Kim Possible: The Darkness Without

Redux

Pt 1

By Eoraptor

Boring but important legal stuff: Kim Possible and all related characters are property of the Walt Disney Corporation ©2002-2007. Redistribution of this text for profit or without the author's consent is prohibited.

More boring but important stuff: This publication is rated by the author as R for violence and adult themes throughout. If you can't handle this type of material or it is illegal where you are located, don't complain to me or the site admin this document is posted on, JUST DON'T READ IT!

Less Boring and Still Important Stuff: This work is inspired by and based on the fan artwork and concept, "The Green Wraith is You" by YogurthFrost on Deviant Art, you can find the link on my author's page.

Author's Notes: This is set in the year or two after season four of the TV series and the two movies. It's set during what would be Team Possible's college years. While I want to keep the fun and whit of the series, it as mentioned above based on a darker fan art piece and thus is not targeted towards the series intended young-teen/teen audience. I hope I can strike some kind of balance, but please keep in mind, death, bloodshed, terrorism, sexuality, etc, are not really topics tackled by this or any Disney series. For NEW thoughts (much abbreviated) see the end of this and other chapters.

Now, on with the Story...

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A familiar four note tone trilled in a purse hanging from the arm of a redhead who was quickly walking from the campus proper to one of the outlaying auditoriums. A warm familiar smile graced the lightly painted lips of Kimberly Anne Possible as she pulled the gleaming blue smart phone out of her purse and clicked the answer button. After a moment of static, a familiar, but slightly more mature face appeared on the small screen.

"Hey Wade, what's the sitch?" Kim smiled at one of the faces she just didn't get to see as often as she liked these days.

Wade Loade was sixteen and becoming a handsome, and rapidly slimming, young man. When Kim and her cohorts had first started saving the world, he'd been a ten year old prodigy who'd already completed his own high school education. Now that people were off in the so-called real world, he was busy consulting for Microsoft, and getting his Drivers License. Further proof that he was no longer a gifted shut-in were the stubble on his chin, and the firm biceps that bespoke his new hobbies that required the use of his hands as more than a conduit from brain to keyboard.

"Not much Kim, just got a hit on the site and it looks a little… …weird." 'The Site' of course, was kim possible dot com, the easily mistyped website of a one-time babysitter for whom anything really was possible. It had been through several iterations over the years, but had been scaled back just a bit when Team Possible had to split up due to the pains of higher education. Not to say the famous redhead didn't still get jobs now and again.

"Weird like San Francisco, or weird like those emails I've been getting about male enhan…" Kim couldn't finish that with a straight face. She had to cover her mouth for a moment before she could suppress her giggle and continue.

Wade made a face and sighed. "I still don't understand why the university couldn't just install the filters I wrote for them… its only four million lines of code!"

Kim did giggle this time and again self-consciously covered her lips. "What can I say Wade, they'd rather buy the ones everyone else is using. Maybe you should ask your friend Bill about that one."

"Yeah yeah… he's retired. Anyway, the message is weird like not the first or the second… It says there's going to be a jewel heist at your school's natural history museum, the Peabody, Tonight! Sounds fishy to me."

Kim agreed with that whole heartedly and nodded at the kimmunicator in her palm. She ran a hand through her long red hair and looked up at the autumn sky over Cambridge, Mass, thinking about what her favorite techy had just told her.

Kim Possible had graduated Valedictorian from Middleton high almost two years ago, and had spent the last eighteen months doing semesters in Europe, America, and the Pacific Rim. Now she was doing an Ivy League stint, filling in her knowledge of law, and trying to live down her near-fame as the girl who could do anything, including stop alien invasions. She wasn't exactly fending off the paparazzi, but she wasn't an anonymous legal-aide student either. News always spread about her extra-curricular activities fighting comically over-wrought super villains and saving the world while balancing a full class load and social life.

"Well, you know we've gotten tips like that before… usually not a problem, just some spurned henchman ratting out the boss," she responded after a moment, looking back to her handheld.

Something in Wade's demeanor told Kim that he wasn't so sure. "All right… I'll look into it after scrum. Anything else? How's Shelly treating you?" Kim grinned faintly and knew that, despite his new social streak, plugging Wade for info on his personal life would still leave him a blushing sputtering mass of dark skin and curls. It was a good way to get him off her back about something.

