![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
graycardinal********************
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (7/10: “Gluglugluglugluglugshhhllloooooopp!”)
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....
********************
This chapter ran rather longer than I expected, considering. (I think I've mentioned earlier that the round-robin viewpoints took me a little by surprise, but they've been working out surprisingly well. I think we're looking at two more chapters and an epilogue at this point, but we'll see.)
“DUCK!!!!!”
Four voices shouted the word simultaneously – three from the sky over Rector Street, one from the sidewalk. But there simply wasn’t time for Mrs. Dr. Possible to react before the narrow penlight-beam struck its target. For perhaps two and a half seconds, she glowed with shimmering cinnamon-colored light . . .
. . . and then there was only a series of clinks and rustles as her aquamarine business suit settled to the pavement in a heap, its wearer vanished.
“You’re so going down!” Kim Possible yelled from above and behind Ron, and she swooped past her sidekick at full jet-propelled speed, drawing her hair dryer as she went by.
Ron, as usual, wasn’t nearly as smooth a flyer; he was barely managing to stay clear of Mell Kelly’s laser fire. He was also a little higher up than Rufus liked, but there wasn’t time to wait, so the naked mole rat tripped a release catch, and the tiny open-cockpit toy jet in which he was sitting fell away from Ron’s waist.
Rufus promptly kicked in the power and zipped away from Mell’s line of fire. As he’d expected, none of the combatants were paying any attention to him – they almost never did – and as soon as he was clear of the firefight he looped downward toward the sidewalk. The little jet was one of Nakasumi’s prototypes, and Rufus had spent most of the helicopter ride from Boston modifying its onboard wiring so he could pilot the craft himself.
Evading the crossfire wasn’t as difficult as Rufus had expected; Mell was concentrating almost entirely on Kim, forcing her to circle higher and farther from the section of sidewalk now occupied solely by Mell, Shego, and Mrs. Dr. Possible’s clothing. New York’s pedestrians might be jaded, but they were wise enough to stay clear of a supervillainous battle, and this one was proving more than usually pyrotechnic. Shego, her disguise discarded, was pelting Mell with a barrage of plasma bolts, but the onslaught was being deflected by an invisible force field, and Mell had produced a small bazooka from somewhere and was firing it at Shego – not at all accurately – with her off hand.
“This isn’t your fight, Princess!” Shego was yelling between plasma bursts. “Get away while you can!”
Kim was above Rufus’s line of sight, but her return shout echoed off skyscraper windows up and down the block. “She zaps Mom, she gets stomped, end of story. Then it’s your turn!”
Mell was laughing – not a mad-scientific mwahahaha, but a laugh of pure exuberant glee. Rufus had heard a lot of villainous laughs during his adventures with Kim and Ron; this one was easily the scariest. It sounded as if Mell hadn’t had this much fun in years, and she was enjoying it to the hilt.
“Ready to come down now?” the black-haired intern taunted, as the sound of a sputtering jetpack drifted down from overhead. “Looks like you’re running out of gas; let me help you with that!” Mell stuffed her laser pistol into a pocket, reached into her coat, and pulled out a tubular weapon almost as long as her arm – all while still absent-mindedly firing the bazooka in her other hand in Shego’s general direction. Rufus glanced upward and saw Kim spiral into view, gliding a bit erratically as her backpack used up the last of its jet fuel. Then she suddenly twisted sideways, dodging the bright orange streak that had erupted from Mell’s flamethrower. The shot didn’t entirely miss, though – about half the left wing of Kim’s jetpack was now a melted ruin.
Rufus banked his little jet, again steering away from potential crossfire. Kim, meanwhile, had fired her grapple gun, snagging a fire escape and using her cheerleading ability to bounce herself off a series of walls as she dropped toward the street. As he curved back toward his target, the mole rat caught a glimpse of Ron. Luckily, he was out of Mell’s line of sight. Unluckily, he’d managed to get himself stuck on a flagpole. Rufus shook his head, bemused; for the moment, his human was safe. Relatively safe, anyway.
The craft bucked suddenly, as a nearby KA-WHOOFF! sent shockwaves rippling through Rufus’s airspace. A glance toward Mell revealed the source; her flamethrower’s remains were scattered around her in melted fragments. Mell herself was only slightly scorched, but she looked extremely annoyed.
