Kim Possible belongs to Disney. This is a work for fun not profit.

"Heart of the Wyrm"

A fan fiction by Six-string Samurai

High in the Mountains to the North of Mega Go City…

Shafts of liquid gold, the first of the sun's rays, shone down through the jagged stones, barely illuminating two figures that slowly ascended the sheer cliff face, less than a hundred meters from a wide ledge.

The lead form, a young woman in her early twenties, moved surely from hand hold to hand hold, every now and then shooting a quick glance down to ensure her partner was following suit. Satisfied at what she saw, the woman continued to climb, pausing now and then to secure the safety line they were using to a clamp hammered into the stone. It had been a long, but thankfully uneventful, trek from the small base camp she'd set up the night before.

This marked her second trip up since they'd confirmed the location, the first time she had been solo. She found the journey took much longer when accompanied, due in no small part to sporadic complaints from further down the rope.

The voice of her partner drifted up across the empty span, "We almost there? 'Cuz my hands are killing me."

God, it never stopped. "Yeah, I can see the edge," she paused to wipe the light sheen of sweat off her brow with the back of a gloved hand. "Two hooks away." Resuming the ascent, she shot over her shoulder, "Then we can get to work."

"Aw, jeez. Can't we rest a few minutes?"

"And waste our head start on the day? Not happening. You saw the pictures. We have no idea how long it's going to take to get through those doors," she shot a look downward at her climbing gear, purple skin-tight long-sleeve shirt, and black bicycle shorts. The young man secured to the rope below her was dressed similarly, and neither of them was wearing suitable clothing for the wind chill that nightfall would bring. "I want to get in before nightfall, thank you very much."

She shook her head slightly in exasperation, silently grateful for remembering to bring along a hair tie this time; yesterday she'd been fighting a mouthful of red tresses every time the wind decided to pick up. Yet on more thing that irked her about her companion, as the skinny youth kept his blond hair trimmed short, barely past the middle of his forehead in front. It was a style she'd considered, once, opting instead to cut it off just above her shoulders. It had taken the better part of a year to grow it back the way she liked it. There was a sort of comfort in the extra weight, something she missed the moment she'd put down the shears.

But that was neither here nor there, she brought her attention back to the task at hand, frowning that she'd let her attention wander. Not a very safe prospect at this altitude.

A span of breaths later and her hand reached the ledge, pulling her up and over. Taking in the slack on the rope a bit at a time, it wasn't much longer until company joined her, shallow of breath.

"You positive we've got a ride back down," the thin blond gasped as he plopped down on the cold rocky ledge, sitting a few feet from the drop off.

"It's taken care of. Paul will be on his way as soon as I give the signal."

"Paul? Paul…why does that sound so familiar," the young man propped his chin on a palm as he continued to rest, sitting cross-legged. Not three seconds later, his eyes widened. He turned to the red head. "You're not talking about that Paul, right? The one with the mangy beard? I mean, the guy's crazy! Everyone knows that."

The girl fixed him with a look and a shrug. "Do you know anyone else that has access to a functioning chopper?" She waited for a reply that she knew wasn't coming. "Right. Didn't think so." As she spoke, she finished gathering up the safety line and started re-coiling it, looping it up into a tight, portable bundle. "Besides, he's not as bad as everyone likes to claim he is."

The blonde narrowed his eyes. "How're we supposed to pay him? From what I've heard, the guy doesn't do anything for free. What's he getting out of this? It's not like either of us is rolling in the cash right now." His arm waved around the ledge. "This is supposed to be our meal ticket!"

"And, that's still the plan. Don't worry, I've totally got it all worked out." The redhead flicked her ponytail over one shoulder. "You let me deal with Paul."

He folded his arms, grumping. "I still think we could have found someone else."

"Like I said, I'll handle it. Besides, first things first. We've still got to deal with this baby," the red head turned, tossing the bundle of rope over against a small pile of rocks near the mountain face that still rose quite a distance up above the two. Her eyes lit on the sizable metal slab hatched into the rock at the back of the ledge they were standing on. "Right now, the chopper isn't going to mean squat if we can't get inside."

The blonde rose from his seat, jaw gaping at the find. Scrabbling across the ledge, his hands were all over the slab, fingers running along the seam between the metal and the rock, brushing off countless years of dirt and thin tendrils of plant life. "This is really it, isn't it."

Stretching her arms and popping her back, the red head watched as her longtime partner worried at the ancient door like an overexcited dog. "It matches the coordinates we found. And if we're wrong, I mean, what are the odds of finding anything up here in this exact spot?" Seeing the off put look that she was getting she answered it for him. "Don't hurt yourself, it's pretty astronomical."

