A Kigo Carol

By Eoraptor

AN: Kim Possible belongs to Disney, "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. I own nothing involved here save for my laptop, the name "Debbie Horowitz," and some grammar and original names.

Second edition (or director's cut if you prefer) of my "Christmas Carol" Kim Possible kigo fiction from 2008

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Deborah was about to retreat to her bedroom when she heard a sharp "rap rap rap." Looking around, she couldn't find the source. She went to her door, but no one was in evidence through the peep hole, and no shadows danced beneath the portal. Her eyes went to the bedroom, but she found its door once again intact and closed.

She heard what seemed like a tiny throat clearing, and the tapping again. Turning, she saw that the ghost of Christmas Present had left behind her fireplace, and astride the mantle was Death. Well, it seemed like Death.

She had always believed that the specter of the grim reaper would be… well… taller. The Spirit was definitely fearsome in appearance; his great black cloak was woven of a course cloth with faint fraying at the folds and edges, as if he had labored with the corpses of the dead many eons whilst wearing it. Clinging to his form were various smears and cobwebs, again bespeaking a gruesome pastime. A heavy bronze hourglass dangled from a hangman's noose around his waist and a scross was rolled up and half-placed within one pocket.

The disconcerting thing was that this grim Spirit of Christmases Yet to Come was all of eight inches tall. He clutched a miniature scythe in hands which bore wicked claws, and his face, or skull perhaps, was hidden in the deep shadow of his hood, save for a set of gleaming white incisors that glinted out occasionally as he rapped his scythe again on the mantle of the spectral fireplace.

If she weren't a little disturbed by the presence of massive teeth, claws, and a very functional looking, if letter opener sized reaping implement, Deborah would have laughed out loud. Still, she couldn't help but smirk a bit. "Oh, this is too rich… you're here to show me future holidays, yeah?"

The hooded figure gave a grim nod and then pointed to Miss Horowitz's bedroom door with his scimitar. The business woman shrugged, and strode to the door. On opening it, she found not her bedroom, but the greatroom of some expensive manor house. It was decorated with heavily perfumed flowers on end tables and a few fine antique chairs.

Leaning back out of the doorway, Deborah spied the walls of her own living room. "Huh… neater trick than the flashlight and the windows."

Stepping through, she looked around the large open space with some curiosity, since this specter had given her no guidance yet. She spied the Stoppables, well, the parents at least, gathered in one corner. She saw no one else, so she made her way over to them to see what the stich was.

Deborah shook her head, Ron was wearing a goatee of blonde and gray. It looked good on him, but the worn look in his eyes ruined the impression of maturity the beard lent. Beside him, his wife Tara also wore silver in her flaxen hair, and one look at her eyes showed Shego they saw nothing, having a milky quality where once they had been sapphires.

The two seemed to have just finished speaking, and she was unsurprised when they passed right through her. Turning, she followed them out of the greatroom and perked an ear as Ron spoke again.

"So, she's finally gone…" The blonde man sniffed a touch. "Can't say it wasn't a long time coming, considering how sick she was. But at least it's all over now."

The elegant woman looked about, and realized this manor house must be a funeral home, since soft soothing music was playing quietly in the hallway. She looked around, and caught sight of the Spirit standing atop a chair midway along the hall. "Hey, short stack, whose funeral? Oh… I know, Must be Tiffany. Well, I guess she lived longer than that last ghost thought. That's… good, right?"

The grim specter gave her no response other than to motion her along with the scythe. With a snort, she followed the pair as they walked down the hallway. She trailed them as they passed through a doorway, but they had disappeared when she came through. She found instead, her brothers, picking through a cardboard box atop a simple steel table in some kind of service room.

"Gee, didn't have much in the way of personal effects, did she?" Her long haired brother bemoaned as he picked through the box.

"This is just the stuff that the housing staff didn't take, and the stuff the state didn't confiscate for taxes." Massive Harold went on, picking out an ear ring and considering it. "Won't sell for much, I'm afraid, which is why it's still here."

The twins shook their heads and set their handfuls back in the box as well,

"Wasn't even,"

"Worth coming down,"

"To this hole,"

"To retrieve."

