Cameron Du hunched over his desk, reading with eyes that burned in their thirty-sixth hour of sleeplessness. A mug of cold coffee sat at his elbow. A single light burned on his desk, casting a dim glow upon the office of his mentor, which he had temporarily appropriated. Were it not for the constant ache of his body, he might have mistaken this for a dream.

Each report he read could have doubled as a bestselling work of fiction: tall tales about GJ soldiers being routed by two civilians on a suburban lawn; fables about a couple of teenagers brutalizing the renowned Team Go at their own gala celebration; pure fantasy about rank amateurs blasting into a federal prison and escaping with their arch nemesis in a stolen hover jet. It all sounded so stupid when he read it in succession. He didn’t believe a word of it, even while he knew every report was more or less the truth.

His office door interrupted him with a knock. Using a semi-intelligible grunt, he bade the door open. Dini entered and closed the door behind her. He was surprised to see that her black eye was entirely gone. Not covered with makeup, but healed, as if it were never there at all. Her hangdog expression, though, came as no surprise.

Du tired of her salute before her hand reached her forehead. “Report,” he said.

“The Global Justice sata-net has been trawling all possible avenues of searching. Satellite imaging—“

He silenced her with an impatient wave. “Three words or less,” he said.

“Nothing yet. Sir,” Dini answered smartly.

Groaning, Du massaged his temples and leaned back from the fantastic reports. Three years’ worth of fatigue harried his face, one year for each day since Team Possible had become Public Enemy Number One. “Very well. Keep me posted, Dini.” His eyes skimmed the reports for several seconds more before noticing that Dini had not yet left.

Dini stood ramrod-straight and kept her gaze against the back wall. Both were the hallmarks of an inexperienced agent. Du could recall his own early years, serving under his mentor, sweating every word he said to her for fear of misspeaking. It was only after months of saluting and muscle-locking posture that the future Director of Global Justice had taken him aside and given him some advice.

He decided to pass that advice along to Dini. “Agent, if you keep standing and walking like that, waiting for me to notice you, you’ll be using a walker by the time you’re thirty. I brought you on board this investigation for a reason. If you’ve got something to say, pipe up. If it’s bad news, throw some ‘sirs’ in with it.”

Dini blushed lightly and relaxed her stance. “Am I to understand the Commander is giving me permission to speak freely?”

“You understand. Now sit down and spit it out.”

At his gesture, Dini took the chair opposite his across the desk. “Sir,” she said with a nod. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking about our targets’ motives and their recent activities.”

Du raised an eyebrow, intrigued. “Oh?”

“And none of it makes sense! Sir,” she added hastily. “My own experience with Stoppable is bizarre enough. But then he goes and tears up a party in Go City for no apparent reason. And Possible returns to the Boise locker just to burn it down? And then breaks out a megalomaniac who appears to have no connection to this case? I can’t make sense of it, sir. It’s hindering my ability to track them. I…”

She trailed off. “My time is limited, Dini,” Du said warningly. “Speak freely, but especially concisely.”

Taking a deep breath, Dini blurted, “Sir, I recommend that I be taken off this case and that it be assigned to a more experienced agent.”

Du’s frown shot straight up to the ceiling. “Are you honestly telling me that you’re asking to be taken off a case that will make your entire career? A case that any other agent would give her eyeteeth for? That’s asinine. Request denied.”

“But sir—“

“My turn,” Du said sharply, rocking her silent with his tone. “Dini, I’ve spent the better part of two decades dealing with situations like this. GJ’s Intelligence division handles ninety percent of these cases before they happen. Do you know what the best way to diffuse these situations is?”

“Sir?’

“You make sure they don’t happen. You find these lunatics and stop them from the shadows. Bankrupt them. Manipulate the local crime into swallowing them whole. Warn local authorities to nap them on trumped-up charges. Otherwise disasters like this happen, and it gets passed to GJ Tactical. Do you know what I call that, Dini?”

“Sir—?”

His features stormed. “I call that a loss. I call it an inability to outguess our opponent. Intelligence already lost when we failed to predict Possible’s alliance with Dementor. We passed the buck to Tactical. Now you’re telling me you want to pass the buck back to someone else?”

“Just another agent, sir. One better equipped to—“

“Bah.” Du waved her voice away as if it were a foul odor. “Better equipped? There’s only one person in GJ with extensive experience in dealing with Team Possible. The Director. And I’m keeping her out of this investigation for exactly that reason. Her judgment’s compromised. So it’s up to us to figure out the hows, whys, and wheres of this Possible problem.”

He let that sink in with a moment of silence. Slowly, Dini nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

In order, Du picked up corroborating reports and slid them across the desk for Dini to see. “Team Possible and Team Go have a history. Stoppable was likely taking out what he perceived to be a potential threat to their plans. Possible could have retrieved something from Boise that she missed her first time there, and destroyed the rest to keep us in the dark as to what. She then picked up Lipsky, who has previous, extensive experience with Demens’ Entropy Cannon.”

Dini took each report, and then tucked them underarm to read later. “Yes, sir,” she said with a nod. “Then how do we proceed from here?”

His fingers steepled into a rest for his chin. “The only thing to do is wait and watch. Given enough time, an amateur like Possible is bound to make a—“

The Communicator clipped to his belt beeped insistently. Du palmed the device and thumbed it silent. Its screen displayed a message that made his haggard face light up.

“—mistake,” he finished, smiling.

Drakken looked up from the ground with pained annoyance. Leaves from the path clung in his hair. Unbothered by the feminine wrath hovering over him, he glanced back at the tripwire that had caused his misstep. “Who strings invisible wire in the middle of a deserted volcano island? It’s rude, is what it is. Rude and confusing,” he grumped.

Kim bent and examined the wire strung across their path. She pointedly ignored Drakken’s proffered hand asking for help. The metal wire bit her finger as she traced it into the underbrush. What she found hidden there made her curse. It was a small black box staked into the ground. A red diode blinked atop the box.

“We aren’t half an hour out of the jet, and you manage to screw this up. Even for you, that’s impressive, Drakken. Way to go,” Kim said.

Yori stood behind them both, mopping her brow with the back of her hand. The island upon which they landed swam with tropical heat the likes of which she hoped never again to see. A single, flat-topped mountain rose in the morning sky ahead of them, its broad base vanishing into the lush foliage through which they tromped. “What is that device, Kim-san?” she asked.

“It’s a signal of some kind. Looks like it’s been here for a while,” Kim explained, pausing to lance Drakken with a glare. “There’s no telling who it’s transmitting to, or where they’d be coming from. We have to hurry.”

Drakken stood sans assistance and dusted off his orange prison suit. “Well, maybe they’re on the other side of the world. Let’s think positive.”

Kim shoved him forward into a stumble. “You’re right. If it had been a mine, we’d all be dead by now. Let’s all keep that positively in mind. Move.”

They continued on in silence, save for the sweaty huffing of Drakken’s beleaguered lungs. Kim and Yori kept their eyes trained to the jungle, searching for any further signs of traps, or worse, betrayal. They were on Drakken’s turf now, bumbling appearances to the contrary. And after last month’s near miss, Kim wasn’t going to give Drakken a single inch of trust.

A thought occurred to Yori as they neared the base of the dormant volcano. “Kim-san, why would anyone set a warning device on the island?”

The question earned a sneering laugh from their guide. “Plenty of reasons. I’m one of the world’s leading evil geniuses. There are plenty of people who would love to wrap their greasy mitts around my equipment. The problem is, I’m too smart for them. They can’t get into my lair, so they set listening posts, waiting for someone to open it for them. This secret reserve is one of the few lairs I haven’t lost to obnoxious teenage interference. No offense,” he added mockingly to Kim.

She shoved him hard into a tree next to the path. His swollen nose cracked against the trunk, blinding him with pain. He howled a foul curse that questioned Kim’s parentage.

“None taken,” she said sweetly as she and Yori walked past.

The rough trail ended a few steps ahead in a small clearing that abutted the volcano’s base. Porous boulders sat in the underbrush, which formed a tangled carpet that came up to Kim’s knees. She paused at the edge of the clearing with Yori and waited for Drakken to catch up.

He staggered past her, clutching his bloody nose, his scowl burning over the top of his hands. “After my efforts with cloning certain know-it-all meddlers failed to pan out, I stored most of my equipment here. It’s a bare-bones lair. More like a storage facility, really. Like my own Evidence Locker. I keep it small and hidden enough that—“

“We get it. It’s small. Now invite us in already.” Kim folded her arms and watched him stumble through the tall plants.

Sneering at her, Drakken kicked a specific boulder. It shuddered and then rumbled aside with the sound of grinding gears. A small, square hatch opened from underneath the boulder, with stairs leading down into inky blackness.

Drakken stepped aside and bowed mockingly. “Ladies first,” he sneered.

Kim exchanged a bemused glance with Yori. “How sweet. Now get in the hole before I throw you in the hole. And if I see you go for anything or press anything, or do anything that makes me twitchy, I’ll sic my ninja on you.”

“Grr,” said Yori.

He grumbled and descended the metal stairs, leading Kim and Yori into the sightless depths. When he reached the fifth step, the lights of the lair triggered, flooding the underground chamber. Startled, Kim took in their surroundings all at once, her fists clenching in anticipation.

The lair was little more than a dome hollowed out of the ground. Compared with the sprawling complexes she had visited and vanquished in her career, this lair was downright puny. She could scarcely imagine her parents’ house fitting under the dome’s apex, which featured a large array of buzzing lights. What struck her most of all, though, was the lair’s emptiness.

It evidently struck Drakken as well. “My lair!” he shrieked, clutching his hair. “My equipment! My brilliance! My stuff!”

