Crumbs

Author: The Humbug

Disclaimer: “Kim Possible” and all characters within © The Walt Disney Company and its related entities. Kim Possible created by Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley. All rights reserved. No profit is being collected from the fiction contained within. You can blame the rest of this on me.
Rating: PG-13 for combat violence and intimations of a physical relationship and intimate contact between consenting adult females. This should also cover a little harsh language now and then. If this will offend you, please read something else and then seek some professional help.
Summary: This is a Kim/Shego pairing fan fiction and is set in my ‘Who’s Writing This Crap?’ storyline. It is a sequel to ‘A Cookie For Ecclesiastes’ and you really, REALLY need to read that story first. Kasy Ann and Sheki Go Possible are the creations of NoDrogs. The KP version of The Supreme One as well as the ruined Shego is my idea. WARNING: Some parts are a little dark.

Crumbs / Nine

Breath clogged in their throats and terror gripped them like iron. The green eyes and the red hair of their captor was mere inches from their faces and the rosy pink skin was flushed with emotion.

And then they glimpsed the soul behind those eyes.

“mom!”

“mommy!”

“what am I going to do with you two?” Kim hissed back at them, whispering furiously. “if this is what cheerleader try-outs have come to, I’ll… I’ll…” The young woman abandoned any pretense of forced levity and dragged her daughters closer. She was already clutching them to her with all of her considerable strength but managed to find just a little more pull from somewhere deep within her core. Breathing was difficult but the twins never thought to fight against the crushing hold. Kim eventually relaxed and the girls drew in a few labored gasps.

“three guesses what I want to know… the first two don’t count”

“the sitch?”

“good guess” Kim looked them over; both girls looked rumpled and in need of a good soak but otherwise not the worse for wear. “let’s narrow it down to ‘what are we up against’ for now.”

The girls shared a look.

“it’s kinda complicated”

“keep it simple”

“it’s gonna take awhile”

“keep it short” The older Possible placed her hands on the girls’ shoulders and squeezed firmly but lovingly. “we don’t have the time for ‘war and peace’ young ladies… I can get us out of here but you have to tell me who these people are and how they can know everything I know”

“you… you know about them?”

“no, but it was a… clue of sorts that your momma and I got this morning”

“got from who?”

“uh-uh, no way do we have time for me to try and explain that one”

“but…”

“no buts, one sitch at a time” She pointed at her red-headed daughter. “how many are there?”

“two”

“two?”

“uh-huh”

“just two?”

“yup”

“as in three minus one equals two?”

“yup” Kasy nodded her confirmation. Kim looked at her child quizzically for a moment before turning to her other daughter.

“not two dozen?”

“nope”

“ok” Kim digested that. “I’ve seen one of them… all thin and creepy… who is that?”

“mom, you need to understand…”

“sheki, we don’t have the time”

“but you really need to listen”

“young lady, I’ll be happy to sit down and listen when the sitch is over, but right now you had better tell me who that was I saw lurching around in here a few minutes ago” There was absolutely no time for waffling and Kim’s patience was about spent; why were the girls being so vague? Sheki hesitated and it was Kasy who spoke up.

“that was momma”

“Oh, God! Shego!” The news hit Kim like an express train. In that moment of sickening horror, Kim forgot to keep her voice down. The girls were quick to move in closer, desperate to squelch her volume as to provide clarification and assurance. The hero saw something their expressions that meant there was more to the story so she forced herself to calm down… for the moment.

“god… what did they do to her?”

“no! no, that’s what we’re trying to tell you, it…”

“… isn’t really momma”

“guys”

“well, she is and she isn’t”

“guys”

“mostly isn’t”

“guys”

“at least not anymore”

“guys”

“mom, it’s like this…”

“hey, if I don’t have time to explain, then you don’t”

One set of emerald eyes flared.

“guys…who!?”

The twins sighed.

“they’re you”

“they’re… who?”

“they’re future versions of you and…”

“… momma, our ‘rents from an…”

“… alternate timeline”

Kim hesitated only a moment before she reached out and took their hands.

“girls… are you on drugs?”

“mom!!”

“I know that your momma experimented a little when she was your age, but really…”

“no! well…” Kasy rubbed at her neck, “they did shoot us up with something last night… but that’s not the point!”

“then how do you know so much about these… people?”

