Thanks to Boris Yeltsin, captainkodak1, Mr. Wizard, daywalkr82, whitem, Shockwave88, Comet Moon, Quathis, Katsumara, Eddy13, Classic Cowboy, JCS1966, Shrike176, bigherb81, CajunBear73, campy, screaming phoenix, kpfan72491, RonHeartbreaker, Zoooch12, sharper1988, Molloy, and noncynic for revieiwing and to everyone for reading.

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Thanks to campy for proofreading this chapter; the borscht is in the mail.

KP © Disney; original characters © the author

I.

Katerina opened the hatch, climbed through the opening, and smiled: there before her was a gleaming modified MiG 21, exactly where it had been left fifty years earlier. She performed a quick visual inspection of the fighter and was relieved to discover that it remained secured and undisturbed. Still, she knew there was reason to be concerned about the state of the jet’s systems and fuel after a half century – the plane would require a more thorough examination before it was flown.

Before performing her review, though, she made her way over to a locker, pulled out a flight suit, and changed. Then she grabbed her helmet, walked back to the plane, climbed a ladder, and opened the cockpit bubble. She was about to get into the aircraft when the alert klaxons began blaring and the red lights began flashing, which could mean only one thing: the cryogenic containment tube had somehow been compromised.

II.

“What are the odds?” Ron asked as he covered his ears and looked accusingly at Stark.

“I didn’t touch anything!” Stark protested.

“Something must have triggered that alarm,” King observed. “The question is what.”

“What’s the book say?” Ron asked.

“Good question,” the SLUG answered. He looked for an index, then turned to the section on alarms. “Hmmmm.”

“Is that a good ‘hmmmm’ or a bad ‘hmmmm’?” Ron wondered.

“Honestly? I don’t know,” King said. “The alarm system is activated for one of three reasons: intruder alert—”

“Been there, done that,” Ron said.

“—The cryogenic containment system’s been compromised.”

“Negative,” Stark said. “Vozmozhnoskaya had already deactivated that system.”

“Then that leaves the third possibility: the lair’s going to self-destruct.”

III.

“Great,” Kim mumbled as the unwelcome sound of the alarm began to draw her into consciousness. “I’m going to be late for school.”

She cracked open an eye and immediately noticed the flashing lights that kept bathing the room in red. Her first thought was that the Tweebs were up to something. But she soon noticed her head wasn’t on a pillow, but the floor. And she had carpeting in her room, not a steel deck littered with shards of glass. Everything came back to her in a rush. “Katerina,” she growled.

Despite the lingering numbness in her legs and hands, Kim managed to get to her feet. And while it took a moment to steady herself, she was soon out of the chamber and in search of her cousin.

IV.

“Where are you going?” Stark demanded as he interposed himself between Ron and the door.

“Kim’s in trouble,” Ron said, his tone making clear this should have been obvious to Stark.

“We’re all in trouble if this thing explodes,” the Navy man stated flatly.

“Dude, it’s not going to blow up,” an exasperated Ron said.

“Excuse me?”

Ron sighed. “Whenever a lair is about to self-destruct, there’s a count down. Do you hear any counting?”

“No, but—”

“Detonatzia logova proizoidet b desyat minitach.”

“Oh come on!” Ron complained.

“What is it?” King asked, suspecting he already knew the answer.

“I don’t speak Russian but I’ll bet you all the Diablo Sauce in China that Comrade Computer Voice just told us the lair is going to blow up,” Ron replied, for once in his life wishing events were not trying to prove him right.

V.

“Sam Hill on a skateboard,” Cochrane said when the craft finally broke through the surface. The submersible was immense, at least as large as the Enterprise, its top convex. As the man-made leviathan rose, the seas rolled off its gray hull, reminding the captain of a breaching whale. Whales, however, were benign creatures. This massive thing, built by Soviet cold warriors whose intentions remained unknown, struck him as being anything but.

VI.

Katerina dropped the helmet into the cockpit, climbed down the ladder, and hurried over to an instrument panel that was mounted against the wall; there, she began to type a series of numeric commands. When she was done, she reached over to a key, which she turned, then withdrew, and then carefully placed in the breast pocket of her flight suit.

VII.

The command center was a cacophonous symphony. Klaxons blared, an automated voice was most likely announcing imminent destruction, and Ron and Stark were yelling at one another.

“Look, I don’t have time for this,” Ron snapped. “KP’s in trouble. Now get out of the way.”

“Or what?” Stark sneered.

“You want me to go monkey on you?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“As serious as a Steve Barkin pop quiz the day after I’ve spent eight hours playing Zombie Mayhem.”