Broken wires were strewn about on the smooth, dusty floor where large pieces of equipment had been ripped from their housings. Kim could still see the empty bolts and blank spaces in the floor where, presumably, Drakken’s cloning equipment had been. Ghosts of footprints sat in the dust, stirring into obscurity when the unlikely trio stepped from the stairs.

Drakken ran from one wire bunch to the next. He grasped at their ends as if he expected to find the equipment hidden at their fraying ends. “This is horrible. They got everything. Even my Gene-A-Ma-Jig. Awwww…”

He began patting the wall in search of something unseen. Kim watched him for a moment before her attention drifted across the vacant spaces where his technology had been. A sliver of despair stung her waning hope. This was their best lead, which Kim only now realized was incredibly thin, and now it had failed.

She had no idea where to go from here. She had no Wade to call, and no Ron on which to lean.

The empty lair swallowed Kim in loneliness.

“Ahah!” crowed Drakken, breaking Kim’s reverie. His hand depressed a small square of the wall, triggering a wide section of the dome’s side to slide away. The smooth stone rumbled aside to reveal a second chamber, smaller and darker than the one in which they stood. “Whoever the thieves were, they missed the storage room. Perhaps I left something behind to replace this ‘correctional fashion’ that the state so maliciously provided,” he mused, tugging at the baggy chest of his orange jumpsuit.

He darted into the revealed room with Yori following close. Kim trailed after them, slowed down by the weight of her realization. Both Kim and Yori had to look away as Drakken climbed out of his jumpsuit to don a set of clothes he’d dusted off from a pile. There were things, otherworldly and terrible, that need to remain firmly in the deepest recesses of the imagination.

They looked instead to a table filled with various gadgetry, presumably Drakken’s designs. “If Drakken has lost his equipment, then perhaps he is of no further use to us,” Yori said. She picked up one of the gadgets. It was a small stack of colorful rings on a central stalk, and reminded Kim of a toy her parents had gotten for her brothers when they were much younger.

Kim folded her arms and kept the blue of Drakken’s skin in her peripheral vision. “If that’s the case, we can hightail it before whoever planted that signal box shows up. Maybe just let them deal with him,” she muttered.

“Or, we could return him to where he—,” Yori began.

The stack of rings in Yori’s hands flashed with white light. Kim had to avert her eyes until the pink glow outside her eyelids faded. When she could look again, she nearly burst out laughing.

Yori, who had topped Kim by more than an inch, now stood less than three feet tall. She looked to be no more than four years old, and her clothes had shrank to match. Adult Yori was beautiful and elegant, but as a child, Yori possessed a pudgy adorability that gave Kim a smile she desperately needed.

“—belongs,” Yori finished in a youthful squeak. She looked down at herself, horrified by what the device had done to her body.

Across the room, Drakken finished buttoning his cobalt lab coat. A pair of round black cylinders in the room’s corner occupied his attention. “Stop playing with my Juvenator,” he shot back distractedly.

Yori’s hands pulled at the rings of the device, shaking with rage. “If this change is permanent, I will end him slowly,” the again-young ninja growled.

Kim stilled Yori’s struggle with a hand on the Juvenator. “Ease up before this thing turns you into a fetus,” she said.

Half a decade of foiling Drakken gave Kim a unique familiarity with his style of design. It was a simple matter for Kim to twist the rings back and trigger the device with a tap to its stack. She was tempted—just for a second—to leave the would-be competitor for Ron’s affections stuck somewhere at a pre-curves age. With another blinding flash, Yori returned to her old self, breasts, hips, scowl and all.

While Yori patted herself down to gauge her proportions, Kim glanced back at Drakken and found her own reason to scowl. He was engrossed with the large cylinders, whose glossy surfaces reflected a warped enthusiasm in his face. “Hey! Don’t get grabby over there, Drakken. If we see anything even remotely ray-like, you’ll have a new boot print on both your cheeks.”

He waved off her brusque tone as though it were a nattering fly. “Yes, yes. I’m just checking up on one of my old projects. Actually, I think you might find this one to be particularly interesting.”

Kim marched at him between tables of his archived inventions. Her fists swung at her sides, eager to reaffirm the pecking order. “I told you not to mess with—“

It was too late. Smoke roiled from seams that split each cylinder down the middle. The white haze billowed from doors that opened the glossy chambers fully. Kim ran up, only to flinch back from the haze. She squinted through wet smoke, coughing, and then gasped when she saw a face emerge from the smoke that made her heart skip.

Staring at the smiling, freckled visage in the smoke, Kim stammered, “Ron?”

The inflatable raft ran aground on jagged marble detritus. Pieces of the island’s grand architecture lined the shore, scorched at their broken edges, moody and pale under the pall of moonlight. Only the rush of the tide spoke to the three travelers as they dragged their raft up and over the rough shore. It told them nothing they didn’t already know.

Monique shivered, though not only because of the cold surf seeping into her shoes. Her last visit to this island had been a rousing adventure. Now it felt as though she encroached upon the threshold of a tomb. “This place is heebie-jeebie central,” she murmured.

“You’ll have to pick just one,” Ron said from the front of the raft. He assumed the brunt of dragging duties, letting Wade climb the marble detritus higher on shore. “We’re here to see what Dementor is cooking up in this old heap of his. We don’t have time for heebies and jeebies.”

Wade scrambled up a chunk of what once had been part of Dementor’s central tower. When he reached the apex of the wet, craggy stone, he pulled from his pocket a pair of cell phones he’d kit bashed together. The one screen left between them lit with a spray of binary code, which he read at inhuman speed. “This is so weird,” he murmured.

Fiddling with the raft’s valve, Ron called up at him, “What’s weird? ‘Weird’ has been a really subjective word lately.”

“We saw some lights when we flew over, right? Well, my sensor isn’t picking up any kind of power readings. Just some elevated heat against the background a few hundred yards from here. It could just be wild animals,” he said.

As soon as he finished speaking, he twitched in surprise at an object sailing over his head, appearing from over the top of the ridge above the shore. The object tumbled end over end on its arc into their midst. It caught the moonlight long enough for the teens to identify it as a bottle. Then it smashed on a rock, spilling shards into the surf.

They stared in shock at the glass bits clinging to the rock. A whining cry shook them loose from wonder: “Hey, that was mine!”

The sound of approaching footsteps dropped down from over the ridge. Ron’s heartbeat ramped into panicked overdrive. He yanked the raft out from under Monique, surprising her into the surf, and hissed, “Hide! Hide!”

Wade shimmied down the stone. He and Monique crawled beneath a marble outcropping, half-drowned in the surf. Ron found his own tight hiding spot. But when he tried to drag the raft in, its rubber girth refused to follow him into the crevasse. If he didn’t hide it from the owner of those imminent footsteps, the stealth portion of their mission would be over, and the fighting for their lives portion would start well ahead of schedule.

With no choice left, Ron sighed, and gripped the rubber of the raft. Scarlet flashed in his eyes as he tore the raft down the middle, releasing its air with one loud clap that was lost in the crash of the waves. He dragged the deflated corpse of the raft down by his feet and wedged himself in the crevasse, and waited.

Loose stone rattled down from the top of the ridge. The silhouette of a man dropped soon after, falling into the surf mere feet from where Ron hid. He controlled his surprised breath, turning his presence into a specter that would make Yamanouchi proud, and watched the silhouette stagger to the glass bits on the rock. Light fell into the silhouette’s face, revealing his identity. Ron had to fight doubly hard to remain silent.

“You guys are jerks!” Frugal Lucre hollered back up the ridge. He wore a week’s worth of wispy stubble on his chin. His hair and clothes were in shambles. Ron could smell him over the salty brine of the sea, which itself may have been the most impressive accomplishment Lucre could claim. His mix of cheap alcohol and body odor made Ron’s eyes water while Lucre pawed drunkenly at the rock.

“That was my last bottle,” the dumpy villain moaned. “Why do all those guys have to treat me like that? Maybe I don’t have cool villain gimmicks like them, but still… ‘S rude, is what it is…”

Struggling through a sherry haze, Lucre climbed back up the slope. His shoe scraped the rock right next to Ron’s frozen face. It was several minutes more, once Lucre’s footfalls had faded into the background, that Ron emerged from hiding.

Monique and Wade rose up from the low outcropping as drowned rats. She wrung the bottom of her shirt to no avail, and groused, “I used to like swimming. Moonlit beaches used to sound romantic. What happened to my life?”

“Did you hear him?” Wade asked drippingly. “It sounds like there are other villains up there. Dementor might be trying to rebuild the original Legion. Why else invite Lucre?” he added with a frown.

Lucre had looked more a hobo than an invitee to Ron. But from the sound of it, there was definitely more than one villain to content with. It didn’t matter why they were here. He needed to get through them to get to Dementor, so he would. But that didn’t mean he had to fight them. Maybe he could even use them.

“What did you do to the raft?” Monique cried, spying the sheaf of torn rubber in Ron’s hiding spot. She twisted her sodden hair to empty it of water. “How are we supposed to get back to the seaplane? We can’t exactly whistle for it to come, Ron.”

Half his mind was lost in thought of the unknown quantity of villains waiting for them over the ridge. The other half possessed his unique belief in his ability to overcome the consequences of his snap decisions. “We’ll drown that bridge when we get to it, Mon. Right now, we need to head topside and figure out what’s what,” he said.

Wade held his cobbled sensor at arm’s length. It dribbled seawater, having shorted out when he had hid. Dropping the useless device, he asked, “You gonna go ninja?”

