Kim's pulse quickened as her teeth began to grind in anger.
The slim, pallid hand continued to gesture, teasingly and mockingly through the window of Kim's bedroom, for them to come on up.
Come on up...and then what?
"I can save the world" thought Kim, "and yet I can't even protect my own home?"
All of the evening's chaos, it seemed, had let up to this one, crucial moment.
And then, she finally snapped.
"This...ends...right...now..." snarled Kim in a frightening tone that neither Ron or even her own brothers had ever heard before. "I've had enough of this shit."
Her green eyes blazing with enmity, she stomped towards her front door, finally throwing all matters of caution to the wind and preparing herself to kick some prowler ass and take some prowler names.
"K-Kim, wait!" cried Ron desperately from somewhere behind her, but she barely heard him, the blood pumping rapidly through her veins seemingly giving her tunnel vision and shutting out all unnecessary interference. She thought she could also hear her brothers calling out her name as well, but that too was ignored and then tossed aside.
"This is OUR house" she growled. "Not to mention, MY room...so just GET THE HELL OUT!"
In an instant, she had crossed the threshold and marched into the thick shadows of the foyer, and then before she knew it, she had reached the top of the stairs, not even bothering to avoid the spots on the floor that creaked and groaned when stepped on.
Down the hall. And then around the dark, dreadful corner where the cold wind was still blowing through the open window, her mother's curtains still dancing eerily on the swiftly flowing current of air.
Far off in the distance, she could hear a deep, booming roll of thunder that not even the thick, sound-muffling mist could block out. Ominous foreshadowing, perhaps? Honestly, who the hell even cared anymore.
Even in the pitch dark, she still managed to make her way down the hall without a single trip or a misstep, as if she was being guided by some hidden, sixth sense that had suddenly kicked in when she had finally reached her breaking point.
At last, she reached the last door on the left at the end of the hallway - her bedroom. She tried flicking the hallway lightswitch, but as expected, the power was still dead.
No matter. NOTHING would stop her from flushing out whatever malicious bastard had been tormenting them that night.
The door was shut. And yet without a moment's hesitation or even a thought for her own safety, she gripped the knob and violently turned it, throwing the door to her bedroom wide open with a loud *BANG* as it struck the metallic spring doorstop.
"ALRIGHT!" she exploded, yelling into the black void before her, "COME ON OUT!"
No answer.
"I SAID COME OUT!" she roared again. "I KNOW THERE'S SOMEONE IN HERE!"
Still, no answer.
"HEY, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO MOTIONED FOR ME TO COME UP!" she bellowed. "WELL, HERE I AM! WHAT'S WRONG? YOU'RE NOT SCARED, ARE YOU?!"
All was quiet. Until...
*HISSSSSSSSSSSS*
"KNOCK IT OFF, ALREADY!" yelled Kim, showing absolutely no sign of fear or even anxiety. "YOU'RE NOT A SNAKE!"
Once again, Ron and the tweebs had silently and discreetly followed behind Kim - Ron was standing timidly just a few paces back from Kim (goggle-eyed, chewing his nails and looking terrified, as was his wont), while the twins were busy with the fuse box just around the corner of the hallway; having grabbed their Dad's toolkit while downstairs, they were quickly trying to get the electricity back, if only so Kim could actually SEE who (or what) she was fighting against.
"Okay!" whispered Tim, "Tab A-3000984 is almost ready!"
Jim nodded. "And slot B-5892284 is just about-"
"ENOUGH WITH YOUR STUPID NOISES! YOU DON'T SCARE ANYONE!" they heard Kim roar, wincing and nearly dropping their tools in shock.
"Wow..." they whispered, as their big sister violently ranted and raved at their unknown intruder with the force of a category-5 hurricane. Sure, they had seen Kim lose control and get angry before (and it was usually pretty funny, too)...but NEVER like THIS. Even Ron, who had borne witness to more than one meltdown from Kim, was completely taken aback by her unrestrained blasts of naked rage in the ugly faces of danger and the unknown.
