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graycardinal********************
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (4/10)
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....
********************
Wade was used to multitasking, but this particular morning’s to-do list was more than usually challenging.
He’d gotten Mrs. Dr. Possible (or Mrs. Kim, as he was beginning to think of her) safely off on her very first mission – just as a call had come in sending Kim and Ron to Boston to look into the theft of key electronic hardware from an MTA subway car. At the same time, he was trying to trace Shego’s movements – no small challenge given the stealth tech built into her new jet – as well as attempting to unravel and track the activities of Mell Kelly, the interdimensional assassin supposedly out for Shego’s blood. And he was somehow supposed to keep the whole Shego/Mell situation secret from Kim into the bargain. It was enough to give even a super-genius a headache.
One of his monitors beeped, and he swiveled his chair to respond. “”I’m on the ground at LaGuardia,” reported Mrs. Kim.
“Great!” Wade told her. “Mr. Callaway’s limo is waiting outside baggage claim. The sign will read KKP.”
“Got it,” Mrs. Kim said, as a second monitor went beep.
Wade silently blessed his foresight in assigning Mrs. Kim’s Kimmunicator its own dedicated frequency. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ve got another feed coming in.”
“Talk to me, Wade,” came Kim’s voice over the primary band. “I’m sending a scan of the sabotaged circuitry – or what’s left of it. Whoever did this was really careful, but there’s something familiar about it all the same. I’m hoping you can tell me what.”
“I have it,” Wade said, channeling the datafeed to a secure directory on the relevant server. “This may take a few minutes.” He keyed a series of pattern recognition tests and slid his chair back to Mrs. Kim’s monitor, reactivating her audio channel. “Need anything else?”
“Not just now,” Mrs. Kim replied. “I’ll check in once I’ve picked up the last item.” The video link clicked off, leaving only the Kimmunicator’s passive carrier signal online.
As the Boston data crunched, Wade turned his attention to his other systems. News on Shego’s whereabouts was practically nonexistent, even though Wade had both GJ’s satellite net and his own police-band and security-cam sweepers watching for her to pop up. He wasn’t precisely worried as yet; it had, after all, been barely more than a day since the Idaho sighting, and it wasn’t unusual for one or another supervillain to go underground for weeks at a time.
He had scooted across his room to the quantum-event monitor (equally silent just now) when a symphony of chaos erupted across the audio-link from Kim’s subway car. There was a brief, deep motorized rumble followed within a few seconds by the high SKREEE! of brakes kicking in, both overlaid by a frantic “Yahhhh!” from Ron and the inevitable clatter of objects that hadn’t been bolted down (Kim and Ron included, by the sound) being thrown in various directions by the sudden motion.
“You guys all right?” Wade asked, quickly spinning his chair back to the main video pickup.
“No serious harm done,” Kim said, although her hair looked a bit off-kilter.
“Just a little shaken u—hey, what’s this?” came Ron’s voice behind her. His hand pushed its way into range of the Kimmunicator’s camera, a small flat square of blue plastic held between two fingers.
“Flash memory card,” Wade and Kim said simultaneously. “Looks like an SD,” Wade added, as Kim plucked it from Ron’s grip and slid it into the Kimmunicator’s reader.
“It slid out from under something when I – uh, the car jagged,” Ron said as the card’s data loaded.
“Huh! Not even encrypted,” Wade commented. “Maps, schedules, a couple of basic schematics, more maps, for . . . let’s see, the MTA, the London Underground, and the New York subway system.”
“The thief must’ve lost it while he was opening up the electronics,” Kim said. “Bet you a chimirito combo – grandé-sized – that he’s headed for Manhattan next. How quick can you get us a ride?”
Wade grinned, typing fingers flying. “No bet, and ten minutes tops. There’s a Nakasumi helicopter practically in shouting distance already. You should be in the Big Apple by lunchtime.”