“You need better toys, inkspot!” Shego taunted. She was still subjecting Mell to a steady plasma barrage, but instead of battering at the force field, she was lobbing small globes of green energy over it.
“Working on it, slime-brain!” retorted Mell, who had retrieved her laser pistol and was shooting the plasma balls out of the air like skeet targets. The bazooka was nowhere in evidence, but Mell’s free hand was thrust deep into a coat pocket. “Damn, I thought I had one more penlight!”
Concentrating on his flying again, Rufus executed one final turn before extending the toy plane’s landing gear. Its engine made very little noise, but he cut it completely once the turn was complete – no sense attracting unwanted attention. A few moments later, the jet skidded to a stop behind the subway entrance, just a few feet from Mrs. Dr. Possible’s now-forgotten sports bag and her crumpled clothing.
As he jumped out of the plane, the heap of pale linen fabric rustled. Rufus frowned, eyeing the rippling coat sleeve sharply as a pointed, black-tipped nose poked out from under it. “Who?” he squeaked softly.
The rest of the body followed the nose. It was eight inches long to Rufus’s five, not counting a slender tail. The ears and nose were jet black, but its eyes were an almost disturbingly bright green, and its fur was a warm candy-apple red that looked extremely odd on a gerbil.
“Rufus?” the gerbil said, sounding slightly dazed. “You’ve – grown.”
Rufus shook his head quickly. “No,” he replied. “You, smaller. Much.”
The gerbil’s nose wrinkled, it looked down at itself – and almost fell over. “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Dr. Possible. “This is not good.”
Rufus shrugged. “Happens.” He pointed a few yards down the sidewalk. “Bag, important?”
“Very,” Kim’s mother said wryly. “We need what’s in it to send Mell back where she belongs – but it has to be aimed, and I’m not sure we’re big enough to move it.”
“Try,” Rufus replied. “Have to. Save – “ He threw up his paws. “Everybody!”
Mrs. Dr. Possible’s nose twitched, and she peered at it as well as she could. “Dear me, this will take getting used to. The process must have mapped human neurological impulses onto the gerbil physiological . . . sorry,” she said, breaking off. “It’s utterly fascinating, but you’re right, there’s no time; we’d better try to use the PANIC device before someone else gets hold of it.”
Rufus cocked his head quickly in several different directions, taking stock of the battle, then nodded at Kim’s mother. “Clear. Go!”
The mole rat and the gerbilized brain surgeon scampered rapidly from behind the stairway kiosk to where the sports bag had landed, right side up near the inner edge of the sidewalk. After another glance to confirm that Mell and Shego were still preoccupied, Rufus jumped atop the bag, grabbed the zipper tag in his teeth, and tugged. The zipper slid easily, and once he’d created an opening a few inches wide, he stopped, looking expectantly at his companion – who looked back at him with a blank expression.
Rufus jerked his head at the opening. “In!”
“Oh,” Mrs. Dr. Possible said, whacking her red-furred forehead with a tiny paw. “Right.“ She thrust her nose tentatively into the dark slit, then clambered inside the bag rather less clumsily than Rufus had feared. After a moment’s thought, Rufus followed.
Not surprisingly, it was almost pitch dark inside the case, and the two rodents spent a few awkward moments bumping into and scrambling over each other as their eyes adjusted. “Remind me not to mention this to James,” Kim’s mother said absently. A moment later, she added, “Aha!” There was a click, and the small round glow of a pocket flashlight shone into the shadows.
“Much better,” she said. “Ah, here we are – oh, good, I think it’s oriented in the right direction already. We just need to push the induction tube far enough out of the bag so it’s pointing at Mell.” She waved a paw at one end of the device.
“Push!” agreed Rufus, and the two set to work. The PANIC projector wasn’t especially heavy, but it was still big enough that both he and Mrs. Dr. Possible were panting by the time they’d shoved it the five or so inches toward the open end of the bag, then maneuvered the “induction tube” – less formally, the business end of the dust-buster vacuum Wade had cannibalized for the gadget’s housing – upward just far enough to get the end of the tube through the opened zipper slot.