"W-well.." he thought, with an audible gulp and a trail of sweat on his brow, "I'll remember to NEVER ever make you mad again, KP...sorry I made fun of your movie knowledge...heh heh...WOWEEEEEE..."
The twins paused for a second, listening intently to Kim's tirades and pondering whether or not they should take down their aforementioned webcomic, before suddenly coming back to their senses.
"L-let's hurry!" said Tim.
"R-right!" said Jim, both of them feeling the pressure to get the lights turned on as soon as they possibly could.
But even then, in spite of Kim's outrageous verbal venom, aside from the feral hissing noises, there was still no answer from the darkened room. Just nothing but cold, empty silence.
She took a step into her room She couldn't see a thing. And she didn't care.
"I'm coming in here..." Kim spoke softly in a tone that dripped with cold, yet burning hostility, "and I am taking you down..."
"Good evening, Miss Possible" answered a low, sultry, young woman's voice.
Quick as lightning, Kim assumed a Pang Lang Quan Kung Fu fighting stance - the same one that her Nana had taught her so many years ago - the cords of her muscles as strong and taut as steel wires as her adrenaline burned like magma.
The red eyes suddenly materialized from the coal-black shadows and blazed to hideous life, now appearing MUCH larger than the tiny pinpoints they had previously seen through the window.
"Yes, I DO believe that the time for these silly children's games has come to an end" continued the low seductive voice, as the hellish crimson eyes approached closer and closer to Kim. "Let us get down to business, shall we?"
Kim, despite everything she had been through that night, was actually beginning to smile (if only for a chance to take her aggression out on the individual who was actually dumb enough to trespass into THE Kim Possible's bedroom.)
"Look, I don't know who, or WHAT you are, and I don't really care either!" shouted Kim with rock-solid confidence and a self-assured grin, as the glaring eyes slowly advanced upon her. "If you're here to hurt us or rob us, then I'm afraid you're out of luck. Because the ONLY things you'll be leaving here with tonight are broken bones, permanent brain damage and excessive blood loss!"
"Blood loss?" asked the voice in a pleasing, sublime tone. "My goodness, how utterly ghastly..."
"Annnnnnnd, here we go!" cried Tim in triumph as he and Jim connected the final two wires, their genius engineering work having been completed in less than a minute. All of the lights in the house - ceiling lights, lamps and digital clocks - flickered several times, almost like a series of strobe lights, and then came on all at once, the normally soft and pleasant illumination feeling painfully blinding to their eyes after having been in the dark for so long.
"HOOSHA!" they shouted, with a jovial high-five.
"BOO-YA!" howled Ron with an aggressive fist-pump, his paralyzing sense of fear seemingly vaporized beneath the friendly glow of the ceiling lights. "Chalk one up for the good guys!"
"Mission accomplished!" cried Tim and Jim as they bounded down the hall and joined up with Ron in a three-way fist bump. "Now let's see the dumb loser who busted into our house!"
"Hey bright-eyes, why doncha' come on out!" taunted Ron with crossed arms and a smug expression, (falsely) assuming that Kim had the sitch under control. "Well, judging by your bug-eyed peepers and your spoooooooooooky hiss, you're obviously...w-wait...your name isn't...GILL, is it?
"...who?" asked the twins, puzzled.
No answer came.
"...W-well, good!" continued Ron, his bravado returning to maximum. "Anyway, you're OBVIOUSLY some kind of genetic freak who fell into a life of crime. And ya know what? Crime...doesn't...pay. It...just...doesn't!"
"Laying it on kinda' thick, man" thought Tim.
"So get ready, freakazoid" continued Ron, really on a roll, "to spend the REST of YOUR life behind bars in some mutant zoo, where everyone will point and stare and throw peanuts and yell "Oh my God, what is thaaaaaaat?!"
"Or...or...the science lab!" laughed Tim.
"Yeah!" laughed Jim, "and then you'll be force-fed raw meat, experimented on, pumped full of weird chemicals and then have a bunch of plastic tubes shoved up your b-"
"WHOA, NO JIM!" cried Ron, shaking his head. "That's just sick and WRONG, my dude! SICK...AND...WRONG!"