“Please and thank you!” said Kim, grinning back and closing the link – as a four-toned beep from two monitors over announced Mrs. Dr. Possible’s reappearance on the other line.
“I’ve got the vortex inducer!” Mrs. Kim reported, holding the device up to her Kimmunicator’s video sensor. Wade regarded the compact brushed-metal cylinder silently for a moment. This latest version of the device was smaller and leaner than its predecessors, more closely resembling an elegant map case than an oversized can of tomatoes.
“All right,” he finally said. “Let’s put the pieces together. Better find someplace private first, though.”
“Already there,” Mrs. Kim responded. “A med-school classmate of mine practices two blocks from the Empire State Building; I dropped in and told her I needed to borrow an office for a little while.”
Wade keyed a GPS macro and bookmarked the location, which was closer to the subway station Kim and Ron were heading for than he liked. To Mrs. Kim, however, he said, “Perfect. Here’s how we’ll do this . . . .”
Something less than half an hour later, he sat back in his chair, took a satisfied breath, and contemplated the PANIC projector; the acronym, he’d told Mrs. Kim, stood for Pan-dimensional Artificial Nexus Induction Containment. “Basically,” he said, “anybody who jumps from one universe to another has to exist in two quantum states at the same time – the one associated with their home reality, and the one they’re visiting. What the PANIC projector is designed to do is to turn off a target’s “visiting” quantum state, thereby kicking it back to its home universe.”
“Designed to do?” asked Mrs. Kim, eyeing the device critically. In its completed form, it looked rather like an oversized hand-held vacuum – not surprising, since that was what Wade had used as the gadget’s housing.
“It’s not like we’ve had a chance to test it,” Wade pointed out. “That’ll be Shego’s department. Assuming we can find—”
He was interrupted by a sharp, high-pitched hum from the speakers connected to his locator systems. Spinning his chair toward the relevant terminal, he blinked and exhaled sharply. “Okay, scratch that. Shego just left the Newark airport via rent-a-car, headed for Manhattan. The biometrics match is only 90% – she was out of uniform, the name she used isn’t any of her normal aliases, and I can’t enhance the security-cam images enough to get more than a partial retina-scan – but what I’ve got looks solid.”
“Understood,” Kim’s mother said crisply. “The email I sent suggested we rendezvous in Battery Park – that’s probably where she’s going. I’d better get moving, I think.”
“Be careful, “ Wade told her, trying not to sound nervous. That would put Shego and Mrs. Dr. Possible within a few blocks of the Rector Street subway station, which had been highlighted on the map from the memory-card Ron had found – and was therefore where Kim and Ron were due to arrive via helicopter in . . . Wade glanced at his atomic-synchronized alarm clock . . . something like twenty minutes.
He was just opening his mouth to mention that fact to Mrs. Kim when the second locator alert sounded. He glanced sideways at the monitor devoted to the quantum-signature search – and gulped. “Uh-oh,” he said. “There’s just been another quantum event.”
“Deep breaths, Wade,” said Mrs. Dr. Possible, though she was clearly making an effort to stay calm herself. “Don’t stress out on me. So: what happened and where?”
Wade did his best to follow Mrs. Kim’s advice, but he couldn’t entirely quell his alarm. “Assuming you and Shego are right,” he said, “Mell Kelly just arrived in New York, too.”
“Where exactly?” Kim’s mother asked.
“That’s just it; I don’t know,” Wade admitted. “The kind of energy we’re talking about isn’t something the satellite systems were designed to pick up, so they don’t localize the output that precisely. I can refine the data and try to triangulate, but it’ll take time.”
Mrs. Dr. Possible sighed. “I’ll be extra careful, I promise,” she said, “but obviously the rendezvous won’t wait.”
“No,” agreed Wade, “but I can give you a little help. I’m downloading a sensor subroutine to your Kimmunicator that should pick up Mell’s personal quantum signature if she gets too close to you – too close being about three hundred yards. That’s not a lot of warning, but it’s better than none.”