That task accomplished, Mrs. Dr. Possible retreated to the other end of the device where its controls were mounted, while Rufus took scampered atop the induction tube, where he’d be able to peer out through the bag’s opening to make sure their aim was good enough.
“Mell, force field,” he squeaked over his shoulder at Kim’s mother. “Problem?”
“Hmm,” came Mrs. Dr. P’s voice. “I don’t think so. If I understood Wade right, what this thing projects is more like a radio signal than an energy beam. Ready?”
“Ready!” said Rufus. Outside the bag, Mell was still skeet-shooting at Shego’s plasma balls with the laser pistol; in her other hand was something that looked like a speargun.
“Powering up,” Mrs. Dr. P said, switches going click as she spoke. “Quantum resonator on line in ten, nine, eight . . . .”
Rufus missed the rest of the countdown. On eight, there was a tremendous SNAP! as the flagpole from which Ron had been hanging finally gave way – whereupon Ron dropped some twenty-five feet straight down and landed squarely on Mell Kelly’s head. It was hard to tell which of the two made more noise; the combined “Yaaaaahhhhh!!!” nearly burst Rufus’s eardrums.
Several other voices weighed in almost simultaneously, adding to the confusion. Fortunately for Rufus’s ears, they were muffled somewhat by Ron’s pants – predictably, he’d lost them in the fall, and they’d draped themselves partially over the sports bag.
“Ron!” That was Kim.
“Boo-yah! The Ron-man scores!”
“Amazing,” came Shego’s dry comment. “I guess that’s one way to break a stalemate.”
“Owwww, my head.” Obviously, that was Mell. “You’re gonna – huh?”
As Rufus pushed aside the stray pant leg, he found himself staring straight into the evil intern’s eyes. She had apparently landed face-forward on the sidewalk and had just started to get up when their gazes intersected.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Dr. Possible called from farther inside the bag. “We’re armed and ready . . .”
Shego’s voice drowned out the rest of the sentence. “One microscopically false move, Kelly,” she was growling from somewhere above and behind Rufus, “and there won’t be enough of you left to feed a single-celled organism for breakfast.”
There was a click so soft that Rufus barely heard it, and abruptly, a small black tube was pointing at his nose from inside one of Mell’s sleeves. He froze.
“Better think twice about that,” Mell told Shego calmly. “This is only a three-hundred watt pulse laser – but that’s good enough to fry your little pink friend here. Not to mention whatever’s in that bag. Which is humming, by the way.”
“He – it – isn’t my—”
Before Shego could finish the sentence, Kim’s voice cut in, sounding desperate. “Nobody fries Rufus, okay? And especially, nobody blows up the . . . .” She trailed off.
Without so much as twitching her wrist-mounted laser, Mell tilted her head upward. “Blows up the what? Do tell.”
“I . . . can’t,” said Kim, not at all convincingly. “I don’t have the faintest idea what Mom had in that bag.”
“Yes, you do,” Mell said cheerily. “Now tell me – unless you like your mole rats extra crispy, that is.”
Shego spoke next. “Better answer, princess. Kaboom Girl here doesn’t mess around.”
Kim sighed audibly. “Wade called it a PANIC projector – something to do with parallel universes and dual quantum states. I – didn’t get all the specifics.”
“PANIC,” Mell said thoughtfully. “Dual quantum states. Probably – amp down the plasma there, night-light girl – for booting unappreciated guests out of neighboring universes. Am I right?”
There were several awkward moments of silence. “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Mell, looking amused. “So what happens if I blow it up? Something spectacular, I bet.”
One of Rufus’s few weaknesses – aside from cheese – was the irresistable impulse to cap a sufficiently apt straight line, and Mell had inadvertantly given him one. “Gluglugluglugluglugshhhllloooooopp!” he said, simulating a bathtub drain for the second time that day.
Mell eyed him, impressed. “Black hole, huh? Maybe total collapse of the immediate multiverse?” Reluctantly, Rufus nodded.
“Well, then,” said Mell Kelly, very carefully levering herself to her feet one-handed, her wrist laser wavering not so much as a millimeter from its focus on Rufus’s nose as she did so, “everyone had better do exactly as I say, hadn’t they? Unless you really want to find out what black holes look like from the inside.”