At that moment, Kim slowly backed out of her bedroom, her face NOT wearing an expression of victory, but equal parts fear, panic and shock.
"So KP, has the trespasser been soundly thrashed? asked Ron, ignorant of Kim's haunted expression. "Ha ha, I'd HATE to see the look on his fa-"
"You guys...back up...j-just back up..." she whispered.
"What, why?" asked Ron. "Is he, like, really fat or somethi-"
"Just BACK UP!" she shouted.
At that very second, their intruder slowly walked through Kim's bedroom door and into the full light of the hallway, finally in plain view for all to clearly see.
Now they understood why Kim looked the way she did.
All four of their faces fell, the lot of them feeling as though they had just swallowed a bucket of ice.
Wade guzzled down a mouthful of soda as he continued working feverishly at his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard like a virtuoso guitar player burning over the frets.
From the information he had gathered, there had been two violent abductions earlier that evening in Middleton, and each time, there had been a long black limousine parked out in front of the victim's residence. And not only that, but ever since the thick gray miasma had settled over the entire city (the local weathermen and meteorologists were at a TOTAL loss), there had been innumerable reports flying in of strange, otherworldly occurrences happening all over the place. Scary faces peering through windows, scratching at the doors, objects moving around by themselves, eerie disembodied voices and wild, cackling howls of laughter coming out of nowhere.
"It's like 'Ghostbusters' out there, or something!" said Wade, as he continued typing. "Man, I'll bet Ron's just LOVING this...or NOT...", as Wade knew firsthand just how skittish Ron could be when encountering anything the least bit scary.
"I wonder..." he muttered out loud, "I wonder...if the police reached Kim and the others by now...unless...their hands were already full-"
Suddenly, with a flurry of crashing noise, various objects in Wade's room began to fly around on their own accord; books, papers, electrical equipment and empty cups went soaring through the air, some of them just BARELY missing Wade's head, as his window and bedroom door then began to repeatedly open and shut by themselves.
"YIKES!" he cried out, jumping from his chair and spilling his bucket-sized cup of soda all over himself. "This is SO not happening!" he shouted, his scientific genius mind COMPLETELY baffled over the bizarre phenomena taking place before him.
He heard a loud, booming crash downstairs.
"Oh...my...LORD?! he heard his mother caterwaul from the kitchen. "Wade! Honey, you won't believe this, but the bowl of cookie dough I was mixing just FLEW right outta my hands and into the wall! Ugh, what a MESS!"
"Guess the poltergeists don't like your cookies, either!" said Wade as he quickly tried to mop up the spilled soda with a "Pain King" beach towel, ducking just in time as his spare keyboard went sailing over his head.
At last, Kim, Ron, Tim and Jim had come face to face with their burglar.
However, their "burglar" was nothing like they had expected. Not even within a country mile.
Before them stood a young woman with highly - VERY highly - unusual features. She was EXTREMELY tall, taller even than Kim's father, who clocked in at a good six foot two, and her skin was extraordinarily pale - SO pale, in fact, that she made Drakken's complexion look like a three-hour session at the tanning salon. She was barefoot, with her abnormally long and sharp toenails and fingernails painted blood red, and her ample cleavage was covered by a white wrap of sorts that matched the VERY short skirt that was just barely preserving her modesty.
Her long, thick red hair was held up in a high bun, with elegantly-cut bangs falling around her sharp, angular face. An ornately-carved golden necklace was clasped around her throat, and two golden disc-shaped earrings dangled from her unusually long and pointed (almost elven-looking) ears. On her forehead appeared to be a simple tattoo of a golden, crescent moon. And then there were the eyes - glowing with a blazing, fiery red that oddly matched the same unearthly red of her full, plump lips.
Ron was the first one to notice that there was something extremely odd about this particular woman's lips:
The two sharp, white, needle-like fangs poking out from them.
