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The Stubborn Beast Flesh

Author: The Humbug

Disclaimer: “Kim Possible” and all characters within © The Walt Disney Company and its related entities. Kim Possible created by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley. All rights reserved. No profit is being collected from the fiction contained within. You can blame the rest of this on me.
Rating: PG-13 for combat violence and intimations of a physical relationship and intimate contact between consenting adult females. This should also cover a little harsh language now and then. If this will offend you, please read something else, and then seek professional help.
Summary: This is a Kim/Shego pairing fan fiction; there is love and romance between Kim & Shego, as well as plenty of action and adventure, and hopefully some humor and horror. Set in my ‘Who’s Writing This Crap’ Kigo-verse, this is a tale of what happens when something goes horribly wrong. Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible are the sole creations of NoDrogs (it is with great respect that I make mention of them). Special Note: Yes, I am still using the wrong first name of ‘John’ for Dr. Mr. P.

Chapter X.c / Convergence – part 3

Amy Hall reached out and switched off the centrifuge by touch alone, years of practice making sight unnecessary. DNAmy lifted out the crimson test tube and checked the cap to ensure that is was made fast; it wouldn’t pay to spill a drop.

‘What is the law? Not to spill blood, that is the law!’ She had to stifle a giggle at the quote from ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau’, her favorite movie and the initial inspiration for her life’s work. Sure the Cuddle-Buddies ™ were adorable, but hardly a suitable reason to devote her live to hard science and besides, that Burt Lancaster was such a cutie!

She finished tabulating the results of her latest tests and did lift her gaze to make sure that the Drs. H and Anne P. were nowhere close enough to read what she had written. They would have been very troubled if they could. Removing the top piece of paper and folding it, she secreted it away in her lab coat and also thought to crumple the sheet immediately under it just in case; her writing was often heavy and someone might be able to read the impressions left on the lower sheet of paper.

Rising from her chair, she casually sauntered across the medical research chamber and over to the several dozen cages, the ‘hobby’ that she had brought with her and was so annoying to Dr. Mark Hall, and inspected the wriggling shapes within. She patted the outer pocket of her coat and felt the weight and shape of the vial. The blood did not represent anything blatantly nefarious; it was hers and she had secretly drawn it when the others were taking a very short break. But it was what she had been successfully able to blend it with in a stabile cohesion that was making her cautious.

DNAmy, in just a few short hours and with the entire resources of Global Justice at her command, had found a way to imbue naked mole rats with the genetic traits of humans. Now she could give them the genetic potential for increased intelligence and maybe even the chance to achieve a slight increase in size. It would take many generations before the little mammals began to display any new characteristics in their nature, but she had time and they breed quickly.

One day she would have an army of the creatures to command!

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Bonnie shut off her turn signal and parked right against the curb. The streets were totally deserted at this dead hour and she had driven back into Middleton proper in no time. ‘Think family, think security’, Ron had told her. She scowled to herself that she didn’t have anywhere special in mind yet. She would have readily taken the infants to her mother’s house except that the woman was just now willing to speak with Bonnie herself; if her ‘promiscuous’ daughter showed up in the middle of the night with a passel of strange children, Bonnie guessed that her visit home might be cut short.

“The Possibles might be home… I’ll call them.” Unaware that she was talking to herself out loud, Bonnie lifted her personal Kimmunicator from the seat next to her and used the telephone feature to access a personal number. She glanced into the back of the vehicle at the two safety seats that Ron had borrowed and installed before the start of the first ‘Team Rockwaller’ mission.

Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible were looking back at her and grinning, grasping in the brunette’s general direction with their pudgy hands and jabbering in their incomprehensible baby talk. There was one word that she could understand, however.

“…mamama…”

Rufus tried to look indignant as Kasy cuddled him with one little arm but he couldn’t maintain the posturing. The rodent wiped a bit of drool from his head and allowed the little redhead to kiss him again.

‘feh, peepul khuteez!’

Bonnie listened to the recorded voice of Dr. Possible explaining the several reasons why his family was not presently able to come to the phone. She could only imagine that they were out looking for Kim since no one else was aware of her presence at the fuel depot, or that they had gone to the hospital to look after their sons. With a bittersweet smile she reached back and stroked the pale green faces.

“Not even close, but I swear to do my best until both of your mothers can take over for me.” She blew them each a kiss before leaving her message. “Drs. P, this is Bonnie… Bonnie Rockwaller, and I have the girls with me. I repeat, I have the girls with me and I’m going to swing by Kim’s place to pick up some items before I head over to your house.” She steadied her nerves and took a breath. “They’re fine and Ron and I got them out with no trouble. I’ll be there as soon as I can… bye.”

There was nothing more to say. She prayed that Ron was all right back there with Shego; she even hoped that Shego would be Ok and they could somehow get Kim to listen to reason and return with them. The science of the nightmare they were all dealing with was beyond her, so if this was all she could do to help, she was proud to have done it.

Sheki wasn’t able to lean over far enough to slobber kisses on the naked mole rat because of the harness around her car seat, but she giggled and scratched him behind the ears. Rufus decided that maybe ‘people cooties’ weren’t always so bad after all. With one more look back to her innocent charges, Bonnie restarted the vehicle and pulled back onto the empty street.

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“… ow…”

He couldn’t see and he didn’t have any concept of how long he had been lying there. There was heat all around him and it wasn’t until he tried to roll over that spears of agony lanced through his chest. His vision clearing, he discerned flames all around his body but none close enough to cause harm. With no other intent that to fulfill the basic instinct to survive, Ron Stoppable forced himself over onto his belly and began to drag his body in the direction from which he felt the least heat.

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Shego turned and ran.

She ran for her life and for her sanity and because the cavalry was late. The fire in her lower face matched the flames that were building all around her and she was reminded of her broken jaw each and every time she took a running step. Somewhere behind her, and probably gaining, was her wife. The smoke and collapsing debris might protect Shego from Kim’s enhanced senses but the petite and irrational woman would never give up the chase.

I even abandoned Ron, she thought, refusing to allow herself the realization that in this burning depot, the boy would be safer as long as Kim followed her.

“Baby, wait up! The mighty Shego never runs… what’s that about?” The voice behind her in the greasy smoke would have sounded as sweet as ever had it not been punctuated with a hacking cough. There was no mystery as to what her Princess as just spit from her mouth into the filth.

Great, as if I needed proof, Shego thought. First it’s my improper use of prayer and now tempting Fate. Weak from loss of blood and in agony from her broken jaw, Shego kept her breathing steady and continued to run.

The fuel depot was an enormous place and most of the entrances and exits had been barricaded years ago. The smoke that protected her also foiled her attempts to escape to the open air where, hopefully, the forces of ‘GJ’ would soon be descending upon this place like flies on crap. Even in her exhaustion she wondered how Dr. Betty Director might like that analogy.

Coming upon yet another metal wall in her search for freedom, Shego skirted around it before she realized that the wall was curving away from her. In a gigantic building constructed like a box, any surface that was curved obviously meant something important. Eager for any detail that might lead her towards better terrain, she followed the wall around its circumference until she reached the rungs of a ladder. Muting her own cough to clear her lungs of the greasy soot, she looked up and up and saw that the ladder rose far over her head and that this ‘wall’ was more than she had first assumed it to be.

She had unwittingly found the elevated vertical stack once used to burn off waste gasses from the depot, long since defunct and now a monument to the place. Now it had become her escape route; Shego ceased to run and began to climb.

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“Whoa! Seriously! I’d hate to see the bills to heat this place!” Motor Ed could not believe how huge Central Command was. He continually glanced away from his workstation to stare up at the ceiling far overhead. “They all must be claustrophobic or something! Seriously!”