“Agreed. Let me know the instant you have anything more specific – please and thank you!” And on that note, Kim’s mother shut off the video link.
Well, Wade told himself, maybe Kim and Ron will sort out the subway-tech thefts and be on their way before the fireworks start going off. But he’d scarcely finished the thought before another electronic alert sounded – and when he shifted his gaze to the terminal where the forensic scans of the Boston subway car had been running, he almost fell out of his chair.
“Damn,” he said aloud, the word echoing off his bedroom walls hard enough to rattle the window. He took a breath, then pinged Kim’s Kimmunicator.
“What’s the sitch?” Kim asked a moment later.
“Way complicated,” Wade replied. “First the good news: I know who your thief is. The cover panels weren’t lasered open. They were sliced; there were traces of monofilament ceramic along some of the cut edges – and I’ve got a match for the exact type of ceramic blade used to make the cuts.”
Kim was nodding. “Way ahead of you,” she said. “Let me guess – Shego’s claws. She must be shopping for Drakken’s latest project.”
“Could be,” Wade agreed. “But it gets lots messier. I can’t talk you into calling it a day and coming home right now, can I?”
The look Kim gave him had you’ve got to be kidding written all over it. “I was afraid of that,” Wade told her. “Okay, then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you – and when you see your mom, tell her this was totally not my idea.”
“When I see my – ? All right, way confused here. What’s Mom got to do with any of this?”
Wade shrugged eloquently. “You may not believe this, but she’s trying to save Shego’s life.” Rapidly, he summarized what he’d learned from Kim’s mother, the assembly of the PANIC projector, and the quantum surges that seemed to indicate incursions from a parallel reality.
“I know it sounds weird even by our standards,” Wade said as he finished the story. “I admit I’ve been skeptical, but I don’t see what else could make Shego this nervous. This subway sitch is way more subtle than she usually goes in for, and she went through security at Newark dressed in – get this – beige and brown, no Spandex in sight. And neither she nor your mom wanted you within a hundred miles of whatever’s going down. You know Narbonic better than I do – is Mell Kelly really that dangerous?”
Kim frowned into the Kimmunicator link, her nose wrinkling thoughtfully. “She could be,” she said at last. “But assuming we all come out of this without getting flambéed, remind me to have a heart-to-heart with Mom about which one of us is better qualified for getting chased by bad guys. What was she thinking?”
“Can’t answer that,” Wade said, “but I can tell you – uh-oh.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Kim. “Now what’s the sitch?”
Wade’s fingers flew over his keyboard, and he nodded suddenly. “I’ve lost the carrier tracking signal from your Mom’s Kimmunicator, but I think I know why. Part of the bandwidth I use is way off the usual frequency charts – far enough off that the signal must pass through a quantum layer that’s being blocked by background noise from the PANIC projector. I should be able to compensate for it, but not till she calls in again.”
“Let’s see if I have this right,” Kim said dryly. “In between stealing subway-car hardware, Shego’s expecting to meet Mom and pick up a shiny new untested superweapon – only Mell Kelly may show up before the exchange goes off. Mom’s walking into a firefight between Shego and Mell – and Mell doesn’t play by anything like the usual rules. And Ron and I may not get there till things are already way out of control. Oh, by the way – what happens if Mell manages to accidentally blow up that PANIC projector?”
Wade blinked, and his face went pale. “Good question. Maybe nothing, if it isn’t activated at the time. But if it was powered up – you might get a black hole big enough to suck in a whole bunch of neighboring universes like a vacuum-powered bathtub drain.”
The last sound Wade heard before Kim cut the Kimmunicator link was Rufus, making bathtub drain noises. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
I Suppose This Means They Read the Fanfic (4/10)
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....
********************
Wade was used to multitasking, but this particular morning’s to-do list was more than usually challenging.
