there are easy solutions. First thing, the size. A square kilometer. It would have a surface area ten billion times larger than one of theses. " He held the remains of the scanner he had took apart.

"A square kilometer. There's no way something that big could be lifted in space." Drakken said.

"I got to agree with him Ron." Wade said.

"That's why it would be built in space. So we could make it that size. Remember the satellite I helped Tim and Jim build a few years back. The inflatable solar array?"

"Yeah." Wade answered. Then his eyes lit up. "I see. You wouldn't make it a solid structure on the ground. You would lift something that can be inflated in space."

"Right. Actually the material itself is plenty strong enough to be spread on some supports. All we need is something to give us the direction the Diablos are in. Even tubes of tin foil would do that. We only need to run a current through them to make the material opaque to the signal. The holes in the tubes would be the holes for the array, giving us a direction."

"Hmm." Wade muttered. "I think I see where you're going with this. How much would it weigh?"

"We would need thirty million square meters of tin foil. Around five hundred thousand kilograms." Ron answered. "The material to sense to signal would be a million square meters. It would weight around a hundred thousand kilograms. The tubing to provide the structure along with the air and foam to inflate it and make it solid would be three hundred thousand kilograms. The spray on solar cells would be two hundred thousand kilograms. Add in another hundred thousand for electronic devices for cameras and communication with another hundred thousand for wiring to provide electromagnetic propulsion. I figure the total weight would be a million and three hundred kilograms. Thirteen hundred tons."

"How would you get it into space?" Wade asked.

"Build it in nine sections. Nine launches of a hundred and forty-five tons each. Just within the capability of our largest launch vehicles. Each would be fitted with its own electromagnetic propulsion unit so they would be able to maneuver to link together."

"Would be awfully delicate work to do that. Maneuvering something that size." Wade looked thoughtful.

"But doable." Drakken admitted. "Image the energy it could collect. The laser it co..." He looked around and went quiet.

"Still problems." Wade pointed out.

"That high it would be free from the earth's atmosphere. A circle of electrified wire around it could be used to keep it taut so no vibrations could spread across the structure while it was maneuvering."

"Hrm." Wade was busy punching in figures on his computer. "Doable. So far." He admitted.

"It wouldn't just have ten billion times the surface area of the ones we currently use." Ron pointed out. "With no vibrations to mess up the reading we could keep it focused on a particular area for a full hundred and forty seconds. It would be able to wait over eight thousand times as long before clearing the film collecting the signal than this scanner." He held up the device. "Plus the cameras could be better than the ones that got to fit into something so small." He waved the scanner again. "Instead of thirty million pixels it could have three billion pixels. And the surface area of each cell in the array would be ten thousand times the times the surface area of the sheets in these. The array would be nearly eighty billion times more sensitive. It would be able to scan an area of a million square kilometers at a time from an orbit of a thousand kilometers."

"In principle it would work." Wade agreed. He looked at Drakken.

"The Buffoon's idea is sound." He admitted. "If a bit ambitions. I never designed a machine that big." He sulked. He also looked eager to get to work on it.

"So what's the major problem you claimed it had?" Dr. Betty Director looked at Ron. "As if I couldn't guess."

"The cost." Ron admitted. "I estimate it would cost between two and six billion dollars. It depends. The economy of scale should help some with the work. But buying such a massive amount of material could drive the material costs up. I peg it at around three billion."

The woman nodded, looking thoughtful. "It could spot every Diablo?" She asked.

"It would. Unless the signal is blocked by something electrical. It would be able to spot the ones in the landfills no matter how deep they're buried, and it would be able to spot the ones in the oceans no matter how far down they are."

"At any point on the earth's surface?" Dr. Betty Director inquired.

Ron nodded. "The sensor array would be moveable. But only slowly. It would take around two months to scan the entire surface. But it could do so repeatedly for fifty years."

"And the minor flaw?" The woman asked.

"Given it would have to be a thousand kilometers up and trying to keep the price reasonable..."

"Six billion reasonable?" Dr. Betty Director interrupted, with a slight smile.

"That's the worst case." Ron answered, gulping.

"Continue." She instructed him.