King decided it was time to intercede. Having developed a better understanding of what the two teens meant to each other, he didn’t doubt that Ron would indeed go monkey on Stark, complicating the mission, and creating a host of other problems for all involved. “Sir,” he said to Stark, “why don’t we let Stoppable find Possible while we work on addressing the situation here.”

“You’re taking his side?”

“Uh, no,” King lied. “Just trying, to, uh, get him out of our hair so we can focus on disarming this thing.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” Stark mused. “Okay, Stoppable, you find Possible while we work on addressing …”

Ron didn’t hear the rest of the SLUG’s order; he’d already bolted from the control center in search of his girlfriend.

VIII.

“Going somewhere?”

Katerina, who had been climbing the ladder to her jet, turned to see her furious young relative approaching her. She couldn’t help but smile. Escaping from the cryogenic tube spoke volumes about her resourcefulness. “Kimcha,” she said approvingly, “I am most impressed.”

“You should know the family motto: anything is possible for a Possible,” Kim retorted hotly.

Katerina considered her cousin. Other than a somewhat messy head of hair and a few minor cuts, the teen appeared well. She was clearly a redoubtable young woman if she was able to so easily escape her cryogenic prison. She made a decision. “Come with me.”

Kim was non-plussed. “What?”

“You say anything is possible? Then do the unthinkable. Join me!”

“Hello! I fight villains,” Kim said.

“As do I,” Katerina retorted without irony.

“Excuse me? You work for the Soviet Union!”

“And you, apparently, are an agent of American imperialism,” Katerina countered. “So who is the hero and who is the villain, Kimcha? Do not argue; it does not matter. You and I have the same goal: to protect the people, to bring order to the world. Together, we can do that.”

“So not happening,” Kim said as she executed what would have appeared to cheerleading aficionados to be a double handspring – but actually was a momentum-building flying assault that allowed her to drive her feet into her cousin’s side, knocking the older woman off the ladder and sprawling onto the deck, with Kim upon her.

“You will regret this,” Katerina growled as she gained purchase and used her feet to push Kim off of her. The two women scrambled to their feet and warily eyed one another.

“Not as much as you will when Global Justice takes you away,” Kim shot back as she considered her next move, only to have it decided by Katerina who spun and sent a kick flying her way, one that Kim barely evaded.

“Nobody is going to take me away,” Katerina declared as she followed up her kick with two sharp chops, which Kim deflected. “You are going to let me go.”

“As if,” the teen snapped as she grabbed Katerina’s forearm and prepared to throw her.

“You will if you do not want your precious Ronya to die.”

“What? If you hurt him …”

“The Luna will self-destruct in less than ten minutes,” she said coolly, “and I have locked out the escape pods.”

“And to think I thought deep freezing me and sending me to the moon was your way of saying you cared.”

Katerina waved her hand dismissively. “I assumed the others would save you; when I realized you had escaped, I needed to take measures to ensure my departure.”

“And blowing us all up helps you do that how?”

“By presenting you with two options,” Katerina said with equanimity. “You can either continue to try to stop me or you can go save that foolish boy and yourself. Let me go, and I will give you the ability to unlock the pods. Otherwise …”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” Kim demanded.

Katerina grinned. “We are family, no?”

“And I don’t find that reassuring why?”

The klaxon continued to blare as a tinny Russian voice issued another warning. Katerina arched an eyebrow.

Kim reluctantly stepped aside. “This so isn’t over, Katerina.”

“If you say so,” the older woman replied as if indulging a willful younger sibling as she climbed into the cockpit of her aircraft. She strapped herself in, then reached into her flight suit, took out the key, and looked down to her cousin, before she threw the key over her head in the direction of the control panel. “Insert the key into the console against the wall; it will unlock the pods. Good luck and dos b’danya, Kimcha.”

Kim turned, then bolted for the key while Katerina lowered, then secured the canopy.

Katerina entered a series of commands into a radio control unit in her cockpit. In response a blast shield rose from the deck. She did a final check of her instruments and then ignited the jet’s engines.

Kim was unlocking the controls to the escape pods when two giant doors slid open and the hangar was filled with a rush of fresh ocean air. As the roar of the MiG’s engines filled the bay, she was seized by an almost primal desire to find a way to prevent her cousin from escaping. Kim had begun considering her options when the now all-too-familiar mechanical voice issued yet another warning, reminding her that time was quickly running out. Resigned to dealing with her rogue relative another day, she hurried from the hangar in search of Ron and the others as Katerina flew off into the pink twilit sky.