He’d gotten Mrs. Dr. Possible (or Mrs. Kim, as he was beginning to think of her) safely off on her very first mission – just as a call had come in sending Kim and Ron to Boston to look into the theft of key electronic hardware from an MTA subway car. At the same time, he was trying to trace Shego’s movements – no small challenge given the stealth tech built into her new jet – as well as attempting to unravel and track the activities of Mell Kelly, the interdimensional assassin supposedly out for Shego’s blood. And he was somehow supposed to keep the whole Shego/Mell situation secret from Kim into the bargain. It was enough to give even a super-genius a headache.
One of his monitors beeped, and he swiveled his chair to respond. “”I’m on the ground at LaGuardia,” reported Mrs. Kim.
“Great!” Wade told her. “Mr. Callaway’s limo is waiting outside baggage claim. The sign will read KKP.”
“Got it,” Mrs. Kim said, as a second monitor went beep.
Wade silently blessed his foresight in assigning Mrs. Kim’s Kimmunicator its own dedicated frequency. “Hold on,” he said, “I’ve got another feed coming in.”
“Talk to me, Wade,” came Kim’s voice over the primary band. “I’m sending a scan of the sabotaged circuitry – or what’s left of it. Whoever did this was really careful, but there’s something familiar about it all the same. I’m hoping you can tell me what.”
“I have it,” Wade said, channeling the datafeed to a secure directory on the relevant server. “This may take a few minutes.” He keyed a series of pattern recognition tests and slid his chair back to Mrs. Kim’s monitor, reactivating her audio channel. “Need anything else?”
“Not just now,” Mrs. Kim replied. “I’ll check in once I’ve picked up the last item.” The video link clicked off, leaving only the Kimmunicator’s passive carrier signal online.
As the Boston data crunched, Wade turned his attention to his other systems. News on Shego’s whereabouts was practically nonexistent, even though Wade had both GJ’s satellite net and his own police-band and security-cam sweepers watching for her to pop up. He wasn’t precisely worried as yet; it had, after all, been barely more than a day since the Idaho sighting, and it wasn’t unusual for one or another supervillain to go underground for weeks at a time.
He had scooted across his room to the quantum-event monitor (equally silent just now) when a symphony of chaos erupted across the audio-link from Kim’s subway car. There was a brief, deep motorized rumble followed within a few seconds by the high SKREEE! of brakes kicking in, both overlaid by a frantic “Yahhhh!” from Ron and the inevitable clatter of objects that hadn’t been bolted down (Kim and Ron included, by the sound) being thrown in various directions by the sudden motion.
“You guys all right?” Wade asked, quickly spinning his chair back to the main video pickup.
“No serious harm done,” Kim said, although her hair looked a bit off-kilter.
“Just a little shaken u—hey, what’s this?” came Ron’s voice behind her. His hand pushed its way into range of the Kimmunicator’s camera, a small flat square of blue plastic held between two fingers.
“Flash memory card,” Wade and Kim said simultaneously. “Looks like an SD,” Wade added, as Kim plucked it from Ron’s grip and slid it into the Kimmunicator’s reader.
“It slid out from under something when I – uh, the car jagged,” Ron said as the card’s data loaded.
“Huh! Not even encrypted,” Wade commented. “Maps, schedules, a couple of basic schematics, more maps, for . . . let’s see, the MTA, the London Underground, and the New York subway system.”
“The thief must’ve lost it while he was opening up the electronics,” Kim said. “Bet you a chimirito combo – grandé-sized – that he’s headed for Manhattan next. How quick can you get us a ride?”
Wade grinned, typing fingers flying. “No bet, and ten minutes tops. There’s a Nakasumi helicopter practically in shouting distance already. You should be in the Big Apple by lunchtime.”
“Please and thank you!” said Kim, grinning back and closing the link – as a four-toned beep from two monitors over announced Mrs. Dr. Possible’s reappearance on the other line.
