Author's note: I apologize for the most likely increased amount of grammar/spelling mistakes, my beta reivewer is currently on vacation.

Also: Just in Case anyone was wondering I started writing this before so the drama; so I'm gonna pretend that that episode never happened, since it just doesn't work with the story. Also it turns out the episode: Gorrila Fist; which is on So the Drama's dvd; does fit well into my story; for those of you who haven't seen it, I'll include a brief synopsis later on, the section will be clearly marked.

Also: Thank you to those of you who reviewed. I truly appreciate it. To those of you who haven't yet, I only have this to say to you. "Come on. Come on. Come on." Thank you and have a nice day.

PLEASE REVIEW.

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Chapter Four: If I Die Whilst I Sleep, I Pray My Body My Soul to Keep

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They sat in silence, once again, but this time Ron was more than aware of it. He was in fact paying attention, an act that he did as rarely as possible, to it. After all that's what best friends do. They watch out for each other, and keep out an ear for rumors, and... other stuff. Right now was one of those far too numerous moments in the other stuff category. Kim sat, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rested her head upon her kneecaps.

She looked unhappy. Moments like this Ron wished, more than usual, that he was smart, or, athletic, or even just generally useful. But he wasn't. And he was so gonna fuck this up. He just knew it. But he was her best friend, unless she'd gotten a new one and then he didn't have to do this anymore but that was absurd so he might as well just suck it up and do it, and he had a job to do. Thankfully he wouldn't have to do it alone.

A pink animal sped from his pocket. Its tiny claws tickled slightly through the thin fabric. He hardly noticed. Kim didn't either. It wasn't until Rufus was standing upon her kneecaps, squeaking at her vehemently, did she register his presence. Her head raised, and she unfolded a little bit, just enough for Rufus to squeeze up against her. The naked mole rat's tiny paws traced minute comforting circles upon her body as the tears continued. Small squeaky mutters of "there, there, not your fault," reached Ron's ears. He wasn't sure if he agreed. Kim had lost it. She'd been pounding on Shego like a crazy woman. Granted, he still wasn't convinced that, that was a bad thing, but he was pretty sure Kim had been the one doing it. He hadn't ruled out mind control, but it was supremely unlikely. There was one thing he was sure of: Kim was scary when you get her mad. That and the cold cobblestones of the abandoned lab were really making his butt sore.

---

Shego was fairly resilient. Early on in her life she'd learned to take a pounding. Joining a super team with your stupid, self obsessed brothers had more than covered her tuition for the school of hard knocks. Whispers in the underworld claimed that she could take a direct hit from a tank and still gut the vehicle without a problem. Generally these whispers came after the consumption of many drinks found in very small glasses, after the men had glanced around three or four times, just in case. With her there was no such thing as too careful. The whispers weren't right in even the most lenient sense of the word. They would have been correct if they'd said she was one tough bitch.

It was because of this simple truth that Shego was merely limping at the moment. One of her eyes was slightly swollen, red puffiness clearly visible to all, though those that valued their lives seemed not to notice it. Funny thing that.

Dried blood had sealed the tear in her lip. Her hair was disheveled, like the rest of her face. The remainder of her wasn't in much better shape. Her uniform had several small tears in it, testimony to the terrible beating she'd received in such a short time. Despite all this she was arguing with her boss while they entered the warehouse Dure had claimed as a lair.

"Told you it wouldn't work," her voice was caustic, more so than normal, as if attempting to convey the words 'this is all your fault' through mere tone of voice.

"Quiet Shego," Drakken retorted, but his heart wasn't in it.

The two walked further into the warehouse, mouth's blaring, completely unaware of their surroundings. A figure watched them from above. His ears picked up their words. As each one was inspected by his internal word processor his face grew colder, angrier. When he had assembled both of their sentences the subject became even more apparent. His upper lip curled back in a show of rage, not that they noticed. Drakken and Shego merely kept arguing, unaware of Dure's presence. After a few seconds he could take no more. He would punish them. But first he wanted to hear their excuses, it would give him something to mock while he tortured them.

"I take it you failed then," the cold voice ripped them from their private argument.

