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graycardinal********************
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (8/10)
A Sitch in Slash: Episode #2
Fandom: Kim Possible/Narbonic
Author: Gray Cardinal
Rating: PG -13
Classification: You tell me....
Summary: An assassin's after Shego, Mrs. Dr. Possible is trying to resolve matters without involving Kim -- and you just know that's not going to work out....
********************
And after much too long a hiatus, we return to our story. But are we through with the evil cliffhangers? Maybe, maybe not....
8 • "I May Look Like a Gerbil, But I'm Still a Brain Surgeon"
It was one of those moments when too much was happening at once. Even as Ron heard the blip-sizzle of Mell’s laser, he saw Kim cock her wrist and send the mirror from her compact spinning outward like a Frisbee, all while whirling her body in another direction and aiming a series of kicks at Mell. At the same time, Shego was dropping sideways into the space between Mell and the sports bag, twisting out of the mirror’s way as she went.
There was a flash as Kim’s mirror intercepted the laser burst, causing it to ricochet over the evil intern’s shoulder and straight toward Ron. He ducked, the energy bolt shot past him – and straight onto the wing mirror of a parked car, which bounced it out over Rector Street . . .
. . . just as Shego, who had somehow got hold of Kim’s lipstick laser and was slicing at the side of Mell’s lab coat, caught the flying mirror in her free hand (free hand? Wasn’t she cuffed a second ago?) and flipped it upward in a high, curving arc . . .
. . . so that it blocked the straying laser fire with another flash, causing the bolt to carom back toward the battle – or, more specifically, on a direct course for the sports bag holding the PANIC projector (it was humming, I know it was humming – how come it stopped?) . . .
. . . except that the eight-inch-tall red-furred gerbil that was apparently Mrs. Dr. Possible (sick and wrong, incredibly sick and wrong, but at least she didn’t get evaporated) had come up with a pair of human-sized mirrored sunglasses from somewhere, and – though she staggered backward at the force of the ricochet – used the lenses to bounce the energy burst back toward Mell . . .
. . . who was busy enough with Shego – who had actually managed to bisect the evil intern’s lab jacket from collar to coattail, and was in the process of tugging the left half of the coat off of its owner’s body – that she didn’t notice the incoming laser discharge until it hit her jacket’s right sleeve with a crackling phhht-PHUT!
Mell yelped and jumped slightly, flinging her right arm outward as the end of the sleeve turned to ash and disintegrated, while the stubby little laser emitter that had been clipped inside it – and from which the shot had been fired in the first place – half fell and half dripped to the sidewalk, the less melted parts clinking and scattering messily as they landed.
Ron stared at the scene, eyes wide. “Wait a second. Didn’t she have a . . . ?”
“Force field!” said a familiar squeaky voice, as Rufus tugged on his pants leg (he had, just barely, had time to put the pants back on before chaos had erupted). The naked mole rat was beaming and holding a small square device with several tiny buttons on its front, which seemed to be designed to clip onto one’s belt. Ron grinned, scooped up Rufus and his prize, and slipped both into his pocket. “Score! Nachos with extra cheese for the little guy.”
“Call it a team effort,” Shego said dryly, one hand glowing and aimed in Mell’s direction while her other arm was nearly elbow-deep in a pocket that didn’t look anywhere near large enough to hold it. “Full marks to the Princess, the mole rat, the merc, and – is that really you down there?” she finished, eyeing the red gerbil presently perched atop the sports bag.
“I’m afraid so,” the gerbil said, its voice clearly that of Mrs. Dr. Possible, and much less squeaky than Ron had expected. “It’s – disconcerting, to say the least.”
“Enough with the gloating already,” Mell Kelly said, sounding more annoyed than cowed even though Kim was covering her with her own pocket Gatling laser – and looking much more comfortable with it than she usually did when it came to guns. “You might as well send me back now, anyway.”
“Ohh, no,” retorted Kim, whose finger was caressing the laser pistol’s trigger with exaggerated care. “You’re not going anywhere until you change Mom back.”
Mell blinked. “Who, me? Do I look like a mad scientific genius?”
“You look,” Shego retorted, “like someone who’s liable to have extra crispy feet real soon now if she isn’t careful.”
