I do NOT own Kim Possible

Time: The next day.

Cheeseburgers,... Death Sentence,... The Alien Language,... Suicide

She watched as he gobbled down another cheeseburger. She had meant to keep count, but she figured she might need a better education in order to count that high. Well, maybe I'm slightly exaggerating there, she thought to herself. But just slightly. Given she had mutilated her family, and runaway from home, when she was twelve she only had most of grade seven. And even there she had purposefully trashed her marks since it had annoyed her mother and father. The something inside had liked even that sort of misery. It had hurt her to hurt them like that, and the something inside had liked that as well. She sighed and lifted her arms carefully, with an exaggerated slowness, to take another bite out of her own cheeseburger.

It didn't take much to exceed five kilometers per hour. She had learned that pretty fast when he had started taking her out to lunch. It was equivalent to three miles per hour, which was what she would normally walk at. But in her rush to get to the cafeteria where Miranda worked, and get to away from that room, she had exceeded that a few times, with the predictable consequences of ending up asleep. She really did have those devices he talked about in her body. She watched as he took another cheeseburger and mentally counted seven. She saw Shego take another and mentally counted six.

Ron watched as Jenny nibbled on her second cheeseburger, trying to delay having to return to her room. He doubted anyone could blame her for that. If he had been stuck in a place like that for so long he would have tried to breakout long ago. Being restrained so much couldn't be good for her moral. He gave a silent sigh and turned to look at Shego. She was watching the girl too. From her expression he decided her thoughts pretty much echoed his own. She looked slightly mad.

Finished with her second cheeseburger she started on the salad that she had to eat. It wasn't that it tasted bad. It was actually kind of good. But something in her just wanted to rebel against having to eat something green. She would have preferred something else, or even skipping it altogether. She sighed and used the fork, that was practically nothing but cardboard, to take a bite. She sighed again and turned her thoughts elsewhere. She had asked her sister how their parents were doing and had been told they were okay. Getting more information had been a chore, but she had got her sister to talk about them a little bit. After what had happened things had been pretty bad and her sister was sure they'd only remained together for her sake. To be there to help her deal with the trauma.

Her parents had fully healed after what she'd done to them. Physically anyway. But when her sister had asked if they wanted to see their youngest daughter again they'd said no. They never wanted to see her again. She clenched her jaws as she recalled that and forced herself not to cry. She took another bite of salad. It was good. It was a miracle that her sister still cared. It was too much to have hoped for more.

Ron and Shego watched the prisoner as they marched her to her room. They looked at each other and he saw Shego was still mad. But then so was he. They turned into her room and he heard her sigh.

Enough is enough, he told himself. "You know what will happen if you leave the room." He told her. "Right?"

She nodded.

"I'll ask Wade to have one of his old laptops delivered to you. You will be able to play games, and even send emails to your sister. Okay?"

She blinked as she realized she wasn't going to be strapped down again.

"Just don't do anything stupid okay? You don't want to hurt anyone, right?" He asked. "Well imagine how much Shego and I would be hurt if you died. Or Kim and Mark. Or Miranda for that matter." He stared at her.

"Okay." She answered quietly.

"And since I'm the one about to get into a fight with Dr. Betty Director over this, I would be really hurt if you did something stupid." He told her. "It would be my fault." He stared her in the eye.

She thought on that. "I won't." She promised, swallowing.

He smiled at her. "Good."

She watched as they turned and left. Looking around the room she didn't know what to do. She carefully stretched and started walking around the bed. An hour later she was still slowly walking. It felt good. It had been so long since she'd walked further than to the cafeteria and back. She was midway into her second hour of just walking when Miranda bounced in with a laptop. There was a sticky note on it with her sister's email.

"Can I watch the fight?" Shego asked. "It's going to be epic."

Ron sighed. "That's one way of putting it. But the way I see it, being strapped down is just making her more depressed."

"No argument there from me. I would have tried escaping ages ago."

"Me too." Ron admitted.

As it turned out Dr. Betty Director had more important issues on her mind than whether one child was being properly restrained or not. She didn't even blink at the notification that Jenny was free to wander her room.

