Let There Be Light
"This is Free..." Monique began, then hesitated a moment before clearing her throat and beginning to speak into the microphone again. "This is Monique Watson, the voice of Freedom Two..."
As the radio changed from static to speech, an acrid yellow smoke wafted throughout the Passages; the result of an intense battle waged with an army of synthodrones versus spinning tops of doom, neural destabilizing sporks, and a two person team consisting of a thin blond woman surrounded in the aura of a ghostly bear and a man in black armor similar to one of Kim's team.
Anne Possible helped a wounded middle aged man onto a cot, instructing him to rest until someone had time to tend to him. The battle had been intense, and it had seemed that it had been nearly lost until finally the synthodrones had begun popping inexplicably.
"Josh?! Tara?!" she called, searching through the crowd of people in the circle they had created as a defensible position.
"Aunty Annie?" Larry called, wading through the injured to reach her. He was bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and a large burn adorned one arm where an energy bolt had torn away his shoulder armor. His glasses were missing and he stumbled toward her as though he was nearly blind.
"Larry!" Anne cried, hugging the young man. "Thank you for coming!"
Larry blushed. "I couldn't let Junior and Dash have all the excitement." he said, nearly in a daze. "Besides, that was just like Nimbus Three, and the battle of Nimbanar!" he laughed with a snort. Anne shrugged, content in the fact that her nephew had made it through the battle alive.
"Hey!" Jim Possible shouted from down one of the tunnels.
"Over here!" Tim called.
Josh snapped awake to the sound of his son crying beside him. He bolted upright, tearing through a layer of thickened synthogoo and sucking in a burst of air before nearly choking on it. He felt his chest in an effort to make certain he was corporeal, then began a quick search for Tara and Joss.
The crying was close by, and he stood, tearing up layers of yellow goop as he did. "Tara!" he shouted. "Hana!"
A bubble in the synthogoo began to form as Tara attempted to stand, the dried pudding like substance tearing as it stretched. Her head broke through and she heaved a sigh, still holding the tiny baby in her arms. "Josh? Where are..." she asked, turning as he put his arms around his family. "Where's Hana?"
"Yuck!" the girl said. She was covered in the yellow gunk, and Josh stared at her in disbelief. "Okay?" she asked with a frown.
Josh thought for a moment, remembering the image of the girl disappearing in amongst the synthodrones, in a pillar of blue light that splintered into hundreds of monkey-like ghost creatures. They had then proceeded to grind their way through the synthetic soldiers, turning their robotic formation into chaos. He gestured for the young Japanese girl to join them, kneeling down to hug her as well. The four of them never even noticed the Possible's coming up behind them and throwing blankets over their shoulders.
"Our freedom has been won, our humanity saved. I've been given reports that Lord Drakken's fortress has literally vanished into light, much like many of the people he took that we knew as friends and family." Monique said over the radio Wade was standing beside.
He was watching the midday sun shine on the still disintegrating metropolis, feeling the heat radiating off of the energy that Drakken's fortress was being reverted into.
Soldiers in Monique's resistance cell bustled around him, giving him space as his body trembled. He clenched his teeth hard together as he suppressed a cry, watching the very thing that had taken so much from the world turn into something beautiful.
"Hey!" Joss called, rolling forward in a wheelchair with a smug smile. "Gonna leave me an' Rufus alone with those medics? If I get any more morphine, I might do something with you I probably won't regret." Wade turned back and forced a smile. "They haven't shown up yet, huh?"
Wade shook his head. "How could they make it out of there?" he asked, wiping his cheeks. "It's..."
"Impossible?" Joss grinned.
"I haven't received word yet if Kim Possible and her team have made it out of Drakken's lair." Monique said, pushing on through obvious tears. "But wherever she is, we thank you. Humanity thanks you. The Earth thanks you. And I'm sure that all the people that have sacrificed their lives to this point, thank you. Good bye, my friend."
Junior was looking away from a tender red burn on one of his arms as Olivia Nelson put a cooling salve on his bicep. The man whimpered softly, nearly crying it seemed and Olivia shook her head with a smile. She wished her brother could be here, to see that he had been wrong about Drakken, and right about Kim.