“mom, you have to trust us” Sheki clenched and unclenched her fists in agitation; there was way too much to say and so little time. “they’re you and momma but they’re crazy and…”

“… sick and…”

“… wrong and…”

“… wrongsick…”

“… and we’ve seen them before”

“when??”

“weeks ago, that sitch when your hand got stabbed and we…”

“… were being jerks about our powers, and…”

“…we made a pact with momma ‘cause we’d been bugging about not getting to go with on missions”

Kim glanced down at her right hand. There wasn’t even a scar to mark that particular sitch but she recalled the mission clearly. She also recalled her feeling that the girls never had quite explained to her satisfaction how they had come across an ointment capable of healing her wounded hand in a matter of seconds; the flesh had almost knitted back together before her very eyes.

She would have to get the rest of the story when this was all over… and also remember to ask about this ‘pact’. She regarded the twins with a healthy dose of suspicion.

“you two had your own little adventure while we were out that night, didn’t you?”

They nodded. Kasy’s brow furrowed, realization suddenly dawning.

“and I think… I think that I saw the other-momma outside my window last night”

“really? Then why didn’t you… oh!” Her eyes went wide. “the thing on the lawn?”

“yeah, the thing on the lawn”

“then somewhere around here there’s another… me?”

The girls could only nod in assent. How could they compare this woman whom they loved with a tyrant who could order the deaths of millions as casually as asking for the correct time? Kim didn’t feel her mouth swing open but she hadn’t noticed that it was already hanging a bit slack, either. They had been through much in the last ten hours or so and Kim herself had heard many improbable things in her lifetime… but this?

“mom, we know that this all sounds crazy, but…”

“… every word is true”

“I… I believe you” Kim shrugged and looked down. “I have to… my girls are good girls and they don’t tell lies” She had been holding on to them the entire time, her small strong hands gently kneading their shoulders as she spoke. They were dirty and bedraggled, obviously exhausted but there was no sign of duplicity or delusion. The girls gained as much reassurance from this simple contact as their mother but Kim held on for several seconds before raising her eyes and pursing her lips in determination; the next part was going to be extremely difficult for her. She gritted her teeth before continuing.

“girls, I need you to listed to me very carefully”

“mom, please don’t send us away!”

“we can help!”

“guys”

“yeah, we can help…”

“… you find momma so…”

“guys”

“… that we can all…”

“… get out of here…”

“guys!”

“… together!” The twins’ distress was palpable. “please let us help with the mission!”

“guys… judas priest… if you will both shush, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

The girls could not believe their ears and fought to keep their voices low.

“really?”

“you mean it?”

“yes… but your momma’s gonna kill me for this” The older woman pointed up at the ceiling far above their heads, almost hidden in the gloom. “do you see that large conduit… the one that goes off in that direction?”

“uh-huh”

“sure”

“good… it runs the length of the whole place and at that end,” she jabbed her gloved finger over their shoulders, “you’ll find the main hatchway leading out” She looked for comprehension. “understand?”

They nodded in unison.

“yes, ma’am”

“if I remember correctly, there are several storage rooms along that wall” Kim gestured towards the way out. “the mission is simple… find your momma, free her if you can, drag her out if you must, but I want the three of you to hightail it out of here while I create a distraction.” She smirked. “that was your momma’s original plan”

“how do you know that she’s been captured?”

“because if she hadn’t, this place would be in far worse condition than it is right now”

“how do we… how do we know she’s not…” The question wasn’t completed and tears played at the corners of the twins’ eyes. Kim didn’t hesitate to confront their fear.

“she’s fine, I can feel it” The older redhead refused to consider any other sitch. “but I expect that she’s being held in one of those rooms and that, Team Possible, is your mission”

“what are you gonna do?”

“finish what your momma started… make enough noise and see what crawls out”

“mom, that’s not a good idea!”

“you don’t know these people!”

“you don’t know… her” The look in their eyes was almost enough to give Kim pause. Almost.

“apparently I do” Kim remembered the call from that morning and what the mysterious stranger had told then in their kitchen at home. “but the mission is a basic cut and run, got it?”

“right”

“we know”

“you three scoot and I’ll be right behind you”

They didn’t answer, but the girls breathed easier and some of the tension melted away from their faces.

“hey, don’t worry… you’re old mother isn’t looking to tackle them single-handed”

“kay”

“so cheer up” Kim gave them her brightest smile. “besides, I can do anything”

“so not…” Sheki started.