“Maybe,” Mell said, sounding remarkably unconcerned at the prospect. “But that won’t help you. Those Gerbilizer™ penlights were one-shots, and even if there’s one left someplace, there’s no reverse setting – Helen didn’t build one in.”
Kim’s eyes darkened. “No? Reverse? Setting?”
Mell started to grin, then scaled back the amusement level in her expression as she studied Kim’s face. “Reverse settings are for wimps. Real mad scientists don’t want their mutations undone at the drop of a hat. And you know, it does say ‘evil’ on our business cards.”
“She’s got a point there, Princess,” Shego observed.
“So not helping,” Kim shot back.
“It’s not the end of the world, Kim,” Mrs. Dr. Possible said, jumping down from the sports bag and poking her gerbil-sized nose into the pocket of the jacket she’d morphed out of. “Wade may have some ideas about this.” With some effort, she tugged her Kimmunicator out of the pocket and tapped the call button.
“What’s the—sitch?” Wade’s voice rose sharply in pitch as his image stared out of the tiny screen at Mrs. Dr. P’s button nose and whiskers.
“Mostly under control, believe it or not,” Kim’s mother replied. “That is, aside from the, um, extreme makeover.”
“No kidding. Let me guess – DNA and brain-wave scans?”
“Please and thank you. And let me have a look at the results,” she added. “I may look like a gerbil, but I’m still a brain surgeon.”
“On it,” said Wade, “but I’ll need to load some extra software to process the EEG; it’ll be a few minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. Dr. Possible told him, then looked up at Kim and added, “I do hope we don’t end up having to explain this to your father.”
Kim started to respond, but abruptly paused, a frown crossing her face as her gaze shifted. Ron turned his head, following her glance, as a cloud of gray smoke erupted out of the subway access stairwell. Out of the smoke rose a tall, tuxedo-clad figure . . .
“James Bond!” Mell said, her expression turning predatory – though even Ron could tell that it was her hormones, not her assassin’s instincts, driving the reaction.
“But isn’t he a . . . ” Ron trailed off.
“Fictional character?” Shego finished, her voice dry. “Doy! That looks like – Brosnan, isn’t it, the guy who plays him? But what would he be doing here? And why isn’t he . . . “ As the smoke began to clear, the new arrival’s profile began to take on a peculiar, stiff quality – and a whirl of small objects flew from over its shoulder toward the group.
“Hey, Chex mix!” Ron said, reaching up and scooping a square out of the air. Before he could pop it into his mouth, however, the rain of cereal-shaped missiles was followed by a soft phut-phut, and the whole group was abruptly enveloped in a shroud of damp gray mist. “Huh—mmph?!”
As quickly as it had erupted, the mist vanished again with a sharp sucking noise – and in the same few seconds, what had looked like a single square of Wheat Chex expanded into a tightly woven mesh that wrapped itself neatly around Ron’s body, pinning his arms snugly against his sides and binding his legs so he couldn’t move easily. A rapid glance revealed that Kim, Mell, and Shego had all been snared by more of the peculiar nets, which seemed to be impervious to Shego’s plasma. Rufus squeaked unhappily from Ron’s pocket, apparently unable to wiggle himself into a position where he could try his formidable teeth on the netting. And Ron couldn’t see what had happened to Mrs. Dr. Possible – one of the nets had landed on and enfolded the sports bag containing the PANIC projector, but Kim’s gerbilized mother was nowhere in sight.
Ron turned his attention back to the subway stairwell just in time to see Pierce Brosnan fall over like a bowling pin, so that his elegant nose whacked itself firmly against the sidewalk . . . and bounced. “Ohhh!” Ron said. “Rubber! Like those kiddie-clown punching bags.”
The tall blonde woman who emerged from behind the fallen dummy grinned. “Exactly. He’s very convincing, though. Right, Mell?”
“Mmmrpphhht!” Mell Kelly had been caught off balance by the net that had snared her, with the result that she now looked like a sleeping cat that had gotten itself tangled in a basketball hoop.
As she squirmed, an even taller man stepped past the blonde and approached the netted intern. “She looks kind of ticked,” he observed. “You think it’s safe to—?”
The blonde eyed Mell thoughtfully. “Good grief, what did you do to that coat?”
“Give me a minute to get out of this and I’ll show you,” growled Shego from several feet away. She didn’t seem to be making much progress with the promised escape, but she had managed to maneuver herself so that she was leaning against a lamp-post rather than merely lying on the sidewalk, and her fingers flared with green energy as she spoke. “Dr. Narbon, I presume?”