"Oh, right." He turned back to the door, resuming his search for a way to get it to open. "I still don't see why we can't just blast our way in."

"Yeah, we're on the side of a mountain, on a tiny ledge no less, and you want to use explosives? I'm real glad that I didn't let you plan this one." She put a hand to her temple, feeling the beginnings of a headache. "Seriously, just do your thing and get us in there. I was up here all yesterday afternoon tapping and scratching at that damn thing and didn't find jack."

Smirking, blondie interlaced his fingers and pushed his arms out, cracking his knuckles in the process. Letting go, he rolled his head from side to side and then his shoulders. There was a series of tiny pops as he worked out the kinks. Once he limbered up, he fixed his partner with a small grin. "Okay, let's see what this baby's got."

It didn't even take two minutes.

"Who's the Man huh, who's the Man!"

The redhead watched as her partner did a little sidestep shuffle and spun pointing his hands at her for a moment, held in the shape of a gun, before thrusting them back toward his chest, nearly jabbing his thumbs into his shirt.

"This guy! Am I the best or what? Tell me I'm the best."

She just shook her head, and rolled her eyes. "Your ego doesn't need any more stroking, so, sorry, no dice."

"Aw, you never say it."

"What can I say; I'm a girl who's set in her ways. You'll just have to deal. Now, come on, we're burning daylight." With that, she unclipped a flashlight from the utility belt around her waist and stepped up to the darkened hole that lay beyond the metal hatch, poking her head just inside. "God, it smells rank." She coughed, covering her mouth and nose with her free hand. "At least we know no one's been in there for a long time."

Sudden sputtering and coughing from just behind her shoulder told the young woman that her partner was following.

"Jeez, I should've brought some air freshener. Smells like something died."

Ahead of them, the thin beam of light rapidly vanished into the thick musty air. But, it went far enough that they could tell they were facing a long narrow corridor, and moreover, beyond the doorway, the walls weren't stone as she had been expecting, but the same solid slate gray of the metal hatch.

"How far do you think it goes?" Blondie spoke over the red head's shoulder.

"Your guess is as good as mine. We're just going to have to find out."

"Uh, right. So…"

"So, what?"

"You know, lead the way."

"Do you always have to act like such a wuss?"

"Hey, who's the one who got the door open? I did my part. You're the ruin expert, not me."

"And you're the guy." The red head shot back, without looking. It was a moot point anyway, since she always went in first. Honestly she didn't care one way or the other, as they'd been doing this sort of thing for the past six years, and he was just as experienced at it as she was. In the end, it really didn't matter who led the way. But, she teased him about it just the same.

"You always say that." He pointed out.

She countered, "Doesn't make it any less true. Now come on, get your butt in gear unless you want to get left behind." With that, she strode off, sure footsteps padding an echo against the smooth ground.

It took a moment for her partner to realize that she was the only one holding a light, and he took off down the corridor, hurrying to catch up to the bobbing beam.

After the better part of two hours, the two ruin explorers had finally made their way through every hall and corridor they could freely access, marking out the doors, the majority of which had been sealed shut; unlike the hatch they'd first come through, they never found any keypads, hidden or otherwise, to gain deeper access.

As they passed the latest locked door, the blond mused aloud, probably just to break the overbearing silence of what had grown to feel like a giant tomb, despite the lack of bodies, "I bet all these entryways are power activated. We still haven't found any generator room, and with something this size, you know there's gotta be one."

"Unless, with our luck, it's locked away like everything else." While it was true that they hadn't run across anything other than cobwebs and dust, much less something of value, even the red head didn't believe it for a minute. That would be the dumbest idea ever, to put your power source somewhere that became inaccessible the very moment it was most useful.

"Maybe there's a backup generator we can get to," supplied her short-haired friend.

She nodded absently, playing the light along the walls. "It's possible."

The blonde nodded along with the motions of the flashlight, responding as if by rote. "Yeah, anything's possible fo-"

There was a whirl of red and suddenly the blond was cut off mid-sentence and all but blinded by the beam of light shining directly in his eyes as a leather gloved hand mashed up into his mouth.

"Don't you fucking finish--"

Even blinded by the light as he was, the blond swore he could see a pair of eyes burning with anger just beyond. The taste of dirt and worn leather was bitter in his mouth.

"I'm not warning you again. Nod if you got me," each word was almost bitten off they came out so harsh.