Dr. John Possible paused in his own work and turned to his new partner and ally.

“You know, you’re right about that. Every room in this place is enormous.” He shrugged the distracting thought away but the mechanic beside him wasn’t so quick to refocus.

“Yeah, even the cans in this place are big. Seriously.” He ruminated on that for a moment. “Hey, come to think of it…”

“Attention, everyone!” Dr. Betty Director strode out into the center of the room and stepped up onto the central dais. “Everyone be quiet! We have an update…” The woman paused for breath in the muffled silence.

“… the only small room in this place is her office, serio…”

The comment carried through the crowded chamber like a tidal wave. The blush on Eddie’s face was partly hidden by his mustache but Dr. Director was forced to raise the printed update close to her face as if she was having some difficulty in reading it. The only faces not looking towards her in shock were turning to find Motor Ed sinking down deeper into his chair. Only John Possible was free to enjoy the ironic humor.

“Good one, Eddie. Remind me to tell you about what Anne said during our wedding reception. I swear that the whole hall heard it. Her parents still won’t talk to me.”

“IF… we can refocus our attention…” Betty lowered the paper from her face and she was all business once again. “We have received a transmission from the field squad and it seems that the signal was indeed from a Kimmunicator. The signal strength has given the operatives a course to follow and the enhanced hover sleds should be on the scene within minutes.” She watched as her agents digested this information with a mixture of relief and trepidation; their girl had been found but could they bring her in?

“That is all for now. Return to your posts and further updates will be disseminated as they come in.” She stepped down from the dais and work resumed around her.

Of the hundred or so operatives manning the Central Command, most were coordinating the actions of the agents in the field with the base of ‘GJ’ operations here. Each person was highly trained to perform multiple tasks but was solely responsible for one function when assigned to ‘CC’. The only non-agents here at this time were Eddie and John; each man had been given a workstations to monitor the telemetry of the newly enhanced hover sleds and route the field reports back to the relevant teams; all must be prepared if the mission was to be successful.

She threaded purposefully between the clusters of busy agents and stood next to Dr. P. Eddie noticed that the executive agent wasn’t going to give him any attention in front of her posse, but he’d expected no less. Embarrassing remarks aside, this was her turf and she had troops to command; no way was she going to be seen fraternizing with the enemy.

“We will locate her, sir.” She might have said more but providence was not to be tempted. John nodded in silent gratitude before bending back down over the monitor screen in front of him. He was mildly startled by a light punch to his shoulder.

“Dude, really, we’ll snag Little Red. Seriously. It’ll all be cool.” John could see that Ed was sincere and gave another grateful nod. Even Dr. Director shifted in reaction to the comment before she walked away to oversee more of the project. The two men returned to their work, their chosen fields of engineering and technology given them more confidence than they would have other wise felt.

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There was little need to guess as to the whereabouts of Kim Possible; the pilots had spotted the flames from miles away and, matching the original direction of the Kimmunicator transmission to that heading, directed their hover sleds flew as fast as they could towards an abandoned fuel handling depot on the distant outskirts of Middleton.

Agents Benson and Hedges were in the lead vehicle and in constant contact with Central Command; this was more to relay data to the operatives back at ‘GJ’ rather than receive instructions themselves. They had been drilling and preparing for this moment for almost a week now, even before the Possibles and the other ‘guests’ had been brought into the project. Back before it started being referred to as a ‘rescue’ mission instead of a possible ‘seek and destroy’, shamed though they all were to admit it. Hedges ran his fingers along the instrument panel ruefully.

The hover sleds were truly a wonder; never having used the devices before, a handful of the best ‘GJ’ pilots had drilled and trained on the machines from the moment that Drakken first declared the enhanced machines to be complete. With more lift and speed than an MH 53-E Sea Dragon, the sleds were no louder than a golf cart and almost as simple to operate and control. Throw in the capacity for the retractable arm coils and they were more than suitable for the task at hand. For all of his instability, Drew Lipsky was a genius.

“Sir, we’ve got a reading!” Benson’s voice was loud in the hover sled.

“Another transmission?”

“Not this time, sir. It’s a transponder signal from a sub-dermal implant!”

“Where?” The canopy of the new sled was protecting the passengers from wind shear so the agent had no trouble reach forward and pointing to the sensor array on the instrument panel. Hedges saw where the finger was pointing and evaluated the location.

“Just beyond the periphery of the flames. We’re almost on top of that signal now!” He thumbed a control. “I’m taking us down!” Hedges directed the hover sled to ground level while Benson signaled the other vehicles to remain loft but remain in a holding pattern until otherwise instructed. Lights mounted in the undercarriage of the sled winked on and the hard-packed earth and cracked macadam lit up like high noon.

“There!” The sled lowered further and came to rest near a prone body. As soon as the vehicle touched down and the canopy was opened, Agent Benson jumped over the side and ran towards the still form. Being careful with the apparently wounded subject, he checked for life signs.

“Get a backboard over here!” It wasn’t necessary to yell into his personal communicator but he had recognized the face and felt the need for urgency. It was obvious from just a cursory inspection that medical help was going to be needed. The agent managed to control his tone before making a more concise report to the Field Commander. “Sir, it’s one of them! It’s a member of Team Possible!”

“Understood.” Hedges never seemed to let his emotions affect his actions. “Bring the subject on board as quickly as possible and I’ll send the other units on ahead.”

The unconscious body of Ron Stoppable was strapped to the backboard and gently loaded into the hover sled.

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Shego had been in moving upwards for the last several minutes, climbing ever upward. Desperate to gain the high ground for her own safety, she had failed to elude the mad thing that wore the ragged mantle of her wife. She was sick from the pain in her face and exhausted from battle and the running had no more idea what she was going to do now than the man in the Moon. There was a wraith somewhere below her that looked like someone she loved, a girl that she respected and admired too deeply to describe.

Kim was desperate also; to catch her, beat her, love her, and rape her until someone’s heart stopped beating. It didn’t even matter whose heart. The heat below matched the heat behind her eyes and the fire within her chest. As if summoned by a voice unheard, Kim retched another mouthful of pitch onto herself, the black fluid drying in the heat and turning to ash almost instantly. The smoke and stench of burning fuel oil wrapped themselves around the two women.

Kim was excreting constantly now, every orifice visible or otherwise a fount of vile pitch. It streamed from her emerald eyes and made it difficult to see her quarry. The mixture of dead tissue, fatigue poisons and excess Havok material made for a sour taste in her mouth as she vomited it up from her guts every few minutes, staining the exterior of her remaining clothes almost as quickly as the fabric was being soiled from within. The occasional flash of pink skin was still to be found, even for all of the dirt and pitch and soot, but there were no wounds or cuts or lacerations any sort on her flesh; the unthinking, self-serving ministrations of the Havok saw to that. Falling apart she might be, replaced system by system until she reached the point of dissolution, but unnatural forces were holding her body together until then.

Through the billowing smoke her eyes caught a flash of green from above. Kim grinned and increased her speed up the ladder.

The rungs mounted to the side of the refining stack were not of a single piece; the stack was much too tall for that. Rising three hundred feet above the burning depot, the ladder was attached in sections that were ten feet in length, with wider sections at each connection to allow climbers to rest or bypass each other. Not daring to rest, Shego pumped her legs for all that she was worth. Her vision was also impaired, but she knew that her own despair was the cause more so than the heat wafting up at her.

Her pain was also a factor and Shego did force herself to stop momentarily as she probed her knee; it was sore and she suspected an overextended ligament. Her arm was still bleeding lightly but her nose wasn’t and the lower half of her face felt as if she were chewing on a hot coal. She had never had a broken jaw before and she didn’t care for the sensation much. Her preternatural healing abilities were taxed but functioning, and her biggest worry was making sure any broken bones would be properly set before they knitted.

