AN: Rated T for Teen. Kim Possible and related material property of the Walt Disney company. Batman and related material property DC Comics and Warner Brothers Animation.
"The Long Road Back"
By Eoraptor
There were no words.
Just a long, bone raking, gut wrenching, soul shattering scream. It came at exactly nine-forty-two am mountain standard time on April 14th, twenty twenty.. It didn't mean that the houses' occupants were prepared for it.
"Stars in Heaven!" the young fashionista looked up from where she was just finishing the breakfast dishes. "WITHWT?!"
The blonde young man set his book down and sighed, "That was the sound of ultimate suffering."
"Not Funny. And Not Cool." She scowled at him.
"I have to laugh…. Or I'll cry too." he shook his head. "What else is there?"
She supposed that was the only response she could expect or want from her fiance.
It had been a long three days.
A death watch.
She had been sick for a long time now. But when she told her beloved that she was done, there was nothing for it but to be there for them both. No more pills, no more shots, no more nurses or therapists or house calls that only someone with supervillain money could afford.
That was after fighting ovarian cancer for three years as hard as she had fought any enemy in her life.
It wasn't that she had given up. It was just… time.
The dark skinned beauty looked up at the ceiling. "Should we…?"
"Just… give her a few minutes." he shook his head. "She just lost her first battle in a long time. Just give her a few."
"But…"
"I know. It's gruesome to leave her alone with a corpse. But if it were me…. Would you want someone barging in just a moment after it happened? No. Just, let it lay for a moment."
Sighing, she returned to drying the grits pan.
Ten minutes later, they made their way to the master suite.
There were two women in the obnoxiously large bed. But only one was aware of them. The other no longer saw anything, heard anything, felt anything.
He made his way across the obscenely carpeted floor quietly. It didn't require ninja skills; the floor absorbed every sound put to it by design.
"It's time to let go." he gently shook the redhead's shoulder. "She's gone now."
"No. no. nononononono." the heroine shivered, verging on childlike whining. "She's just…"
"No, she's not resting this time." he gently but firmly pulled her from the maudlin embrace she was trapped in with the inanimate woman. "It's over. Come on now."
Another of those soul piercing cries tore at the space between them and he had to exert a little strength to draw the redhead from the bed. She didn't really fight him.
Even if she had wanted to, she had lost some of her own strength these past few months, battling alongside the deceased brunette for every moment together instead of her usual world-saving battles, and it told in the loss of her muscle mass.
Finally, gently, he extracted her from the hold she had on the descendant. "Come on. I'll call her family, she'll call the coroner, just like the plan was."
"No. I… I won't let you." there was suddenly a spark in her tired green eyes. "It's not over."
"It is." he sighed.
No amount of science, mad or otherwise, had been able to halt the inevitable. And no amount of magic, monkey or otherwise, could bring back what had been lost.
"NO…" she shook her head and tried to break free of his grasp. "I can do anything, damnit,"
"And now that means letting her go," he sighed. "Come on. Do you think she didn't know this was coming? Would she want you defiling her last moments by complaining about the inevitable?"
"But" she looked up at him, unshed tears still brimming in green eyes. "I can save her."
"There's nothing left to save. Come on. We have a plan. And now is the time to put it into motion. Believe me, it will make it easier in the long run." he shook his head. "Just sick to the plan. One foot in front of the other."
It took another ten minutes of cajoling to get the heroine to agree to go along with the plans.
The plan did make things easier.
He and she took her away from the house before the coroner arrived with his black bag and gurney.
The family came and oversaw the final arrangements.
The funeral was maudling and uneasy.
The stone was iconic; a pedestal of green granite that outlined the word "GO" and included nothing else but the pertinent dates.
The redhead admitted that she liked the view of the lake. The view that the villainess had picked out months before.
-TLRB-
Three days later the mansion was burned to the ground. The fire department wasn't happy when they were physically blocked from fighting the blaze by an army of synthodrones and bebe's programmed to carry out their mistress's final wishes. The redhead did nothing to intervene.
Scotched earth to the end, that was what her beloved had stipulated. Nothing was to be left to anyone. Even the land was left fallow, unsold.
Except the promised rings. The heroine kept those despite the plan saying otherwise.
She moved back to her rebuilt childhood home.
After two months, she was beginning to stink. She was unshaven, unkempt, uncouth, she wore both promised rings on a necklace that now was fouled by strands of unbrushed hair. She was utterly unmotivated by the outside world.