"The minor flaw is at the range the array would need to operate it would only be able to pinpoint a Diablo within a hundred meter radius. You would still have to send an agent to each area and have them cover the ground with a smaller scanner. It would take around an hour of good walking to do that. But that's better than wandering around aimlessly. They would know there were Diablos in the area, and how many."

"How long to build, assuming unlimited resources?" She asked.

Ron shrugged and looked at Wade.

"Around a year. The design is pretty basic so only minor testing would be needed. Companies already exist that would provide the materials in the needed quantities." The genius answered.

"You agree with the cost?" Dr. Betty Director asked.

"It would be within the range he specified. Three billion is probably pretty close."

"And it would do what he claims?"

"It would." Wade said.

"We have ten thousand agents working to collect those dolls." The woman said. "At a hundred thousand each, plus transportation costs, plus medical cost for those hurt, plus a ton of other costs it takes us..." She took a deep breath. "Two billion dollars a year to keep up the search for them. And it's estimated it would take twenty years to find just ninety-six percent of them. I will approve the array."

She looked thoughtful. "Actually I will call the agents off the search until it's built. In a year they might find a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand. Two weeks work when the array is operational. In the meantime I will just need to make sure no villains get too many of them."

The communicator Melissa carried beeped. She answered it and listened. Shego might be the head of the team but she had appointed Melissa communications officer who filtered out the important calls from the not so important calls.

"Really." Melissa cried into the machine.

Shego started to pay attention. Whatever it was, the news almost had Melissa on the brink of tears.

The woman put the communicator away. "We don't have to look for the dolls any more." She cried.

Shego blinked. "Party at my place tonight then. This we got to celebrate." She sat down on the muddy ground and looked at the Diablo she had just collected from a four year old kid. It hadn't been easy. She wondered if the little girl was still crying. And just why did kids love these dolls. "They say why?" She asked.

"They're building a device that will be able to scan the entire globe for them. It will take a year to build." She paused. "So we will have to look for them again once it's built. But for now we don't have to." She sat down beside Shego.

Ron wandered back to where DNAmy was working on Jenny. Wade and Drakken would take over building the Diablo Array as they had started calling it. He looked around. DNAmy was still running test after test, mumbling to herself. Kim was sitting in a chair watching. The redhead had been spending a lot of time watching the girl lately.

He sat down beside her. "What you thinking?" He asked.

"Just how close I ended up being like her." She admitted.

"You didn't though." He pointed out.

"No. I got lucky. My mother was a brain surgeon working at a major hospital. She had the ability to test me for genetic diseases that showed the alien DNA. And she had the ability to find someone who could work a miracle. The only person in the world who could have fixed me."

"Guess that makes you lucky. That's what you should be focusing on."

"I guess. I got fixed so not only didn't I end up like her, I gained strength and speed a normal person could never hope to have. Instead of mutilating people I made good friends. " She smiled at him and continued. "Was cursed with the tweebs." Her tone was filled with love for the two. "Got the best parents in the world. And I'm dating someone I love."

"Sounds pretty good." He told her.

"Yeah. My life has been so close to perfect I can't imagine how it could have been any better." She looked at the girl. "I wonder if once the alien part is gone if she will be normal. Or if she will still be a psychotic killer."

"Normal." Ron answered. "If she can get over what she was used for."

"How do you know?"

He shrugged. "I can't say for sure. But all DNAmy did was remove the alien DNA from you and you turned out pretty good. So I don't think the aliens messed with her mind too much on a genetic level. She won't be a psychotic killer unless she's been broken by all that she's seen and done." He took a deep breath, thinking. "Of course that's just speculation."

Kim leaned back in her seat. "Guess we will see in a week or so."

"Yeah." He leaned back, sitting beside her. He watched the girl. Will she be able to cope with what she had done, he wondered.

Shego watched the Buffoon meditate. She'd learned he had had something to do with saving her from having to fight four year old kids for dolls. At least for the next year or so. She thought he deserved a reward for that. She sat back thinking. It wasn't as though they could improve upon the sex they had. It was already perfect. But she could try. She waited for his meditating to end.

End of Chapter.

Jenny has a chance at being herself, instead of being a human/alien combination.

Ron just one upped Drakken on largest machine built.

It seems Shego has a year off from Diablo hunting.

And the night will be extra special for Ron and Shego.