"Um, she's great... gotta go now though, big uh… contract to work on…" the little screen on the kimmunicator, that marvel of smart phone design, winked out and she slipped it back into her purse. She resumed walking again along the path, heels clicking on the pavement and a renewed grin on her lips.

Kim couldn't help but giggle just a bit. Some things never changed. She ran her fingertips through her hair once more, and wondered yet again time how she did it all; Pre-law, intramural rugby, volunteering at the Center for Justice, dating, and taking on the occasional dare-devil mission pro-bono. It made high school seem like a cakewalk.

She sighed softly, the warm familiar grin on her lips as she wondered how Ron did it too. He was busy fulfilling his dream of being a chef in Chicago, also volunteering, being a running back in something called Arena-football, and occasionally flying out to follow her on missions. And despite it all, he was still a clutz who managed to rip out his pants as often as he caught the bad guy. No titanium belt or mystical monkey powers seemed to be able to stop that for long.

Heels clicking away on the path and showing off her shapely legs under the prim business suit-dress, and with her pace light but brisk, she made her way to her next class.

A cell phone was picked up behind a newspaper along that path, "The message has been delivered."

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Several hours later, a blur of red, purple, and black dashed along the roof of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The museum was renowned for its cultural studies, even if Wade had called it natural history museum, but thankfully it had the same flat industrial roof that most city buildings did. Kim peered through the skylight and down into the main exhibit hall of the museum. She'd been here an hour now, and had yet to find any evidence of a break-in having occurred.

Sighing softly, she sat back a bit, kicked at the asphalt gravel listlessly, and allowed her mind to drift ever-so slightly. She was enjoying Harvard, especially the rugby. She'd been head cheerleader at Middleton High, but she found she much preferred being the one being cheered for. Thankfully, here at the major university there was no shortage of official and unofficial womens' sport. Besides, it was much easier to stay in touch with Ron, the 'rents, the tweebs, and all her other friends when she was three time-zones away, not seven or more as she had been at Ikebana last year.

Ron's face, even in memory, brought a smile to her lips. It was true that they weren't formally an item any more… they'd agreed that it was just too hard with each globe-hopping, often now in different directions. Not that Kim minded having him on her arm at the clubs, or anywhere else for that matter; he was darned cute. He'd finally shed that Bueno Nacho belly the summer after high school, when he got his first "officially" solo mission in the afterglow of the Lorwardian sitch, making him that much cuter.

Then again, which mission was it he had really shed the belly for; the mission to Japan to stop a Monty Fisk wannabe, or the still incomplete mission to save "KP" from her panties? She blushed intently at the memory of that set of bumbled entendre's and romantic gestures. Ron was sweet to a fault, so he'd understood when she said that she really wasn't ready to take their relationship past to that stage, but even he still made clumsy attempts once in a long while.

This brought a mild frown to the porcelain features of the pre-law student and globe-trotter. None of the young men she'd met in the past year had been nearly so sweet, and only two had been as understanding. Honestly, was romance really that difficult?

Kim was running her gloved hands over her face when she heard the footsteps crunching through the asphalt nearby. She leapt to her feet, more quietly than the steps approaching her, and just as quickly was crouched to attack or defend.

"Good evening Kimberly. It's been a while." Kim blinked. She knew that voice. But seven words was not a lot to put a face or name to a voice.

"Yeah, sure has…" she responded, trying to cover her confusion.

"About five years now? I think it was Christmas time."

A smile of recognition spread across Kim's face as she put the clipped, precise manner of speaking with a familiar face. Her suspicions were confirmed when a figure in a long dark blue coat, short brown hair, and a satin eye-patch came into the faint aura glowing from the museum skylight.

"Dr. Director… what brings you to Cambridge? Don't tell me you're here for the baked beans?" She smiled warmly, but she knew Betty Director didn't leave her office at Global Justice headquarters, wherever that was, without a darned good reason.

"Well, I wanted to personally offer you an assignment as my last official act as head of Global Justice." the older woman spoke quietly.

Kim looked at her in shock. Dr Director didn't seem that old, and she definitely didn't seem like the type to retire, quietly or otherwise.