“You can’t let her –”
“We have to, Ron,” came Kim’s voice, sounding resigned. “It’s too dangerous not to.”
“She’s right, Stoppable,” Shego put in, “and you have to know how much I hate saying that. Can’t have world domination without a world to dominate, you know?”
“Perfect,” Mell said, reaching into yet another pocket with her free hand and producing two pairs of black and silver shackles. “So, Kimmy, if you’ll just cuff Shego’s wrists behind her for me? No – that set’s to hobble her ankles; give me some credit.”
Kim sighed. “This is so wrong – in a very wrong way, if that makes any sense.”
“I hear you, princess,” said Shego as the restraints clicked shut. “It’s – embarrassing.”
Mell gave Shego a disgusted look. “No less embarrassing than reading incredibly kinky porn about goinking your boss, your boss’s mom, and a gerbil all at practically the same time,” she said dryly.
“Eeeeuuuwwww!!” said Kim and Ron simultaneously, followed in the next breath by “Too much information!”, and in the breath after that by “Jinx, you owe me a soda!”
Shego simply glared. “I refuse to be guilt-tripped by a comic strip character with wimpy taste in fanfic. Now if Princess here wants to pile it on, fine – she’s got the right. It is my fault her mother got evaporated. But it’s not my fault that my made-up Mell turns out to have a way twistier imagination than yours.” The expression on Shego’s face looked oddly . . . drained, Rufus decided.
“So not the right moment,” Kim said in a dry, tightly wound voice. “If we somehow come out of this in the same universe – we’ll talk. Unless I decide to pound you into Silly Putty.”
“We come out of this in the same universe . . . Kim,” replied Shego, “I may just let you.”
“Oh, spare me,” Mell cut in. “Enough with the tea and sympathy already. Besides, it’s not like—”
Two voices interrupted at once; one was Ron’s. “Weird. It’s not—”
The other came from behind Rufus, as a certain red-furred gerbil poked its head out of the sports bag. “What’s going on out--?”
For a split second, reality seemed to freeze-frame, as six faces registered six different flavors of shock.
Then Mell’s wrist laser went off.
[....to be continued....]
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (7/10: “Gluglugluglugluglugshhhllloooooopp!”)
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....
********************
This chapter ran rather longer than I expected, considering. (I think I've mentioned earlier that the round-robin viewpoints took me a little by surprise, but they've been working out surprisingly well. I think we're looking at two more chapters and an epilogue at this point, but we'll see.)
“DUCK!!!!!”
Four voices shouted the word simultaneously – three from the sky over Rector Street, one from the sidewalk. But there simply wasn’t time for Mrs. Dr. Possible to react before the narrow penlight-beam struck its target. For perhaps two and a half seconds, she glowed with shimmering cinnamon-colored light . . .
. . . and then there was only a series of clinks and rustles as her aquamarine business suit settled to the pavement in a heap, its wearer vanished.
“You’re so going down!” Kim Possible yelled from above and behind Ron, and she swooped past her sidekick at full jet-propelled speed, drawing her hair dryer as she went by.
Ron, as usual, wasn’t nearly as smooth a flyer; he was barely managing to stay clear of Mell Kelly’s laser fire. He was also a little higher up than Rufus liked, but there wasn’t time to wait, so the naked mole rat tripped a release catch, and the tiny open-cockpit toy jet in which he was sitting fell away from Ron’s waist.
Rufus promptly kicked in the power and zipped away from Mell’s line of fire. As he’d expected, none of the combatants were paying any attention to him – they almost never did – and as soon as he was clear of the firefight he looped downward toward the sidewalk. The little jet was one of Nakasumi’s prototypes, and Rufus had spent most of the helicopter ride from Boston modifying its onboard wiring so he could pilot the craft himself.
Evading the crossfire wasn’t as difficult as Rufus had expected; Mell was concentrating almost entirely on Kim, forcing her to circle higher and farther from the section of sidewalk now occupied solely by Mell, Shego, and Mrs. Dr. Possible’s clothing. New York’s pedestrians might be jaded, but they were wise enough to stay clear of a supervillainous battle, and this one was proving more than usually pyrotechnic. Shego, her disguise discarded, was pelting Mell with a barrage of plasma bolts, but the onslaught was being deflected by an invisible force field, and Mell had produced a small bazooka from somewhere and was firing it at Shego – not at all accurately – with her off hand.