They finished for each other. Deborah wondered whose things they were going through, perhaps one of those women from the shelter, though a tickle at the back of her brain said otherwise.

She watched her usually do-gooding brothers continue to pick through the cardboard box like ghouls, and frowned. It was not how she expected the Team Go organization to act at all. Even if they seemed older and more tired, like the Stoppables, this was pretty far out of the norm for them. She shivered outright as her brothers passed through her ghostly form with a tangible wave of cold.

Turning, she found the diminutive specter perched on a shelf, "Spirit. Are there more funerals going on? Why all these people I know gathered for strangers?"

The grim miniature specter merely shook its head beneath the hood and pointed towards the door. After a moment, he indicated with his scythe, tapping it on the shelf he sat astride for emphasis. It seemed to ring far more loudly that a six inch cookie cutter should.

She shrugged and sighed "All right all right, I'm goin… Gee, you'd think for funerals, people would be more… I dunno, sad or some junk. These creeps are just indifferent."

Passing through the door, she found herself not back in the hall, but in a chapel. She looked around and found that this was, indeed, a funeral. Yet, it was a sad and depressing one. Looking around, the preacher droned on with religious sentiment he obviously felt, but no one sat in the pews.

No, scratch that. One person sat off to one side. A woman clad all in black, including a lacey veil across her eyes. Miss Horowitz was about to move closer, to see who it was, when a chill ran up her spine. As the mourner, the only mourner in the entire large chapel, dabbed beneath the veil, she revealed a spray of red hair.

The spectral business woman wheeled, looking for the pint-sized reaper and his damnable scythe. She found him perched, of all places, on the pulpit, standing right in front of the preacher.

She stormed towards the miniature spook, but slowed, realizing this also brought her closer to the casket and its apparently ignored occupant. Her anger quickly gave way to trepidation as she recognized the glossy black casket was set 'round its rim with green stones. "Spirit… who's funeral is this…?"

The cloaked figure shook his head beneath the shadowy hood and gestured to the casket. Deborah shivered violently and backed away a step, not willing to see for herself the corpse within. She heard movement behind her, and saw the redhead of mystery moving up to the casket, forming, by herself, an imaginary line of mourners. She passed by the ethereal woman and looked down into the casket as it was opened for her by the preacher. With a sad shake of her head, she moved along, thanking him with some hollow words.

Ignoring the words in their familiar voice, empty though those words were, she followed in the wake of the lone mourner. She looked into the casket before the lid was sealed back up, and recoiled in horror. For there, within the sleek black coffin with a satin green lining, was herself. She looked hideously made up, as though the embalmer couldn't be bothered to make the corpse look human. Thick green eye shadow and black lipstick attempted to hide sunken features on a withered and embittered face, and her hair had gone all white save for a single black streak that looked shocking and harsh against the deceased's features.

Flailing backwards, the ghostly woman screamed in abject terror for the first time in her life that she could recall. She wheeled to the lectern and grabbed the miniature cloak of the Spirit, pleading with her eyes as her voice trembled.

"This is me?! My fate is to die all alone?! My brothers picking through my possessions like ghouls, the Stoppables practically toasting my demise?! Only one person to attend my death, and she came out of duty and nothing else?!!!! Spirit Answer Me!"

The petite specter nodded and clacked his scythe on the pulpit with a disproportionately loud slam.

"IS there any way I can change this?! Make it not happen?! Keep Tiffany from Dying?! Keep myself from becoming this pariah?! Change it at all?! Yes, that's it! That's it! I'll change! I'll be better!" Deborah pled.

The Spirit clacked his scythe on the lectern with a thunderous slam again and shook his head, large buck teeth gleaming beneath the hood; and Deborah found herself inside the casket. She was still and terrified for a long moment, the only sound her shuddering breaths. Then she heard sounds, the tumbling of something above. It was dirt! They were burying her! They were going to bury her alive!

She pounded on the lid of the casket. She wasn't dead yet! Not ready to be buried! She pounded with all her considerable strength. She started shredding the liner, down to the bare metal, crying to be let out, slamming her whole body up against the sealed lid of the coffin. Igniting her hands, she flung heat and fire into the lid, screaming to be let out, screaming to the heavens that she would change!