"Ah, put a sock in it!" Duff Killgan said as he sat down next to Junior. "There's people wit lost limbs, and yer tearin' up ova a bloody sunburn!" he said, flicking Junior's injury with a finger.
"Now though, the rest of us are tasked with rebuilding our world." Monique continued over the radio. "Whether the heroes of our generation are able to come back to us or not, it's now up to us to make the most of their sacrifice. We that have survived have to remember the mistakes that have come before and give the next generation something to look forward to."
Professor Icari grinned down at the tiny little green stem that was poking out of fresh, hand plowed soil. "It worked!" he cheered, his substantially reduced midsection still jiggling somewhat with his laughter. He turned, hugging the still plump Native American man that stood beside him around the shoulders. "It worked!" he shouted.
Cheif Sakituya smiled down at the white haired professor, watching him dance around in the dirt. The Indian Chief nodded, looking out toward the moving hills in the distance. Where the Professor had found the giant sized cockroaches was beyond him, but the creatures were literally devouring the wreckage brought onto the Earth over the last several years of war and turning it into a form of high mineral fertilizer.
The large grey bear that was slumped on the ground next to him sniffed at the air and let out a gruff whine. The Indian Chief looked up to the sky, holding out a hand to feel a raindrop.
"This is Monique Watson. What was once the voice of hope is now the voice of freedom. Freedom to live again, and the freedom to build again."
Steve Barkin was holding the exploded husk of a synthodrone in one hand and a large survival knife in the other, his face covered in yellow goop. He was wearing a red head band and an empty bandolier, standing at the forefront of the circular defense that had been constructed at the heart of the Passages. Arthur Smarty stood behind him, awkwardly holding one of the synthodrone's rifles.
At some point, Steve's shirt had been torn off in the battle and he stood up, dropping the husk and surveying the carnage. He turned to pat Arty on the shoulder, and smiled down at the freckle faced teen he had adopted as his own since he father had died at the hands of Drakken's minions. "You did well, kid. Thanks for watching my back."
Arty nodded in acknowledgement.
"It is unlikely that Drakken will be the last one to try taking away everything we hold dear to us." Monique continued, her voice coming through the radio scanner inside the underwater Worldwide Empire base. "But to put our fate on the shoulders of one person is not a luxury we can afford any longer."
"Are you still listening to that, Jade?" Grimm asked, stepping into the control room wearing a suit of black battle armor with gold high lights that fit tightly against his body, with it's own plated musculature and wicked blades that stuck out from his forearms and could extend backward past his elbows. Rhonda strode in behind him confidently, brushing off her tan leather longcoat that had tassels along the length of each arm.
"It beats the utter silence of the ocean." the young Japanese woman replied, spinning in her chair. "How're the new duds?"
Grimm reached up to the unmarked button on the collar that poked out from under the armor. The plating seemed to liquefy and quietly pull itself into the skin tight, black and gold blueprint that he wore underneath. "I'm glad you did away with the flash and crash." he said, noting the difference in the far more stealthy activation than Possible's.
"Do we really still need this stuff?" Rhonda asked. "And to stay hiding?"
Grimm gestured to the radio that Monique's voice had been coming through. "Like the lady said, there's always gonna be someone wanting a bigger piece of the pie than they should." he said, flashing a knowing smirk. "And we'll be there to take it back."
Kim was lying on her side in blue tinged sand, wearing what was left of her Global Justice uniform as a makeshift bikini and skirt. Ron was lying behind her, curled up to her back with his own ravaged uniform made into an awkward looking loin cloth. His wounds and bruises had healed quickly after a rest, and he was propped up on an elbow, watching the fire they had built on the beach. The lake of Eden Two licked at their bare toes and goose bumps formed over their bodies with each lap of cool water.
Kim smiled, snuggling into Ron's warmth and letting out a quiet cooing sound as his arm tightened around her chest. "How long before you think Felix will find out we're here?" Ron asked, kissing her shoulder.