“I could, but I’m not keen on the idea of leaving you two here alone. Plus, I have no idea what the surveillance around here is like anymore. Sneaking could go sour real fast.” An uncomfortable amount of ninja stealth relied on preparation, an area in which Ron knew he did not excel. Intuition and talent, he had in droves. But he could still accidentally wander onto a sensor, or a trap, and effectively kill them and their chances of saving Kim.

Monique dug through the raft’s remains, hoping to salvage something. She came back with the emergency kit. Checking its contents, she said, “Well, at least we have this.”

Ron’s attention fell into the box. He reached over Monique’s shoulder and pulled out a large tube marked “Nutra-Paste.” It was a survival food substitute he had eaten before, and could do without ever eating again. He squeezed out a line of the paste on his finger and stared at it thoughtfully. The blend of vitamins, carbs, proteins, and sweetener glistened like sapphire. It tasted like sapphire, too.

“Hey, Wade. Remind me. You’re a super-genius who can make anything out of nothing, right?” he asked.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response, except to say that yes, yes I am,” Wade said. “Why? What do you want me to make?”

A glance at the orange rubber at his feet gave him a smile and an idea. He smeared the blue paste over his nose, and said, “A couple of bad guys.”

The man that emerged from the mist of the cylinder was Ron Stoppable in every way the eye could discern. Shaggy blond hair fell into his chocolate eyes, which twinkled with child-like delight that time could never smother. A long-sleeved black shirt and dark cargo pants hung from his deceptively strong body. He stood with a slight slouch and a bedazzling grin that fooled Kim for almost a tenth of a second.

“What the hell is this?” she said snidely of the duplicate Ron.

“Kim-san, look!”

Yori’s shout made Kim look to the other opening cylinder. She became confused, and wondered why Drakken would put a mirror in the cylinder. When the mist cleared, and she saw her smirking “reflection” wearing her classic mission clothes, she understood.

“Hi!” her duplicate chirped as she stepped from the cylinder. “I’m Kim Possible, and I love to meddle in the affairs of my intellectual superiors.”

The duplicate Ron pumped his fist, and cried, “Booyah!”

Kim grasped the collar of Drakken’s lab coat. She dragged Drakken between the duplicate pair, fully into the fury burning from her eyes, and snapped, “You cloned me? Again? You son of a bitch!”

She cocked her fist back, ready to turn his nose inside out, when he raised his hands in frantic surrender. “No! Wait! They aren’t true clones. They’re just syntho-drones, I swear. I thought they could help!”

Grabbing his lapels, Kim slammed him back against a lab table. His faux-Possible stood by with an empty grin on her face. Beakers smashed with the force of the blow as she shouted, “Is that supposed to be a joke? Ha-ha, I syntho-droned you and your BF? Do you have any idea how sick I am of seeing someone else with my face right now?”

“You don’t understaghhttthh—“

Drakken’s eyes bulged as Kim’s thumbs sank into his throat. Desperate pleas gargled behind his lolling tongue. He thrashed on the table, knocking its glass vessels to the floor, where they smashed and spilled stinking chemicals that pooled on the stone. His tiny hands wrung Kim’s wrists to no avail. Her grip was iron. Her eyes burned with unleashed hate she had been stifling for half a decade, hate that the injuries of late had multiplied a thousand fold.

Yori chopped Kim’s grasp away from Drakken’s throat with a deft stroke of her hand. As Drakken collapsed, wheezing, Kim whirled upon the ninja. Her fist struck even before her hateful glare reached Yori, who staggered with the blow.

Seeing Yori rocked by her fist broke Kim’s rage. She blinked her bloodshot eyes and forced open her hand. Her gaze trailed to Drakken, whose purple face faded back to a healthier blue. “Yori…” Kim murmured, “I…I didn’t…”

Yori righted herself slowly. Blood trickled from her lip. Her expression chilled the waning fire in Kim’s chest. There was no question that Kim’s next outburst would be met in kind. “Have you regained your senses?” she whispered coolly.

“…yeah. Yeah, I’m okay now.” Kim braced herself back against the table and felt far from okay. As her adrenaline wore off, she felt the world try to tilt itself to either side, throwing her balance for a loop. Fatigue ate her legs, leaving her with nothing but rubber on which to stand.

Turning her icy words upon Drakken, Yori continued, “I suggest we calmly interrogate Doctor Drakken, and wait for his reason behind these cheap facsimiles before we decide to kill him.”

Drakken straightened his collar with a raspy whimper. “Just once, I’d like to team up with a girl who can’t beat me up,” he grumbled. Both girls’ expressions darkened with impatience. “That is,” he stammered, “Cheerleader and Buffoon are from a previous scheme of mine.”

“Cheerleader and Buffoon?” Kim repeated archly.

“Yes. You can probably guess which one is which,” Drakken said, smoothing his jacket. He stepped between the two syntho-drones and slung his arms around them. All three grinned eerily. “I had planned to unleash them upon you back when I first developed syntho-technology. Of course, I didn’t have your brainwave scan at the time, so I had to approximate their personalities.”

Cheerleader giggled and grinned. “Saving the world from that handsome Doctor Drakken is awesome! So not the big!”

“Booyah!” Buffoon yelled, throwing his fists in the air as he grinned Ron’s grin.

“One of my early syntho-drone triumphs. And such a cutie-pie, don’t you think?” asked Drakken.

Kim suppressed a gag as Drakken ran a hand through Cheerleader’s long, luxurious red hair. “I think I’m going to be sick if that thing turns out to be anatomically correct,” she said. “But before I puke, I need to beat the crap out of you, because I’m not hearing anything close to a good reason for you booting up these creepy copies of me and Ron!”

He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “How did you ever manage to outsmart me? You’ve attracted the attention of someone who could offer honest, loyal Shego enough of a paycheck to turn on her dear Doctor Drakken. Not to mention the Global Justice goons whose jet you’ve evidently grand-theft-aero’ed. We’re going to need more help if we’re to find the fool who’s foolish enough to fool around with my equipment for his foolery!”

Kim and Yori exchanged incredulous looks. “We? You’re a little confused. Your part in this is over. Lead’s a dud,” Kim said. “Why shouldn’t we just leave you and your goo dolls here for mystery bugger to come and find?”

Drakken’s trademark smugness resurfaced on his features, as though the villain in him had truly awakened. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace, his head tilted back in mocking thought. “Oh, I suppose you could. But then I’d be left to track my equipment all by my lonesome, and you would miss out on meeting whoever photocopied your sidekick’s face.”

“Track?” echoed Yori.

“I’m a mad scientist, little girl,” Drakken said, agitated. “I spend my life creating devices of unimaginable potential that my so-called peers would trade their own mothers to possess. Over the years, I’ve learned to put tracking bugs in all my important equipment so I can find it when one of my lesser steals it.”

Snorting, Kim said, “You learned that trick after you stole Dementor’s Detonatrix Engine and he showed up to get it back. After I diffused it.”

Puffing, Drakken snapped, “Look, the point is, I learned it, and my cloning equipment has chips I can track remotely, and I have my own meddlesome teenagers to help me—“

“Booyah!” Buffoon crowed.

“—and my own hover car to track it in. So who needs you?” Drakken brayed in Kim’s face.

Kim paused, frowning in thought as Drakken deflated with a series of huffing breaths. She glanced at her doppelgangers, who smiled emptily back at her. Her gaze drifted to the other end of the lab, where a half-painted oval hover car sat on a repair rack. “Just how convincing are these drones of yours?” she asked Drakken.

“They’re perfect,” he said, miffed.

Cheerleader tilted her head. “Have you seen any boys? I love to love boys! But which one should I love to love the most?” she asked, clearly vexed by the idle thought.

Cringing, Kim muttered, “That’s a little more convincing than I’d care to admit. It’ll do.”

“Do for what?” Drakken demanded.

Activating her Kimmunicator, Kim turned from him, and put forth a call. “Hana? Rufus? Come in.”

A light screen appeared above Kim’s wrist. Hana’s troubled face resolved from the static, with Rufus perched on the girl’s shoulder. She put on a brave face as she said, “We stayed in the jet, just like you said.”

“Good girl,” Kim said. “Now, I need you two to come to my location. There’s not much time, so hurry, but be careful. Rufus, you should be able to follow our trail, no problem. And leave the jet unlocked,” she told the saluting mole rat.

“Why?” Hana asked.

“I’ll explain when you get here. Now move quick.” Kim closed the link, and then turned to the two syntho-drones. Far from shuddering, she now looked upon them with a favorable smile. “Cheerleader? Buffoon?” she asked.

“Booyah?”

“I want you two to go topside and take a walk. We’ve got some friends coming in a few hours. Be sure to give them a warm welcome,” Kim told them. Her smile drew deviously upon the drones.

Cheerleader and Buffoon skipped merrily from the lab while their creator stewed in their wake. He whirled upon Kim, who had moved on to inspecting his hover car. “Where do you get off ordering my drones around, you little miscreant? Those are my drones!”

Kim kicked the gravity skirt of the car, and nodded in approval. “And whoever comes looking for you is going to love them. And when GJ finally tracks the hover jet we leave parked in the open with its very own set of Team Possible, and finds whoever stole your stuff on the island looking for you, everybody involved in that snafu is going to thank you. Now shut up and grab whatever you need, and get in the car. We’re going cruising for cloners with the top down.”

Redness crept up Drakken’s neck as he watched Kim climb into the pilot seat of his car. When Yori prodded him from behind, he reluctantly complied. “It’s so comforting to know that some meddlesome things in life will never change,” he snarled snidely.

“This so isn’t going to work,” Monique muttered. She trailed behind Ron, dreading every step that brought them deeper into the island.