- - - - - -

She exploded out of her bed onto the hardwood floor. Gasping and staring around in a hunted manner, it took Debbie a moment to gather that she was not trapped in a casket being covered in earth. The disheveled businesswoman extinguished her hands with only a little scorching of the hardwood, and stood up shakily, panting, clawing at her day-old clothes now to get the free of them, needing to breath.

Without thought to the nightstand she had used to gauge the previous night's passage of time, she threw open the door to her bedroom and exploded out into the living area. Gone was the fireplace, the toys, the twice destroyed bedroom door was again intact. She closed and reopened it, finding only her bedroom beyond and not a funeral parlor.

The sun was just breaking over Lake Go and blasting through the massive panes of glass, now as solid as ever. She charged to her massive wall-sized television and flicked it on. As always it tuned to a business channel, without a stock ticker for the holiday. "…and in other news this Christmas morning…"

"Christmas Morning?!" she whispered to no one but herself, "I'm Alive!!! I'm Free!!!"

Whooping and cheering, she charged to the bedroom. The pistol and the phone and the benighted alarm clock all still rested on the night stand, reminding her that the previous night was not a dream, so much as a portent. She had to change. Had to mend her callous ways this very day!

Debbie dashed to the bedroom and pulled on what clothes she could as quickly as possible, shedding away her previous day's business dress suit for something more casual, as she had not dressed in years. Owing to those, the jeans and green blouse were a bit stiff and tight, but she let that bother her not, instead dashing out to the elevator.

Quickly she was down to the ground floor of her building, and out into the street. The changed woman knew already what her first act must be. Slipping her ePhone into her handbag, careful to remember its late night call exchanges, she went right for the local deli. Thankfully, Go City was a modern metropolis, and had secular establishments that would be open even today.

Slipping inside, she called the attendant. She gave him the Stoppable's home address, as well as two one-hundred dollar bills. She then sat about picking out dinner, trimmings, and two great platters of cookies. Briefly, she pondered being playfully evil and sending a ham to the mixed residence, grinning wickedly to herself… But with a chuckle, she set that aside. She selected the fattest bird she could find that was precooked, a great TurDucHen, a chicken within a goose within a great turkey, and all baked together. Giving the man a third bill, she grinned, giving no name when asked, and exiting the store.

Clapping her hands together against the chill blowing in off the lake, she made her way immediately to the next stop on her rapidly forming mental itinerary. She took the second of the two platters of cookies with her and went to get a truck.

An hour or so later, honking and raising great fanfare, Deborah arrived at an older house on the inner edge of the city proper, pulling into its drive and leaping from the cab as the driver set to opening the gate of the massive van. It was an old brick manner, but its ornate shutters had been replaced with hardened iron bars. She technically shouldn't even know the place was anything special, but she owed her knowledge to a higher power.

She bounded up the old concrete stairs and banged on the heavy metal door with all force. It took several minutes, but finally, a face appeared at the high window. Only one face could peer that highly, and she grinned up at her brother Harold.

The door was unbolted, an involved affair, and the man-mountain stared out at her in confusion, "Sis? Erm… What are…"

"Oh, get out of the way Hego, Let the man make his deliveries! And here, take these and give them to Bobby, or is it Billy handing out the treats?" She thrust the overloaded platter at the big man, and then brushed past him.

Inside, she found the group of women and children gathered about the bedraggled tree she had already known would be there. She picked up the thing, and with nary an effort owed to her unnatural powers, hurled it away. It was just as quickly replaced by a full, lovely, and pre-decorated tree by the delivery driver, a stout man she had found working the dock alone at the department center she had just raided. He was thrilled with his sudden Christmas bonus, and was all too eager to be of service when told where they were going and who they were to help.

She turned to the mother with the most darkened eyes, and her son Johnny, and smiled. She handed them a card and grinned, flicking some imagined dust from her lapel. "That happens to be the best Civil Prosecutor in three states. I'm most certain he'd be thrilled to take up the case of a boy who's not had a single set of new clothes in an entire year. Just let him know that Miss Horowitz… No. Tell him Shego said he owes her one."

Spinning back, leaving the confused woman holding the business card and stuttering, she clapped her hands and grinned, "Friends! This building is going to be demolished in a few weeks!"