"Watch." She simply said. "This is data recorded from the display in the Lorwardian ship from what you claim to be the navigation console." She pushed a few buttons and the wall to their left starting showing the data. "Of course." She added. "Every Global Justice agent who isn't an idiot agrees it's the navigation display. Only Will Du disagreed."

They watched the display. It was obvious what it was. In the lower left corner there was a picture of the earth. There was red haze on the image of the planet that had taken Ron all of two minutes to figure out. It showed how densely populated an area was. In the larger display behind it there was a yellow ball at the center with several lines around it showing the orbits of the major planets. Small balls marked where those planets currently were in their orbits.

"What does Will Du think it is?" Ron asked, cringing. He had to ask, but it was pretty obviously the display showed the solar system.

"You don't want to know." Dr. Betty Director said. "But if you insist." She took a deep breath. "He thinks they're planning to colonize the earth and the area formed by each circle shows the population they expect to reach in different stages of colonization."

"Oh." Ron shrugged. "At least he's very imaginative."

"Hrmph." The woman responded.

The display changed and a new object marked in orange appeared on the display. Ron felt his heart skip a beat. He watched for a while with Shego beside him.

"It's another ship, isn't it?" She asked.

"Yeah. Most likely. Ron answered. "The speed at which it's moving pretty much means it's artificial, and its path intersects with the earth." He sighed. "Damn. This isn't good." He saidnquietly, as though a death sentence had been pronounced on him. In effect it had. On him, and the entire world.

"Suggestions?" Dr. Betty Director asked.

"Find out how to operate the ship we have and fight, or hide it. If they see it empty they will just wipe us out, no questions asked."

"Why would hiding it work?" The head of Global Justice inquired.

"Stardrives it seems are pretty fragile. They break down a lot and can't be operated close to a gravity well. If they don't see the ship they will just figure its engines broke down and it's being repaired somewhere between here and wherever it came from." He'd spent a lot of time talking things over with Sensei the night before. That was how the AeAeOiOi and TiRGiTBiT's stardrive had worked. They had developed the same method of faster-than-light travel and as far as they knew it was how the Lorwardian's stardrive worked. The mechanical principles they didn't know, but knowing ships broke down a lot had been common knowledge.

Dr. Betty Director sighed. "Of course neither option is feasible." She said. "We don't how to move it, or even if it hasn't already called the new ship and given them the complete picture." She'd heard what Ron had learned about the AeAeOiOi and TiRGiTBiT the day before from his report. "How were those two races wiped out?" She asked. "They had an interstellar empire."

"But they weren't equipped for war." Ron answered. "Which has the better sensors. A civilian aircraft or a military one. The Lorwardians had the equivalent of military ones while the other two had civilian ones. It was simple for the Lorwardians to remain out of sensor range of the AeAeOiOi and TiRGiTBiT and just follow their ships. That gave them a complete layout of their whole empire. When they had it mapped they sent a warship to each system. Once again there were no defenses. They just dropped the equivalent of a doomsday weapon on each world and waited. When ships arrived they destroyed them. Their races died without even being given the opportunity to fight back. A few ships designed to spend decades in space were all that was left. They made the probes that sent the WOW-2 and WOW-3 signals and ran until they were hunted down."

"Yet you thought we had a chance?"

"If we'd had twenty years to work with, like I had expected, then yes. The hulls of their ships are tough but not impossible to destroy. Plus we had one of their ships to tell us when another one was approaching. The planetary defense array I mentioned would have been able to handle one ship. Then, given the distance to their home world we would have had decades more to work with before any more ships arrived."

"The planetary defense array." Dr. Betty Director mused to herself. The captured ship would have told them when another one approached. A scanner, not too different from the Diablo Array would have watched it. From collisions with space debris that sensor would have told them how the barrier around the new ship was configured. Earth used a lot of power. It needed to with seven billion people. Each power plant equipped with a microwave relay would have beamed power to a point in space where it would have destroyed the alien vessel. Configured to match the wavelength of the ship's barrier it would have passed right through. And that much energy would have destroyed just about anything. It was something they wouldn't have time to construct.