“Helen B. Narbon, mad genius, at your ser—“ The blonde paused. “Waitasecond. You’re Shego! A-k-a jade_firecat! You – you pervert!! Dave! Please tell me you packed the portable brain juicer!”
Her tall companion blinked, looking disconcerted. “I didn’t even know we had one of those.”
“It was right next to the DNA tenderizer,” Helen said. “Darnit, how am I supposed to maintain my evil image without at least one implement of diabolical torture at my disposal? Did we at least bring a portable death ray?”
“Now, Helen,” came a small voice whose source Ron couldn’t immediately identify. “Remember why we came. This isn’t about—”
“Oh, come on, Artie,” Helen said, tilting her head slightly sideways. “You were as squicked out by that story as I was. Can’t I at least traumatize her a little?”
“Hah.” Shego couldn’t quite restrain a burst of laughter, nearly causing her tightly wrapped body to lose its balance. “You couldn’t traumatize your way out of a melted popsicle.”
“Please!” The small voice’s owner – a fuzzy, long-eared brown gerbil not quite twice Rufus’s size – scampered from Helen’s shoulder to the top of her head. “We’re not here to discuss torture – or pornography,” he added, with a measured glance at Shego. “Let’s do what we came to do and go home.”
“And just what did you come here to do?” That was Kim, also still securely netted and sounding none too pleased about it. “Don’t you have enough havoc to wreak back in your own universe?”
Helen Narbon grinned, eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “Oh, probably. But there’s nothing like a quick vacation to recharge the evil batteries. Kim Possible, is it? You don’t look as heroic in person as you do in the press kit.”
Kim glared. “Yes, well, your dialogue’s not nearly as funny as it is in the comic strip. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, please,” Helen retorted. “Enough with the stalling-for-time shtick. I have read the Evil Overlord Rules, you know.” She turned toward Dave, looking wistful. “No death ray?”
“No death ray,” Dave said, shrugging. “We do have the nerve-gas clips for the pellet guns, though.”
Helen looked intrigued, but Artie’s expression was one of alarm. “We don’t have masks, and that stuff is incredibly fast-acting.”
“Hmmm,” said Helen, fingers twitching as if tapping imaginary calculator keys. “You’re right – in cross-universe mode, the teleport takes three seconds too long to cycle. We’d make it back, but we’d drop dead in the lab once we got there.”
“There you are, then,” Artie said. “Dave, grab Mell and we’ll – wait, what’s that?” And he pointed a tiny gerbil forepaw at the sports bag containing the PANIC projector . . . where a small candy-apple red shape was trying to wriggle its way inside past the netting. Helen stepped quickly around Mell, reached down, and plucked the crimson gerbil from its target by the tail.
She eyed her prisoner curiously for a moment. “You must be – Rufus? Funny, the dossier said you were a naked mole rat.”
“I should think not!” came the reply. “Dr. Kimberly Katherine Possible, M.D., if you please.”
Atop Helen’s head, Artie’s eyes had gone very wide. “Good heavens. That color – it’s . . . stunning. How did you do it?”
Mrs. Dr. Possible tilted her own head upward as best she could. “Oh – hello, Artie,” she said, sounding slightly flustered. “Good genes, I suppose; red hair runs in the family.”
“Yes, but—”
“Hold on,” Helen said, interrupting Artie. “You did say Dr. Possible?” She gestured sharply toward Kim, who had propped herself against a fire hydrant.
“Chief of neurosurgery, Middleton General Hospital.”
“A brain surgeon?” Helen looked fascinated. “But how – good Lord, don’t tell me the pocket Gerbilizer™ beam actually worked?”
“Amazing,” Artie said, sounding faintly awed.
Shego’s tone was dry enough to compete with the Sahara. “You sound surprised. What was it supposed to do, turn her into a hippopotamus?”
“You never know with prototypes,” Helen told her cheerfully, then glanced down at Mell. “I don’t suppose you managed to hold onto the penlight?”
“Mmmrphllffcrsntt!” It was hard to tell whether Mell’s head-shaking was meant as a response; the netting had snagged part of her mangled lab coat collar and pressed it over her mouth. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be having trouble breathing.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Helen said. “Which means . . . Dave, do we at least have a specimen jar with us?”