There were gasps and shouts, even as her twin brothers were coming in to see what the commotion was and who had been let into the secure building.

"What?! You mean you're really going to burn the place down?!"

"You heartless Grinch! Why?!"

"Why of course I am! And if I could find the place with just any truck driver, it's hardly a place safe for women and children now is it?! Besides… I just happen to know of a perfectly suitable ten story building in the heart of down town that's just standing mostly vacant." She nodded with a grin and a twinkle in her eye, "Complete with a gated entrance, and easy access to schools, shopping, and in a quite secure neighborhood!"

She grinned as even her purple headed brother glanced out from the kitchen in shock. She spent the next few hours sorting out details with her do-gooding brothers and eating a meal with them and the residents of the shelter, even going so far as to make the mashed potaoes. She gave them the number of the contractor she knew would be all too happy to renovate the lower nine stories of her building for the new residents and then bid them farewell, making sure to tip the truck driver again as he hauled away the old derelict tree and now empty boxes of toys and children's clothes that had now been distributed.

Glancing at her ePhone, Deborah realized that she had just enough time to go to her office for her next appointment. Arriving, she unlocked the door, and had just shed her coat when the door chimed a second time behind her to admit someone on this miraculous holiday.

Turning, her voice seized in her throat just as she was about to bid her guest welcome. The redhead before her was a vision in holiday white, from her slacks to her coat. A loan blue scarf set off the otherwise pristine outfit, and Deborah simply stared.

"Ki- Kim- Kimmie…" She finally worked past her stone lips as she stared.

"Please, come in! Have a seat!" She blushed like the girl she had once been and finally, and literally, smacked herself into gear. She indicated the plush chair reserved for high-rolling clientele, and sat down on the edge of her desk. She bit her lower lip as the other woman strode across the office and eased herself down into the luxurious chair.

Deborah noticed it. Anyone else, those who had never seen Kim walk, would never have picked up on the faint limp and the tiny hiss of a gas cylinder as she moved. But the pale woman who sat across from her had known the younger Kim, the one who had owned two working legs and energy in spades and been an unstoppable force. She knew that Kimberly lacked a left leg now, severed mid-thigh just outside the Horowitz's front door that night a decade ago exactly.

After simply staring at the alabaster, cobalt, and ginger angel before her, she was startled by a clearing throat.

"I'm not here as a trophy to be looked at, Debbie. If that's all this was, I still need to go to my parents place, and swing by Ron's." Kim started to rise, only to find herself suddenly gripped in a monstrous hug that drove the breath from her chest.

She blushed despite herself, and cautiously returned it. Leaning back after a moment, she saw that the emerald eyes of her hugger were liquid, tears streaming in a way she hadn't seen since Debbie's beloved puppy had died fifteen years before.

"Kimmie! I'm so sorry! I was a horrible selfish bitch! Please Please say you forgive me! Please tell me you won't come to my funeral!" She gripped the woman's hands tightly in her own, her lower lip trembling in a rather effective pout.

The redheaded archaeologist wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that. She'd never heard someone beg forgiveness and funerary abandonment in the same breath before. "Ooohkay… Maybe we should start again, because I'm confused and I don't think its jetlag."

Stepping back, she held out her hand, albeit it nervously, "I'm Doctor Possible… and you are? Because I sure as heck don't recognize you…"

Deborah winced slightly, but that faded as she saw the warm smile in the eyes of the shorter woman. She extended her hand and shook Kim's, before yanking her into another hug, fiercely holding on to the smaller woman, "And I'm Debbie Horowitz, recovering Grinch."

- - - - - -

Miss Horowitz sat in her office on Friday morning, trying to beat the inane grin off of her face. The Kimmie had promised not to tell Ron that they had had dinner together, or had even seen one another on Christmas Day. She had also promised to try to have dinner again on New Year's Eve. The emerald woman knew it was going to be difficult, but she WOULD win the angel back. She had just finished ordering up two tickets to England for the first of the year, First Class, all the way. Hell, she had money, and it wasn't a sin to use, so long as she was using it for someone else's happiness.

