Kim Possible: Redemption

(A/N: This idea has been floating around for a while, so I decided to try it out. Depending on the reception I'll continue. Who knows, I might anyway. I hope you enjoy. I'll probably put up two chapters today just to give you more than an introduction to the story. So should I continue?)

Torment

He never even knew at what point he'd become petrified in stone. In fact, it still felt as if he were alive, still flesh and blood, still fighting back, trying to break free of this curse. It had all happened so quickly. He'd fallen at the hands of a baby, again. To all outward appearances, he'd seemed unconscious. He'd seemed unaware of anything. They'd assumed he hadn't even known. If that had really been so, however, then why had his expression become forever petrified in pure terror, desperation, pain, and loathing? The Yono's words had run through his mind, and they were clear, each word enunciated as plainly as tolling bells, but he couldn't understand what was being said. He couldn't isolate the words to form a coherent sentence, though he'd heard everything. He had just been dizzy, that was all. He was still prepared to fight, but the chance had never come. Something had beaten him to it.

It was a sudden burning in his limbs, which had all at once escalated to an unbearable degree. It was a firestorm that seemed to suddenly tear through him, making its way steadily throughout his body from its origin. His hand... The mark of the Yono. Something was wrong! Something was happening that wasn't supposed to! That was when his mind had caught up to the events. That was when he'd felt what was happening to him. He couldn't move. He couldn't fight back! The helplessness, the fear, everything that he'd never even dreamed he, a Lord and master of Tai Shing Pek Kwar, would ever have to suffer. It had seemed so foreign, so surreal…and he had been afraid. Afraid didn't begin to express it. He had been terrified. He had felt death taking hold of him slowly and steadily, and he had been powerless to fight back. There would be no chance for him, no mercy, no redemption, no anything. Was it really death, though, he'd wondered; and for a moment he had prayed it would be, for the alternate would be so, so much worse.

Then came the abhorrence and hatred. He felt its advent and felt it showing through, even in his terror; passionate loathing for Ron Stoppable and his baby sister Hana; the secret weapon. He still marvelled, even now, on how he'd missed something so obvious. With hatred and terror, however, something else emerged. An expression that somehow portrayed all his fear, all his anger and hatred, yet hidden deep inside of it was a plea for help. He didn't want to die. He'd tried to call out. Why shouldn't he? Heroes had no choice but to save even their enemies, after all. They'd done it before. Once he was safe, he could take them all out. It wouldn't be a problem. With or without the power of the Yono, somehow he would succeed. He had to succeed. As if that had ever worked before, but it was about time his victory came to him, right? Wrong.

The sound didn't come. He couldn't cry out for help. He couldn't utter a word. It felt as though his throat had been closed off. No air was coming through. He wasn't breathing! He couldn't breathe! He was suffocating! His entire body felt tingly. The burning had died, but now he felt so numb, so paralyzed. He'd known what was happening almost instantly. Stone! He was turning to stone, just as he had turned Kim Possible, the naked rodent, and that foolish old Sensei to stone! He tried to fight back, but how could he win? He reached out, trying to alert them to his distress. Nothing. It was as if death itself had taken hold of him and wrapped him in a smothering embrace.

He'd been out of air for so long now. Why wasn't he dead? Why? He should have been. Then the burning started again, more agonizing than ever, as if he were roasting alive in an inferno somewhere in the deepest depths of, well, you get the picture. There was no such place, he knew, but burning was burning. He wasn't breathing; he couldn't hear his heart beating in his chest. He felt so cold, yet he knew he was alive. Oh so alive. So much was covering him at once. His life was flashing before his eyes, but suddenly ceased; and there were only voices. Voices condemning him, cursing him, insulting and taunting and laughing at him, and the pain wouldn't stop! He had lost track of how long he hadn't been breathing, yet he knew he was still alive, for he felt and heard and saw and sensed everything.

They were looking at him, Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable. Why were they just looking at him! Why weren't they doing anything! Where had the Yono gone? Why was everything suddenly moving as the sensation of death still worked its way through him, cutting off everything he'd known and come to associate with life? They were doing nothing. Couldn't they see how he was suffering? And even if they didn't help, she should have. Yes, Yori should have; that ninja girl who had so quickly proven herself to him, whom he'd deemed 'worthy' enough to be placed third on his growing list of young people he loathed and longed to destroy; for honor was everything to her, more so than hatred. Her mercy would be her death. As far as he was concerned, obviously she'd missed the point of being a ninja.

Wait. There was the sensation of sand; the sensation of being buried alive. He was being buried alive! The sky, the earth, the scenery was disappearing before his very eyes. Still they watched. Was he already dead, he wondered? Was he stuck in one moment of time forever? They hadn't moved. No, they were moving. Life was moving on around him, and he wasn't part of it. He would never see his fellow villains again, nor his monkey ninjas. He would never more banter and bicker and conspire with Drakken or Killigan; he would never train with his army again, he would never see home… a palace that had belonged to his family for generations on generations; he would never more feel the cool air on his skin or through his hair. He would never embrace his destiny, what should have and could have been. Everything, everything, was lost.

He was reminded of the lines in a poem he'd once read. Timor Mortis Conturbat Me. The fear of death consumes me. Was that what was happening now? Only, how could he fear death if he were already dead? No, he wasn't dead. He was still very much alive, and the pain was growing in intensity, and the pending darkness was all too real; and all at once nothing. Just black. Not even black. Just nothingness. He didn't know how else to describe it. Everything stopped moving. He couldn't feel, he couldn't hear, he couldn't see or smell or taste, for there was nothing left to sense; but he could still think, an empty mind without a body. Silence. Not even a rumble. Still he couldn't breathe. Still he couldn't die. Still the pain wouldn't stop, continuously growing in intensity as if he were dying but not, still the voices and howls were screeching in his thoughts; and his screams for help, his screams of anguish, echoed through his own mind, filling the coffin, the grave, with desperate pleas and wails, bound never to be answered.

Eternal darkness. Just his thoughts, his mind, an occasional sense of life, of the outside world moving on, reminded him he was still alive, and that all he'd known and loved, his freedom and power and ambition, had been stripped from him forever. And to be honest, given the choice he would have taken death over the psychological torture any day. He thirsted and hungered and longed for air, but nothing. He would never be free again.