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"Oh, Come on! He was so off sides!" Ron Stoppable was busy peeling himself up off of the Astroturf and yanking the ball out of his left earpiece. His brightly colored Arena football uniform was nearly as loud as the crowd in the arena as the Chicago Rush took on the Upperton Skyhawks. It was a grudge match for Ron, and the blonde haired running back was really getting into it.

"I didn't see it." The ref shrugged off his protests as Ron pulled the pigskin out of his earpiece and lined up again, snorting.

Ron was in Chicago to go to the Culinary Institute, but he was also still the record holder in Southern California for high school rushing yards, and Arena football paid the bills better than flipping burgers on his partial scholarship. Plus the travel occasionally came in handy for his other career. KP seemed to like the new abs when they were in Morocco last month. He spared himself a brief grin before, "Hutt Hutt HUTT!"

"Hitman Flagg drops back… He lets it fly- NO! It's a fake! Stoppable has the ball, he's at the fifteen, the ten, the five, Touchdown Rush!! Crazy Legs Ron has just tied the Arena League record for single season points scored rushing! The Chicago Hero Does It Again! He stops Aliens, and he stumps Defensive Ends! Congratulations Number 42!"

"Boooh Yah!!" Ron spiked the ball and leapt into the fans just past the four foot padded wall that ringed the end zone. The indoor football stadium seemed to rattle with cheers and as pyrotechnics exploded in the rafters and rock music thumped out over the crowd. The celebration was short, as were all things in Arena, including the intervals between scorings on the fifty-yard indoor field.

As he returned to the line, he gave the thumbs up to a certain pink rodent that was running back and forth on the top of the padded wall that bounded the field.

"booh yah!" came the chipper little reply from the rodent that got more than a few odd looks as it scurried back and forth in its tiny Rush jersey with "00 – Rufus" on the back.

He stopped and looked a one of the front-row fans who didn't seem to be particularly excited by the play, despite his own Chicago jersey. Rufus made a sour face and ducked when the fan threw some nachos at him and then held his hand to his ear. The mole rat blew a raspberry at him and scurried on down the end-zone to hang out with the cheerleaders.

Ron dropped back this time as the ball was snapped, faking the D-line, and got another face full of artificial turf and bright blue face-mask for his trouble. A few seconds later the buzzer managed to sound out over the crowd along with a whistle from the ref, and more pyros went off as the game ended 62-48 Chicago.

"No, the secondary and his damned rat both seem to be very occupied at the moment… and there's another game on Tuesday where he'll go for some other record, I don't think we need to worry about him just yet."

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"You look very well Kimberly; college life seems to agree with you…" Dr. Director smiled politely as she fished a smartphone out of her long coat's pocket.

Kim, for her part, was still trying to digest the words "last official act", and barely registered the compliment. "Dr. Director, is something wrong?"

Betty bit her lip for just a moment, and finally shook her head, the first few traces of silver appearing in her brown mop just above her brow, Kim noticed. "Nothing you need to be concerned with Miss Possible. Now, if you'd like to hold your Kimmunicator, I can send you the specifics of what we would like you to look into."

Kim did as asked, holding up Wade's most important creation. In just a moment, a green progress bar appeared and filled itself in. Then, after another moment, a familiar pair of mug shots appeared on the screen; one faintly green, the other decidedly blue.

"They're still working together?" she said incredulously.

"They are, and they seem to have the biggest plot yet… it makes Diablo-bots look like tinker toys, or so I understand."

"You understand? I thought you knew all the plots everywhere, Dr. Director?" Kim watched the Director of Global Justice incredulously as she look down

"I've not been… at my best lately, Kimberly... that's why I'm retiring… but you'll be happy to know I'm being replaced by someone very capable. Not only is Agent… excuse me, Interim Director Will Du personally asking for you on this, he'll be your liaison as well for future communications.

Kim was not exactly thrilled. Her relationship with GJ was cordial, mostly thanks to Dr. Director's acceptance that she had no interest in joining them on a permanent basis. Yet Will Du, while he was a great bureaucrat, was no Betty Director. He wasn't the #1 field agent he was cracked up to be either, but that was beside the point. Still, maybe clothes made the man, so to speak… She hadn't seen Will in even longer than she'd seen Dr. Director. He could have changed from the snobbish by-the-book-worm he'd been when they'd last worked together.