Terror overcame Ron (again) and he began to babble in a long incoherent string of gibberish. "WHOA, no...oh boy, hoo boy, aww, humina humina HUMINA, whoa nelly, nope, no way, not...a...chance...OI! He quickly backed up against the wall and began to hyperventilate.
"And me without a paper bag..." thought Kim, with concern.
The mysterious woman placed her hands on her hips and then sized up the four of them, an unsettling, cruel, mocking smile playing about the corners of her lips, as if she considered them to be little more than insects before her.
Tim and Jim exchanged strange, worried glances.
"So very lovely to make your acquaintances, my darlings..." she spoke in a low, silky voice that was equal parts frightening and strangely soothing. Notwithstanding his panic, Ron felt a bit sleepy all of a sudden, his eyelids beginning to grow heavy from the musical sound of her voice.
"What's...what's your name?" asked Kim, her voice sharp with suspicion and wariness as she remained in her fighting stance. "You seem to know MINE."
The woman continued to smile but did not answer.
Kim was at a complete loss. Just who WAS this lady, anyway? And why was she even here tonight? And for THAT matter...WHAT was she?
Whatever she had broken into their house for, it likely wasn't for jewelry or cash...
"I don't like this at all..." thought Kim, as an extremely unsettling suspicion began to grow that she was dealing with a foe FAR beyond any of the enemies that she had ever faced before. Not someone who was simply bad, or villainous, but truly, unmistakably...undoubtedly...
...evil...
And of all the locations in the world for such a showdown to take place, it was happening in the upstairs hallway of her (supposedly) safe, suburban home.
The woman suddenly turned her attention to Ron (who seemed both afraid and yet oddly entranced by her) and then slowly strode over to meet him up close, swaying her shapely hips with her long, slow, stalking footsteps.
"Good evening, my lovely" she cooed in a sensual whisper as Ron shrank in fear before her. "May I inquire as to what you are addressed as?"
"...I...I...I...I...!" he squeaked.
"Charmed, I'm sure, Mr. I...I...I...I" she answered, cordially. "Would you be offended, Mr. I...I...I...I, if I let it slip that I find you VERY attractive?"
"What...the...HELL?" thought Kim, as her face went all wonky. If her brothers could have seen how she looked at that moment, they would have laughted until they choked.
Ron's eyes flew as wide as they could possibly go. "Ah...n-no...NO, I, uh, wouldn't be m-mad at all!" he stammered. "In fact, M-miss, I would be v-very flatter-"
"His name's RON!" Kim spat, as a strange stab of jealousy pierced her. "Not Mr. I...I...I...I!"
"I see..." answered the woman.
"Since we're, uh, ha ha ha...getting to know each other and all, ummmmm, what might YOUR name be, Miss?" asked Ron with a nervous smile.
"Oh, my love, I have had many, MANY names over the long, lonely years" she answered. "But THESE days...I go by Kali..." she answered in a warm timbre that curled Ron's toes.
"Oh, so she'll tell HIM what her name is, but not ME" muttered Kim, her annoyance suddenly overshadowing her fear.
"W-well, what're we g-gonna do tonight, M-Miss Kali?!" Ron asked, suddenly feeling strangely at ease.
"Mmmmmmm..." she purred, giving Ron warm, thrilling chills up and down his spine. "Time will tell..." she said.
Turning her gaze past Ron and Kim, she caught the terrified Tim and Jim in her transfixing vermillion glare. They couldn't move to save their lives.
"Goodness gracious, what an unexpected pleasure, you two!" she chimed, pleasantly. "So very WONDERFUL to see you both again!"
Kim started. "A-again? AGAIN?!" she cried, in surprise. "Tim! Jim! You mean you've actually MET this woman...this...KALI...before?"
"Uhhhh, sort of" answered Tim.
"Uh, yeah" said Jim.
"I am EXTREMELY grateful to your younger brothers, Miss Possible" said Kali, with a ravenous, wolf-like smile. "After all, I couldn't be here tonight without them...as THEY were the ones who invited me in!"