Not far from the beach, an overturned robot chassis played host to an enormous bonfire. The metallic monstrosity was long past its murderous days, but it did warm a small collection of silhouettes that sat in a ring around it. There were other, smaller fires littered around the local ruins, with more silhouettes populating the spaces between.

Monique doubted that the gaggle of indiscernible villains would be less frightening by day, but she wished for daylight all the same. The shadows around them made her insides jump, while her clammy, cold outsides remained locked with fear. “Why doesn’t Wade have to do this?” she hissed.

Ron glanced back, making his helmet of rubber cloth flop into his eyes. “Because he’s gonna sneak into Dwarfenstein’s old command center and maybe find a computer to hack,” he hissed back.

“So why do we have to do this?”

He turned back, making his rubber cape flair. “Because these bozos might know something about Dementor that we don’t. They’re on his island. They have to be part of his plan.”

She sighed and tugged at the seaweed collected around her shoulders and draped over her hair. The smelly plant matter clung to her bare skin all over, making her want to wretch for its odor and touch. “Fine. So why did I have to strip down to my skivvies and put on this soggy salad? I feel like the ocean barfed on me.”

Tilting his cap forward, Ron marched for the fire, and whispered back, “You’re a super villain. Act like it.”

Monique shook her fist and jogged after him. Her bare feet slapped against the cracked stone walkways of the ruins. “Oh, I’ll act like it. I’ll act like it all up and down that tight little behind of yours, you raft-wearing, goofy little—“

Their approach attracted the attention of the denizens of the fire. Most of them just looked up as Ron and Monique came within sight before staring back into the flames. One of them blithely ignored the pair. His interest lay in waving his hands through the edge of the flame with giggling glee. But another among them rose to confront the pair, and blocked the firelight with height and build both enough to dwarf them.

“Dude, I do not recognize you. Or you,” said the man, who eyed Ron and Monique hard enough to stop the pair in their tracks. He was made from pure muscle contained inside a ratty tank top and holey jeans, and possessed a crown of golden hair that was business in the front and party in the rear. When he spoke, his voice rolled like wet gravel. “Who are you? Seriously?” demanded Motor Ed.

Ron used all of his willpower not to touch the blue paste smeared over his features. Instead, he straightened the “Z” pinned to his shirt and affected an imperious tone that gave even him chills.

“Who am I? Who am I? You dare to question who I am, knowing full well that I could end your pathetic excuse for a life with but a wiggle of my finger?” Ron howled, and thrust his pinky into Ed’s face.

Ed crossed his eyes at the pinky. Confusion reigned between his bushy eyebrows. “Um, yeah?”

“Tremble, fool! For you stand in the presence of the greatest criminal mastermind the world has ever feared. In New Delhi, they cry my name in the dead of night as a curse to the heavens themselves. I am the Blue Scourge of Europe, the Sapphire Dingo of the Outback, and the accursed parking ticket upon the windshield of liberty everywhere! I! AM! ZORPOX!” Ron bellowed, thrusting his hands into the air.

The name echoed through the camp, turning heads everywhere as Ron spread his rubber cape. Monique wilted under the attention, and withdrew into her seaweed coat. Ron didn’t share her pessimism, and panted in the afterglow of his performance. He was sure this would work.

Ed scratched his head. “Dude, your costume is made of rubber. It looks like you made it out of traffic cones. Or a raft, or something.”

Face ticking, Ron took a step back and began to think of exit strategies. “Yes, well…I…”

A shrug lifted Ed’s mountainous shoulders. “Hey, it’s cool. Seriously. I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? Times are tough.” His expression descended with thoughts abound that churned Monique’s guts as he looked at her. “And who is this fine, fine chick?”

“Oh. This is my current number two, the dreaded Kelp Siren,” Ron said hurriedly.

She waggled her fingers in greeting. “Hi. I’m new,” she said. “But evil.”

“Righteous. Name’s Motor Ed. C’mon, I’ll introduce you around,” Ed said.

He led them to the bonfire, where the rest of the silhouettes transformed into men and women in varying states of dilapidation. Their clothes were threadbare, their hair, unkempt and unshaven. Most of the faces were unknown to Ron, but he did recognize a few, and was surprised to see them so, much less at all.

Ed plopped down on the broken claw of the kill-bot housing their fire. “Most of these guys are just henchmen whose jobs went belly-up when things got tough. But we got a few big names around here, like you and me. Over there, that’s Adrena Lynne.”

The high-flying villain Ron had known now sat hunched on a rock, wrapped around a blank bottle. She appeared weeks out from any kind of bathing, and stared forlornly into the fire. When she looked up at Ron, he nearly lost the villainous sneer masking his horror.

“Course, not everybody’s so bummed. Just look at Pyro Pete. He’s been like that ever since he got here,” Ed said.

His nod directed the teens to the man waving his hands through the flames. The scrawny, wiry man had no hair and no eyebrows, just skin that glistened raw with burn scars of all different ages. His eyes bugged as he gazed upon the flames, and cooed, “Through the fire, we see. The fire guides us, cleanses us, and comforts us. It removes pain and fear with its lesson, a lesson of love…”

Monique cringed. “He seems…jolly,” she drawled.

Pete jerked at the sound of her voice. He thrust himself between her and the fire, and shrieked, “She’s not for you! Her love is mine! She sings to me alone, in the voice of a thousand angels that snap and crackle from the throne of God with the wisdom of Athena!”

“Yes. She is the wisest and crackliest one there is,” Ron agreed uneasily.

Digging through his pockets, Ed produced a book of matches, which he tossed to Pete. The smoldering man snatched up the book with a gleeful squeal. “Nah, s’okay, Pete,” Ed said. “The new guys don’t want your fire. C’mon, let’s leave Pete ‘n’ his lady alone.”

They followed Ed from the fire, which crackled with Pete’s attention. Ron found it hard to turn from the despondent Adrena Lynne. Even after all the trouble she had given them, it ate at him to see anyone in such a state. “So, um, Ed,” he said villainously. “Just what kind of operation do you have here? What’s your scheme to conquer the world?”

“Take over the world?” Ed barked with laughter. He slapped Ron on the shoulders, nearly knocking the teen over. “You’re a funny dude, Z-Man. Seriously.”

As they moved further into the camp, Monique’s terror unclenched with sympathy. “None of these people look very fearsome,” she said softly. There were broken men surrounded by broken bottles everywhere she looked. Every step Ed led them through the ruins disproved Ron’s assumptions more and more.

Gesturing around, Ed explained, “We’re just sort of here hiding from Jonny Law. Once you bust out of jail, there’s only so much you can do. None of us have secret labs or trust funds. Seriously. So we found this old spot. It used to belong to some guy named ‘Dementoid,’ or something.”

“Is he here?” Ron asked eagerly. Then he cleared his throat, and remembered his disguise. “I mean, Zorpox would very much like to meet such a man of vision…so that I may crush him! Or…join him!”

Ed chuckled. “Sh’yeah. But no, Dementoid don’t live here no more, dude. That’s why we’re squatting in his old digs. Seriously. It’s cool, though. He had a lot of emergency junk we’ve been digging out of these buildings. You get used to the taste of freeze-dried asparagus pretty quick. Put it between a couple of crackers, and you got yourself a burger, dude.”

Ron hid his disappointment behind his mask of paste. Their only lead had been a waste of time, leading them to some bizarre kind of bad guy shanty town. Failure permeated this place, and now steeped Ron in its stench. He turned his sigh into a weak cackle.

As they neared the opposite edge of the camp, Ed brightened. “Oh, dude, I have got to show you someone. Seriously, you are going to, like, flip. These guys are way heavy hitters, like you, right? Yaahhhhh!”

He strummed his air guitar as he led them to the last fire, set in a circle of stones in the shadow of Dementor’s old sanctum. The debris was largest here near the center of the island. Buildings lay in great piles and scattered into jagged boulders that glowed gold in the firelight.

Two silhouettes sat around the last fire. As Ron approached, he felt his presence break the solitude of the pair. There was good reason for these two to be by themselves. He could sense it in the way they sat: proud and tall, perched on their seats instead of slumped like the others. Like everyone else in the camp, Ron quickly understood that this pair was not to be trifled with.

One of the pair stood with the help of a cane at Ed’s approach. A shotgun clacked in his grip, ejecting the casing of a shell that convinced Ed to stop his tour group right where it was. His back to the fire, the figure was hardly discernable. His face was a mass of red, dirty beard that ended at his glistening scalp. One strong, stubby leg stomped from a tattered kilt as he demanded, “Ach, what do ye want, motor mouth? I told ye, we dinnae need anything from th’ likes of ye.”

Horror blossomed in Monique’s face, which she curtained with seaweed. Ron felt his stomach drop as Ed said, “Easy, Killigan-dude. I just wanted you to meet some new dudes. Seriously. These are a couple of real big bads, like us. Meet Zorpox and Kelp Siren.”

Ed’s shove put Ron face to face with Duff Killigan, the world’s deadliest one-legged golfer. Up close, the Scotsman looked and smelled even worse. Crusty bandages had been wrapped around the stump peeking from the bottom of his kilt. His shotgun was tucked in the crook of his arm, and rusted so badly that Ron doubted it could even fire, though he had no intention of testing that theory.

Ron smiled uneasily under Killigan’s stink eye. The golfer hobbled toward him and stood on one tiptoe, pushing up on his cane to glare right in Ron’s face. The paste slathered on Ron’s freckles dampened with sweat, and began running at his brow.

“Wha’ happened to your face?” Killigan gruffed.

“D’uhm… What happened to yours?” Ron retorted.

Killigan rubbed his beard, which split for a faint smirk. “Aye, a fair question. But ye first, laddie. I’ve only ever seen one other blue boy, an’ I wasn’t too fond o’ him. What turned you blue? An.’…lumpy?” His scrutiny narrowed on Ron’s pasted face. “Good God, you’re ugly.”