"Well, I'm happy you found such a… capable replacement Dr. Director. I hope you'll understand if I take a few hours to look into this?" Director nodded a bit, but she seemed to be elsewhere at the moment mentally, and Kim noticed her good eye was looking up at the stars now, not at her. Kim frowned at that, but it wasn't polite to ask more about why she was out and Director Du was in. Either way, time was of the essence; in the World Saving game, there were no days to spare, and rarely were there hours.

"Of course Kimberly," came the response, after a moment of silence that had gone dangerously close to awkward, especially when that silence came from the usually precise Betty Director.

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A disturbingly blue face peered up from the hatch of the machine and beady eyes blinked, causing an ugly and prominent scar near the left one to pucker slightly. A hand protected by a thick black rubber lab-glove ran over his face and through the receding black hair crowning his head. He looked perplexed; as much as a man who couldn't keep the days of the week straight but could concoct death-rays from old watch parts could look perplexed anyway.

"Shego, have you been messing with the Trans-particle Vortex Recommbinator?" The recipient of that wordy question looked up, not bothering to mask her irritability as she filed away at a glistening metal talon attached to a vividly green glove. She simply sneered at her employer for a moment and returned to her filing.

"I wouldn't touch your precious trans-sexual whatchamacallit with a ten-foot pole Dr. D. Honestly, I don't know why you even bother… you haven't even gotten one of those things to work since you got paroled."

The irritable sneer on her lips briefly flashed to mischievously taunting grin as she remembered how she had broken out of prison twice and stayed on the outside, while he had to be broken out months later only to be recaptured. Then, after that, he was paroled in a positively disgraceful moment for a working super-villain when it came out that trying to transform the San Francisco bay area into tapioca pudding, while a bad idea in principal, wasn't actually against the law.

With his plans sliding ever further into absurdity, her few joys these days came from draining Drakken's bank account while performing no actual work, and needling him. God, Kim Possible hadn't even shown up to their last plot, some Global Justice muscle had merely broken his latest toy, held him for questioning, and then let them go on their merry way. Drakken's slipping whit's showed in his appearance, he didn't seem to spend as much care on his precious lab jackets, or hair gel as he once had.

"TRANS-PARTICLE VORTEX RECOMMBINATOR." Drakken said in an odd manner which started haughtily and challenging, and faded to whining as he realized she wasn't even listening. "And there's a part here I don't remember putting in."

Shego looked up at the wayward scientist and her filing stopped for a moment. Drakken was many things, but he rarely was incautious about his inventions, at least during the construction phase…. Now when it came to operating them; that was another story. Her knees still quivered with the memory of the device created to make continents collide, and nearly being crushed under a metric ton of rubble when her erstwhile employer had cheaped out on construction costs for his college-cum-lair.

After a moment though, she shrugged off the ghost of concern and went back to her maintenance, blowing away some filings of dust and examining her handiwork. "You probably just stuck it in before you had your double frappucino this morning, Dr. Dork."

Drakken ran his hand over his face more irritably. Shego and he had worked together now for nearly seven years, but she was becoming more lippy by the day… He wondered why he bothered renewing her contract at such exorbitant rates. Now she wasn't even insulting him under her breath, it was right out in the open. Honestly, more of his budget was going to her increasing vacations and wardrobe than to his lair's lease and hench-contracts any more.

As usual, though, he deferred to her. "You're probably right… hand me that neutronium spanner would you?"

The sound of renewed filing, and the humming of a club song he knew he'd heard before but couldn't quite place were the response, and he groaned. He eyed the new box and its red light once more before retrieving the tool himself.

"call me beep me if you want to…" she half-sung to herself as she filed away.

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Author's Additional Notes

Yeah, I've cut WAY back on the Author's notes since the original version, huh? Short notes in addition to the disclaimer at the top: Not much in the way of changes made to this chapter aside from references to the series finale, which hadn't aired when this as originally written in April '07. Arena Football is still real (although it is played in the spring/summer and not the fall) The Chicago Rush made it all the way to the playoffs this year, though the Upperton Skyhawks are still fictitious.

I'll leave the original version of "Darkness Without" up until all of this "redux" is finished.