She heard the door chime, and grinned wickedly. The slender emerald-themed woman put on her bitch-on-wheels face and did her double damnedest to erase the goofy smile. Rising from her desk, she straightened her severe green business suit and stepped out of the office.

She looked pointedly at Mister Stoppable, and then at the clock. In a cool, clipped tone, "Explain."

She smirked a trademark smirk, even as he wilted under her gaze and whimpered.

"Miss Horowitz… I… uh… Uh...!" The blonde man stuttered and whimpered further, trying to slink to his desk.

He was about to explain when the door opened again, and a tiny blonde girl ran in. She giggled and leapt into her father's lap, squeezing him around the neck, "Daddy! Mommy said you forgot to take your lunch with you! Aunt Kim was going to bring it up, but I wanted to see you again before I had to go back to that acky hospital!"

Deborah couldn't maintain the stone balled bitch act any longer, not in the face of childlike adoration. She grabbed the little girl from her father, spinning her around as though she weighed nothing, which was close to the truth. "Oh! I don't think you'll have to go back to that nasty place. I hated hospitals too, you know! They made me stay in them all the time because of my skin."

She smiled as the tiny blonde giggled and touched her pistachio cheek, and then set her down on her father's desk. She grabbed up his desk phone and called up the insurance provider from the company. She paid for twenty four seven customer support after all. "Yes, this is Deborah Horowitz, Customer ID 7033472. Look, I want to arrange an in-home nurse for one of my employees. Yes I'm aware what that will do to my premiums."

She rolled her emerald eyes and covered the handset with her palm as the operator worked away, "Guess I'll just have to give your daddy a raise to cover it, huh kiddo?"

Tiny Tiff giggled and spun to hug her daddy tightly around the neck, cheering for no more hospital. Ron just looked on, dumbfounded. First a mysterious seven piece banquet had been delivered to his home on his lone day off, sparing his tasked wife trying to cook a meal; and now aliens had abducted his boss and replaced her with a pod person who was giving him his holiday wish for the sixth day of Chanukah.

"Yes… I know the firm, they'll do well. Here, my assistant, Mister Stoppable will give you all the details." She handed the phone to the befuddled man and grinned.

Bending over, Shego picked up the petite blonde girl again and descended from the office to the car on the street. She smiled and babbled the news to Kim and Tara, who were just staring at her from inside the Stoppable's serviceable old station wagon. One stared at her in bald faced disbelief, the other in barely hidden pride, her own emerald eyes shining. She bounced on the balls of her feet as she leaned in the car window.

"So, did I get it all right Squirt? No more hospital? Big raise for Daddy? Happy helper to make you feel better?" She flicked the girl's pony tail and waited for a response.

"No!" She pouted petulantly, her lower lip jutting out. She held up her little charm bracelet and twirled the six pointed star and the cross there, "You forgot one thing! God bless us everyone!"

And from that day forth, Deborah Shego Horowitz never again let the selfishness of her early life darken her heart. She kept the holidays, and the warnings of the Spirits in her heart always. And when the day for her funeral finally came, half of Go City attended and sent her off with warm words and gifts of charity in her name; all except Kimberly, her beloved wife of seventy years, who had promised one New Year's morning to always forgive her and to never go to her funeral.

END

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AN: Thanks for reading the second edition of "A Kigo Carol." I appreciate all the feedback over this year, from all of my readers, no matter what their holiday beliefs may be, or how they mark the closing of the year. I hope you enjoyed this little tour through a holiday classic, with inspirations taken from so many different versions over the years.

And for anyone who may have been unable to determine the identities of the holiday spirits… Jacob Marly was Drew "Doctor Draken" Lipsky, Shego/Scrooge's deceased business partner; The Spirit of Christmas Past was Jocelyn "Joss" Possible, an androgynous and ageless spirit; The Spirit of Christmas Present was "DNAmy" Amy Hall, a jolly and rotund soul full of the joy of the season; and the Spirit of Christmas's Yet to Come was Rufus, an unspeaking, fearsome portent of the future. All the spirits I tried to take from their original book incarnations in appearance and action. Shego's gun and the exploding door, of course, are drawn from the Bill Murray classic "Scrooged" and much of the rest is my own interpretation.

Happy Holidays!