“Baby?”

Strike that, she thought, improperly knitted bones are my second biggest worry. Shego didn’t even look down for the source of the voice as she continued upwards.

“Baby, wait up!”

The strain of climbing so fast and for so long would have killed most people by now, but her altered body chemistry gave Shego a strength and endurance that made her far different than most people. Still, she was at the end of her resources and sucking for air from her exertions and her entire body was a symphony of pain. One minor detail of a beneficial nature was that she didn’t need to have her eyes open to climb, having memorized the spacing of the rungs; this allowed her to screw her eyes shut against the heat and stinging fumes.

Suddenly she felt an unexpected coolness around her body, replacing that of the heat that was rising from the flames throughout the depot. She risked opening her eyes for a moment and her ragged breath caught in her chest.

The entire depot was on fire, the flames having spread from the smoldering contents of that one fuel drum to acres of abandoned industrial complex. The red glow from the conflagration filled the sky around her but she had finally reached a height that brought up out of the greasy smoke. The night sky was black beyond the reach of the fire, that rich blackness that didn’t evolve horrors because it soon gave way to dawn. There was a gust of wind and even more of the smoke was blown away, revealing something else.

The terminus of the stack was less than ten feet above her head. She had run out of ladder.

“Shego…”

And time.

‘To love, comfort and keep.’

The former villain thrust her leaden hands one over the other to reach the pinnacle of the stack, dragging her legs after her to find what purchase they could. She could also taste the numbness in her brain and heart as she completed this final goal.

“Baby, please stop… there’s nowhere else to go. Please talk to me!”

There was the sound of the cold night wind whipping across tattered fabric and Shego looked down to see that her Princess had also cleared the smoke line, too. She’s right, Shego knew, there is nowhere else to go. Why did I do this?

“Shego?” Kim closed the gap, getting closer, and the look on her angel’s face unreadable with the bright flames below her and bordered in black. “Shego, stop!”

Shego did stop, having reached the very top pf the ladder and because she was dead inside. She hooked her arm around the top-most rung and brought her legs up beneath her, wedging her body in place against the force of the wind.

“Listen to me… you’re tired. You can’t run any more… just stay there and hang on…” Kim’s slender body navigated the final yards in no time and she joined her mate, her quarry, her prey. Shego was shivering, something that she hardly ever did, and her eyes were locked open and staring off into the void.

“Shego, look at me.”

‘Forsaking all others.’

The pale woman did look, thankful that the wind was strong enough to carry away the sour stench of the pitch that was smeared across Kim’s perfect face.

“Kimmie…” She could barely force the words through her despair and pain. She didn’t even know how wet her own face was from her tears or how filthy, either. She only knew that she was alone with her angel and that her angel was dying.

“It’s Ok, I’m here now.” Kim brought herself closer, extending her arms to her spouse. But you’re not, was the reply that Shego could not make. She did not want this terrible visage anywhere near her. When she felt the gradual pressure of Kim’s arms wrapping around her body, Shego cringed at the contact. She could smell the sourness now, feel the remaining fabric of her young wife’s clothing slide across the slick pitch beneath. The firm body next to her felt so warm and otherwise whole and healthy, it made her sick.

‘For richer or for poorer.’

“Kim, it’s over.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

What did she mean, that the chase was over? Did she mean that Kim’s life was over? She believed that now, all shred of hope gone from her heart.

“You’re right, Pumpkin. There’s nowhere else to go.” So final, her words; what was she trying to say to Kim, to say to herself?

“I know, love… look.” Kim released one arm from around her wife and pointed down into the flames. The air was so hot that if they had tried to climb back down it would have cooked their lungs at the first breath below the smoke line. Metal buckled and melted and concrete baked and split from the intensity of the fire, and the sound was a continuous roar that filled their ears like white noise.

“There’s no going back.”

“No… but we can go forward.” The voice of her Princess was so self-assured as always. “There never was a chance for us, you know that right?”

“What? No chance…?”

“Well, no chance for me, at least.” Kim snorted and wiped away the inky tar from her lips. “I know that you’ve been telling me that I’m sick. I’m starting to believe you.” She took her wife’s pale green chin between her thumb and index finger and gently pulled her gaze around to face her.

“Tell me that this is right!” She raised her fingers to her face. Shego didn’t even have the strength left to scream; Kim had just ripped a four-inch strip of flesh away from her cheek. It glistened red, then black and then it was gone, leaving perfectly pink skin in its place. Even if she didn’t feel it for more than a second, Kim certainly seemed horrified by it.

“TELL ME THAT THIS IS RIGHT!”

Shego did react to the screech, but only to draw herself into a tighter ball on the ladder. Kim still held the piece of skin in her dainty hand, a part of the original girl that was being whittled away all too quickly.

“Our life together, our life-style… we never had a chance in this world. You knew that, didn’t you?” Kim let go of the bloody tissue and brought her arm back up to brush some hair out of Shego’s eyes. The heat rising from below made their hair blow and twist. “That’s why you gave our girls to Ron and Bonnie, right? To give them a life, right?”

‘In sickness and in health.’

“Our girls are safe, Kimmie.” It wasn’t an answer, but it would make a good epitaph. Is that why I really came up here? Did I run, abandon Ron, just to die up here with her?

“Safe, yes. We can be safe, too, but it’s not going to be easy.” Kim looked down. “I know you’re tired but if you’ll just let go of the rung I’ll take care of the rest.”

To fall wouldn’t be so difficult right now, Shego thought. Hell, I can hardly keep from falling anyway. This wouldn’t even constitute as suicide, how could it? Kim was dying and I… I’m a has-been reprobate that can’t remember what it was like to be a hero, to always have the right solution to any challenge right at my fingertips. The girls are safe, they’ll have a family with the Possibles, and even Ron is better off if he died down there in the flames. There’s no one left that would need me, miss me…

It’ll be just like skydiving or bungee jumping, just enjoy the fall.

“Ok… Ok, Kimmie.” Rather than looking for strength, Shego allowed what little courage she had remaining to leach away. She felt that it would be easier that way. Maybe this is why I’ve always hated weakness. Maybe it was because I’ve been avoiding this for too long. Shego felt a violent shudder course through her body and she attributed it to the cold pre-dawn air.

‘As long as we both shall live.’

“I’ll go with you.”

“My brave girl…” Kim blinked back what might have been a real tear among the pitch. Kim felt a vibration beneath her feet; she had no way to know that Shego had felt it too and had mistaken it for the wind, but Kim knew something more than that. Her ears had detected the cracking of the baking metal, the popping of rivets and she felt the world tilt slightly as the vertical stack began to crumble at the base.

Without another word, Kim stood up and braced her feet against her rung, freeing her one hand from Shego but letting the taller woman claim the other hand as they held each other tight. If Shego pulled her hand free, Kim would have fallen. But Shego had made her decision and they would fly together.

‘Until death do us part.’

There was a flash in her eyes, blinding her. Was that the sun?

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“Damn it, man, get them!” The updraft from the heat was making the air currents around the hover sled almost too powerful to navigate. The air car bucked and fought beneath them as Hedges gripped the steering levers.

“What the Hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Benson manned the controls for the arm coils. “Sir!” The red glare from the burning depot was brilliant in their eyes and it was next to impossible to do more than stay aloft, let alone manually grab a human body from the top of a stack. The structure was tilted, its base becoming powder from the heat and collapsing from it’s own weight.

“Can’t you hold this thing steady?” Benson didn’t realize that he was screaming at his superior officer.

“What the fu…” Hedges forced down his emotions. “I suggest urgency, but I’ll do what I can.” He did, using all of his training to make the sled ride the air currents instead of fight them. Maybe he could find a rhythm to the motions.