High above them, on one of the catwalks that stretched across the wide converted staircase stood a man. His short cropped, black hair was barely visible from the ground level. Shego saw it though, she had very good eyes. Her eyes were so good in fact, that she caught sight of the small device resting near his hairline. She'd never seen its like before.

That didn't stop her from responding though.

"Relax it's done. We used your little toy on Kimmie and her little sidekick. Fat lot of good it did us."

His sneer of anger easily transitioned into one of mirth. He didn't wipe it from his face, as Shego would have expected him too. Instead he let it grow, smiling like a cat with a floor plan and a set of keys for the canary's cage.

"You accomplished your purpose though. That is all that matters," said Dure. For Shego that was the last straw, despite Drakken's warning glance and her aching form she moved forward, every word she spoke was laced with venom.

"Purpose? That's a laugh. It didn't do anything, geez can't anyone here be the least bit competent?"

Dure merely smiled. It was not the smile of a child who has just been given a candy bar, or even the keys to the candy store. It was the smile of a small child who has just been unleashed upon an unsuspecting babysitter. Had he been yellow and been on a certain popular t.v. show, he would have steepled his fingers and said, "excellent." As it was he forgo the finger movements and smiled down upon the irritated sidekick. His voice spilled from his lips, like oil from a jackknifed truck. "Just be patient Shego. You'd be surprised what can happen overnight."

---

Despite narrative assertions, night doesn't creep, nor does it descend. In reality it appears suddenly, as the sun completes the last leg of its journey while you were distracted with mundane things, like the empty bottle of rum in your hand. This is how the night found Bonnie Rockewaller.

The smooth glass bottle had not a single drop in it, the liquid had long since evaporated. Her face was another story. Wet trails covered her delicate features, staining the golden skin. A few more drops passed beyond her chin, falling with a gentle splat onto the sandy floor of the old playground. A lonely gust of wind wound its way through the still playground, animating the corpses of swings, giving them a semblance of the life they possessed only when a young child rode high upon them.

One currently held such life, though to claim it was the happy kind it enjoyed during the brief recesses of the nearby elementary school would be a cruel joke. Right now it swung the gentle rocking swing of the terminally depressed. With every small swing a single teardrop would land on the sand. The girl resting upon the swing wasn't going very high, just a few inches in either direction, barely swinging at all. Her feet pressed against the sand the entire time perpetuating the rocking motion as she did so. Around the swing a few crickets attempted chirping and discovered they could do it quite well, so they didn't stop. More joined in, creating a soft chorus of staccato noises, slowly other wildlife filled the momentary gap the girl's sobs had caused. Soon the full symphony of the night was playing, baring its soul to a girl who was too absorbed to notice. She was also too absorbed to notice a shadow blocking one of the faint roadside lights that gave the place a semblance of illumination at night.

A soft voice, but not one of a friend, interrupted the swinger's private mourning.

"Do you really think that's the answer." The speaker's eyes were fixated on the bottle. If the swinger had been shocked at the other girl's presence, she didn't say so. Instead her two arms wrapped around the bottle, drawing it even closer. Soon it was enclosed by the barrier of her flesh. Fresh tears dripped down its neck. These were the first drops of moisture it had contained in decades. The owner of the shadow tried staying silent and still in an attempt to force the swinger into feeling the need to speak. The attempt was a miserable failure. After it sulked for a bit the attemptress finally decided it wouldn't work. Long legs carried the shadow wielder forward, to the swing set itself, where she claimed another swing, swinging with slightly more force than the bottle hugger. The two swung in silence, until the sobbing started again. Then movement ceased.

Black skin appeared in the periphery of the crying girl's vision as a delicate hand pushed brown hair away from her tear stained face. The hand lingered a bit longer than necessary, attempting to clean away the seemingly endless trail of tears. Every time one drop was removed another would replace it. Finally the comfortress let loose a low laugh, barely audible even though she was now kneeling right near the other girl.

The brunettes head raised, peering into the deep chocolate brown eyes of her comforter. Three words left the lovely girl's mouth.

"It was his."

The simple sentence left Monique without a single appropriate response. So instead Kim Possible's best friend tried comforting the teen hero's worst foe in silence.