“… the drama” Kasy finished. There was a bit of the usual sparkle back in their expressions. Kim leaned in and hugged them tight, almost crushing them all over again before resting back on her haunches.

“we good?”

“yes, mom”

“we’re good”

“my angels”

“we’ll find momma”

“we’ll make you proud”

Kim made a half turn so that they wouldn’t see her own eyes start to glisten with emotion.

“too late… you already have”

Both girls watched as their mother quickly vanished into the murky shadows. Sheki made ready to leave but her sister was squirming in apparent discomfort.

“hey”

“what?”

“what’s the sitch?”

“you were right”

“about?”

The redhead grimaced with disgust.

“I should’a hit the bathroom earlier”

“huh? Oh… ewwww!”

“yeah” The crimson blush burned through Kasy’s algae green hue. “mom scared the piss out of me”

88888888

Shit, that is one fugly woman, thought Shego. The former villain was not about to succumb to an identity crisis in the company of this warped and broken person. Forcing herself to remain calm and in control, the pale green woman spoke.

“Are… Are the girls ok?”

The tilting head swiveled and Shego’s own eyes burned across fifteen years of pain and anguish.

“… fed, watered, resting… wounds cleansed and…”

“Wounds?”

The only answer given was a single gnarled hand extending from the shroud to display the tiny hypodermic needles mounted onto the ends of the fingertips.

“ENOUGH!” Both Shegos jumped as the commanding voice of The Supreme One roared out at them and the petite redhead raised her fists in fury. “I did NOT give you permission to speak with the prisoner! Go!” A blue and white sleeve thrust towards the open doorway. “Go and prepare the girls for our journey. We’ll be leaving here as soon as the device is ready!”

“… thy will be done…” The damaged form bowed as best she was able but did not leave to fulfill her orders. The Supreme One cocked an eye and frowned.

“Well?”

No answer, just a raw, beseeching look.

“Oh… ok.” The older Kim huffed in frustration and looked askance down at Shego on the floor. “Excuse me, will you? This won’t take but a second.” Turning away from Shego, the older Kim Possible balled her flesh and blood hand into a fist and swung. She struck the crippled woman with a backhanded blow that almost knocked her off her feet but the action had been as casual as if swatting a fly.

“Happy?”

“… please and thank you, Supreme One…” The ruined Shego managed to look almost exultant as she lurched out of the room, a crimson smear coloring her lips.

It was a moment before Shego could speak.

“S-She… she likes it rough, does she?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious.” The lecherous sneer made Shego blanch slightly.

The former villain had no idea how that ruined woman out there had come to be that way but she was having serious doubts as to her captors being clones. The obvious signs of chronic injury and years of crippling mistreatment gave support to the ghastly creature having some sort of supernormal healing ability; only that could have allowed someone so badly damaged to live with such injuries.

“She occasionally forgets just how rough she likes it. She used to try to get away from me while I was… loving her.” The way that the artificial hand was flexing made the chained woman shudder again. “Eventually she stopped trying.”

“What’s that shit she has in those needles?”

“Don’t trouble yourself thinking about it.”

“Oh, come on. Tell me. You know you want to. Some kind of poison?”

“So not the drama. Would I have used poison on my own babies?” The Supreme One regarded Shego callously. “Doy! It’s a neurotoxin tailored to kill anyone not having the benefit of either plasma-based recuperative powers or the medical functions of my battle suit.”

“Oh.” Shego breathed a little easier; at least their babies were still alive somewhere and reasonably unharmed. Now she just had to stall for time. “So, what about…?”

“What?”

“Even if I accept that you are who you think you are…”

“Mighty gracious for someone bound in unbreakable chains and lying on the wet floor of an abandoned lair.”

“… how did you get here? Where are you from?”

“Ah, yes, ‘The Stall’. Most interesting.” The redhead furrowed her brows, some of the scars on her face adding to the creases. “Ok, let us change the tempo of this discussion.” She began to pace, her lean and tightly muscled form moving beneath the blue and white uniform in a way that made Shego sick with anxiety for her spouse. “I was born in Middleton, the only daughter of a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon.”

“Gee, that sounds familiar.” Shego reverted to sarcasm in order to quell her feelings of dread. “Why are you older than the Kim Possible I know?”

“I might as well ask you why you are younger than the Shego I know.” She waved her metal hand. “Or why this world is how I remember things to be from fifteen years ago.”