“That’s the ticket, sir!” Benson seemed to agree with that tactic. “Almost…” He jammed his face against the targeting display and slowed his breathing. The cross hairs joined over one of the two bodies. He pulled back on the control switch and an arm shot out.

Designed by Drakken for a number of uses, from heavy lifting to feats of dexterity that would have impressed a brain surgeon like Dr. Anne Possible, the arm coils could also be programmed to strike like a cobra, grasping a target when speed was more important than finesse. The interlocking segments writhed and extended like a thing alive and the pincers encircled the target twice to ensure a firm grip.

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Kim kicked off from her perch at the same moment that Shego felt the breath driven from her body. Something had grabbed her around the waist and was holding her like a vice. She was dragged forward by the weight of Kim’s body, Shego desperately holding onto her Princess with both hands, causing her torso to rest painfully against the rim of the stack.

“Kim, wait… I can’t…”

“Shego, come on!” Kim looked up at her wife in confusion as she dangled in space, one tiny hand in Shego’s strong grip as her other hand gestured downwards at the maelstrom below. “There’s no other way!”

“Something has me!” She could feel the force pulling her back, tugging her away from her angel and the taking away from her the choice that they had made together. She looked down at herself and saw the gunmetal blue of the arm, not knowing what it was.

Whether it was an attempt to free her mate or to leave her behind was uncertain; Kim lifted her other hand to take hold of Shego’s wrists and then lifted her legs to plant her feet against the side of the vertical stack. Shego felt her pulling.

“Kim, don’t do this!” She had to get herself loose.

“It’s the only way.”

“Don’t leave me alone! I want to be with you!” If she could just free her hands, maybe even just one, she might be able to melt away the offending coils holding her back from oblivion, but Kim had Shego’s hands in a death grip. She looked back down at the younger girl and noticed that the remnants of Kim’s clothing were starting to burn from the ever-rising flames.

“Kim, please… please, baby… baby you’re on fire!”

“Goodbye, Shego.”

“No!”

Kim just smiled up at her and then she let go, dropping from sight and lost amid the fire and smoke.

“… not without me…”

Shego knew no more.

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The stack began to rotate in a spiral as its foundation finally shattered and it started to corkscrew down to the earth, taking out several other smaller pieces of refinery equipment along with it. The place was mostly slag and would burn for days; no fire company would be able to tame that, not if they had a thousand pump engines. If not for the fact that the depot was so far out of Middleton proper that it stood alone on the property, it might have ignited all other buildings around it. As it was, it was the sole beacon to illuminate ‘GJ’s’ greatest failure.

“SHIT!” Chaos reigned inside the canopy of the hover sled.

“Agent Benson…”

“I couldn’t get her! That damn chimney was in the way… I couldn’t reach her!”

Hedges could have ordered the man restrained, or just told him to shut up or even attempted to console his subordinate; none of it would have been of any use. He postponed his report back to Central Command to take a look at the view screen to his left. Clearly visible from the camera mounted on the sled’s undercarriage was a woman, limp within the arm coil and apparently unconscious. Benson raved behind him as Hedges considered just releasing the coil and dropping the woman into the flames.

The thought served its purpose; it galvanized him into action.

“Agent Benson.”

“I couldn’t…”

“Agent Benson, you will shut the Hell up and retract the arm!” He pointed to the screen. “We have more wounded to tend to.” This earned him a scowl as the agent let his training take over and restore control.

“Yes, sir.”

As he activated the winch and slowly lifted Shego’s still form up towards the hover sled, Benson knew that his superior felt as badly as he did. He did not envy the other man his rank as Hedges slowly reached out and activated the communicator, opening a channel back to Central Command.

“Hedges to ‘GJ’, Hedges to ‘GJ’… come in ‘GJ’.”

“We’re reading you, agent.” It was Dr. Director herself. “Please report.”

“Ma’am…” He was distracted briefly as cold air hit the back of his neck. Benson was carefully guiding their new passenger into the sled and laying her down beside the bandaged form of Ron Stoppable. “Ma’am, my report is as follows…”

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The river cut a meandering swath between Middleton and Upperton; it was much cleaner than it once was thanks to both the Environmental Protection Agency and to the civic-minded citizens of the tri-city area. Because of them, most of the industrial sites that lined its banks had either adjusted their production methods to abide by the current laws or they had closed. A raging fire marked the location of one of the latter; a fuel oil depot that had been unable to meet modern standards was burning to the ground.

Less that a quarter of a mile away along the pristine edge of the river, the recreation spot for fishermen and boaters alike, could still be found the only memorials to this dead symbol of a failed enterprise; rusted pipes that once drained waste products from the depot down to the water were now serving as nesting grounds for local bird life.

Tonight there was movement in one of the pipes and this unusual occurrence caused a nearby rat to freeze in its tracks. Movement could mean food for this denizen of the muddy riverbank and all of the local scavengers considered this spot to be excellent foraging ground. The rat, a black and filthy variety ubiquitous in the urban blight of this part of the city, listened and sniffed the air to see what telltales it could find for dinner this night.

The rat meandered right up to the pipe’s metal rim.

Grab, squeeze; a petite hand struck like a waiting cobra and made short work of the rodent, crushing the narrow skull into pulp within the bloody palm. Blood, dirt, and something black that glistened in the moonlight covered the otherwise unmarred flesh.

“… snackage…”

A slender form pulled itself from the pipe and examined the dead thing in her hand. Volumes of pitch were expelled in a retching torrent before she lifted the rat to her lips, and the uneaten portion was shoved into a tattered pocket on the scorched remains of a baggy pair of cargo pants. Giving no further thought to the fire raging behind her, Kim Possible sat along the edge of the river and gazed with furtive eyes across the shifting waters, the dawn breeze causing the patterns of the surface to ripple and scintillate.

Idly, she began to inspect her flesh. In addition to her own secretions she was covered from head to toe with the waste and filth of every beast that had made the pipe its home since the depot had been closed. Bits of broken glass and shards of metal were sticking into her like pins, many had been impacted quite deep from the explosions and she would eventually have to dig them out. No matter what damage had already been done to her body or what she now had to do to herself in removing the debris, no sooner did she remove an offending object when her skin would knit itself closed with black tendrils and then be whole again.

Her clothes were in a dire state and most of her hair was gone, bare scalp shining through matted red fuzz that was caked with mud and ash and melted together in an oily mass from the flames. There was no pain from her wounds, being that she no longer bore wounds for more than a few seconds, and this made the irritation along her right hip all the more puzzling to her.

Kim looked down at the red and swollen knot on her skin. Using what ragged nails as remained to her, Kim dug into the enflamed tissue and a black wad of pitch was expelled into her hand; the wound promptly sealed and the pain was gone. Something hard and inorganic was within the tarry substance, though she could not tell what it was. Pulling herself to her feet she staggered to the water’s edge, the meal of the rat helping to regain her strength, both in mind and body

She bent low and washed the pitch from the tiny object, exposing an encapsulated circuit and relay wires; she blinked in recognition of the device and a single name flashed across her ravaged mind.

“… Wade… the fat little puppet master…”

Kim finished the rat before loping away towards Middleton’s residential community.

To be continued…

Author’s Notes: On a technical note, I’ve incorporated scene dividers into this chapter; I hope that they make reading more comfortable. I have failed miserably at the recommendation that I ‘shorten the chapters and lengthen the story’. This chapter has taken the longest to write because the entire first draft had to be scrapped because it sucked big time. I feel strongly that the story has a full head of steam again and is back on track. As always, reviews and feedback are encouraged.