Kim rolled over onto her back in the flame heated sand, looking up into Ron's brown eyes and the fire light dancing within them. "I'm almost wondering if he had noticed at all, actually. I would have thought that he would have been here already." she said, recalling their narrow escape from Drakken's collapsing lair.
"I... I can't make it back up there, Kim." Ron said, falling to his knees at the bottom of the elevator shaft that lead back up to Drakken's throne room. "I'm tapped out."
Kim surveyed the rapidly disintegrating basement level of Drakken's fortress, pulling out her Kimmunicator to scan the schematics for the building again. "Come on!" she ordered, taking Ron's hand and practically dragging him down the hall toward a room labeled 'PORTAL' adjacent to the Containment Chamber.
They reached the large, locked reinforced door and Kim banged her fist on it in frustration. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all transforming into bright points of light around them, and the metal superstructure above them began to creak and strain with the sudden lack of support holding it all up. "This would look pretty cool if we weren't about to be buried alive!" Ron shouted, covering his head.
Kim watched as the reinforced door began to disassemble into shining pixels, and she pushed through it, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth against the searing burns that were beginning to cover her body, tearing away her uniform. "Ron!" she called, grabbing his hand again to pull him through with her.
The pair burst through the fading door to see a large machine with immense power coils that were unlit on either side of its main bulk. Above the machine, a ring of metal was supported by frail looking tethers that were holding it in place. "A Kinetic Continuing Disturber thingy?!" Ron exclaimed. "But there's no power!"
"It's a Kinematic Continuum Disruptor. Kinda like the one Justine used." Kim corrected. "Drakken's personal back door into Eden Two... I hope." she said, plugging the Kimmunicator's power cable into the machine. Doing her best to remember what she had learned on the science project she had shared with Justine Flanner, she activated the machine's warm up sequence. "Come on..." she whispered, her heart pounding heavily in her chest. Light filled the room as the walls collapsed, and the ceiling began to bend and twist. "It's now or never, Ron!"
The pair began running toward the spinning metal ring, and crossed the threshold as the KCD reached optimal power levels, a moment before it was crushed by the weight of hundreds of stories of metal losing it's foundation.
Kim couldn't help but wonder if anyone would ever know, or even want to know about Drakken's end. In reality, it was he that saved the world by destroying the alien Forge. She had been so close to joining it, just like Vivian had said. The thoughts it was pushing into her mind had felt so much like her own, and she wanted so badly to see her father again. For now though, it was all over, and Kim brought Ron's face down to hers for a passionate, open mouthed kiss. "On the other hand, I could get used to a few more days of honeymoon time." she said, her lips turning up in a blushing smile.
"Boo-yah..." Ron grinned back, proceeding to tickle Kim's exposed areas.
Felix and Yori stood high above Kim and Ron on a hilltop, holding hands and smiling at the peaceful scene. The sudden surge of temporal energy had set off his scanner that he had managed to construct at their new home on Mount Yamanouchi. At first, he had thought that Drakken had managed to escape into Eden Two, and when no attack came and his fortress had wound up disintegrating into beads of light, his best guess was that he was constructing a new Empire.
Taking Yori with him into Eden, he had taken Wade and Joss's skyscooter through a portal created by Justine's original KCD on a reconnaissance mission to where Drakken's portal had been created.
It had been nearly a week since the Synthetic Empire had fallen, and still Kim and Ron's friends were mourning them. Felix sighed, not wanting to disturb their well deserved rest. "Let's go, Yori." he said, turning away.
"Are we not going to bring them back to Earth?" she asked, following.
"Kim's saved our world enough." Felix said with a grin. "Let her have some fun in this one." Yori climbed onto the skyscooter behind him, pulling herself against his back. "We'll let her family and friends know that they're okay. Other than that, they can have some peace."
A very big thank you to all who have reviewed this story, and lent your input. You've helped shape this and I'm quite proud of how it came to completion. It represents a lot of things in my life, from two great television shows from two completely different decades. A special thanks goes to Slyrr, for allowing me to use his original characters of Grimm and Rhonda. I'd also like to show my gratitude to Neo the Saiyan Angel and Katsumara, both of whom gave me a lot of input throughout the story.