Welcome, fair readers, to another new tale. For those wondering when Jump Start and A True Hero is Born will be updated, I can't say for sure, but I haven't forgotten about them. What work I do have for them is fragmented and unpolished, and I don't want to release incomplete and futzy chapters. This particular plot bunny has surfaced more than once, but this is the first time I've committed it to writing. Hopefully it'll prove entertaining.

This story takes place after So the Drama, and touches on some Season 4 episodes but not all of them.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, nor any other products/topics I may address. Any original characters I may introduce are my property, though. As usual, this is the first and only time I will post this disclaimer, and you can consider it continual throughout the story unless through some bizarre event I come into possession of Kim Possible.

Chapter One:

Silence

Kim Possible was many things. She was a cheerleader, an honor student, a martial artist, a gorgeous redhead, a charity volunteer, and she was widely regarded as a superhero. She would now add ecstatic to the list of nouns and adjectives regarding herself. She had finally seen what had been right in front of her for several years, at least: Ron Stoppable.

The blonde, freckled, frequently terrified boy was her first and only best friend, and her companion on missions. In all honesty, she'd never questioned the fact that he accompanied her on these adventures in which he was always facing one of his worst fears and often coming within a hair's breadth of death and/or dismemberment every few minutes. Last night, she had finally figured out why: he was madly in love with her, and she discovered that she harbored similar feelings for him.

It had only been one day since the international cataclysm known as "The Lil' Diablos Incident," but such things were far from Kim's mind. Instead, as she got ready for bed, she recounted the day that she had shared with her new boyfriend. They had gotten ice cream, seen a movie, and cuddled under a tree beside the new pond formed by a Diablo's plasma cannon.

As Kim slid into bed and flicked off her nightstand lamp, she thought about how her life couldn't possibly get any better, from her perspective.

— — — — —

The electric hum of the fluorescent lights melded in with the like rumble of the dialysis machine. Along with the periodic beep of the electrocardiogram and the rhythmic hiss of the respirator, the noises made a sort of mad scientist's symphony. Indeed, this may have been the best term, as a mad scientist sat beside the bed, heavy blue bags beneath his bloodshot eyes. He would have taken pride in such daring robberies – one even from the hospital where Kim Possible's mother worked – but his fear and misery wouldn't allow for a positive emotion just yet. In the bed lay one of his most precious people, someone whom he considered to be family even though she could be very, very mean sometimes.

Drakken stood up, cracking his back and stretching out his shoulders. The M.D. had warned him that he'd burn himself out at this rate, but he didn't care. Shego was suffering, and he couldn't just leave her alone. Crime rates had fallen all over the world at the news; despite her acerbic nature, Shego was beloved by much of the villainous community, and they had decided to take this day off out of deference to the tragic event.

Drakken sat back down, speaking softly to Shego. He didn't know if semi-comatose people could understand speech, but it was probably doing her some good. After all, if plants grew from being talked to, couldn't it work for people, especially green people? "Well, I confirmed that we do indeed have the footage from the base, Shego. We can start a smear campaign against Kim Possible when you get yourself fixed." He rested his hand on her fingertips, careful not to touch her burned skin. "Get better soon, Shego. It's so lonely without you there to give life to this place…" Drakken choked back some tears. He might be a villain, but this was just cruelty! Part of him wondered if the teen even knew what she'd done using that suit's super-strength.

The villainous M.D. entered the room. "Alright, Dr. Drakken, I need you to leave. I have to give Shego a full physical to make sure that her regenerative powers aren't reacting with her electrical burns."

Drakken was reluctant to leave, but he kissed the tip of Shego's finger and turned to leave. "Make sure she gets better, Doc."

— — — — —

Anne Possible was concerned.

Unlike her husband, who was designing a very detailed diagram of how he would jettison Ron into a black hole if he hurt Kim, Anne was not focused on the boy. He was a good person, and wouldn't dare hurt her Kimmie. What concerned the brain surgeon was her own daughter. Kim's mood swing, from love to despair to love, was far too extreme. It couldn't be good for anyone, but Kim took far more onto her shoulders than the average person, so a mood see-saw like that could potentially be disastrous for her.

What worried Anne more than that was how wholly Kim had thrown herself into her newfound relationship. Perhaps it was true love, but even then her daughter was far too obsessive over Ron considering how they had only become boyfriend/girlfriend the night before. Kim was suppressing something, focusing on the positive in her life to hide whatever negative was nagging at her.

Anne would make sure that she and James were there for their daughter, and tomorrow morning she would attempt to coax Kim into revealing what was tormenting her.

— — — — —

Drakken hadn't been the only one to recover the central lair's security footage. Local police, government agencies, and Global Justice had made copies for their own records, all for their own purposes. The police had taken it for evidence in a case that they now could not prosecute because Drakken had, surprisingly enough, put into place a contingency plan in case of his capture, and he and his henchwoman Shego were home free before they could even be brought back to the police station. The FBI and CIA had acquired copies to better analyze the fighting styles and psychological profiles of the heroes and villains. Global Justice, however, had absolutely no interest in Ron Stoppable, Drakken, or Shego: after certain events had come to their attention, they were reevaluating Kim Possible's status, determining if she was a threat.

One more person had attained a copy, burning it to a thumb drive straight out of One Police Plaza in Denver. Sitting cross-legged on a relatively comfortable hotel bed, he watched the footage play out on his laptop. The Shinola was going to slam hard against the fan and begin splattering all over the room, and perhaps he could eke some benefit from it.