Description
The Stubborn Beast Flesh

Author: The Humbug

Disclaimer: “Kim Possible” and all characters within © The Walt Disney Company and its related entities. Kim Possible created by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley. All rights reserved. No profit is being collected from the fiction contained within. You can blame the rest of this on me.
Rating: PG-13 for combat violence and intimations of a physical relationship and intimate contact between consenting adult females. This should also cover a little harsh language now and then. If this will offend you, please read something else, and then seek professional help.
Summary: This is a Kim/Shego pairing fan fiction; there is love and romance between Kim & Shego, as well as plenty of action and adventure, and hopefully some humor and horror. Set in my ‘Who’s Writing This Crap’ Kigo-verse, this is a tale of what happens when something goes horribly wrong. Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible are the sole creations of NoDrogs (it is with great respect that I make mention of them). Special Note: Yes, I am still using the wrong first name of ‘John’ for Dr. Mr. P.

Chapter X.c / Convergence – part 3

Amy Hall reached out and switched off the centrifuge by touch alone, years of practice making sight unnecessary. DNAmy lifted out the crimson test tube and checked the cap to ensure that is was made fast; it wouldn’t pay to spill a drop.

‘What is the law? Not to spill blood, that is the law!’ She had to stifle a giggle at the quote from ‘The Island Of Dr. Moreau’, her favorite movie and the initial inspiration for her life’s work. Sure the Cuddle-Buddies ™ were adorable, but hardly a suitable reason to devote her live to hard science and besides, that Burt Lancaster was such a cutie!

She finished tabulating the results of her latest tests and did lift her gaze to make sure that the Drs. H and Anne P. were nowhere close enough to read what she had written. They would have been very troubled if they could. Removing the top piece of paper and folding it, she secreted it away in her lab coat and also thought to crumple the sheet immediately under it just in case; her writing was often heavy and someone might be able to read the impressions left on the lower sheet of paper.

Rising from her chair, she casually sauntered across the medical research chamber and over to the several dozen cages, the ‘hobby’ that she had brought with her and was so annoying to Dr. Mark Hall, and inspected the wriggling shapes within. She patted the outer pocket of her coat and felt the weight and shape of the vial. The blood did not represent anything blatantly nefarious; it was hers and she had secretly drawn it when the others were taking a very short break. But it was what she had been successfully able to blend it with in a stabile cohesion that was making her cautious.

DNAmy, in just a few short hours and with the entire resources of Global Justice at her command, had found a way to imbue naked mole rats with the genetic traits of humans. Now she could give them the genetic potential for increased intelligence and maybe even the chance to achieve a slight increase in size. It would take many generations before the little mammals began to display any new characteristics in their nature, but she had time and they breed quickly.

One day she would have an army of the creatures to command!

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Bonnie shut off her turn signal and parked right against the curb. The streets were totally deserted at this dead hour and she had driven back into Middleton proper in no time. ‘Think family, think security’, Ron had told her. She scowled to herself that she didn’t have anywhere special in mind yet. She would have readily taken the infants to her mother’s house except that the woman was just now willing to speak with Bonnie herself; if her ‘promiscuous’ daughter showed up in the middle of the night with a passel of strange children, Bonnie guessed that her visit home might be cut short.

“The Possibles might be home… I’ll call them.” Unaware that she was talking to herself out loud, Bonnie lifted her personal Kimmunicator from the seat next to her and used the telephone feature to access a personal number. She glanced into the back of the vehicle at the two safety seats that Ron had borrowed and installed before the start of the first ‘Team Rockwaller’ mission.

Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible were looking back at her and grinning, grasping in the brunette’s general direction with their pudgy hands and jabbering in their incomprehensible baby talk. There was one word that she could understand, however.

“…mamama…”

Rufus tried to look indignant as Kasy cuddled him with one little arm but he couldn’t maintain the posturing. The rodent wiped a bit of drool from his head and allowed the little redhead to kiss him again.

‘feh, peepul khuteez!’

Bonnie listened to the recorded voice of Dr. Possible explaining the several reasons why his family was not presently able to come to the phone. She could only imagine that they were out looking for Kim since no one else was aware of her presence at the fuel depot, or that they had gone to the hospital to look after their sons. With a bittersweet smile she reached back and stroked the pale green faces.

“Not even close, but I swear to do my best until both of your mothers can take over for me.” She blew them each a kiss before leaving her message. “Drs. P, this is Bonnie… Bonnie Rockwaller, and I have the girls with me. I repeat, I have the girls with me and I’m going to swing by Kim’s place to pick up some items before I head over to your house.” She steadied her nerves and took a breath. “They’re fine and Ron and I got them out with no trouble. I’ll be there as soon as I can… bye.”

There was nothing more to say. She prayed that Ron was all right back there with Shego; she even hoped that Shego would be Ok and they could somehow get Kim to listen to reason and return with them. The science of the nightmare they were all dealing with was beyond her, so if this was all she could do to help, she was proud to have done it.

Sheki wasn’t able to lean over far enough to slobber kisses on the naked mole rat because of the harness around her car seat, but she giggled and scratched him behind the ears. Rufus decided that maybe ‘people cooties’ weren’t always so bad after all. With one more look back to her innocent charges, Bonnie restarted the vehicle and pulled back onto the empty street.

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“… ow…”

He couldn’t see and he didn’t have any concept of how long he had been lying there. There was heat all around him and it wasn’t until he tried to roll over that spears of agony lanced through his chest. His vision clearing, he discerned flames all around his body but none close enough to cause harm. With no other intent that to fulfill the basic instinct to survive, Ron Stoppable forced himself over onto his belly and began to drag his body in the direction from which he felt the least heat.

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Shego turned and ran.

She ran for her life and for her sanity and because the cavalry was late. The fire in her lower face matched the flames that were building all around her and she was reminded of her broken jaw each and every time she took a running step. Somewhere behind her, and probably gaining, was her wife. The smoke and collapsing debris might protect Shego from Kim’s enhanced senses but the petite and irrational woman would never give up the chase.

I even abandoned Ron, she thought, refusing to allow herself the realization that in this burning depot, the boy would be safer as long as Kim followed her.

“Baby, wait up! The mighty Shego never runs… what’s that about?” The voice behind her in the greasy smoke would have sounded as sweet as ever had it not been punctuated with a hacking cough. There was no mystery as to what her Princess as just spit from her mouth into the filth.

Great, as if I needed proof, Shego thought. First it’s my improper use of prayer and now tempting Fate. Weak from loss of blood and in agony from her broken jaw, Shego kept her breathing steady and continued to run.

The fuel depot was an enormous place and most of the entrances and exits had been barricaded years ago. The smoke that protected her also foiled her attempts to escape to the open air where, hopefully, the forces of ‘GJ’ would soon be descending upon this place like flies on crap. Even in her exhaustion she wondered how Dr. Betty Director might like that analogy.

Coming upon yet another metal wall in her search for freedom, Shego skirted around it before she realized that the wall was curving away from her. In a gigantic building constructed like a box, any surface that was curved obviously meant something important. Eager for any detail that might lead her towards better terrain, she followed the wall around its circumference until she reached the rungs of a ladder. Muting her own cough to clear her lungs of the greasy soot, she looked up and up and saw that the ladder rose far over her head and that this ‘wall’ was more than she had first assumed it to be.

She had unwittingly found the elevated vertical stack once used to burn off waste gasses from the depot, long since defunct and now a monument to the place. Now it had become her escape route; Shego ceased to run and began to climb.

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“Whoa! Seriously! I’d hate to see the bills to heat this place!” Motor Ed could not believe how huge Central Command was. He continually glanced away from his workstation to stare up at the ceiling far overhead. “They all must be claustrophobic or something! Seriously!”