“You’re from the future?”

“Evidently.”

“You have a time machine?”

“Unfortunately not. If I did, I would have used it by now to leave this wretched place.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“Of that I am not certain.” The smaller woman shook her head and the long red hair with its streaks of white swayed as it flowed down her back. “There was… a cataclysm.”

“A what?”

“I can’t think of any other way to describe it.” They might have been discussing the weather over hot cups of tea. “Without warning and for no apparent reason, the world around me began to disintegrate before my very eyes.”

“That doesn’t happen very often.”

“Indeed not.”

“And you escaped?”

“Always have your escape plan ready in advance. Shego taught me that years ago.”

“But… how did you escape a world?”

Then it hit her.

“You had a pan-dimensional vortex inducer?”

“Just one of my many toys. I’d never used it to travel between dimensions before but when you see the very ground beneath your feet start to fade away, desperate times require desperate measures.”

“And you knew how to operate it correctly? Make all of the necessary calibrations for… traveling fifteen years into the past?” Shego head buzzed with the concept.

“No. Don’t let this fool you.” The petite redhead raised the metal hand. “My real right hand is that amazing creature out in the lair, who even now is repeating her actions and preparing to send all of us away. That’s why we came here,” she spread her hands and indicated the lair around them. “To the one place that we knew would have another inducer.”

“But why kidnap Kasy and Sheki?”

The metallic hand suddenly flashed green, illuminating the room.

“HOW DARE YOU?!” The horribly familiar voice thundered in the enclosed space. “Unless you want to die ahead of schedule you will NOT use those names again!”

Shego couldn’t shrink away or cringe but she did avert her eyes; knew madness when she saw it and true insanity needed to see fear and terror once in awhile. Even if she couldn’t display it well, the fear for her daughters was there. She hated to admit it but, oddly enough, there were facets of this older woman’s personality that did parallel that of her Kimmie to an eerie degree. Her Princess could swing from manic to depressed in the blink of an eye and this woman had proved that she could, too. No one was quite as obsessive as her spouse could be, either.

“My bad.”

“It was… a rescue.” The Supreme One didn’t seem to have heard her. “My girls were taken from me and I simply took them back.”

“Taken? You’re saying that they were kidnapped?”

“D’oy.”

“Who would try a stupid thing like that?” Shego could only imaging how she and her Princess would react to that and standing before her was the living breathing result.

“My enemies.”

“But who?”

“I don’t know.” The redhead adjusted her blue cape and shrugged carelessly. “Enemies. Someone. I don’t know.”

“How did it happen?”

“A sitch gone wrong. A mission, our first as…” The woman stopped and blinked a few times. “The first mission of Team Possible as a whole family. I thought that they were too young, not ready yet. They argued and pleaded.” There was a very Kim-like smile. “We took them along. They were doing so very well when…” Seconds of silence stretched into a minute before Shego felt confident enough to speak. She spoke as a mother, which she was, but found that it was far easier to empathize with her captor than she’d have thought.

“They were doing well. Then what happened?”

Any façade of a grieving mother vanished and The Supreme One turned to stare down at her captive.

“There was an explosion, apparently a bomb. Something that a coward would have done.”

“They were killed?”

“Of course not, fool! My girls are too skilled for such a cowardly ploy!”

“Then what happened to them?”

“For a clone or a simulacrum or whatever the Hell you are, you aren’t listening!” Slender arms crossed again. “They. Were. Taken!”

“Where?” This circular logic made Shego’s head hurt.

“If I’d have known that, I could’ve saved Shego and I a lot of grief and worry. Do you know how many people we had to arrest and interrogate? Hundreds! Not a one would confess.”

“Global Justice let you do that?”

“They didn’t know. Shego and I acted as ‘GJ’ agents just like before, going out on missions and bringing in criminals, but what we were really doing was to undermine the infrastructure of whatever hidden enclave had taken our girls!”

“And they never found out what you were doing?”

“Eventually, yes. But by then I had destroyed their organization as well.”

Madness, Shego thought to herself. You just can’t make up stuff like this. There was one painfully obvious flaw in this entire scenario, regardless of how fantastic it already was. Shego made her decision and chose to risk her life with a question.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Shego and I have been on our holy quest to rescue our children for fifteen years.”

“When the girls were about thirteen?”

“It can do math. Woo Hoo. Extra hoo.”