“I, uh, was burned. By flames. Heroic, do-gooder flames,” Ron said.

Both Killigan and Ed frowned, confused. “Aren’t burns red? Seriously, like, Pete back there has more burns than a person who has, I don’t know, a lot of burns. He’s all red.”

Ron’s eye twitched with his running thoughts, which were winded to begin with. “They were, uh, really, really hot flames. And since cooler flames burn red, and hot flames burn blue, these super-hot flames left blue burns. Science.” He grinned wide, and then remembered his new self, and tried to scowl menacingly.

Glaring hard at the would-be villain, Killigan drew closer still. His scotch-soaked breath rolled from between twisting lips. Then, abruptly, he lowered himself and shrugged. “If you say so, lad. But what about your naked lass here?”

The question interrupted Monique’s sigh of relief. She drew upright, rattling the seaweed draped over her body. Her lip trembled under the attention. Loudly, she blurted, “I control oceanic plant life with my mind!”

“Seriously?” Ed said, clearly more impressed than Killigan. “Cool. Can you show us?”

Rolling with her lie, Monique’s voice rose. “Do you see any ocean plants around here?” she said.

“Um, no?”

“Then I can’t show you. Besides,” she snapped, and wrapped her kelpy arms around Ron, draping him in dripping seaweed. “I’m not your trained poodle. I belong to Zorpon,” she said feistily.

“Zorpox,” Ron hissed.

“Zorpox,” Monique purred quickly, and nibbled at his ear. Both teens tried to hide their shudders of disquiet.

Killigan didn’t bother to hide his shudder, nor Ed, his disappointment. The Scotsman stepped back toward the fire, waving with his free hand as he plunked down onto his marble seat. “Alright, alright. Ye lads and lass be welcome t’ join us. Villains together, eh?”

A bottled sigh wafted out Ron’s nose. This whole mission had proven to be a bust, but he took small comfort in this small favor of fate. If nothing else, this pathetic collection of has-beens wouldn’t attack them. He was in the clear.

Elbowing the other man at the fire, Killigan said, “Hey, Monty. Pull yourself together long enough to say hello at least, ye hairy ape.”

Ron’s sigh was sucked back in with a sharp gasp as Lord Montgomery Fiske turned from the fire to look upon Ron with wild eyes. Days’ worth of beard clung to his face. The man wore tattered black robes that left his hands and feet bare. The sight of his toes made Ron ill: they had been cut again and again between, as if Fiske were trying to make them opposable again without nothing but a knife.

Fiske’s wide eyes bugged at the sight of Ron. “The magic! I smell it! I feel it! Give it back to me!” he screamed.

“You failed?” Dementor roared.

The cry echoed throughout his cavernous lab. He stood upon the raised control platform of his Entropy Cannon and glared down at Shego and Possible. Grease clung to his lab coat, and tools hung from his belt, both evidence of the work he had been putting into the open panel of the Cannon. His eyes burned furiously upon the pair, cowing Possible, but angering Shego.

The mercenary drew herself up. Even with his platform, he stood eye to eye with her. “Look, it’s not like I enjoy screwing the pooch any more than you do. There were complications. The princess was already there. It was a million-to-one chance. Bad luck.”

Dementor shook with rage. “Excuses! You dare bring me excuses? And you, boy! Where were you when Drakken escaped with the one person who might actually be able to stop us?” he demanded of Possible.

“I…I defeated her, Father,” Possible said. His chest swelled with the memory. He said it again, louder. I defeated her. I earned my name, just like you said. I am Possible now.”

He expected his father to rejoice, as he had. But instead he saw his father’s face darken. Dementor lashed out, cracking his hand across Possible’s face. “You earned nothing, you miserable little failure! Drakken was the mission! Drakken escaped. Er hat mit Possible entwischt! And you believe you won something?”

Shego shoved Possible out of the way. Then she floored him by saying, “Leave the kid alone. I already told you, it was bad luck that the princess and her ninja gal pal were already there. Besides, why do we need Doctor D anyway? It’s not like he’s much—“

If Shego’s defense of him floored Possible, then his father absolutely astonished him. Dementor backhanded Shego, slapping her mouth shut. The crack of his glove echoed through the lab.

She froze, shocked. Her hand rose to her red cheek as if to test its sting. When she pulled it away, the hand burst with a blaze that cast her twisting features in furious green light. Her other hand lit to match. “You have five seconds to convince me not to roast you alive, little man,” she growled.

Dementor sneered, and did so with six terse words: “No one else will have you.”

“How dare you?” she fumed.

He held up his fingers, silencing her. “You spent your entire career pandering to a blue fool who betrayed and discarded you. You haven’t a single victory to your name. Your teenage nemesis trounces you at every turn. You are damaged goods, Shego. Bargain bin discount villainy. No one else will hire you. No one else will do business with you. So shut your cow mouth and never again question me. Do you understand?”

Shego’s flaming hands trembled. Her jaw clenched to hide the quiver of her lip. Eyes glistening and narrowed, she extinguished her hands and marched out of the lab without a word.

Satisfied, Dementor turned back to his Cannon, and then heard Possible say, “But Father, why do we need this Doctor Drakken?” He turned with a furious expression seeping from his helmet. The boy raised his hands and took a step back, saying, “Please, Father. I only wish to understand. Why do we need him? Isn’t your brilliance enough?”

Dementor’s expression softened. He bent and retrieved a brown satchel from the platform floor. “You recall your mission to Middleton and the item you liberated from Global Justice?”

How could he forget? “Of course, Father.”

Opening the satchel, Dementor drew out a small, blue gun. It was unlike any weapon the boy knew. He remembered it well, and still bore curiosity for its function. “I am attempting to integrate this device into my Entropy Cannon. The problem is, I did not invent this device. Drakken did. And I cannot make sense of his design no matter how I study it. Its circuitry is sheer madness, and yet its function is, sadly, brilliance.”

The boy saw the problem at once. “And if you don’t understand it, you can’t integrate it into the Cannon.”

“Yes,” Dementor said, nodding. He rubbed his eyes through his mask. “Which is why we need Drakken, or our whole scheme…er, mission, falls apart. And since his absence is, at the moment, slightly worse than his company, I fear I am of an ill temper. Of course I am proud of you for defeating Kim Possible. You have earned your name and more, my son.”

Possible’s face exploded with joy. “Thank you, Father!” he beamed.

Waving off Possible’s affections, Dementor said, “Go, apologize for me to the Lady Shego. She bore the brunt of my frustration unjustly. I wish to ponder this problem alone.”

Possible bolted from the lab without delay. He virtually skipped through the halls, slipping past confused henchmen, until he caught up to Shego in the quarters section of the lair.

She stood outside of her door, trying to remember the keypad code through her haze of rage. The approach of his glee made her teeth grind. “Shego! Shego!” he called down the hall. “Father didn’t mean it. He was just frustrated. I have a name!”

Her eye twitched above the fading redness in her cheek. Without turning from her door, she growled, “Whoopee for you. Now go the hell away before a name is all you wind up having left.”

Her growl curdled his good spirits. Leaning to see her face, he said, “Why can’t you be happy about this? Is this because of what Father said? I already told you, he didn’t mean it. Father relies on you, just like I do.”

Shego stopped. She leaned on the door frame, her head bowed. Possible noticed her shoulders rising and falling heavily beneath her hair. He heard her breath rasp faster and faster. Her gloves sparked, melting divots into the metal frame. Her whole body quivered.

“…Shego?” he asked.

She whirled around and grasped him by the throat, slamming him back against the wall. As he choked, her face filled his vision. Her eyes flared with feral hunger. Her breath rolled hot against his face. When he opened his mouth to gargle a plea, she attacked his lips with hers. Her tongue filled him, teasing him, igniting a spark deep in him he didn’t know he had.

Her mouth retreated to smile, and her grasp loosened. “You want a name so bad? I’ll give you a name,” she hissed. “But you’re going to have to earn this one for real.”

The keypad unlocked the door as it died beneath a blast of green fire. Shego grasped Possible and threw him hard through the parting doors, driving him backward until he struck the far wall of her room. The lights stayed off, plunging the room into darkness as the doors closed.

Shego raked the clothes off his body. His black shirt fell in shreds, exposing muscled chest to the tantalizing horrors of her touch. Her teeth claimed his neck, marking it, making him gasp. Her tongue swept his smooth chin before diving back into his mouth. She heaved into him, pressing him, pinning him back against the wall.

With his bottom lip in her teeth, she growled, “You’d better start fighting back, or you’re gonna get hurt.”

His hands acted without him. He grasped the collar of her jumpsuit and tore, breaking the clasps that held it together. His touch explored the supple flesh inside, earning him a gasp from Shego that jolted her whole body. The suit fell from her shoulders, hanging from her arms.

Shego ripped free of her sleeves with a burst of fire. She shoved him as hard as she could, launching him onto the cramped bunk of her quarters. He’d hardly landed before she bounced atop him, pinning him with her legs.

Green and khaki fabric flew from their bodies. Wholly honest, they intertwined, tasting one another with fervent lips. He traced her curves, making her arch and moan. His body knew hers in ways he didn’t understand and didn’t question. The fire in him told him where to go. Shego’s voice rose in ecstasy with each new tease of his tongue.

In moments, Possible grew ready for her. Panting, hungering, Shego rolled atop him. Her features dissolved with animal need as she overcame him. She as a lioness. She was a goddess. Ivory carved in the perfect design, with ebony pouring from her shoulders and swinging with each twist of her hips. She glistened.

She screamed his name.