"I wonder if they will land." Shego said.

"Maybe." Ron said. "They might want to retrieve the Lorwardians that were in those girls. But they will be ready, and if we killed those that land they will just wipe out the earth."

"No chance to repeat the same trick?" She asked.

"Doubt it. They would be more cautious." He sighed and studied the display. "Around two weeks before they get here." He said, dismay in his voice. "If we'd managed to crack their language or reverse-engineer their technology,..." He shrugged. "Then we might have been able to do something."

"Suggestion?" Dr. Betty Director asked again.

"Since the ship we got isn't moving it isn't using as much energy. They might not have spotted it yet. If we could hide it we might be able to repeat what we did before. But that's only assuming they haven't spotted it." He shrugged. "For all we know they might be in communication with it and know everything."

He and Shego turned and left Dr. Betty's Office.

"No children. I guess." Shego said. She touched her stomach.

"No." Ron answered. "If only we'd figured something out. Or had had more time."

Shego reach over and took his hand. "We still got two weeks."

"Two weeks to do what though?" He racked his brains and came up empty. He gently squeezed the hand holding his.

She felt the drugs in her system decline and focused her mind to pin the banshee. Mentally she sighed. It took so much effort, so much energy. She stood in the place of the tainted light and saw Snake waiting for her.

"Think of the one called Ron." Snake told her.

She did so and a second later Ron and the one called Sensei appeared within the center of her being.

Ron looked around. This place was so different from his center. The light was golden, but it was tainted. He guessed that was from the banshee. The golden light would be beautiful it not for the darkness within it. He turned to Snake and Willow. "You said you had an idea you wanted to try?" He asked.

Willow nodded. "It was something I wanted to try before but Snake never allowed it. I can access the mind of the banshee the same way I can access my legs when it's controlling me. Through the involuntary nerves. Or I can at least try."

"No!" Snake said. "You would enter the mind of a monster, Willow! It could destroy your own mind!"

"But information is what we need on them right?" Willow insisted. "And this might be the only chance. Direct access to the mind of a banshee."

"But you would risk your own sanity. Maybe even your life." Snake told her, sadly. A tear appeared and slid down one cheek. Her pupil was headstrong. Now that she knew the seriousness of the situation she would do what she thought best.

Willow stared. She had never seen Snake cry before.

"In two weeks another ship will arrive. We have no way to fight it." Ron said. "It will wipe clean all life on this world."

Snake turned and stared. "Then there is no choice." She admitted, her voice heavy with defeat.

Willow smiled. "Snake." She said, stepping forward to hug her mentor. "Whatever happens, thank you for giving me a chance to live. To avoid being a monster."

Snake sighed. "You studied so hard and learned what would take most a decade. No teacher could be more proud."

"I will try it before my energy runs low." Willow said. She sat down and created a metaphysical image of her being. Studying it she saw where the banshee's mind connected to her own. Reaching out she sent impulses through those nerves and waited to see what she would get back.

Emotions that had no human equivalent, that no human language could even begin to describe, assaulted her and she screamed a howl of terror. The world around her went black for a few seconds and she was back in the center of her being, thrashing on the floor. Snake was holding her.

"That didn't go too well." She admitted. Turning she studied the metaphysical image one again.

"Wait." Ron said. He stepped up beside the girl and studied the image she had created. It was in her mind and beyond his touch, but he could see it. "Which section did you try to access?" He asked.

She pointed at a small section on the lower part of her brain. "Was going to start low and work my way up." She said, voice shaking.

"That in humans is a very old part of the brain." He said, recalling what he had learned from Wade years ago when they had studied Rufus' brain. "Fear would probably be a major component of it even within a normal human brain. Goodness knows what the alien equivalent would be."

She shivered and said. "Trust me. Nothing good." She felt herself cry and wiped the tears away. "But then I knew that. Snake taught me. Stupid mistake on my part."

He studied the brain. "The banshee can create images in your mind right?"