Four voices echoed as one – Kim’s, her mother’s, Shego’s, and Ron’s. “Specimen jar?” Three of them promptly followed with “Jinx, you owe me a soda!”
Shego merely rolled her eyes. “What is it with you people and sodas, anyway?”
Dave rummaged in the black bag he was carrying, ignoring the byplay. “How about this?” He held out a nearly empty jar labeled AllMart Dry Roasted Peanuts, unscrewing the lid.
“It’ll have to do,” said Helen. “So many tests, so little time.” Mrs. Dr. Possible wriggled desperately, but Helen wrapped her free hand firmly around the gerbilized brain surgeon and thrust her nose-first into the peanut jar, then held her palm firmly over the top while Dave punched several holes in the lid.
“You so won’t get away with this,” Kim told the mad genius as Helen twirled the jar lid into place. “We’ll come after you, Mom!”
“This from the girl who can’t get out of a simple dehydrated capture net,” Helen shot back.
Artie regarded Kim sympathetically from the top of his creator’s head. “I promise I won’t let Helen hurt her.”
“See? You don’t have a thing to worry about,” Helen said, grinning. “I’m sure Artie will take really good care of your mother. I think we’re done here,” she went on. “Dave, get Mell, and we’ll be on our way.”
Dave gave his employer a you’ve got to be kidding look, but shrugged, and with a certain amount of huffing and grunting, managed to sling Mell’s netted body over his shoulders. Meanwhile, Helen held her prize lightly in one hand, plunging the other into her own shoulder bag. Mrs. Dr. Possible scrabbled unhappily against the inside of the peanut jar – then abruptly stopped, clapping her forepaws together.
A moment later, Helen pulled a compact but odd-looking gadget from her bag. “Quantum tether,” she said cheerfully. “Say goodbye, Kim Possible. Oh, and Shego? You owe me one.”
“And you figure that how?” the mercenary inquired archly.
For the first time, Helen’s smile acquired a truly evil dimension. “That’s easy; I just saved your life.”
And so saying, she pressed a button on the quantum tether . . . .
(to be continued)
Previous chapter
Chapter 1
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (8/10)
A Sitch in Slash: Episode #2
Fandom: Kim Possible/Narbonic
Author: Gray Cardinal
Rating: PG -13
Classification: You tell me....
Summary: An assassin's after Shego, Mrs. Dr. Possible is trying to resolve matters without involving Kim -- and you just know that's not going to work out....
********************
And after much too long a hiatus, we return to our story. But are we through with the evil cliffhangers? Maybe, maybe not....
8 • "I May Look Like a Gerbil, But I'm Still a Brain Surgeon"
It was one of those moments when too much was happening at once. Even as Ron heard the blip-sizzle of Mell’s laser, he saw Kim cock her wrist and send the mirror from her compact spinning outward like a Frisbee, all while whirling her body in another direction and aiming a series of kicks at Mell. At the same time, Shego was dropping sideways into the space between Mell and the sports bag, twisting out of the mirror’s way as she went.
There was a flash as Kim’s mirror intercepted the laser burst, causing it to ricochet over the evil intern’s shoulder and straight toward Ron. He ducked, the energy bolt shot past him – and straight onto the wing mirror of a parked car, which bounced it out over Rector Street . . .
. . . just as Shego, who had somehow got hold of Kim’s lipstick laser and was slicing at the side of Mell’s lab coat, caught the flying mirror in her free hand (free hand? Wasn’t she cuffed a second ago?) and flipped it upward in a high, curving arc . . .
. . . so that it blocked the straying laser fire with another flash, causing the bolt to carom back toward the battle – or, more specifically, on a direct course for the sports bag holding the PANIC projector (it was humming, I know it was humming – how come it stopped?) . . .
. . . except that the eight-inch-tall red-furred gerbil that was apparently Mrs. Dr. Possible (sick and wrong, incredibly sick and wrong, but at least she didn’t get evaporated) had come up with a pair of human-sized mirrored sunglasses from somewhere, and – though she staggered backward at the force of the ricochet – used the lenses to bounce the energy burst back toward Mell . . .
. . . who was busy enough with Shego – who had actually managed to bisect the evil intern’s lab jacket from collar to coattail, and was in the process of tugging the left half of the coat off of its owner’s body – that she didn’t notice the incoming laser discharge until it hit her jacket’s right sleeve with a crackling phhht-PHUT!