“Ha! Magic?” Ron laughed nervously as he backed away a step. “Who has magic? Certainly not me. I. Who is Zorpox. That’s just silly,” he said.

Fiske crouched onto his knuckles and followed Ron back. His head tilted with an inhuman fixation as he sniffed Ron’s scent. The wild shrubbery growing above his eyes exploded upward.

“You are the one!” Fiske whispered hoarsely. “You are the jester who would steal the throne of the true god-king. Hence more to be though the North Star, even though your glow pales in that of His. Renounce the throne to which you hold no sovereignty. Stand aside for the god-king of trees!”

Killigan’s hand stopped Ron by the shoulder. Ron readied himself to fight his way out. Then he saw Killigan’s smile, and held his fists back. “Ooch, dinnae pay his ramblings no mind, lad. He’s been a bit screw loose since his last run-in with Kim Possible.” He took Fisk by the arm and limped him back to the fire. “C’mon, Monty, leave the new folk alone.”

“Usurper to my throne of stars,” whimpered Fiske. He sat back down as Killigan directed, but kept staring at Ron with a mixture of heartbreak and hatred.

The five of them gathered around the circle. Ron made sure to put as much fire as he could between himself and Fiske, whose dark eyes haunted him through the flames.

Ed produced a flask and took a long swig. Wiping his mouth, he passed it to Monique. “So what made you guys come here?” he asked her.

After her own long swig, Monique slipped Ron a glance. She thought it over with another swig, and then passed the flask to Ron, and said, “Our own gig went south when, uh, that redheaded meddler blew up our secret headquarters…or something.”

“Yes,” Ron sneered, raising the flask to his lips. “That troublesome little—oh my God does this stuff stink!” He yanked the flask away from his wringing face, holding it out as far as he could between two fingers. When the three villains looked at him funnily, he tried to smile, and said, “Er, bottoms up?” Flinching, he plunged the flask mouth into his lips and tilted it back.

“An’ just what was your operation?” Killigan asked, giving the young villain a curious look.

Ron pulled himself from the flask with a heave. “Smooth,” he rasped, and wiped his mouth. “I, uh, was in the business of world domination. A self-starter. After the, um cheerleader torched my secret lair, I went looking for Professor Dementor. I hear he’s the number one name in the world-dom game. But he isn’t…he isn’t here?”

Killigan shook his head as he accepted the flask. “Nay,” he said. “Ol’ shorty is long since gone from these parts. Shame, really. He had a real nice lair here, an’ he kept it longer ‘n anyone else I know. That’s pretty rare, what with the lass havin’ a thing for blowin’ up a man’s house.”

“So you’re sure,” Ron asked. “I mean, you checked everywhere? He’s small, he can fit in tiny spaces.”

Whiskey courage lifted Killigan’s voice into a snap. “Aye, damn your eyes! O’ course we’ve looked all around this blasted island for anything we can use. D’ you think we like squatting here? Villains o’ our caliber? If there was anything t’ find here, we’d have found it an’ used it. Or drank it,” he mused sadly, and emptied the flask.

Ron eased Killigan’s rant down with a gesture. “Okay, okay. Relax. We’re all on the same evil side here. I just thought…” He turned, and chucked his thumb at the towering ruins behind them, the remnants of Dementor’s sanctum. “Like there. I thought maybe Dementor would have left something really cool behind in his clubhouse.”

A chortle passed between Killigan and Ed. Even Fiske muttered less, his rocking eased by the amusing notion. “Well, sure,” Ed said. “That snacktum place still has tons of goodies, like computers, or gear, and, like, a ton of emergency junk. Seriously.”

“Really?” Monique asked, brightening.

Killigan finished their laugh. “Oh, aye. There’s still plenty o’ bounty in there, ‘cause no man is smart enough to figure a way around Dementor’s booby traps. Full half of the newcomers to the island wind up trapped in one in there, an’ they just starve to death inside.”

Ron blanched beneath his paste. “Booby traps?” he echoed.

“Sure, dude. Force fields, laser grids. The works,” Ed said.

Muted fear leapt from Ron to Monique and back again. His airy tone warbled as he said, “Now, when you say ‘smart enough,’ how smart are we talking? Like, would a Mensa lifer be able to get around this stuff, or are we talking full super-genius required?”

Blinding light erupted from the cracks in the sanctum at Ron’s back, pouring white luminance over the island with the crackling sound of static. As the light faded, a thrilled whoop worked its way through the camp, beginning with Ed. The brawny squatter hopped to his feet and wailed a solo on his insubstantial guitar. “Dude, talk about timing! Let’s go see who we got!”

Ron and Monique found themselves caught in the squatters’ pull as they gravitated toward the glowing ruins. The pair’s dread drowned in the excitement. Living in the broken remains of another man’s accomplishments must have made it easy to imagine someone else’s suffering as entertainment when compared with one’s own. Schadenfreude was the flavor of choice on the island. Unfortunately for the teens, they knew whose suffering would be the squatters’ delight.

The mob squeezed through the gaping doors. Full-fledged villains like Killigan and Fiske—and Ron and Monique—were given preferential position at the front. Lynne, Lucre, Ed, and Pyro Pete were next, followed close by a mob of henchmen. There was nowhere for Ron to go but forward, through the halls he had stormed a month ago, climbing over fallen walls and dead kill-bots. If he looked hard enough, he could probably still find his knuckle-prints in the wall.

Their mob came upon a dazzling hallway. An orb of translucent white hung suspended in the middle of the hall, around which the mob pooled. The orb bobbed softly in place and emitted a faint warmth. Inside, a portly figure lay in the bottom, molded to the shape of the orb in unconsciousness. The sight of the figure almost made Ron blurt his name. Only a timely elbow from Monique cut him off.

Killigan waved his cane until the rabble behind them silenced. He jabbed his finger into the orb, sending white ripples through its surface. “Ach, welcome t’ hell, ye clumsy bastard,” Killigan chortled to the insensate prisoner. “Good news, boys. This one looks fat enough that he might last a while. He may even try to eat himself, like that other fatty last month.”

Frowning, Frugal Lucre leaned in close while the others cheered and laughed. “Hey, does this guy look familiar to anyone else? I swear I’ve seen him before. Was he one of the kids on Fresh Prince?”

“He’s just another fatty,” slurred Lynne. She tapped her bottle against the orb, and sang, “Fatty, fatty, fatty, flattie, flatly, falling…” and stumbled to the ground.

Rusty gears squealed beneath Ed’s mullet. He frowned at the new arrival, stroking his goatee. Something rang familiar with this teenager trapped inside the orb. It gave him a headache to think so hard, but eventually, his memory made the mental leap to the forefront of his thoughts. “Oh! Dude! Oh! Dude! Oh! Dude!” he cried, dancing from foot to foot.

“Ed, we talked about this. Just ask to be excused, and then go pee,” Lucre said.

“No, dude! I know who this is. That’s Red’s little computer buddy!” Ed said.

Lucre glanced skeptically into the orb. Then he gasped. “Seriously? I think you’re right.”

Ed grew annoyed. “Uh, yeah. Duh, dude.”

“Um, I agree with pre-floor Adrena Lynne,” Ron said hurriedly. “He’s just a fatty. Let’s just leave him to eat himself in peace, shall we?”

But Killigan had donned a pair of spectacles to better see the prisoner. His face lit with delight. “It is! It is the lass’s webmaster! Oh-ho-ho! Isn’t this a stroke of karma?”

A lighter flicked with fire at a frantic rhythm in Pete’s hand. He giggled, and pressed himself to the orb. “Let’s bathe him in fire,” Pete sang, his leg twitching with excitement.

“No, no-no, no-no-no!” Ron said, ushering Pete and the other villains back a step. “Uh, fire is overkill. Let’s just leave Wade to wallow in starvation, and his own feces, until death’s sweet touch frees him from the orb. Um, in case death asks, how do you get inside the orb?”

The room was pin-drop quiet. Ron found the focus shifting from the orb to him, and felt his old companion, Panic, calling upon him, as Killigan drawled, “How do ye know his name? Why do ye know his name?”

“I ain’t never heard of no Zorpol,” Lynne slurred as she tried to extricate herself from the floor.

Ron huffed as loudly as he could. “That’s just ridiculous. Ridiculous is what that is. Just ridiculous is that! I hate this nameless not-Wade as much as the rest of you bad guys. Watch!” He stuck his face against the orb, and shouted, “You’re fat and bad at sports!” Peeling his face from the orb, he turned back to the villainous mob, and asked, “Pretty evil, am I right?”

A collective gasp hid Monique’s groan. Ron’s eyes darted across the growing anger among the villains and henchmen. His gaze bounced back to the orb, where he saw blue paste trickling down its side. Touching his cheek, he felt skin where most of his paste mask had been.

Fiske’s unfocused gaze drew taught upon Ron. His brows crawled together as his haunted face twisted with apoplectic fury. He lifted his finger, and howled, “STOPPABLE!”

“Oh, crap,” Ron muttered. He backed against the orb as the six villains advanced upon him, forming a line to box him in. Behind them, henchmen packed in, carrying bottles as bludgeons, or simply pounding fists into palms.

Ed loomed foremost, cracking his ham-sized fists. “Dude, I can’t believe we were tricked by Red’s gofer. And in such a lame costume, too. That is just so wrong. Get ‘im, Kelp Siren!”

Groaning, Monique stepped behind Ed. She buried her bare foot between his legs, turning his whole body into rigid pain. As the behemoth teetered forward, she vaulted his shoulders, shucking her dripping costume to land next to Ron in her black bra and panties.

“Nice,” Ron murmured. To her kick or her clothes—or lack thereof—neither of them was sure.