“This isn’t your fight, Princess!” Shego was yelling between plasma bursts. “Get away while you can!”
Kim was above Rufus’s line of sight, but her return shout echoed off skyscraper windows up and down the block. “She zaps Mom, she gets stomped, end of story. Then it’s your turn!”
Mell was laughing – not a mad-scientific mwahahaha, but a laugh of pure exuberant glee. Rufus had heard a lot of villainous laughs during his adventures with Kim and Ron; this one was easily the scariest. It sounded as if Mell hadn’t had this much fun in years, and she was enjoying it to the hilt.
“Ready to come down now?” the black-haired intern taunted, as the sound of a sputtering jetpack drifted down from overhead. “Looks like you’re running out of gas; let me help you with that!” Mell stuffed her laser pistol into a pocket, reached into her coat, and pulled out a tubular weapon almost as long as her arm – all while still absent-mindedly firing the bazooka in her other hand in Shego’s general direction. Rufus glanced upward and saw Kim spiral into view, gliding a bit erratically as her backpack used up the last of its jet fuel. Then she suddenly twisted sideways, dodging the bright orange streak that had erupted from Mell’s flamethrower. The shot didn’t entirely miss, though – about half the left wing of Kim’s jetpack was now a melted ruin.
Rufus banked his little jet, again steering away from potential crossfire. Kim, meanwhile, had fired her grapple gun, snagging a fire escape and using her cheerleading ability to bounce herself off a series of walls as she dropped toward the street. As he curved back toward his target, the mole rat caught a glimpse of Ron. Luckily, he was out of Mell’s line of sight. Unluckily, he’d managed to get himself stuck on a flagpole. Rufus shook his head, bemused; for the moment, his human was safe. Relatively safe, anyway.
The craft bucked suddenly, as a nearby KA-WHOOFF! sent shockwaves rippling through Rufus’s airspace. A glance toward Mell revealed the source; her flamethrower’s remains were scattered around her in melted fragments. Mell herself was only slightly scorched, but she looked extremely annoyed.
“You need better toys, inkspot!” Shego taunted. She was still subjecting Mell to a steady plasma barrage, but instead of battering at the force field, she was lobbing small globes of green energy over it.
“Working on it, slime-brain!” retorted Mell, who had retrieved her laser pistol and was shooting the plasma balls out of the air like skeet targets. The bazooka was nowhere in evidence, but Mell’s free hand was thrust deep into a coat pocket. “Damn, I thought I had one more penlight!”
Concentrating on his flying again, Rufus executed one final turn before extending the toy plane’s landing gear. Its engine made very little noise, but he cut it completely once the turn was complete – no sense attracting unwanted attention. A few moments later, the jet skidded to a stop behind the subway entrance, just a few feet from Mrs. Dr. Possible’s now-forgotten sports bag and her crumpled clothing.
As he jumped out of the plane, the heap of pale linen fabric rustled. Rufus frowned, eyeing the rippling coat sleeve sharply as a pointed, black-tipped nose poked out from under it. “Who?” he squeaked softly.
The rest of the body followed the nose. It was eight inches long to Rufus’s five, not counting a slender tail. The ears and nose were jet black, but its eyes were an almost disturbingly bright green, and its fur was a warm candy-apple red that looked extremely odd on a gerbil.
“Rufus?” the gerbil said, sounding slightly dazed. “You’ve – grown.”
Rufus shook his head quickly. “No,” he replied. “You, smaller. Much.”
The gerbil’s nose wrinkled, it looked down at itself – and almost fell over. “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Dr. Possible. “This is not good.”
Rufus shrugged. “Happens.” He pointed a few yards down the sidewalk. “Bag, important?”
“Very,” Kim’s mother said wryly. “We need what’s in it to send Mell back where she belongs – but it has to be aimed, and I’m not sure we’re big enough to move it.”
“Try,” Rufus replied. “Have to. Save – “ He threw up his paws. “Everybody!”