She nodded.

"He pointed. This area, called the Broca, is associated with language. That might be a good area to try." He looked at her. "If you're willing that is."

She nodded again and readied herself. She reached out and tried to send impulses through the nerves connecting her language centers to the alien mind. It went a bit better, but all she heard were noises along with the occasional visual image. She backed out. "Just noise, but not random. Sounds like it means something. I just don't know what it is."

"Hrm." Ron said. "Can you try two pathways at once?"

"If I really concentrate. Won't be able to manage it for long."

"Try both the visual and the language parts of the brain."

She did so. The sensation was indescribably strange and she felt like throwing up. Images started flashing past her eyes and there was strange sounds associated with them. What they meant she had no idea. She wondered how to translate them into English and it seemed the alien brain understood the command. Suddenly the images had the English equivalent associated with them. The language was weird. No words for mercy, compassion, love,... She started to grasp just how the alien language was constructed when she blacked out again and awoke in the center of her being once more. She retched, wanting to throw up, even though she couldn't in this place. It was just a mental image and she had no real body to throw up with. Being inside the alien mind was disturbing. It was the mind of a monster and while she had been inside it she had been very much aware of that. It was sickening. She squashed the need to throw up and looked around. Snake was again holding her.

You okay?" Ron asked just as Snake asked the same question?

She nodded. "Just a sick feeling. Disturbing, but it's just a feeling." She described what she had seen.

"I can see the written language with an English translation." She said. "But I can't hold it very long. Their language is weird. It seems all I got to do is access the brain and ask it what I want to know. But while I'm doing it I can feel stuff from it. Not very nice stuff."

"Interesting." Ron mused. Then it struck him. "You know, there are control circuits built into your brain that the alien uses to try and control you. I bet it works in reverse. From this place you can order the alien's brain just as it can yours. Just access the pathways again and visualize a command asking for a translation of its written language translated to English. Have it go through the alphabet it uses."

"Low energy, but I can make one more attempt." She took a deep breath and accessed the same pathways again, braced herself for the sick feeling she would experience, and sent the command. 'What is the alphabet that makes up the Lorwardian language.' Twelve symbols appeared in her mind. They were the basis of the language. 'Show me words of the language at two per second with the English translation.' She ordered. Images appeared in her mind, flashing past. She studied them, absorbing them. Then she started to feel weak and decided to end the language lesson.

Suddenly new strength flowed into her and she continued the lesson. Symbol after symbol passed through mind with english translations. Within her mind she could control time, making fifteen minutes outside appear like two hours inside. Thinking she ordered the symbols to pass at eight per second. They passed before her eyes at one per second and she let the information flow into her. In the outside world it would be at a rate of eight per second. A student of Tai Shing Pek Kwar had perfect recall and one second per symbol was plenty of time to absorb the translation. Suppressing the need to be sick she continued to study the symbols and their translations.

She wasn't sure how long the information flow took but eventually it faded. She felt the strength that supported her failing, but she had one last instruction. "Show me how the Lorwardian sentence structure works.' The information flowed into her brain and she blacked out. When she came too she was awake, no longer even able to remain within the center of her being. There was vomit around her. "Drugs." She screamed as the banshee poured compulsion after compulsion into her.

Ron stood, barely able to stand and shakily twisted a knob on the the IV. Willow was thrashing in the bed, trying to get free. A few seconds later and she was back asleep. He sighed and looked at the times. Over two hours had passed. Sensei had taught him how to transfer his own energy to Willow using him and Snake as a portal. It had been draining.

He looked around to see Shego and Kim staring at him with worried expressions on their face. "Just exhausted." He said and sank to the floor, asleep.

He awoke ten hours later, somewhat refreshed. He looked around to see he was in a Global Justice hospital bed with both Shego and Kim sitting in nearly chairs. He sighed and sat up.

"Is Willow okay?" He asked.

"Ron?" Shego said immediately, stepping up beside the bed to lean over him.

"It's okay." He smiled at her, hoping to ease the worried looked on her face. "Is Willow okay?" He asked again.