Dr. John Possible paused in his own work and turned to his new partner and ally.

“You know, you’re right about that. Every room in this place is enormous.” He shrugged the distracting thought away but the mechanic beside him wasn’t so quick to refocus.

“Yeah, even the cans in this place are big. Seriously.” He ruminated on that for a moment. “Hey, come to think of it…”

“Attention, everyone!” Dr. Betty Director strode out into the center of the room and stepped up onto the central dais. “Everyone be quiet! We have an update…” The woman paused for breath in the muffled silence.

“… the only small room in this place is her office, serio…”

The comment carried through the crowded chamber like a tidal wave. The blush on Eddie’s face was partly hidden by his mustache but Dr. Director was forced to raise the printed update close to her face as if she was having some difficulty in reading it. The only faces not looking towards her in shock were turning to find Motor Ed sinking down deeper into his chair. Only John Possible was free to enjoy the ironic humor.

“Good one, Eddie. Remind me to tell you about what Anne said during our wedding reception. I swear that the whole hall heard it. Her parents still won’t talk to me.”

“IF… we can refocus our attention…” Betty lowered the paper from her face and she was all business once again. “We have received a transmission from the field squad and it seems that the signal was indeed from a Kimmunicator. The signal strength has given the operatives a course to follow and the enhanced hover sleds should be on the scene within minutes.” She watched as her agents digested this information with a mixture of relief and trepidation; their girl had been found but could they bring her in?

“That is all for now. Return to your posts and further updates will be disseminated as they come in.” She stepped down from the dais and work resumed around her.

Of the hundred or so operatives manning the Central Command, most were coordinating the actions of the agents in the field with the base of ‘GJ’ operations here. Each person was highly trained to perform multiple tasks but was solely responsible for one function when assigned to ‘CC’. The only non-agents here at this time were Eddie and John; each man had been given a workstations to monitor the telemetry of the newly enhanced hover sleds and route the field reports back to the relevant teams; all must be prepared if the mission was to be successful.

She threaded purposefully between the clusters of busy agents and stood next to Dr. P. Eddie noticed that the executive agent wasn’t going to give him any attention in front of her posse, but he’d expected no less. Embarrassing remarks aside, this was her turf and she had troops to command; no way was she going to be seen fraternizing with the enemy.

“We will locate her, sir.” She might have said more but providence was not to be tempted. John nodded in silent gratitude before bending back down over the monitor screen in front of him. He was mildly startled by a light punch to his shoulder.

“Dude, really, we’ll snag Little Red. Seriously. It’ll all be cool.” John could see that Ed was sincere and gave another grateful nod. Even Dr. Director shifted in reaction to the comment before she walked away to oversee more of the project. The two men returned to their work, their chosen fields of engineering and technology given them more confidence than they would have other wise felt.

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There was little need to guess as to the whereabouts of Kim Possible; the pilots had spotted the flames from miles away and, matching the original direction of the Kimmunicator transmission to that heading, directed their hover sleds flew as fast as they could towards an abandoned fuel handling depot on the distant outskirts of Middleton.

Agents Benson and Hedges were in the lead vehicle and in constant contact with Central Command; this was more to relay data to the operatives back at ‘GJ’ rather than receive instructions themselves. They had been drilling and preparing for this moment for almost a week now, even before the Possibles and the other ‘guests’ had been brought into the project. Back before it started being referred to as a ‘rescue’ mission instead of a possible ‘seek and destroy’, shamed though they all were to admit it. Hedges ran his fingers along the instrument panel ruefully.

The hover sleds were truly a wonder; never having used the devices before, a handful of the best ‘GJ’ pilots had drilled and trained on the machines from the moment that Drakken first declared the enhanced machines to be complete. With more lift and speed than an MH 53-E Sea Dragon, the sleds were no louder than a golf cart and almost as simple to operate and control. Throw in the capacity for the retractable arm coils and they were more than suitable for the task at hand. For all of his instability, Drew Lipsky was a genius.

“Sir, we’ve got a reading!” Benson’s voice was loud in the hover sled.

“Another transmission?”

“Not this time, sir. It’s a transponder signal from a sub-dermal implant!”

“Where?” The canopy of the new sled was protecting the passengers from wind shear so the agent had no trouble reach forward and pointing to the sensor array on the instrument panel. Hedges saw where the finger was pointing and evaluated the location.

“Just beyond the periphery of the flames. We’re almost on top of that signal now!” He thumbed a control. “I’m taking us down!” Hedges directed the hover sled to ground level while Benson signaled the other vehicles to remain loft but remain in a holding pattern until otherwise instructed. Lights mounted in the undercarriage of the sled winked on and the hard-packed earth and cracked macadam lit up like high noon.

“There!” The sled lowered further and came to rest near a prone body. As soon as the vehicle touched down and the canopy was opened, Agent Benson jumped over the side and ran towards the still form. Being careful with the apparently wounded subject, he checked for life signs.

“Get a backboard over here!” It wasn’t necessary to yell into his personal communicator but he had recognized the face and felt the need for urgency. It was obvious from just a cursory inspection that medical help was going to be needed. The agent managed to control his tone before making a more concise report to the Field Commander. “Sir, it’s one of them! It’s a member of Team Possible!”

“Understood.” Hedges never seemed to let his emotions affect his actions. “Bring the subject on board as quickly as possible and I’ll send the other units on ahead.”

The unconscious body of Ron Stoppable was strapped to the backboard and gently loaded into the hover sled.

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Shego had been in moving upwards for the last several minutes, climbing ever upward. Desperate to gain the high ground for her own safety, she had failed to elude the mad thing that wore the ragged mantle of her wife. She was sick from the pain in her face and exhausted from battle and the running had no more idea what she was going to do now than the man in the Moon. There was a wraith somewhere below her that looked like someone she loved, a girl that she respected and admired too deeply to describe.

Kim was desperate also; to catch her, beat her, love her, and rape her until someone’s heart stopped beating. It didn’t even matter whose heart. The heat below matched the heat behind her eyes and the fire within her chest. As if summoned by a voice unheard, Kim retched another mouthful of pitch onto herself, the black fluid drying in the heat and turning to ash almost instantly. The smoke and stench of burning fuel oil wrapped themselves around the two women.

Kim was excreting constantly now, every orifice visible or otherwise a fount of vile pitch. It streamed from her emerald eyes and made it difficult to see her quarry. The mixture of dead tissue, fatigue poisons and excess Havok material made for a sour taste in her mouth as she vomited it up from her guts every few minutes, staining the exterior of her remaining clothes almost as quickly as the fabric was being soiled from within. The occasional flash of pink skin was still to be found, even for all of the dirt and pitch and soot, but there were no wounds or cuts or lacerations any sort on her flesh; the unthinking, self-serving ministrations of the Havok saw to that. Falling apart she might be, replaced system by system until she reached the point of dissolution, but unnatural forces were holding her body together until then.

Through the billowing smoke her eyes caught a flash of green from above. Kim grinned and increased her speed up the ladder.

The rungs mounted to the side of the refining stack were not of a single piece; the stack was much too tall for that. Rising three hundred feet above the burning depot, the ladder was attached in sections that were ten feet in length, with wider sections at each connection to allow climbers to rest or bypass each other. Not daring to rest, Shego pumped her legs for all that she was worth. Her vision was also impaired, but she knew that her own despair was the cause more so than the heat wafting up at her.

Her pain was also a factor and Shego did force herself to stop momentarily as she probed her knee; it was sore and she suspected an overextended ligament. Her arm was still bleeding lightly but her nose wasn’t and the lower half of her face felt as if she were chewing on a hot coal. She had never had a broken jaw before and she didn’t care for the sensation much. Her preternatural healing abilities were taxed but functioning, and her biggest worry was making sure any broken bones would be properly set before they knitted.