“I’ve got the vortex inducer!” Mrs. Kim reported, holding the device up to her Kimmunicator’s video sensor. Wade regarded the compact brushed-metal cylinder silently for a moment. This latest version of the device was smaller and leaner than its predecessors, more closely resembling an elegant map case than an oversized can of tomatoes.
“All right,” he finally said. “Let’s put the pieces together. Better find someplace private first, though.”
“Already there,” Mrs. Kim responded. “A med-school classmate of mine practices two blocks from the Empire State Building; I dropped in and told her I needed to borrow an office for a little while.”
Wade keyed a GPS macro and bookmarked the location, which was closer to the subway station Kim and Ron were heading for than he liked. To Mrs. Kim, however, he said, “Perfect. Here’s how we’ll do this . . . .”
Something less than half an hour later, he sat back in his chair, took a satisfied breath, and contemplated the PANIC projector; the acronym, he’d told Mrs. Kim, stood for Pan-dimensional Artificial Nexus Induction Containment. “Basically,” he said, “anybody who jumps from one universe to another has to exist in two quantum states at the same time – the one associated with their home reality, and the one they’re visiting. What the PANIC projector is designed to do is to turn off a target’s “visiting” quantum state, thereby kicking it back to its home universe.”
“Designed to do?” asked Mrs. Kim, eyeing the device critically. In its completed form, it looked rather like an oversized hand-held vacuum – not surprising, since that was what Wade had used as the gadget’s housing.
“It’s not like we’ve had a chance to test it,” Wade pointed out. “That’ll be Shego’s department. Assuming we can find—”
He was interrupted by a sharp, high-pitched hum from the speakers connected to his locator systems. Spinning his chair toward the relevant terminal, he blinked and exhaled sharply. “Okay, scratch that. Shego just left the Newark airport via rent-a-car, headed for Manhattan. The biometrics match is only 90% – she was out of uniform, the name she used isn’t any of her normal aliases, and I can’t enhance the security-cam images enough to get more than a partial retina-scan – but what I’ve got looks solid.”
“Understood,” Kim’s mother said crisply. “The email I sent suggested we rendezvous in Battery Park – that’s probably where she’s going. I’d better get moving, I think.”
“Be careful, “ Wade told her, trying not to sound nervous. That would put Shego and Mrs. Dr. Possible within a few blocks of the Rector Street subway station, which had been highlighted on the map from the memory-card Ron had found – and was therefore where Kim and Ron were due to arrive via helicopter in . . . Wade glanced at his atomic-synchronized alarm clock . . . something like twenty minutes.
He was just opening his mouth to mention that fact to Mrs. Kim when the second locator alert sounded. He glanced sideways at the monitor devoted to the quantum-signature search – and gulped. “Uh-oh,” he said. “There’s just been another quantum event.”
“Deep breaths, Wade,” said Mrs. Dr. Possible, though she was clearly making an effort to stay calm herself. “Don’t stress out on me. So: what happened and where?”
Wade did his best to follow Mrs. Kim’s advice, but he couldn’t entirely quell his alarm. “Assuming you and Shego are right,” he said, “Mell Kelly just arrived in New York, too.”
“Where exactly?” Kim’s mother asked.
“That’s just it; I don’t know,” Wade admitted. “The kind of energy we’re talking about isn’t something the satellite systems were designed to pick up, so they don’t localize the output that precisely. I can refine the data and try to triangulate, but it’ll take time.”
Mrs. Dr. Possible sighed. “I’ll be extra careful, I promise,” she said, “but obviously the rendezvous won’t wait.”
“No,” agreed Wade, “but I can give you a little help. I’m downloading a sensor subroutine to your Kimmunicator that should pick up Mell’s personal quantum signature if she gets too close to you – too close being about three hundred yards. That’s not a lot of warning, but it’s better than none.”