"She's asleep." Shego said, looking him over. The worried expression didn't fade.

Ron smiled at her again, reaching out to take her hand. "I'm okay." He told her again. "She took all the risks." He stood up. His energy was only halfway restored, but he needed to know what Willow had learned. She had spent a long time within the alien's mind. Long enough that he thought she must have learned something. "Going to give it another try." He said.

"You sure." She asked, wanted to stop him. Also knowing it was futile to try. She sighed.

"I'm okay." He reassured her. "And no more experimenting for today." He promised. "Just want to talk to her." He walked back to Willow's room with both Shego and Kim following him. Both wore identical expressions of worry. There wasn't much that could knock out someone with comet powers for ten hours, so he guessed worry on their part was expected.

An hour later the drugs in Willow's system was again lowered to the point where she was near waking up. Sitting he entered the cyan light that was the center of his being and waited. Minutes later he was in the tainted golden light that formed Willow's center of being.

"Think I got something." She said immediately.

He studied her. Her image was pale and sickly looking.

"You okay?" He asked.

She nodded. "My system took a beating and it's not something I should risk again anytime soon." She shuddered. "That mind is sick. Just being in it is enough to make a person want to lie down and die." She took a deep breath and, as she felt the banshee stir, pinned it. "But I did get something. I had it show me all the words in its language. As you know we members of the Tai Shing Pek Kwar clan have really good memories." She grinned at him. "I recall it all."

He blinked. "You can read their language?"

She nodded. "Sort of. As you probably know it will take practice for me to read it with any great speed. But I can."

He nodded. "Yeah. We can absorb information pretty fast, but we still need practice for it to become natural to us." He studied the girl again. The pale sickly look was fading. "Describe it."

"They use squares to hold the symbols. Each symbol is such that it can be placed in the square without blocking any of the others. There are three horizontal lines. An upper line is one symbol, one through the center is another, a lower line is a third symbol. It's the same with three vertical lines. That's three more symbols. The same goes for the diagonal. Three lines slanting down from left to right, and three slanting down from right to left. Twelve lines that depending on their position within a square defines what symbol it is. No word uses the same symbol twice and they just write them all in one square." She paused to take a breath. "It's a lot like being able to write all the letters of an english word on top of each other and still being able to read it. Weird."

"What does the size of the squares represent?"

"The smaller the square the more important it is. Again the opposite of what we would do. I think to them having it smaller means they got to focus more attention on it to read it, hence a greater significance."

"Color?"

"Signifies amount. The darker the shade the greater the amount. They have numbers but if they were to spell the word Lorwardian in their own language in a light shade it would signify a young person without giving a specific age. A darker shade would signify someone older, but once again there would be no exact age. It would be like saying a Lorwardian with a few years, or a Lorwardian with a lot of years."

"What order are the symbols read in?"

"From the lower left upwards."

He grinned. "Okay. Now to get that Lorwardian out of you and get you to write down all you know about this language." He smiled at her. "Ready to say goodbye to that banshee?"

"Definitely." She said, with an eagerness that would have been funny if not for the seriousness with which she said it.

They parted and he returned to his own center of being. There he ended his meditation and returned to the real world. Standing he was pleased to note DNAmy had joined them. "Get ready to separate them." He said. "She did good. She managed to access its mind and learn their language."

Sleepily it struggled to moved, to command the camouflage that refused to obey. It was frustrating. There were even times when the mind of the pest seemed to disappear. That it could do that was impossible. But there could be no excuses. When it returned to its own kind it would be given a very low status. It had failed to fulfill even one of the two goals it had been given and had even been dominated by its own camouflage. It was vaguely aware of what was going on around it and heard one of the pests mention the girl, meaning the pest it wore as camouflage, had accessed its mind and learned the language.

If it had been able to move it would have screamed in fear. There was no way a pest could do that. It was beyond impossible. But then maybe that was where it went when it disappeared. Maybe it was using the control circuits to access its mind. That was impossible, but then the pest who had said those words seemed able to communicate with the camouflage without words. They were not ordinary pests.