“Baby?”

Strike that, she thought, improperly knitted bones are my second biggest worry. Shego didn’t even look down for the source of the voice as she continued upwards.

“Baby, wait up!”

The strain of climbing so fast and for so long would have killed most people by now, but her altered body chemistry gave Shego a strength and endurance that made her far different than most people. Still, she was at the end of her resources and sucking for air from her exertions and her entire body was a symphony of pain. One minor detail of a beneficial nature was that she didn’t need to have her eyes open to climb, having memorized the spacing of the rungs; this allowed her to screw her eyes shut against the heat and stinging fumes.

Suddenly she felt an unexpected coolness around her body, replacing that of the heat that was rising from the flames throughout the depot. She risked opening her eyes for a moment and her ragged breath caught in her chest.

The entire depot was on fire, the flames having spread from the smoldering contents of that one fuel drum to acres of abandoned industrial complex. The red glow from the conflagration filled the sky around her but she had finally reached a height that brought up out of the greasy smoke. The night sky was black beyond the reach of the fire, that rich blackness that didn’t evolve horrors because it soon gave way to dawn. There was a gust of wind and even more of the smoke was blown away, revealing something else.

The terminus of the stack was less than ten feet above her head. She had run out of ladder.

“Shego…”

And time.

‘To love, comfort and keep.’

The former villain thrust her leaden hands one over the other to reach the pinnacle of the stack, dragging her legs after her to find what purchase they could. She could also taste the numbness in her brain and heart as she completed this final goal.

“Baby, please stop… there’s nowhere else to go. Please talk to me!”

There was the sound of the cold night wind whipping across tattered fabric and Shego looked down to see that her Princess had also cleared the smoke line, too. She’s right, Shego knew, there is nowhere else to go. Why did I do this?

“Shego?” Kim closed the gap, getting closer, and the look on her angel’s face unreadable with the bright flames below her and bordered in black. “Shego, stop!”

Shego did stop, having reached the very top pf the ladder and because she was dead inside. She hooked her arm around the top-most rung and brought her legs up beneath her, wedging her body in place against the force of the wind.

“Listen to me… you’re tired. You can’t run any more… just stay there and hang on…” Kim’s slender body navigated the final yards in no time and she joined her mate, her quarry, her prey. Shego was shivering, something that she hardly ever did, and her eyes were locked open and staring off into the void.

“Shego, look at me.”

‘Forsaking all others.’

The pale woman did look, thankful that the wind was strong enough to carry away the sour stench of the pitch that was smeared across Kim’s perfect face.

“Kimmie…” She could barely force the words through her despair and pain. She didn’t even know how wet her own face was from her tears or how filthy, either. She only knew that she was alone with her angel and that her angel was dying.

“It’s Ok, I’m here now.” Kim brought herself closer, extending her arms to her spouse. But you’re not, was the reply that Shego could not make. She did not want this terrible visage anywhere near her. When she felt the gradual pressure of Kim’s arms wrapping around her body, Shego cringed at the contact. She could smell the sourness now, feel the remaining fabric of her young wife’s clothing slide across the slick pitch beneath. The firm body next to her felt so warm and otherwise whole and healthy, it made her sick.

‘For richer or for poorer.’

“Kim, it’s over.”

“Hm? What do you mean?”

What did she mean, that the chase was over? Did she mean that Kim’s life was over? She believed that now, all shred of hope gone from her heart.

“You’re right, Pumpkin. There’s nowhere else to go.” So final, her words; what was she trying to say to Kim, to say to herself?

“I know, love… look.” Kim released one arm from around her wife and pointed down into the flames. The air was so hot that if they had tried to climb back down it would have cooked their lungs at the first breath below the smoke line. Metal buckled and melted and concrete baked and split from the intensity of the fire, and the sound was a continuous roar that filled their ears like white noise.

“There’s no going back.”

“No… but we can go forward.” The voice of her Princess was so self-assured as always. “There never was a chance for us, you know that right?”

“What? No chance…?”

“Well, no chance for me, at least.” Kim snorted and wiped away the inky tar from her lips. “I know that you’ve been telling me that I’m sick. I’m starting to believe you.” She took her wife’s pale green chin between her thumb and index finger and gently pulled her gaze around to face her.

“Tell me that this is right!” She raised her fingers to her face. Shego didn’t even have the strength left to scream; Kim had just ripped a four-inch strip of flesh away from her cheek. It glistened red, then black and then it was gone, leaving perfectly pink skin in its place. Even if she didn’t feel it for more than a second, Kim certainly seemed horrified by it.

“TELL ME THAT THIS IS RIGHT!”

Shego did react to the screech, but only to draw herself into a tighter ball on the ladder. Kim still held the piece of skin in her dainty hand, a part of the original girl that was being whittled away all too quickly.

“Our life together, our life-style… we never had a chance in this world. You knew that, didn’t you?” Kim let go of the bloody tissue and brought her arm back up to brush some hair out of Shego’s eyes. The heat rising from below made their hair blow and twist. “That’s why you gave our girls to Ron and Bonnie, right? To give them a life, right?”

‘In sickness and in health.’

“Our girls are safe, Kimmie.” It wasn’t an answer, but it would make a good epitaph. Is that why I really came up here? Did I run, abandon Ron, just to die up here with her?

“Safe, yes. We can be safe, too, but it’s not going to be easy.” Kim looked down. “I know you’re tired but if you’ll just let go of the rung I’ll take care of the rest.”

To fall wouldn’t be so difficult right now, Shego thought. Hell, I can hardly keep from falling anyway. This wouldn’t even constitute as suicide, how could it? Kim was dying and I… I’m a has-been reprobate that can’t remember what it was like to be a hero, to always have the right solution to any challenge right at my fingertips. The girls are safe, they’ll have a family with the Possibles, and even Ron is better off if he died down there in the flames. There’s no one left that would need me, miss me…

It’ll be just like skydiving or bungee jumping, just enjoy the fall.

“Ok… Ok, Kimmie.” Rather than looking for strength, Shego allowed what little courage she had remaining to leach away. She felt that it would be easier that way. Maybe this is why I’ve always hated weakness. Maybe it was because I’ve been avoiding this for too long. Shego felt a violent shudder course through her body and she attributed it to the cold pre-dawn air.

‘As long as we both shall live.’

“I’ll go with you.”

“My brave girl…” Kim blinked back what might have been a real tear among the pitch. Kim felt a vibration beneath her feet; she had no way to know that Shego had felt it too and had mistaken it for the wind, but Kim knew something more than that. Her ears had detected the cracking of the baking metal, the popping of rivets and she felt the world tilt slightly as the vertical stack began to crumble at the base.

Without another word, Kim stood up and braced her feet against her rung, freeing her one hand from Shego but letting the taller woman claim the other hand as they held each other tight. If Shego pulled her hand free, Kim would have fallen. But Shego had made her decision and they would fly together.

‘Until death do us part.’

There was a flash in her eyes, blinding her. Was that the sun?

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“Damn it, man, get them!” The updraft from the heat was making the air currents around the hover sled almost too powerful to navigate. The air car bucked and fought beneath them as Hedges gripped the steering levers.

“What the Hell do you think I’m trying to do?” Benson manned the controls for the arm coils. “Sir!” The red glare from the burning depot was brilliant in their eyes and it was next to impossible to do more than stay aloft, let alone manually grab a human body from the top of a stack. The structure was tilted, its base becoming powder from the heat and collapsing from it’s own weight.

“Can’t you hold this thing steady?” Benson didn’t realize that he was screaming at his superior officer.