“Agreed. Let me know the instant you have anything more specific – please and thank you!” And on that note, Kim’s mother shut off the video link.
Well, Wade told himself, maybe Kim and Ron will sort out the subway-tech thefts and be on their way before the fireworks start going off. But he’d scarcely finished the thought before another electronic alert sounded – and when he shifted his gaze to the terminal where the forensic scans of the Boston subway car had been running, he almost fell out of his chair.
“Damn,” he said aloud, the word echoing off his bedroom walls hard enough to rattle the window. He took a breath, then pinged Kim’s Kimmunicator.
“What’s the sitch?” Kim asked a moment later.
“Way complicated,” Wade replied. “First the good news: I know who your thief is. The cover panels weren’t lasered open. They were sliced; there were traces of monofilament ceramic along some of the cut edges – and I’ve got a match for the exact type of ceramic blade used to make the cuts.”
Kim was nodding. “Way ahead of you,” she said. “Let me guess – Shego’s claws. She must be shopping for Drakken’s latest project.”
“Could be,” Wade agreed. “But it gets lots messier. I can’t talk you into calling it a day and coming home right now, can I?”
The look Kim gave him had you’ve got to be kidding written all over it. “I was afraid of that,” Wade told her. “Okay, then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you – and when you see your mom, tell her this was totally not my idea.”
“When I see my – ? All right, way confused here. What’s Mom got to do with any of this?”
Wade shrugged eloquently. “You may not believe this, but she’s trying to save Shego’s life.” Rapidly, he summarized what he’d learned from Kim’s mother, the assembly of the PANIC projector, and the quantum surges that seemed to indicate incursions from a parallel reality.
“I know it sounds weird even by our standards,” Wade said as he finished the story. “I admit I’ve been skeptical, but I don’t see what else could make Shego this nervous. This subway sitch is way more subtle than she usually goes in for, and she went through security at Newark dressed in – get this – beige and brown, no Spandex in sight. And neither she nor your mom wanted you within a hundred miles of whatever’s going down. You know Narbonic better than I do – is Mell Kelly really that dangerous?”
Kim frowned into the Kimmunicator link, her nose wrinkling thoughtfully. “She could be,” she said at last. “But assuming we all come out of this without getting flambéed, remind me to have a heart-to-heart with Mom about which one of us is better qualified for getting chased by bad guys. What was she thinking?”
“Can’t answer that,” Wade said, “but I can tell you – uh-oh.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Kim. “Now what’s the sitch?”
Wade’s fingers flew over his keyboard, and he nodded suddenly. “I’ve lost the carrier tracking signal from your Mom’s Kimmunicator, but I think I know why. Part of the bandwidth I use is way off the usual frequency charts – far enough off that the signal must pass through a quantum layer that’s being blocked by background noise from the PANIC projector. I should be able to compensate for it, but not till she calls in again.”
“Let’s see if I have this right,” Kim said dryly. “In between stealing subway-car hardware, Shego’s expecting to meet Mom and pick up a shiny new untested superweapon – only Mell Kelly may show up before the exchange goes off. Mom’s walking into a firefight between Shego and Mell – and Mell doesn’t play by anything like the usual rules. And Ron and I may not get there till things are already way out of control. Oh, by the way – what happens if Mell manages to accidentally blow up that PANIC projector?”
Wade blinked, and his face went pale. “Good question. Maybe nothing, if it isn’t activated at the time. But if it was powered up – you might get a black hole big enough to suck in a whole bunch of neighboring universes like a vacuum-powered bathtub drain.”
The last sound Wade heard before Kim cut the Kimmunicator link was Rufus, making bathtub drain noises. He hoped it wasn’t an omen.
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Date: January 10th, 2006 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: January 10th, 2006 08:18 pm (UTC)It's been interesting writing this, rotating POV with each new chapter (which is working rather better than I thought it might).
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Date: January 10th, 2006 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: January 10th, 2006 09:54 pm (UTC)