Mell yelped and jumped slightly, flinging her right arm outward as the end of the sleeve turned to ash and disintegrated, while the stubby little laser emitter that had been clipped inside it – and from which the shot had been fired in the first place – half fell and half dripped to the sidewalk, the less melted parts clinking and scattering messily as they landed.
Ron stared at the scene, eyes wide. “Wait a second. Didn’t she have a . . . ?”
“Force field!” said a familiar squeaky voice, as Rufus tugged on his pants leg (he had, just barely, had time to put the pants back on before chaos had erupted). The naked mole rat was beaming and holding a small square device with several tiny buttons on its front, which seemed to be designed to clip onto one’s belt. Ron grinned, scooped up Rufus and his prize, and slipped both into his pocket. “Score! Nachos with extra cheese for the little guy.”
“Call it a team effort,” Shego said dryly, one hand glowing and aimed in Mell’s direction while her other arm was nearly elbow-deep in a pocket that didn’t look anywhere near large enough to hold it. “Full marks to the Princess, the mole rat, the merc, and – is that really you down there?” she finished, eyeing the red gerbil presently perched atop the sports bag.
“I’m afraid so,” the gerbil said, its voice clearly that of Mrs. Dr. Possible, and much less squeaky than Ron had expected. “It’s – disconcerting, to say the least.”
“Enough with the gloating already,” Mell Kelly said, sounding more annoyed than cowed even though Kim was covering her with her own pocket Gatling laser – and looking much more comfortable with it than she usually did when it came to guns. “You might as well send me back now, anyway.”
“Ohh, no,” retorted Kim, whose finger was caressing the laser pistol’s trigger with exaggerated care. “You’re not going anywhere until you change Mom back.”
Mell blinked. “Who, me? Do I look like a mad scientific genius?”
“You look,” Shego retorted, “like someone who’s liable to have extra crispy feet real soon now if she isn’t careful.”
“Maybe,” Mell said, sounding remarkably unconcerned at the prospect. “But that won’t help you. Those Gerbilizer™ penlights were one-shots, and even if there’s one left someplace, there’s no reverse setting – Helen didn’t build one in.”
Kim’s eyes darkened. “No? Reverse? Setting?”
Mell started to grin, then scaled back the amusement level in her expression as she studied Kim’s face. “Reverse settings are for wimps. Real mad scientists don’t want their mutations undone at the drop of a hat. And you know, it does say ‘evil’ on our business cards.”
“She’s got a point there, Princess,” Shego observed.
“So not helping,” Kim shot back.
“It’s not the end of the world, Kim,” Mrs. Dr. Possible said, jumping down from the sports bag and poking her gerbil-sized nose into the pocket of the jacket she’d morphed out of. “Wade may have some ideas about this.” With some effort, she tugged her Kimmunicator out of the pocket and tapped the call button.
“What’s the—sitch?” Wade’s voice rose sharply in pitch as his image stared out of the tiny screen at Mrs. Dr. P’s button nose and whiskers.
“Mostly under control, believe it or not,” Kim’s mother replied. “That is, aside from the, um, extreme makeover.”
“No kidding. Let me guess – DNA and brain-wave scans?”
“Please and thank you. And let me have a look at the results,” she added. “I may look like a gerbil, but I’m still a brain surgeon.”
“On it,” said Wade, “but I’ll need to load some extra software to process the EEG; it’ll be a few minutes.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mrs. Dr. Possible told him, then looked up at Kim and added, “I do hope we don’t end up having to explain this to your father.”
Kim started to respond, but abruptly paused, a frown crossing her face as her gaze shifted. Ron turned his head, following her glance, as a cloud of gray smoke erupted out of the subway access stairwell. Out of the smoke rose a tall, tuxedo-clad figure . . .
“James Bond!” Mell said, her expression turning predatory – though even Ron could tell that it was her hormones, not her assassin’s instincts, driving the reaction.
“But isn’t he a . . . ” Ron trailed off.
“Fictional character?” Shego finished, her voice dry. “Doy! That looks like – Brosnan, isn’t it, the guy who plays him? But what would he be doing here? And why isn’t he . . . “ As the smoke began to clear, the new arrival’s profile began to take on a peculiar, stiff quality – and a whirl of small objects flew from over its shoulder toward the group.