She glared at him beneath the burning gaze of the mob. “I’m trapped on an island, facing down villains in my underwear. This is pretty much my worst nightmare. Could you please focus?”

“The jester sits in the god-king’s throne of stars! He rings his cap with a merry little lark!” Fiske howled, his hands aching to tear out Ron’s throat.

Ron felt the tingle inside of him burst into flame. His hands burned bright red as he curled them at the mob. “Oh yeah? Well, I have no idea what that means!”

He sprang off Ed’s bowed head and over the line of villains, plunging into the scraggly mob beyond. They were trained henchmen, unafraid of a bizarre glow coming from the former sidekick. But they were tired, despondent, and malnourished, and on their best day, twice their number couldn’t have hoped to stop the Chosen One of Yamanouchi. Their ranks broke like waves against his fists, which bowled tens of them into the air at a time.

As his scarlet punches cleared the hall, Ron felt something latch onto his back and wrap around his waist. Fetid air rolled over his shoulder in a snarling voice. “The true king rose up from the grave to take back his kingdom from the cowardly jester!”

Pain stabbed through Ron’s neck at the bite of an enraged Fiske. Blood pooled beneath Fiske’s curled lips. He twisted his head, tearing the flesh, bringing Ron to his knees with a spray of blood.

Ron reached around and pulled Fisk bodily from his back, breaking the crazed man’s grip as he might a toothpick. Eyes ablaze, Ron hurled Fiske into Killigan, who hobbled at the pair with his cane raised as a club. Both villains flew back into the wall and did not stir.

“Who’s next?” Ron yowled in an echoing voice. The raw flesh at his neck knit into perfect skin. His hands flared and spread, daring the entire mob at once. “C’mon! One god-king, no waiting! Bring it on! Bring it on!”

While Ron fought, Monique pounded on the orb. Her fists made its translucent surface ripple, but nothing more. “Wade! Wade, wake up! I don’t know how to get you out of there, but you probably do, so you have to wake up and tell me how to save you!” she screamed.

The chaotic baffle of noise roused Wade. He groaned and rolled over, struggling onto his back inside the tiny orb. His bleary eyes opened, and then bugged. He pressed himself against the sphere in a panic, pounding on its sides to the same effect as Monique. As his mind caught up with his senses, he calmed down. “Trapped. Right. I remember now.” He smiled weakly at Monique, and then quirked a brow at Ron’s massacre of the pathetic squatters. “The battle’s new, though.”

“Wade! How do I get you out?” Monique asked, pressing her hands over his with the orb wall between them. “Hurry, and use small words!”

Wade examined his imprisonment for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. His shoulders sagged. “You can’t,” he said. “This is a null-point energy barrier. You guys have to get out of here without me.”

She slammed her palms against the orb. “What? Shut up and think! There has to be a way to get you out of there!” she snapped.

“Of course there is. All you need is an electro-particle accelerator. Do you have one?” he snapped back. “This thing will last until someone deactivates it with a specific energy signature, or until time stops. You can’t move it and you can’t pop it. Now get out of here!”

“We can stay and figure this out,” Monique insisted. “Ron can handle these guys. What’s the hurry?”

Inhuman cackling yanked their attention to the fight behind Monique. Far outside of Ron’s crashing circle, Pyro Pete stalked the hysterical Monique. His bald eyelids spread wide for a crazed look s he held his lighter to his ear. Smoke curled from his lobe as he murmured, “What’s that, my love? Yes, yes, I agree. We should welcome them proper. Baptized in love!”

He stole the bottle from an unconscious henchman and shattered it over his arm, soaking his sleeve in stinking gut-rot. A kiss from his lighter set his arm ablaze. Cackling, Pete lurched at Monique with fire consuming his clothes.

Monique pressed herself back against Wade’s orb. Both she and Wade screamed, “Ron!”

Their scream broke Ron’s berserker fury. His eyes dimmed and fell back to the orb, where Pete tried to embrace Monique with fire. The gagging henchman in Ron’s grasp fell aside as Ron leapt across the mob in a single bound, clearing dozens of henchmen at once. He landed next to Pete, and then relocated the living torch with a glowing kick.

“Hang on, buddy,” Ron said. His magic fists hammered the orb, turning its translucence opaque. The orb wouldn’t budge, so he hit it again, and again. “We’ll have you out in a jiffy.”

“Ron, you can’t break it,” Wade said. “I’m safe in here. Monique isn’t.”

Ron poured more of himself into his punches. His fists outshone the orb, turning the hallway scarlet with his strength. But the orb refused to break. The red light seeped back into Ron’s eyes as his growl began to echo again. “I’m not leaving you!”

Monique’s moan made Wade look over Ron. She clung to Ron’s back, looking fearfully as the dizzy mob parted for Fiske. The raving, foaming madman returned to the fight with a feral howl of Ron’s name, charging at Ron on his knuckles.

“She needs you,” Wade said, and pounded on the orb.

Baleful helplessness twisted in Ron’s freckles. As he scooped Monique into his arms, he locked eyes with Wade, and vowed, “We’re coming back for you.”

Wade nodded. “I know.”

A red nimbus swallowed Ron and Monique. As he jumped, the ambient energy exploded, blowing back every one and thing, save for Wade’s prison. The burst blew Fiske off his hands and feet. He lay on his back, howling at the pair rocketing upward. “Stoppable! Give me back my feet!”

Ron’s jump pushed through the crumbling roof with a spray of masonry. They kept soaring, higher, higher, moving across the island while it shrank beneath them. In seconds, they were over open water and still climbing higher without control. Ron hugged Monique to his chest to hide his worried look from her. He felt her cling tighter to him.

Finally, his stomach lurched with the beginning of their fall. Gravity reached up to reclaim them, billowing their hair as the ocean loomed to catch them. Ron’s nimbus flared when they struck the water, meting force for force to cancel the impact. The light faded, and Ron and Monique were plunged into icy water miles away from anything.

The island was a mere dot now. Ron treaded water and wondered how long it would take him to swim back to it, or to the sea plane they had left anchored off its coast. The salty brine around them seemed eager to swallow them whole. Monique was having trouble keeping her head aloft, and sputtered every few seconds.

“Whelp. Here we are,” Ron muttered, and coughed.

He laid back with a deep sigh and felt Shego’s hair tickle his chest. The bed wasn’t big enough for them to lie side by side. Neither of them seemed to mind. “That was…wow,” he breathed.

“Glad you liked it,” Shego said, only half-sarcastic. She reached into her nightstand and rummaged for a cigarette, which she lit with a snap of her fingers. Smoke curled from her pursed lips as she watched his glistening face ease into a cool, exquisite flavor of relaxation. “It was overdue, I’ll say that much. It’s been…well, too long.”

The smoke drifted past his nostrils. He would treasure that smell forever. “You smoke after sex?” he asked.

“Don’t know, I never checked,” Shego said. She chuckled at her own joke through a pull on her cigarette. He gave her an odd look, which made her glance up. “Do I sm… Never mind. It’s an old joke, way before your time. I guess a lot of stuff is,” she mused.

He took the cigarette at her offering. It burned his throat all the way to his lungs, making Shego smirk while he coughed. He quickly gave it back to her, and hacked, “I can’t imagine why. That’s awful.”

Shego hummed thoughtfully as she examined the cigarette. “It’s all about memories, kid. After a workout like that, I light one of these, and the smell…” A deep breath made her face into bliss. “Like being back in that Camaro the night after the Homecoming game. That car was so damn small,” she said with a soft laugh..

Her daydream broke for a frown, and her face returned to normal. “Don’t get all flowers and mush about his, kid. This is what it is. Do you understand?”

“I think so? Yes. Yes, I understand.”

He breathed easier as Shego laid her head back on his chest. He would have said anything to get her to relax with him again. Love wasn’t the issue here. He just wanted the moment to last as long as it could. It was the first moment he ever had, the only moment, when life wasn’t about saving the world from itself. He wanted this moment forever.

“Shego? What was that name you were yelling? I didn’t quite understand it.”

“Sim,” she said. “Believe me, you could’ve been the best on the planet, and I still wouldn’t call you ‘Possible’ during sex.” The very thought made her convulse.

“Sim.” He rolled the name around in his mouth. It wasn’t like his other name. It was fresh. It was his, and not by birthright. He’d earned it. “What does it mean?” he asked.

Shego did not speak for a long time. In that silence, he felt his nice moment end. “Before your time,” she said, and pulled on her stumpy cigarette.

Far across the room, where her belt had been flung, Shego’s communicator vox crackled to life. The lovers looked up to hear Dementor’s voice emerge from the device. “Lady Shego? I trust your tantrum is at an end?”

Shego rolled her eyes. She climbed off of Sim and strutted slowly to her belt, reveling in the eyes that followed the sashay of her hips. Bending, she retrieved the communicator, and blew smoke into its vox. “Yeah. I managed to blow off a little steam. What do you want?”

“I have need of your redoubtable skills. In the hangar, you will find a hover cargo with a compliment of my henchmen. They will brief you en route. Try to bring all of them back with you.”

The communicator silenced with another crackle. The last of her cigarette ran through Shego’s sigh. She stomped the butt out as she moved to her closet. “It never ends,” she sighed. “You’d better scram, kid. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

Sim rose from the bed and caught the boxers she kicked at him. It was the only attention she paid him as she finished tugging her jumpsuit into place. “You shredded my shirt,” he said, stepping into his clothes.

“Another lesson for you: the walk of shame,” Shego said. “Embrace it, and it’ll go easier.”

“I want to go with you.”