“What the fu…” Hedges forced down his emotions. “I suggest urgency, but I’ll do what I can.” He did, using all of his training to make the sled ride the air currents instead of fight them. Maybe he could find a rhythm to the motions.

“That’s the ticket, sir!” Benson seemed to agree with that tactic. “Almost…” He jammed his face against the targeting display and slowed his breathing. The cross hairs joined over one of the two bodies. He pulled back on the control switch and an arm shot out.

Designed by Drakken for a number of uses, from heavy lifting to feats of dexterity that would have impressed a brain surgeon like Dr. Anne Possible, the arm coils could also be programmed to strike like a cobra, grasping a target when speed was more important than finesse. The interlocking segments writhed and extended like a thing alive and the pincers encircled the target twice to ensure a firm grip.

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Kim kicked off from her perch at the same moment that Shego felt the breath driven from her body. Something had grabbed her around the waist and was holding her like a vice. She was dragged forward by the weight of Kim’s body, Shego desperately holding onto her Princess with both hands, causing her torso to rest painfully against the rim of the stack.

“Kim, wait… I can’t…”

“Shego, come on!” Kim looked up at her wife in confusion as she dangled in space, one tiny hand in Shego’s strong grip as her other hand gestured downwards at the maelstrom below. “There’s no other way!”

“Something has me!” She could feel the force pulling her back, tugging her away from her angel and the taking away from her the choice that they had made together. She looked down at herself and saw the gunmetal blue of the arm, not knowing what it was.

Whether it was an attempt to free her mate or to leave her behind was uncertain; Kim lifted her other hand to take hold of Shego’s wrists and then lifted her legs to plant her feet against the side of the vertical stack. Shego felt her pulling.

“Kim, don’t do this!” She had to get herself loose.

“It’s the only way.”

“Don’t leave me alone! I want to be with you!” If she could just free her hands, maybe even just one, she might be able to melt away the offending coils holding her back from oblivion, but Kim had Shego’s hands in a death grip. She looked back down at the younger girl and noticed that the remnants of Kim’s clothing were starting to burn from the ever-rising flames.

“Kim, please… please, baby… baby you’re on fire!”

“Goodbye, Shego.”

“No!”

Kim just smiled up at her and then she let go, dropping from sight and lost amid the fire and smoke.

“… not without me…”

Shego knew no more.

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The stack began to rotate in a spiral as its foundation finally shattered and it started to corkscrew down to the earth, taking out several other smaller pieces of refinery equipment along with it. The place was mostly slag and would burn for days; no fire company would be able to tame that, not if they had a thousand pump engines. If not for the fact that the depot was so far out of Middleton proper that it stood alone on the property, it might have ignited all other buildings around it. As it was, it was the sole beacon to illuminate ‘GJ’s’ greatest failure.

“SHIT!” Chaos reigned inside the canopy of the hover sled.

“Agent Benson…”

“I couldn’t get her! That damn chimney was in the way… I couldn’t reach her!”

Hedges could have ordered the man restrained, or just told him to shut up or even attempted to console his subordinate; none of it would have been of any use. He postponed his report back to Central Command to take a look at the view screen to his left. Clearly visible from the camera mounted on the sled’s undercarriage was a woman, limp within the arm coil and apparently unconscious. Benson raved behind him as Hedges considered just releasing the coil and dropping the woman into the flames.

The thought served its purpose; it galvanized him into action.

“Agent Benson.”

“I couldn’t…”

“Agent Benson, you will shut the Hell up and retract the arm!” He pointed to the screen. “We have more wounded to tend to.” This earned him a scowl as the agent let his training take over and restore control.

“Yes, sir.”

As he activated the winch and slowly lifted Shego’s still form up towards the hover sled, Benson knew that his superior felt as badly as he did. He did not envy the other man his rank as Hedges slowly reached out and activated the communicator, opening a channel back to Central Command.

“Hedges to ‘GJ’, Hedges to ‘GJ’… come in ‘GJ’.”

“We’re reading you, agent.” It was Dr. Director herself. “Please report.”

“Ma’am…” He was distracted briefly as cold air hit the back of his neck. Benson was carefully guiding their new passenger into the sled and laying her down beside the bandaged form of Ron Stoppable. “Ma’am, my report is as follows…”

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The river cut a meandering swath between Middleton and Upperton; it was much cleaner than it once was thanks to both the Environmental Protection Agency and to the civic-minded citizens of the tri-city area. Because of them, most of the industrial sites that lined its banks had either adjusted their production methods to abide by the current laws or they had closed. A raging fire marked the location of one of the latter; a fuel oil depot that had been unable to meet modern standards was burning to the ground.

Less that a quarter of a mile away along the pristine edge of the river, the recreation spot for fishermen and boaters alike, could still be found the only memorials to this dead symbol of a failed enterprise; rusted pipes that once drained waste products from the depot down to the water were now serving as nesting grounds for local bird life.

Tonight there was movement in one of the pipes and this unusual occurrence caused a nearby rat to freeze in its tracks. Movement could mean food for this denizen of the muddy riverbank and all of the local scavengers considered this spot to be excellent foraging ground. The rat, a black and filthy variety ubiquitous in the urban blight of this part of the city, listened and sniffed the air to see what telltales it could find for dinner this night.

The rat meandered right up to the pipe’s metal rim.

Grab, squeeze; a petite hand struck like a waiting cobra and made short work of the rodent, crushing the narrow skull into pulp within the bloody palm. Blood, dirt, and something black that glistened in the moonlight covered the otherwise unmarred flesh.

“… snackage…”

A slender form pulled itself from the pipe and examined the dead thing in her hand. Volumes of pitch were expelled in a retching torrent before she lifted the rat to her lips, and the uneaten portion was shoved into a tattered pocket on the scorched remains of a baggy pair of cargo pants. Giving no further thought to the fire raging behind her, Kim Possible sat along the edge of the river and gazed with furtive eyes across the shifting waters, the dawn breeze causing the patterns of the surface to ripple and scintillate.

Idly, she began to inspect her flesh. In addition to her own secretions she was covered from head to toe with the waste and filth of every beast that had made the pipe its home since the depot had been closed. Bits of broken glass and shards of metal were sticking into her like pins, many had been impacted quite deep from the explosions and she would eventually have to dig them out. No matter what damage had already been done to her body or what she now had to do to herself in removing the debris, no sooner did she remove an offending object when her skin would knit itself closed with black tendrils and then be whole again.

Her clothes were in a dire state and most of her hair was gone, bare scalp shining through matted red fuzz that was caked with mud and ash and melted together in an oily mass from the flames. There was no pain from her wounds, being that she no longer bore wounds for more than a few seconds, and this made the irritation along her right hip all the more puzzling to her.

Kim looked down at the red and swollen knot on her skin. Using what ragged nails as remained to her, Kim dug into the enflamed tissue and a black wad of pitch was expelled into her hand; the wound promptly sealed and the pain was gone. Something hard and inorganic was within the tarry substance, though she could not tell what it was. Pulling herself to her feet she staggered to the water’s edge, the meal of the rat helping to regain her strength, both in mind and body

She bent low and washed the pitch from the tiny object, exposing an encapsulated circuit and relay wires; she blinked in recognition of the device and a single name flashed across her ravaged mind.

“… Wade… the fat little puppet master…”

Kim finished the rat before loping away towards Middleton’s residential community.

To be continued…

Author’s Notes: On a technical note, I’ve incorporated scene dividers into this chapter; I hope that they make reading more comfortable. I have failed miserably at the recommendation that I ‘shorten the chapters and lengthen the story’. This chapter has taken the longest to write because the entire first draft had to be scrapped because it sucked big time. I feel strongly that the story has a full head of steam again and is back on track. As always, reviews and feedback are encouraged.