“Hey, Chex mix!” Ron said, reaching up and scooping a square out of the air. Before he could pop it into his mouth, however, the rain of cereal-shaped missiles was followed by a soft phut-phut, and the whole group was abruptly enveloped in a shroud of damp gray mist. “Huh—mmph?!”
As quickly as it had erupted, the mist vanished again with a sharp sucking noise – and in the same few seconds, what had looked like a single square of Wheat Chex expanded into a tightly woven mesh that wrapped itself neatly around Ron’s body, pinning his arms snugly against his sides and binding his legs so he couldn’t move easily. A rapid glance revealed that Kim, Mell, and Shego had all been snared by more of the peculiar nets, which seemed to be impervious to Shego’s plasma. Rufus squeaked unhappily from Ron’s pocket, apparently unable to wiggle himself into a position where he could try his formidable teeth on the netting. And Ron couldn’t see what had happened to Mrs. Dr. Possible – one of the nets had landed on and enfolded the sports bag containing the PANIC projector, but Kim’s gerbilized mother was nowhere in sight.
Ron turned his attention back to the subway stairwell just in time to see Pierce Brosnan fall over like a bowling pin, so that his elegant nose whacked itself firmly against the sidewalk . . . and bounced. “Ohhh!” Ron said. “Rubber! Like those kiddie-clown punching bags.”
The tall blonde woman who emerged from behind the fallen dummy grinned. “Exactly. He’s very convincing, though. Right, Mell?”
“Mmmrpphhht!” Mell Kelly had been caught off balance by the net that had snared her, with the result that she now looked like a sleeping cat that had gotten itself tangled in a basketball hoop.
As she squirmed, an even taller man stepped past the blonde and approached the netted intern. “She looks kind of ticked,” he observed. “You think it’s safe to—?”
The blonde eyed Mell thoughtfully. “Good grief, what did you do to that coat?”
“Give me a minute to get out of this and I’ll show you,” growled Shego from several feet away. She didn’t seem to be making much progress with the promised escape, but she had managed to maneuver herself so that she was leaning against a lamp-post rather than merely lying on the sidewalk, and her fingers flared with green energy as she spoke. “Dr. Narbon, I presume?”
“Helen B. Narbon, mad genius, at your ser—“ The blonde paused. “Waitasecond. You’re Shego! A-k-a jade_firecat! You – you pervert!! Dave! Please tell me you packed the portable brain juicer!”
Her tall companion blinked, looking disconcerted. “I didn’t even know we had one of those.”
“It was right next to the DNA tenderizer,” Helen said. “Darnit, how am I supposed to maintain my evil image without at least one implement of diabolical torture at my disposal? Did we at least bring a portable death ray?”
“Now, Helen,” came a small voice whose source Ron couldn’t immediately identify. “Remember why we came. This isn’t about—”
“Oh, come on, Artie,” Helen said, tilting her head slightly sideways. “You were as squicked out by that story as I was. Can’t I at least traumatize her a little?”
“Hah.” Shego couldn’t quite restrain a burst of laughter, nearly causing her tightly wrapped body to lose its balance. “You couldn’t traumatize your way out of a melted popsicle.”
“Please!” The small voice’s owner – a fuzzy, long-eared brown gerbil not quite twice Rufus’s size – scampered from Helen’s shoulder to the top of her head. “We’re not here to discuss torture – or pornography,” he added, with a measured glance at Shego. “Let’s do what we came to do and go home.”
“And just what did you come here to do?” That was Kim, also still securely netted and sounding none too pleased about it. “Don’t you have enough havoc to wreak back in your own universe?”
Helen Narbon grinned, eyes sparkling behind her glasses. “Oh, probably. But there’s nothing like a quick vacation to recharge the evil batteries. Kim Possible, is it? You don’t look as heroic in person as you do in the press kit.”
Kim glared. “Yes, well, your dialogue’s not nearly as funny as it is in the comic strip. And you didn’t answer my question.”
“Oh, please,” Helen retorted. “Enough with the stalling-for-time shtick. I have read the Evil Overlord Rules, you know.” She turned toward Dave, looking wistful. “No death ray?”
“No death ray,” Dave said, shrugging. “We do have the nerve-gas clips for the pellet guns, though.”