The partner, the hacker, the director; none of them could get her moving past the last details of the plan.
The website eventually shut down.
Six months later she took a clerical position with the blue jumpsuit brigade.
She had to. She had no income; had always worked for free, relying on her darker half's fortune in the last few years instead of charging for her skills. The evil woman had no problem bank-rolling her best enemy's heroing antics. She took twisted glee in stealing with one hand and giving with the other. Now that was all gone.
Cancer was expensive, but not so much as to exhaust the villainess's resources. But again, the plan was that it all went away with her.
To where, the heroine wasn't privy, only knowing that her beloved believed in burning anything she couldn't take with her.
-TLRB-
The blonde man and the fashionista had their wedding in the spring, and that brought a slight smile to her face at least. She even managed to comb her impossibly long flippy hair out for the occasion.
She took vacations to Star City, Metropolis, Jump City, anywhere to get her away from the memory of a world that didn't care her darker half was gone. She felt a little better when she got back to her desk, slightly more human.
But she had no desire to go back to heroing.
At least she was showering now. And dressing herself, albeit in a blue jumpsuit with a gold eagle badge that was provided for her.
Two months later she was promoted to assistant director of communications, but really who cared?
Six months later, a call came in that she couldn't ignore. The hacker put it through to her, breaking a dozen international records to get directly to her desk at the justice brigade's top secret headquarters.
The blue skinned madman was back.
And he was arming himself with what he called Cece's. Cybernetic plant creatures melded with advanced robotics.
Her video phone rang with an alien call. Four notes that she hadn't heard in two years and three months.
Beep beep boo beep.
"Dude! They broke my leg!" he bemoaned from the rolling gurney as the video link connected him to the redhead.
"How did you get this number? And why the hell did you change my ringer to… to that?!"
"I needed your attention."
"You got it," She growled, about to disconnect the call.
"But we need you!"
"Well where the heck is-," she glared at the interruption of her mundane life.
"He's still fighting them, but he's losing ground." the hacker reported as he was put into an air cast by triage personnel.
"Well what do you expect me to do about it?"
"What you do. What you always do."
"I'm retired."
"You're needed. Badly."
"Call the big guys. Don't they have a friggin satellite for this sort of thing?"
"They're all busy or off-world."
"All of them?"
"Something about apocalypse."
"The Apocalypse?"
"No, just apocalypse."
"Well I can't, I'm on call. And I'm out of shape."
"Look in your left desk drawer."
She did. She pulled out one unrecognized steel plated briefcase. She instantly recalled the container, and pressed her thumbs over the two lock plates.
Inside was a shrift of black satiny fabric. When she touched it, purple tracers shot away from her fingers and the material bunched up, as though reaching out to her.
"It's mark six. All the features of the original; plus bullet resistant fabric, neural-link interfaces, and more tools than I can get into right now." The hacker informed her over the video link, wincing as a hypospray of pain killers was injected into his neck by the triage nurse.
"Where…" she boggled as she slipped a hand into the glove and black talons sprung out of each finger, as though called to duty after two long years of vacation. "Oh my god, you copied her claws!"
"Where did it come from?" he smirked in spite of the way he was being bustled by the medics, "I have my ways, you should know that by now."
"I don't…" the long haired former heroine chewed her lip.
"The world needs you." he grunted. "Besides, there's one feature that's purely cosmetic, but I thought you would appreciate. Just try it on."
After a full thirty seconds of silence, she excused herself to the utilitarian bathroom that was attached to the call center. The suit didn't just slip on. It was more intuitive than that. It practically crawled onto her body over her jumpsuit; forming and aligning itself and then ejecting the blue jumpsuit and golden eagle badge out the back end as surplus to requirements, leaving her in the black body stocking that lit up purple with her every movement.
A second later, she felt her too-long hair pulled back into an overly high ponytail by a matching black scrunchie made of the same super-material.
And then, the final ouch. The piece de resistance. The touch intended to remind her who she was really fighting for.
The throat unzipped, and a tear-drop window opened at the breastbone, revealed the promised rings on their filigree gold chain.
She returned to her desk and found the hacker waiting for her. "Like a glove. Like it was made for you; which of course it was."
She felt something surge through her. The black battlesuit responded to this, pulsing with purple shapes in a harlequin pattern.
Somewhere in her subconscious, a smokey voice whispered, "GO."
"Your ride will be there in five. Mr. Geminini upgraded the circus train to a monorail." the hacker informed her, knowing she had given her car to her brothers a while back.
