Captain Possible and The Centurion Legacy

Chapter Eleven: Calling Down the Thunder

Kim and Ron came to a stop on the rocket propelled scooter to see the command tower blast into the sky. There were Diablo bots blocking out the moon as they flew overhead, and rain spattered on the two teen's faces. "We're too late!" Ron shouted, watching the trail of smoke.

Kim glared at the ascending rocket. "We're not too late. We've just got to get to dad. He's a rocket scientist, maybe he can..." but she was cut off as they were both blown off of their feet with the explosion of the top of Buenos Nacho headquarters. A chain reaction tore through it and several Diablos dropped from the sky and landed, as though standing guard.

Kim crawled to her feet and reached for Ron's cell phone, dialing a phone number out of reflex. "Wade, where's my dad?!" she shouted with pain, fear and worry breaking to the surface of her normally calm exterior.

"Inside..." came Wade's tear filled voice. Kim shook her head and dropped her arms, burying her face in Ron's chest. "He was inside..."

Kim's eyes snapped open from the nightmare she had been having and her hand instantly went to the scar that covered half of her face. The acid burn was healing nicely, all things considered, with Joss applying a regenerative salve to the affected areas. The muscle tissue and nerves below however, were still aching and Kim reached to her night stand for a glass of water. She raised the glass to her lips, then sighed as she realized it was empty. Resting the glass in her lap, she sucked in a deep breath, grimaced at the stubbornness of her still healing lungs, then began a heaving fit of coughing that sent painful tremors through her entire body.

When the lung spasms had subsided, Kim looked in irritation at the call button that Joss had set up. With effort, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and slid her bare feet into a pair of pink slippers, quietly moving toward the exit with the empty glass in hand. Since returning from Middleton, and the subsequent gut aches from eating spicy Mexican food after five years of synthesized rations, Kim had avoided the rest of the team as much as possible. Joss, of course, was looking after her wounds and was relishing being able to give Kim orders, as the Captain wasn't fit for duty. Her little cousin also looked upon her with medical indifference, offering little console in the way of bedside manner, instead prescribing an intense massage from some strong, familiar hands. Predictably, Kim refused.

Kim was also keeping her thigh length red hair out of the braid she normally put it into to keep it out of her way, and instead adopted her old hair style in an effort to hide the scarred portion of her face. With practiced stealth, she moved past Wade's lab, where he was experimenting with Ron and various technologies. During their last mission, when they had infiltrated Middleton to meet Felix Renton, Ron had somehow shredded the battlesuit that had been fitted to him when he called on his Monkey Powers. If Kim hadn't lost power in her own battlesuit in the fight with Shego and had thus been exposed to the corrosive atmosphere, she would have been furious with him. The loss of a battlesuit was a major blow to their resources. Even when Rufus had detonated his robotic body to escape Shego in Sanctuary, it had taken weeks to reprogram the blueprint he wore as a collar. Losing the blueprint as well meant the battlesuit was no more. She listened at the doorway for a moment as Ron and Wade spoke, with the boy genius trying to get whatever information he could out of the mystical ninja master.

"A tingly feeling isn't exactly helpful, Ron."

"Well I can't explain it any other way. It was like the suit was trying to squeeze me out, but my monkey powers weren't budging."

"Sounds like similar magnetic poles repelling each other. And you said the energy we were jamming while you were fighting Erik outside the Kepler did the same thing?"

"Yeah. All the little lightnings just ended at my glow. That's what Erik noticed."

"I imagine that could be what makes your powers so effective against him and the other synthetics." The conversation paused for a moment before Wade continued. "Well, let's run some tests."