Helen looked intrigued, but Artie’s expression was one of alarm. “We don’t have masks, and that stuff is incredibly fast-acting.”
“Hmmm,” said Helen, fingers twitching as if tapping imaginary calculator keys. “You’re right – in cross-universe mode, the teleport takes three seconds too long to cycle. We’d make it back, but we’d drop dead in the lab once we got there.”
“There you are, then,” Artie said. “Dave, grab Mell and we’ll – wait, what’s that?” And he pointed a tiny gerbil forepaw at the sports bag containing the PANIC projector . . . where a small candy-apple red shape was trying to wriggle its way inside past the netting. Helen stepped quickly around Mell, reached down, and plucked the crimson gerbil from its target by the tail.
She eyed her prisoner curiously for a moment. “You must be – Rufus? Funny, the dossier said you were a naked mole rat.”
“I should think not!” came the reply. “Dr. Kimberly Katherine Possible, M.D., if you please.”
Atop Helen’s head, Artie’s eyes had gone very wide. “Good heavens. That color – it’s . . . stunning. How did you do it?”
Mrs. Dr. Possible tilted her own head upward as best she could. “Oh – hello, Artie,” she said, sounding slightly flustered. “Good genes, I suppose; red hair runs in the family.”
“Yes, but—”
“Hold on,” Helen said, interrupting Artie. “You did say Dr. Possible?” She gestured sharply toward Kim, who had propped herself against a fire hydrant.
“Chief of neurosurgery, Middleton General Hospital.”
“A brain surgeon?” Helen looked fascinated. “But how – good Lord, don’t tell me the pocket Gerbilizer™ beam actually worked?”
“Amazing,” Artie said, sounding faintly awed.
Shego’s tone was dry enough to compete with the Sahara. “You sound surprised. What was it supposed to do, turn her into a hippopotamus?”
“You never know with prototypes,” Helen told her cheerfully, then glanced down at Mell. “I don’t suppose you managed to hold onto the penlight?”
“Mmmrphllffcrsntt!” It was hard to tell whether Mell’s head-shaking was meant as a response; the netting had snagged part of her mangled lab coat collar and pressed it over her mouth. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be having trouble breathing.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Helen said. “Which means . . . Dave, do we at least have a specimen jar with us?”
Four voices echoed as one – Kim’s, her mother’s, Shego’s, and Ron’s. “Specimen jar?” Three of them promptly followed with “Jinx, you owe me a soda!”
Shego merely rolled her eyes. “What is it with you people and sodas, anyway?”
Dave rummaged in the black bag he was carrying, ignoring the byplay. “How about this?” He held out a nearly empty jar labeled AllMart Dry Roasted Peanuts, unscrewing the lid.
“It’ll have to do,” said Helen. “So many tests, so little time.” Mrs. Dr. Possible wriggled desperately, but Helen wrapped her free hand firmly around the gerbilized brain surgeon and thrust her nose-first into the peanut jar, then held her palm firmly over the top while Dave punched several holes in the lid.
“You so won’t get away with this,” Kim told the mad genius as Helen twirled the jar lid into place. “We’ll come after you, Mom!”
“This from the girl who can’t get out of a simple dehydrated capture net,” Helen shot back.
Artie regarded Kim sympathetically from the top of his creator’s head. “I promise I won’t let Helen hurt her.”
“See? You don’t have a thing to worry about,” Helen said, grinning. “I’m sure Artie will take really good care of your mother. I think we’re done here,” she went on. “Dave, get Mell, and we’ll be on our way.”
Dave gave his employer a you’ve got to be kidding look, but shrugged, and with a certain amount of huffing and grunting, managed to sling Mell’s netted body over his shoulders. Meanwhile, Helen held her prize lightly in one hand, plunging the other into her own shoulder bag. Mrs. Dr. Possible scrabbled unhappily against the inside of the peanut jar – then abruptly stopped, clapping her forepaws together.
A moment later, Helen pulled a compact but odd-looking gadget from her bag. “Quantum tether,” she said cheerfully. “Say goodbye, Kim Possible. Oh, and Shego? You owe me one.”
“And you figure that how?” the mercenary inquired archly.
For the first time, Helen’s smile acquired a truly evil dimension. “That’s easy; I just saved your life.”
And so saying, she pressed a button on the quantum tether . . . .
(to be continued)
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