“And are Ka…” A hard glare from across the room made her stop and rethink her choice of words. “Are the two girls you’ve ‘rescued’ about thirty years old?”

“So not.”

“And the reason for the age discrepancy is…?”

“What does it matter?” The emerald eyes were slightly glazed and the small woman began pacing around the room. “I have my girls back and in a few hours Shego and I will take them away. Away to someplace else, someplace new where we can start again.” She moved slowly but purposefully, as if following a dream… or evading a nightmare. Now Shego knew from whence the madness came.

There were two dead girls from some distant corner of the multiverse that would never be properly mourned. The sitch made a lot more sense now. Shego steadied her breathing and felt for that subtle ‘humming’ in her bones; it was how she sensed and gauged the strength of her plasma energies. From what she could feel, it was apparent that her reserves were still terribly low, not that her plasma would be of any use against the chains, if this middle-aged Kim was to be believed.

She needed more time.

“Global Justice.”

“What about them?” The smaller woman sighed impatiently.

“You said that you destroyed them. How?”

“From within, of course.” The Supreme One continued her circuit around the room, lecturing. “I was their darling, their cutesy little Princess and their poster girl. I could go anywhere and do anything within their walls.”

“You exposed their secrets?”

“I unearthed their weaknesses. I spread dissention and undermined their authority from the bottom up. New agents flocked to me and I trained them in secret, creating a hidden cadre of operatives to not just fight crime but assimilate the best resources of our enemies for myself.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“I’d have thought that you’d have used your experience to rise to the top and eventually replacement Dr. Director.”

“That would imply a desire to rise through political achievement. After the… after my daughters were taken from me, I desired to break ‘GJ’ without the hindrance of using their own system against them.” When she next faced Shego, she was the picture of confidence. “When the feet of clay crumbled, I was the only one left within ‘GJ’ that had any credibility whatsoever. I became the new center of their establishment.”

“What about these ‘enemies’ you talked about? What happened to the villains you fought?”

“Oh, they all underestimated me. Not for long, mind you. What could a mere slip of a girl do to them, they asked themselves.” The Supreme One strutted a little in the confined space. “They all fell, however… Dementor, Monty, Killigan… even that hyperactive whore Adrena Lynn learned what a mistake it was to evade my righteous mission.” Her emerald eyes narrowed to slits and she grinned. “I let Shego have her as a plaything. I understand that she was begging for death weeks before she actually died. How’s that for freaky?”

“What about Drakken?” Shego latched onto the glaring omission of this madwoman’s ‘rogues gallery’. The former villain would have denied it, but she did harbor more than a passing interest in the Doc’s fate.

“Ah, Drakken! That pathetic fool Lipsky actually tried to strike a deal with me! An ‘assurance of our mutual victory over the world’, he called it!” The Supreme One casually fingered the hem of her blue cape. “But I realized the truth soon enough. He was hoping to avoid suspicion in my quest to rescue our children.” The material of her cape shone in the lighting of the cavern and there was naked scorn on her face. “He found out what happens to those who would thwart me.”

“What happened to him?” Shego strained her back and pulled her body up into a sitting position. This warped reflection of her Princess smiled sweetly down at her.

“Why? What do you care?”

“We had an understanding, that’s all. We worked together for years.”

“I see.” The petite woman nodded thoughtfully. “So your curiosity is in the interest of respect, is that it?” She pursed her lips and raised her brows to punctuate her question. Shego wondered why she felt so cold all of a sudden.

“Yes, respect. That’s all.”

“I totally understand.”

The Supreme One raised her hands and undid the clasp of the blue cape from around her shoulders. She let the thing fall, guiding it as it dropped so that it landed on Shego’s legs. She turned her back on the captive woman with a smile and walked towards the doorway to the main cavern.

“Feel free to pay your last respects.”

Baffled, Shego peered down at the blue material that draped across her bound form. She searched its folds and contours for some hidden meaning, some reason for her captors comment. As she did this, she looked closely down at the cape, idly wondering if it was made of fabric or vinyl or…

No.

Oh, no. No, no, nononono…

It wasn’t vinyl.

The Supreme One leaned against the wall outside of the storage room and laughed at the sound of Shego’s scream. It had been so long since she’d heard such revulsion.

To Be Continued…

Author’s Note: Several references made here to ‘A Cookie For Ecclesiastes’. You really need to read it if you haven’t already.