And it didn't matter. Even if there was one chance in a billion the pest had learned the Lorwardian language it had to die. When each Lorwardian was created they had that imperative burned into their minds - to never allow a pest to learn the true language. It couldn't disobey that command. It reached inside itself and ordered its body and, since they were linked, that of the camouflage to die. Poisons poured through its veins and it shrieked in pain. It would be slow and painful. Even the agony of another Lorwardian was joy to its own kind.

Ron was watching DNAmy warm up the machine when Willow shrieked. A cry that was half human and half like the immature Lorwardians they had killed. He turned to stare. She was lashing about in the bed, screaming in agony. That she was dying was obvious.

He started to undo her restraints even as Shego and Kim moved to stop stop him. "We've got to separate them now or she dies." He screamed and, lifting her from the bed, ran for the mutator. He placed her inside and closed the door.

Turning he spotted DNAmy at worked. That was the benefit of working with villains. They were always prepared for raids by heroes, or Global Justice, and that meant they were able to think quickly when they needed to. "Locate any abnormal chemi..."

"I know." DNAmy said, interrupting him. The girl was dying and the most likely cause was a poison released by the alien. She had to locate it and instruct the machine to keep that poison in the alien. But time was short. She might be a mad geneticist but she wasn't stupid. The one minute usually required to recalibrate the machine was due to running the process three times and cross checking the results. She set it to run once and the heck with cross checking. "Recalibration complete." She said twenty seconds later.

Hitting a few buttons she said. "Scanning DNA." Once again it was usually done in triplicate. She set it to run once. Comparing the results with the two other girls she had separated from aliens she detected an unknown chemical and instructed the machine to place it with the alien. Then she hit the button to run the separation process. All the time she was aware of the soul shattering screams coming from the mutator.

The four of them turned to watch as the machine lit up and ran through the process of separating the girl from the alien. When it stopped Ron opened the door without waiting for DNAmy's okay. Inside her saw a deathly still Willow and a thrashing alien that was in extreme agony. Its shrieking ripped through him. He grabbed Willow and pulled her out of the chamber. Luckily the alien, in its thrashing, had not hit her. He closed the door and carried her back to her bed. The alien he ignored, it was obviously dying.

She scream and tried to focus on the center of her being, but in her agony she couldn't focus. Couldn't call to snake. She was slowly dying. Then after what seemed like an eternity the pain faded and she stood in a golden light. For a brief second she turned around and stared. It was golden, not tainted. It was beautiful.

"Stare later." Snake ordered. "Look to your body."

She created a metaphysical image of her body and stared at the damage. Something had destroyed whole patches of cells and she felt fear as she studied it closer. She saw the blood to her brain was blocked and wondered how it had happened.

"You did that even though you couldn't access this place." Snake said, guessing her question from the way she stared at the blockage. "The alien released a poison and it would have damaged your brain if not for that. But for now you should remove it."

Willow reached out and ordered her blood to flow properly again. "Poison?" She asked.

"I think it tried to commit suicide." Snake said. "It was dying too."

"Why?" She asked.

"Don't know." Snake answered. "Now focus."

"It's okay." Willow answered. "A lot of cells died but nothing vital. I was just startled to see so much of me pretty much dead. But I guess their love of killing stuff slowly, and with great pain, worked to my advantage. The poison was so slow it only did superficial damage. I just need to make sure the veins and arteries are okay and it can be left to heal on its own."

She went to work and after an hour had made sure her body, though damaged, would heal. Then she placed herself into a deep sleep to speed the process.

End of Chapter.

Describing the plans Ron had hoped to develop for handling a second ship, plus the alien language, probably gets a bit too technical? Difficult to follow? Two things I wanted to describe, but I probably didn't do it well. The language had to be described. Just saying they learned the language without giving details would have been lacking in some way.

At least now they have someone who knows the language. But do they have time to make use of it. Two weeks isn't long.

And Jenny has graduated from being restrained to having the whole room to roam in. Not much, but still an improvement.

The last alien has been removed from its camouflage.