-TLRB-
Thanks for the lift Mr. Geminini! Just like old times."
"Anything for you my dear" the aging circus master responded, flicking a button on the lion car to open the door for her.
She got to the lair of the blue madman to see her longtime partner flagging. His monkey ninja skills were being outmatched by the cybernetic plant robots' superhuman speed and lashing tentacles.
She fired a grapple from her built-in wrist launch and catapulted herself into battle.
"HEY!" he shouted with unhidden enthusiasm when a second grapple shot forth, electrified, and electrocuted the Cece robot that had him pinned down. "Schway suit!"
"Schway?" she tilted her head at him sideways and backfisted a robot that tried to sneak up on her from behind. "Where'd you hear that one?"
"TV of course!" he cheered and spun-kicked a third robot.
Between the two of them, they made quick work of the remaining cybernetic horde. Then it was down into the lair to get the blue skinned scientist with the peony vines growing out of his collar.
"You! You Took Her away from me!" he screamed at the heroine as she used a battlesuit-enhanced kick to knock down the reinforced metal doors.
"Don't you dare," she growled dangerously, stalking across the room, using her talons to deal with the few goo-filled synthodrones who tried vainly to get in her way. "She left you of her own free will."
The heroine picked up a doom ray that was half again as big as she was and threw it at the egghead; momentarily marveling at the power this new mark six battlesuit had.
He dove to get clear, and found himself cowering at her feet. "Uh… she did?"
"And who wouldn't leave you?" the redhead sneered. "Look at you, rehashing the same scheme for the umpteenth time. Even if she hadn't come to me, she would have left you after yet another failure."
"And you took her!"
"The Fucking Cancer took her!"
The blonde ninja sidekick boggled at the roar his partner gave and the cursing. "Uh… maybe not the best time to…"
"No!" she barked, "We're having this out now. And then I am ending his threat permanently."
The cerulean madman swallowed that sounded like a very portentous declaration.
"You were so wound up in a scheme that you couldn't even be bothered to learn she was sick," she snarled, stepping closer to him as he tried to summon a vine to keep her at bay. "You claim she was like evil family? Well where were you when she was getting eaten alive from the inside?"
She hauled him up by the lapels of his dark blue lab coat and supposed the talons of her gloves, "While she was wasting away and fighting like hell against her own powers keeping the cancer alive despite the drugs and the surgeries?"
She began ripping the white petals from around his neck and then summoned the electro-shock powers to root out the vines that tried to defend him.
"You! Perhaps the one man on the planet who might have been able to figure out the meteor cancer, and all you could do was whine to yourself and plot another scheme doomed to fail!"
"Hey, don't take it too far." her partner warned cautiously, unwilling to intervene in this catharsis.
The heroine threw him into a tank of his super-pro hydrogenato fertilizer, which cracked but failed to break this time. She quickly followed, and grabbed his last struggling vine, applying electricity from her talloned gloves as she ripped it out by the roots.
"Mercy!" he crumpled, waving his tiny hands frantically.
"Fine," She spat at him. "But only because I am me, and not her. She would have flayed you alive here and now if the positions were reversed."
"Whoa… Hard Core" the blonde ninja looked at the juicy remains of vines and petals that his redheaded partner had ripped out with the powers of her new battle suit.
"Yeah, well just call me the new and improved woman who can do anything." she smirked and produced a pair of black handcuffs from the belt of her suit.
"Mrf, you think you're all that." the mad doctor sneered as he was cuffred, "But you're-,"
"Absolutely right." she laughed cheerfully, considering her black taloned glove. "Take him away Boys."
"SO…" the ninja sidekicked looked at her uncertainly, "Does this mean that..."
"We'll see. I was told I was needed and he was right. But seriously, the blog club should have handled this." she sighed, retracting her talons and combing her fingers through her longish hair.
"You know, I hear tell from some that even their telepathic martian can't find the lorwardians" he grinned as though enticing her to keep it up.
"Like I said," she eyed him, but couldn' disagree that it felt good to not be wearing that blue jumpsuit for a change, "We'll see."
And they did see.
AN: Okay the first part nearly brought me to tears writing. But this is the story of how Kim lost and found herself. And how she got the upgraded costume she wears in "Knight Watch" and how it was inspired by both The Batman Beyond suit (an armor plated enhanced mark 5) and by Shego's catsuit. Also lining up the dates between the end of KP in 2007 and the start of Batman Beyond in 2039.
Please feel free to comment and reshare!