Shego stopped at the door. Her gaze hardened at the shirtless boy at her bedside. “Yeah? Well, tough shit. I told you what this was. I don’t need some puppy dog nosing after me.” Scowling, she slapped the door control, splitting open the exit. “I’m leaving on your dwarfy dad’s latest errand. Don’t be here when I get back.”

The doors rushed shut behind her, protecting her from Sim’s glare. He found the nearest thing of hers he could, a small photo of a tree house on her nightstand, and flipped it so hard that its glass cracked. Then he stomped out of her room, vowing never to return.

It wasn’t about love. It wasn’t! He didn’t love Shego. She had given him a taste of a world that he didn’t have to save, where he could just be. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why did she have to yank it away so callously? He had so little, and now he had less!

No. Now he had a name. He had two names. Just like everyone else. And he would have his world where he could just be, even if he had to take it.

Without fully understanding why, Sim stomped through the halls until he reached his father’s lab. His access code ushered him through the door. Inside, he found his father buried inside the innards of the Cannon. His footsteps drew out Dementor’s helmet, which looked to him with curiosity.

“My son, what is it that makes you walk so loudly? And where is your shirt? And from what are those scratches?” Dementor asked.

“Father, I want to know the plan,” Sim said.

Dementor sat up from the access hatch of the Cannon. The blue gun sat at his side, its wiring exposed. Swinging his legs over the side of the platform, Dementor said, “My son, you aren’t yet ready for such weighty matters. Your part in this will come again. You have already done well in acquiring this device. Shego is solving our other problem, which will put us back on schedule.”

Sim stomped his bare foot. Standing tall, he loomed over Dementor, despite the platform. “Father, I have done everything you’ve asked, and more. I have faced my others. I have faced Global Justice.”

A lean, piercing gaze lanced from Dementor’s helmet. He stroked his beard, and said softly, “And now you face me, eh?”

Jaw jutted, Sim stood his ground. “Father, I simply wish to know what we are doing. You claim I will save the world. Well, shouldn’t I know how? Why do I have to keep waiting to know? I’m ready to know. I need to know.”

Dementor nodded slowly. “Yes. I believe you are.” He stood, brushing his jacket clean, taking the moment to let Sim stew while his thoughts collected. “Possible, do you know how to make two old foes settle their grievances in the blink of an eye?”

The question snuffed Sim’s petulant ire. “I… No, Father.” He had so few memories, and many of those were just the others’ dreams. The subject remained something of a mystery to him. “How?”

“By making them forget all their grievances,” Dementor answered.

“Forget? How do we do that?”

Dementor retrieved the gun at his feet. “With this,” he said. He patted the casing of his massive Entropy Cannon. “With this. And with this.”

The tiny scientist held out his communicator. A small hologram emerged from its screen, creating a luminous sphere above the device. As Sim watched, a shape took form inside the sphere: it was a person, young and portly, trapped inside. It was the boy Sim had saved from Global Justice in Middleton.

Three intrepid explorers plumbed the darkness with a single lantern, a complicated device, and too much swearing for the four-year-old stumbling between them with her mole rat clutched in her hands.

Hana walked close enough to Kim to practically ride on the hero’s heels. The rough terrain hurt her feet, but she refused to be carried. She trusted neither Drakken nor Yori enough to sit on either’s shoulders. When she thought to ask Kim, the lantern light made her reconsider. Kim didn’t look like Kim anymore, just a haggard ghost that tried to smile when Hana spoke. So the little girl walked into the depths of the earth with a soft whimper that only Rufus could hear.

The lantern hung high in Kim’s grasp, swinging its light over the pitted surface of the tunnel. If her Kimmunicator’s database was accurate—and knowing its programmer, it was—this mine shaft hadn’t seen a human being in almost a century. If Kim were going to hide anything, this abandoned tunnel would be near the top of her list of spots. That alone helped to convince her they were on the right track, despite her many misgivings about their guide.

Their process halted as Drakken stopped again, clutching his foot and uttering a curse that carried through the tunnel. Kim gave him a shove that made him stagger forward, and said, “Quit stalling. This is the fifth time in as many minutes that you’re holding us up.”

His scathing look was made hollow in the lantern light. “I’m going as fast as I can. This thing isn’t backlit, so I can barely read it,” he said, and thrust the tracking device at her. “And since you won’t let me carry the lantern, I can’t see more than two inches in front of me, so I keep stubbing my toe, which really hurts! So I suggest you either get in front, give me the light, or take a chill pill!”

The lantern swung next to his face, giving him a clear view of Kim’s scowl, which she pressed at him. “One: there is no way I’m turning my back on you. Two: there is no way your butterfingers are going to break our only source of light. And three: if you say anything else besides ‘this way’ from now on, I will feed you this light, plant your scanner in the back of your skull, and jab you in the back, so that when you scream like a little girl, you light our way while we follow the signal ourselves. Got it?”

Drakken swallowed. “This way,” he stammered.

Kim swung the lantern back while Drakken stumbled ahead. “You two okay?” she asked.

Two sets of big brown eyes passed by her navel with a whimper. Kim watched Hana and Rufus pass, and then glanced back at Yori. The ninja hadn’t moved. Her stony expression traversed the pitch of the mine to make Kin frown quizzically.

“Kim-san, what has become of you?” Yori said softly.

They heard Drakken curse again, and moved to follow him with the light. Their voices lowered into graveyard whispers. “What do you mean?” Kim asked.

Yori kept pace with Kim, keeping the teen hero in front of her, as she had since leaving Drakken’s lair. “You are not yourself. You are so far from yourself that I begin to worry, Kim-san. You have pushed yourself in every sense. I fear it is taking a grim toll upon you.”

The lantern handle creaked in Kim’s grip. “I’m fine,” she said.

“You have kidnapped a man from prison and are forcing him to aid in your quest,” Yori said. “Worse, you are threatening his life in front of the child. I understand the necessity of these circumstances, but their allowance is limited. Your judgment is clouded by grief and anger, and so I offer you mine.”

Kim turned forward to the blue figure groping through the darkness. Her face twisted. “Drakken deserves way worse than a few threats. Wait and see. He’ll try something before this is all over.”

“And will you act on these threats of yours?” Yori asked. When Kim didn’t answer, Yori said, “You have not eaten nor slept since leaving Middleton. You need to rest, Kim-san.”

“I’ll rest when I know.”

“But—“

Kim’s glare froze Yori silent. The lantern did terrible things to Kim’s features. Or perhaps it was Kim’s features that were mercifully masked, except for the lantern light. Regardless, Yori’s blood ran cold at Kim’s expression. “When I know,” Kim said, ending the discussion.

“Ow! Son of…OH!” Drakken’s cry echoed forever, and hastened the girls’ steps. They took the light to Drakken, who sat upon a rock outcropping, rubbing his foot. His smile beamed when the light found him. “Look what I found!” he sang.

The tunnel ended with a wall of smooth, glistening metal that even four non-geologists could tell didn’t belong in the mine. The metal was banded with vertical struts and possessed a tight seam that ran from the floor to the low ceiling. Dark, angry burn marks marred the surface of the metal, which looked otherwise pristine.

“It’s a door,” Hana said, running her hands over the metal.

Drakken snorted impatiently. “Well, obviously it’s a door, you stupid child.”

Hana ignored him. She rapped on the metal softly, placing her ear against its cool surface. “Reinforced stainless steel with titanium supports. I can hear them in the vibrations. It’s about two feet thick, but it sounds like there’s a central locking system at the seam,” she told Kim.

Huffing, Drakken said, “Well obviously it’s…that. You stupid child…?”

Kim pushed Drakken out of the way and handed Yori the lantern. Aside from the long, slashing scorch marks, the door offered Kim no clues. She lifted her Kimmunicator and took aim, saying, “Cover your eyes.”

“Why?” asked Drakken, the only one of them to keep watching.

The Kimmunicator’s cutting laser burned into the door’s seam, flooding the tunnel with red light that made Drakken scream and clutch his face. Kim guided the laser up and down the seam through her squint until she heard the door ratchet noisily. It slid apart, retracting into the walls. White light poured over them through the opening.

Kim’s eyes watered as she stepped through. As her vision adjusted, she came to know their discovery. Her blood ran cold.

Hana and Yori followed her into the circular chamber, which was far taller than the tunnel, and lit with rows of fluorescent ceiling tiles. A dusty, smooth floor clicked underfoot. This chamber had been cut and polished out of the local rock.

Equipment encircled the room. There were tables filled with beakers, tubes large enough to bottle whole men, computer servers the size of automobiles, and countless other instances of technology that mystified the girls. Drakken recognized each component in the room, and squealed in glee. “My babies!” he cried, and ran to greet them all.

The three girls ignored his reunion. They were transfixed by the far wall, which was filled with printed charts, graphs, and, most damning, pictures: pictures of Kim; pictures of Ron; pictures of Kim and Ron; pictures of them fighting together; pictures of them fighting each other; pictures of them kissing; hugging; laughing; running. Every moment Kim could imagine herself in had been photographed to fill this enormous wall, which loomed before her, summing up her life in a disturbing collage.

“Wait,” Drakken cried. He stood in an empty socket in a row of enormous tubes, looking around as though the human-sized beaker had been misplaced. “Clone Tube Three is missing? What happened to good old Threebie?”

“I’m afraid that one was misplaced, Doctor. You can thank Shego for that.”

Kim whirled around at the voice’s emergence from the tunnel. The sight at the doors made her drop the lantern. It shattered at her feet, forgotten. Cold shock froze her body as she tried to shove a thousand thoughts through her mouth. Only one emerged. “You?”

Standing in the doors, Doctor Director gestured to the space around them. “Hello, Kim,” she said evenly. “Welcome to Project Sim Possible.”

End Act II