He could only comply, it had been an accident after all, and he couldn't blame her reaction either, it was just the way things were.

"Good," the glove fell away, wetly glistening, from being halfway jammed between the blonde's lips, as it passed back through the beam and into shadow. "Let's go, I want to start checking the rooms we found open." The red head's voice rang low and was much softer this time.

"I didn't mean it. I'm really sorry."

She turned around to face him again, but the light stayed pointed away this time. "I know." It might have been an apology. Silence reigned, stretching for several heartbeats. "Come on, we've still got a lot of ground to cover, especially if it's in one of the locked rooms. This could take a lot longer than I planned for." She turned away again, moving back toward the last open room they'd run across.

It was the only apology the blond was going to get, and he knew it. One of these days, he was going to slip up, and push a little too far. Shivering, he shook the blood back into his limbs and once again rushed to keep up.

As she'd feared, it wasn't the room she was looking for, that much was obvious the moment she'd put a foot in and shined her light. Sure, she could have taken a peek back when they'd discovered the door wasn't jammed shut like most of the rest, but it was part of her method, and she'd never been one to stray from a tried and true thing; especially when it worked.

No, not with a relic like this place, she'd never had to worry about anything laying in wait for an ambush judging by the inches of undisturbed dust and grime coating everything. Hers was the first breath to exhale here in years, if not decades.

Shrugging, she let the beam skim the walls and then turned her back on the empty room. "Nothing."

"Man, I was hoping this would be it."

"When have we ever had it that easy?"

"Um, pretty much never."

The red head nodded. "Alright, where was the next one?"

The blond fished out the little electronic notepad he'd been sketching the layout on. Scrolling along the diagram with the stylus, he narrowed his eyes. "Uh," after a moment he jabbed the plastic wand down along the bend in the hall. "Two hundred meters…that way."

So they went.

The second room proved to be some kind of storage closet, filled almost to the ceiling with stacks of wooden crates, all bearing a logo on the side.

Regardless that it was obviously the wrong place, the red head pushed the sliding door open as far as it would go, and stepped in, walking over to the closest stack so she could read the tiny writing under the stylized logo. "Hench Company. Hmm, wonder if it's the same junk we found last time."

"Back at the last place?" the blond recalled the defunct company. They'd found similar crates in a few of the old ruins across the country. Usually, the wooden boxes were already broken into, and empty. There had been a few occasions where they had been fully intact though. But, the contents had hardly ever been salvageable, mostly just bits and pieces of broken machinery. It had been his guess that those weren't the original contents. It hardly made sense for a business to sell useless trash.

Of course, he'd pointed out the first time they'd found a stash, that was likely the reason the company had gone bankrupt.

"We'll come back later and check these out," the blonde's partner informed. "Where to next?"

In the end, they lucked out and none of the accessible doors led anywhere significant, neither did they run across more potential loot after finding the crates.

"Shit, we've got to find a way to get into the rest of the rooms now."

The blond looked up from the map; all of the doors he'd marked as open were now scribble out. Eyeing the tiny map again he frowned. There were still almost a dozen locked doors, but they still hadn't found any sign of a power source. Then again, the mountain they were in was fairly sizable, and so far they hadn't seen anything that might lead deeper down.

Moreover, none of the doors resembled the double wide sliding doors that they'd found in previous ruins, the kind that they'd come to identify as elevator doors.

Shoulder to shoulder, going over the crescent shaped diagram, they both knew they'd somehow missed something. The question was where was it?

The red head spoke up for the both of them. "We're going to have to make another pass."

"Man, this place sucks."

"Yeah, tell me something I don't know. Just remember, we know it's gotta be here."

"Shouldn't we check the boxes, you know, just in case?"

The light popped up from its course on the floor ahead of them to point at the blonde's torso, just shy of getting in his face.

"Were you even looking at the same plans I was? There's no way that thing would fit into one of those tiny things, they're barely 4x4! The unit's easily three or four times that size--" The red head cut her speech off, not wanting to start ranting at her friend just because he said stupid things now and then. If she started to lose her patience now, it would be that much harder to bear trudging around in the dark deep in the earth with the present company.

"Okay, okay…chill. No reason to bite my head off." The blond held his hands up in mock hurt. "Just an idea. Forgot you were the only one that was supposed to have those."

The light swung away. "No, you're right. This is just a little frustrating. We've already combed this place twice. I just don't see how we both could've missed anything. There has to be a way to get further inside." The red head tapped the side of the flashlight in thought. What was it? What was she overlooking?