Mrs. Dr. Possible’s nose twitched, and she peered at it as well as she could. “Dear me, this will take getting used to. The process must have mapped human neurological impulses onto the gerbil physiological . . . sorry,” she said, breaking off. “It’s utterly fascinating, but you’re right, there’s no time; we’d better try to use the PANIC device before someone else gets hold of it.”
Rufus cocked his head quickly in several different directions, taking stock of the battle, then nodded at Kim’s mother. “Clear. Go!”
The mole rat and the gerbilized brain surgeon scampered rapidly from behind the stairway kiosk to where the sports bag had landed, right side up near the inner edge of the sidewalk. After another glance to confirm that Mell and Shego were still preoccupied, Rufus jumped atop the bag, grabbed the zipper tag in his teeth, and tugged. The zipper slid easily, and once he’d created an opening a few inches wide, he stopped, looking expectantly at his companion – who looked back at him with a blank expression.
Rufus jerked his head at the opening. “In!”
“Oh,” Mrs. Dr. Possible said, whacking her red-furred forehead with a tiny paw. “Right.“ She thrust her nose tentatively into the dark slit, then clambered inside the bag rather less clumsily than Rufus had feared. After a moment’s thought, Rufus followed.
Not surprisingly, it was almost pitch dark inside the case, and the two rodents spent a few awkward moments bumping into and scrambling over each other as their eyes adjusted. “Remind me not to mention this to James,” Kim’s mother said absently. A moment later, she added, “Aha!” There was a click, and the small round glow of a pocket flashlight shone into the shadows.
“Much better,” she said. “Ah, here we are – oh, good, I think it’s oriented in the right direction already. We just need to push the induction tube far enough out of the bag so it’s pointing at Mell.” She waved a paw at one end of the device.
“Push!” agreed Rufus, and the two set to work. The PANIC projector wasn’t especially heavy, but it was still big enough that both he and Mrs. Dr. Possible were panting by the time they’d shoved it the five or so inches toward the open end of the bag, then maneuvered the “induction tube” – less formally, the business end of the dust-buster vacuum Wade had cannibalized for the gadget’s housing – upward just far enough to get the end of the tube through the opened zipper slot.
That task accomplished, Mrs. Dr. Possible retreated to the other end of the device where its controls were mounted, while Rufus took scampered atop the induction tube, where he’d be able to peer out through the bag’s opening to make sure their aim was good enough.
“Mell, force field,” he squeaked over his shoulder at Kim’s mother. “Problem?”
“Hmm,” came Mrs. Dr. P’s voice. “I don’t think so. If I understood Wade right, what this thing projects is more like a radio signal than an energy beam. Ready?”
“Ready!” said Rufus. Outside the bag, Mell was still skeet-shooting at Shego’s plasma balls with the laser pistol; in her other hand was something that looked like a speargun.
“Powering up,” Mrs. Dr. P said, switches going click as she spoke. “Quantum resonator on line in ten, nine, eight . . . .”
Rufus missed the rest of the countdown. On eight, there was a tremendous SNAP! as the flagpole from which Ron had been hanging finally gave way – whereupon Ron dropped some twenty-five feet straight down and landed squarely on Mell Kelly’s head. It was hard to tell which of the two made more noise; the combined “Yaaaaahhhhh!!!” nearly burst Rufus’s eardrums.
Several other voices weighed in almost simultaneously, adding to the confusion. Fortunately for Rufus’s ears, they were muffled somewhat by Ron’s pants – predictably, he’d lost them in the fall, and they’d draped themselves partially over the sports bag.
“Ron!” That was Kim.
“Boo-yah! The Ron-man scores!”
“Amazing,” came Shego’s dry comment. “I guess that’s one way to break a stalemate.”
“Owwww, my head.” Obviously, that was Mell. “You’re gonna – huh?”
As Rufus pushed aside the stray pant leg, he found himself staring straight into the evil intern’s eyes. She had apparently landed face-forward on the sidewalk and had just started to get up when their gazes intersected.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Dr. Possible called from farther inside the bag. “We’re armed and ready . . .”
Shego’s voice drowned out the rest of the sentence. “One microscopically false move, Kelly,” she was growling from somewhere above and behind Rufus, “and there won’t be enough of you left to feed a single-celled organism for breakfast.”