---

Kim Possible was tired, which was to say that every bone in her body felt like a lead weight, every muscle felt like a wet sponge. She was even exhausted emotionally. Ever since her breakdown at the castle she'd become numb, too drained to even feel guilty. Ron had watched her with worried eyes until their ride had dropped her off at her home. She'd stumbled in through the door, as the helicopter they'd been riding in left to take Ron home. That had been her idea, he'd wanted to stay. Now, as she sat on the bed in her normal clothes, she simply sat still. Her eyelids flickered every so often as she forced them open. Her parents hadn't assaulted her with questions, in fact they hadn't greeted her at all. They were at a couples retreat, and had left the day before, the day Shego had killed officer McClay. At the thought her pocket seemed to grow heavier, as if the weight of sheer responsibility had been placed inside it. Her exhausted hand snaked down into it, pulling out a lump of metal that fought against her efforts to remove it. The mental strain it took to retrieve it belied the thing's weight. Once it was free her eyes were drawn to it, even as gravity and exhaustion drew her towards her bed. As she drifted towards the bed, she wondered if she should lock the door. The answer came a few inches closer, when she remembered the tweebs would be at a friends house till Monday. Then she fell asleep, officer McClay's badge resting next to her on the bed.

Downstairs Ron Stoppable let himself in. He knew she'd said to go home, but he was worried. The fact that she hadn't even locked the front door made his unease increase. He crept up the stairs, all the while hoping Kim didn't notice. She'd be furious with him.

When the final stair passed under his feet he made his way inside her room. She lay there, fully clothed, breathing softly. With a sheepish smile Ron made his way downstairs. He plopped down onto the couch after locking the door. After all he'd changed his mind on a free ride to make sure she was okay, the fact that she was napping wouldn't change that.

---

In her dreams, Kim Possible was under attack. Things were not going in her favor. There was no life left in her arms, or come to think of it, any other part of her. Every Kick the her tormentor threw her way sent sharp pain racing through a system that shouldn't contain pain. But she wasn't really there. It was a metaphor. Of that she was sure, because there was a giant blue baboon holding a neon sign that flashed the words, "You're dreaming. This is all a giant metaphor. For the answer please turn to page ten of your guidebooks. Not you Miss Possible. You don't have one. And yes this is probably a metaphor too. Have a good day, that was not a metaphor," in deep reds and browns. All in all she preferred it to the nightmares she'd been having recently. Well up until the monkey dropped the sign, pulled out an ax, lopped off her head, and tore her soul from her headless corpse. In the nothingness of dream her bodyless soul watched the simian pick up her head and carry it away. After a while she felt a strange tug and arrived to see a pink sloth leaving with Ron's head. Her monkey, with a fanatical amount of care and precision, screwed her head onto Ron's body. And then it smiled at her and gestured. She felt a sharp tug, and then she was following it into the bizarre body.

She remembered thinking that this would still make no sense in the morning. She was most probably wrong. But then again, metaphor's are funny things.

---

Three shadowy figures sat around a table. It was not the kind of table such figures usually congregate around. For one thing it was rather plain. For another, it was square. Which just goes to show not all shadowy figures are the same. These shadowy figures for example weren't all that dumb. They wore normal clothing, bereft of any baseball caps or sunglasses. The only item adorning any of their faces was a single pair of normal glasses one of them wore. In fact technically speaking, at the moment there was very little that was shadowy about these individuals. They sat in the bright, artificial light of a Dennys, having a normal toned conversation amid the din of the restaurant. An observer would have been hard placed to find anything sinister about them. Had there been a man eavesdropping he would have heard no secret codes, ominous pauses, or anything at all symbolic in the conversation. Had the eavesdropper been keen and good at his job, he would have found this quite odd. After all everyone had little abbreviations and codes for things they didn't want to mention by name, like an ex, or the latest one night stand who happens to be standing in line behind you. All this changed one when of the figures began talking about a her, you know the one I'm talking about, oh come on don't deny it, you want her don't you Mr, I'm so big bad and gay. You want your bossie, you want your bossie.

When Shego saw Dure the next morning, he was sporting a shiner.