There was a click so soft that Rufus barely heard it, and abruptly, a small black tube was pointing at his nose from inside one of Mell’s sleeves. He froze.
“Better think twice about that,” Mell told Shego calmly. “This is only a three-hundred watt pulse laser – but that’s good enough to fry your little pink friend here. Not to mention whatever’s in that bag. Which is humming, by the way.”
“He – it – isn’t my—”
Before Shego could finish the sentence, Kim’s voice cut in, sounding desperate. “Nobody fries Rufus, okay? And especially, nobody blows up the . . . .” She trailed off.
Without so much as twitching her wrist-mounted laser, Mell tilted her head upward. “Blows up the what? Do tell.”
“I . . . can’t,” said Kim, not at all convincingly. “I don’t have the faintest idea what Mom had in that bag.”
“Yes, you do,” Mell said cheerily. “Now tell me – unless you like your mole rats extra crispy, that is.”
Shego spoke next. “Better answer, princess. Kaboom Girl here doesn’t mess around.”
Kim sighed audibly. “Wade called it a PANIC projector – something to do with parallel universes and dual quantum states. I – didn’t get all the specifics.”
“PANIC,” Mell said thoughtfully. “Dual quantum states. Probably – amp down the plasma there, night-light girl – for booting unappreciated guests out of neighboring universes. Am I right?”
There were several awkward moments of silence. “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Mell, looking amused. “So what happens if I blow it up? Something spectacular, I bet.”
One of Rufus’s few weaknesses – aside from cheese – was the irresistable impulse to cap a sufficiently apt straight line, and Mell had inadvertantly given him one. “Gluglugluglugluglugshhhllloooooopp!” he said, simulating a bathtub drain for the second time that day.
Mell eyed him, impressed. “Black hole, huh? Maybe total collapse of the immediate multiverse?” Reluctantly, Rufus nodded.
“Well, then,” said Mell Kelly, very carefully levering herself to her feet one-handed, her wrist laser wavering not so much as a millimeter from its focus on Rufus’s nose as she did so, “everyone had better do exactly as I say, hadn’t they? Unless you really want to find out what black holes look like from the inside.”
“You can’t let her –”
“We have to, Ron,” came Kim’s voice, sounding resigned. “It’s too dangerous not to.”
“She’s right, Stoppable,” Shego put in, “and you have to know how much I hate saying that. Can’t have world domination without a world to dominate, you know?”
“Perfect,” Mell said, reaching into yet another pocket with her free hand and producing two pairs of black and silver shackles. “So, Kimmy, if you’ll just cuff Shego’s wrists behind her for me? No – that set’s to hobble her ankles; give me some credit.”
Kim sighed. “This is so wrong – in a very wrong way, if that makes any sense.”
“I hear you, princess,” said Shego as the restraints clicked shut. “It’s – embarrassing.”
Mell gave Shego a disgusted look. “No less embarrassing than reading incredibly kinky porn about goinking your boss, your boss’s mom, and a gerbil all at practically the same time,” she said dryly.
“Eeeeuuuwwww!!” said Kim and Ron simultaneously, followed in the next breath by “Too much information!”, and in the breath after that by “Jinx, you owe me a soda!”
Shego simply glared. “I refuse to be guilt-tripped by a comic strip character with wimpy taste in fanfic. Now if Princess here wants to pile it on, fine – she’s got the right. It is my fault her mother got evaporated. But it’s not my fault that my made-up Mell turns out to have a way twistier imagination than yours.” The expression on Shego’s face looked oddly . . . drained, Rufus decided.
“So not the right moment,” Kim said in a dry, tightly wound voice. “If we somehow come out of this in the same universe – we’ll talk. Unless I decide to pound you into Silly Putty.”
“We come out of this in the same universe . . . Kim,” replied Shego, “I may just let you.”
“Oh, spare me,” Mell cut in. “Enough with the tea and sympathy already. Besides, it’s not like—”
Two voices interrupted at once; one was Ron’s. “Weird. It’s not—”
The other came from behind Rufus, as a certain red-furred gerbil poked its head out of the sports bag. “What’s going on out--?”
For a split second, reality seemed to freeze-frame, as six faces registered six different flavors of shock.
Then Mell’s wrist laser went off.
[....to be continued....]
Tags:
