Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When she woke up, her eyes stayed closed. It was a practiced skill; it had taken forever to perfect. Originally her eyes had always snapped open. When pretending you're still unconscious could make the difference that saved the world, it was best to keep your eyes closed on waking.

She wasn't in her bed. That was easy enough to feel. The noises would have alerted her anyway. They, combined with the smell, told her she was in a hospital or infirmary.

She subtly tested her limbs. They weren't bound. Probably meant she was amoung friendlies. Even so, when she opened her eyes it started with just a hopefully unnoticeable cracking open of her left eye. Just in case she judged wrong and she'd been captured by the enemy.

What she saw confirmed what she already knew: some kind of medical facility.

To get more information from her surroundings she was going to have to reveal she was awake, but there were other sources of information. What was the last thing she remembered. Her mind was hazy, but she thought she put things into the right order. If she had, then that would mean the last thing she remembered was fighting Shego. She must have been knocked unconscious, but that didn't tell her who brought her to here. Friend or foe?

To find out she would have to tip her hand, so she opened her eyes then tried to sit up.

A hand firmly, but gently, forced her back down.

“I wouldn't do that in your current state.”

She recognized the voice: Shego. She was amoung enemies. That clarified nothing. If Shego had control of her then why wasn't she dead? Why wasn't she locked into the hospital bed? Why did Shego's voice lack animosity and taunting?

She decided to play along, “What is my current state?” she asked as politely as she could.

“You're a recently created clone,” Shego said in an infuriatingly matter of fact manner.

Her eyes opened wide in panic. If she was a clone then that meant there would be no rescue, there would be no one to stop whatever it was that Shego planned to do to her.

“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

“Nothing. You can go to your family if you like. They'll accept you like a long lost daughter and never think any less of you for being a clone. You know that.”

“But...” she let the word hang when she realized she didn't have a sentence to follow it with.

“You're unrestrained, you know your way out. If you want to, you can leave. I've instructed the henchmen: no one will try to stop you.”

“I, uh, actually don't know my way out,” she admitted.

“Oh.” Shego sounded somewhat surprised. “Out that door,” she pointed, “take a left, go passed the training area, take a right after the living quarters, and continue to the end of the hall.” Shego looked away as if she were finished, but then she added, “But wait twelve to fifteen minutes for your body to adjust to being … made.”

The girl on the infirmary bed was trying to take this all in.

If she was a clone then there were so many questions. How would she distinguish herself from the original? Were her memories, feelings, and personality less real because they belonged to someone else? Why did she have those things, which DNA surely wouldn't carry, in the first place? Why had she been cloned? How would she explain to other people, “Oh, I'm not Kim, I'm just her clone”? What would she do with her life? Did she need to live in fear of carbonated beverages? Was the process that created her stable? While she was sure Kim's family would accept her if she asked them, could she convince everyone else that she wasn't Kim's evil clone? All of these things and more came to her mind, some came and went so fast she couldn't hold onto the thoughts long enough to remember them.

And, on the other hand, if she wasn't a clone, then what sort of mind game was being played here?

“Why did you make me if you don't plan to do anything to me?”

Shego sighed. “This may surprise you, Princess, but there aren't any experts on clone psychology out there. We weren't even sure if telling you you were a clone would cause a breakdown. We made up an elaborate lie just to spare you from that possibility but in the end I decided to tell you the truth, hope for the best, and have a therapist on standby.”

The girl said, “Two things.”

“The first?”

“If there's a therapist on standby where is he?”

“She is in the next room.”

The girl nodded. “Second: How does that relate to my question?”

“It relates to your question because we also don't know what telling you why you were created would do to you. One theory is that you'll latch onto it as your purpose in life. Another is that you'll rebel against it. A third is that it will have no effect upon you at all.” Shego paused. “Regardless, to be on the safe side, I'm not telling.

“You're going to have to work things out for yourself.”

“So you created me, and now you're just going to let me go?”

“If that's what you want.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to decide, of your own free will, to stay around here for a while and get a better idea of what it's like than you would racing in, blowing stuff up, and racing out again.”

The clone was puzzled, “Why would I do that?”

“Why not?” Shego asked.

The girl gave a look that indicated it wasn't a good enough answer.

“Curiosity?” Shego asked.

The girl thought that was a tempting reason, she'd never had access to one of the bases. She saw them mostly through ventilation systems and the lab that housed whatever the latest “super” weapon happened to be. Beyond that she knew almost, but not quite, nothing about them.

On the other hand, she was either Kim Possible, the nemesis of the people who worked here, or a clone of the same. That didn't seem like it would result in pleasant relations with the people there.

She decided to show no reaction to Shego.

“Ok, how about this: you're probably ready to sit up now.”

The girl tried to sit up. She succeeded with no ill effects.

“And you'll be ready to walk out of here soon. However, you're not exactly in fighting trim. There are any number of people who would do all sorts of things to get themselves on the vaunted Kim Possible,” for the first time Shego spoke with sarcasm and animosity, but it evaporated with her next words, “or a copy thereof.

“I'm sure you'd be completely safe with your family, but if you want to go off on your own you'll probably have to wait until you've trained yourself up to Kim's level anyway, so why not do the training here? You'll not only be sure that you'll be safe when you do go out, you'll also make sure that we're not doing anything evil by being in our midst the entire time.

“Necessary practice, keeping us from being evil, no one loses.”

The girl asked, “Where's the exit again?”

Shego sighed, the girl thought that she could see a sadness in Shego's eyes but wasn't sure. Regardless, Shego answered, “Out the door, left down the hall, right after the living quarters, exit is at the end of that hall.”

“And if I go no one will stop me?” the girl asked.

“No one,” Shego said, this time looking away.

The girl weighed various possibilities in her mind. Letting her go could be a bluff but she, or Kim, or whatever, had gotten pretty good at reading Shego and it didn't seem like one. If it wasn't a bluff then she had no idea what was going on. Why create a clone just to let it go? If it was a bluff then not calling it arguably put her in a better position than calling it. Better she be seen as playing along than be in open defiance.

She didn't think it was a bluff. She thought that if she wanted to she could leave. And that made her decide to stay. She was curious, and, while she'd never stay if she were forced, if she could come and go as she pleased then she saw no downside to staying around for a bit.

Finally she said, “What was the lie?”

“Huh?” Shego seemed surprised. She seemed to think the conversation had ended and also seemed to have forgotten mention of a lie.

“You made up an 'elaborate lie' because you weren't sure if it was a good idea to let me know I was a clone. What was the lie?”

“It was elaborate, but it didn't take a lot of effort to make it up. It was just my story but with the pronouns changed to sound like it was your story.”

“What is your story?”

“Personal.”

“You were considering telling me anyway.”

“Yeah, but...” Shego sighed. She didn't like all of the sighing she'd been doing. She'd known this was a bad idea from the beginning, yet she had insisted on doing it anyway. She'd been desperate and hadn't seen another way. Now she was going to have to … on the other hand, maybe it was a good sign. It showed interest. “Whatever,” she said, trying to sound annoyed. “Make yourself comfortable.”

The girl adjusted herself so she was sitting cross legged on the bed facing Shego. She rested her chin on her hands.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The walk to the living quarters was a short one, and it passed mostly in silence.

By the time they arrived the clone had settled on "Place" as the name she'd think of herself as until a more permanent one could be found.

Place had mostly kept her eyes forward but she every time a door opened she instinctively looked to see if a threat might be coming through it.  What she saw in those glimpses gave her more to think about than she really wanted.

Shego said something about the room not being well furnished, but Place wasn't really listening.  She was thinking about the other rooms she'd had glimpses into.  None of them were well furnished.  No personal touches, or at least not much in the way of them.  Not much point in making your quarters into a home when some teenager could show up at any moment and blow the whole complex up.

That was a disturbing thought for place.  Evil lairs were places where people lived.  Granted they were mostly henchmen who could transfer to a different location, but that different location would be another evil lair.  Another place that a "hero" might destroy.  Stopping someone from taking over the world was important, obviously, but did Kim really need to bring about utter destruction?  Did she really need to go around blowing up people's homes?

How many of them were like Shego, working this job only because they knew that the world was never seriously at risk?  How was what they did any different from any other private security force?

The Middleton Space Center routinely housed things that could be used to take over the world, how would Kim react to someone blowing up the security guard's homes?

There was no question how someone who did that would be viewed, and the word to describe such a person wasn't 'hero'.

And all this brought up another thought.  If one thought of the henchmen as simply hired security, which technically they were, then how were the villains operations any different from that of various "legitimate" businesses that destroyed far more lives and yet always seemed to avoid prosecution.

Drakken threatens the world and everyone on his staff is sent to jail after seeing their home blown up.  A "respectable" business actually  damages  the world, causing immeasurable harm to hundreds or even thousands of people, and the CEO never seemed to take a fall for it.  Certainly not the security guards.

While she wanted to tell herself she was nothing like Kim, the memory of the fight in the rain still looming large in her mind, Place knew that the only real difference was that she was looking at things from an outsider's perspective for the first time.  Since she knew she wasn't Kim, she had nothing invested in seeing Kim as being right.  She was free to judge as harshly as she wanted, and she was content to judge quite harshly.

The larger problem, though, was that her entire personality had been built on the ideas of good and evil, right and wrong, villains and heroes, the law abiding and the law breakers... in short: black and white.  The world now seemed exceedingly sepia.

Place had no idea what to do about that.

She located the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.

She curled up in a ball and waited for darkness to take her.

Chapter Text

When Place woke up in the morning she didn't know what to do.

She clearly remembered exactly where she was and what she'd been told, she had no illusions that it might have been a dream and it would turn out that she was, in fact, the real Kim Possible.

Her room had some generic clothing in her size, she dressed in a black t-shirt and loose bluejeans. But then what? Could she really walk around inside of Drakken's lair, looking for all the world like Kim Possible, and not have it turn into a disaster? Wouldn't alarms go off and chaos break loose as soon as one of the henchmen saw her? Wouldn't everyone she met expect her to fight them?

She ended up thinking herself into a box. She didn't remember how exactly she got there, but she was sitting against a wall, knees pulled into her chest, when Shego found her.

She hadn't heard Shego coming and gave a yelp of surprise when Shego tapped her on a shoulder.

"Jumpy?" Shego asked.

"You could knock," Place snapped. She regretted her tone, partially because she didn't think it was called for, but also because it wounded her pride. She only reacted that way because she felt vulnerable, and she didn't like feeling vulnerable.

"I did," Shego said.

"Oh," Place said. "Sorry."

Shego sat down next to Place and asked, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

Place thought it over for a moment. "No." She looked at Shego who seemed disappointed. "I want to get out of here." For a moment Shego's expression turned ... pained? Afraid? Place wasn't sure. It was only a moment before Shego suppressed whatever it was and her face was neutral. Still, Place had a feeling she knew what caused the expression, and it was a misunderstanding. "Of the room," she clarified.

"Shego said a drawn out, "Oh," with relief and understanding in her voice, but then stopped it abruptly and repeated, "Oh," with no hint of emotion.

Place made note of it in her mind, hoping that at some point she'd be able to figure out what Shego's agenda was. If it was nefarious, though, Place had to admit that she'd already been duped. Maybe it was learning Shego's story, maybe it was the impression she'd gotten from Shego's few unguarded moments-there hadn't been that many- maybe it was wishful thinking, but Place felt like whatever Shego wanted it wasn't inherently bad.

Which made Place realize that, sooner or later, she was going to have to find out if she'd been subject to any mental conditioning or mind control. But not yet.

Now she was planning to stay in the lair until she was strong enough to defend herself against whatever the world might throw her way. Which brought her back to leaving the room. "You mentioned training yesterday."

"I did," Shego said.

"Where would we do that?" Place asked.

"We?" Shego asked. Her voice wasn't neutral, but it also didn't give Place an insight into what the woman was thinking it was... guarded, maybe? It would fit with the way Shego seemed to be trying to hide her emotions.

Then it hit her: since when did Shego hide what she was feeling? Shego said whatever she felt with snark and volume. And she'd back it up with violence if need be.

Whatever Shego was looking for in Place, Place realized that it had to be completely different from Kim's normal interactions with Shego. But that little epiphany was soon cancelled out by the realization that she'd already known that.

Shego didn't offer Kim a place to stay. Shego didn't sit down and talk with Kim. Shego didn't treat Kim the way she was treating Place in any way at all.

Realizing everything was completely different wasn't attaining some new knowledge, it was just going around in a circle and returning to square one.

And that's when Place noticed that Shego had taken out her nail file.

"Sorry," Place said. She said it sincerely. She meant it. If it turned out that Shego was planning on using her for evil then the whole sitch was going to be hell. She was too emotionally attached already. She'd only been there for a day.

Then again, Place thought, she'd only been alive for a day.

"You going to tell me what's going on in there, princess," Shego asked, "or are you just going to keep on drifting off with no explanation?"

"I just have a lot to think about, is all," Place said. "Anyway, where were we?"

"Well, funny you should ask that..." Shego said, a hint of her usual snark in her voice.

"We were at 'we'," Place realized.

"Yes we were," Shego said.

"Well, I just sort of assumed we'd train together," Place said. "Did you not want to train with me?" Place originally planned to let Shego respond, but before Shego could, Place thought of more to add, "I mean if you're not working on any evil schemes then you've got the free time, right?"

"Yes, I do," Shego said.

"So, do you have something better to do?" Place asked. She didn't realize it, but she had slipped into a, very mild version of, the Possible puppy-dog pout.

"No," Shego said.

"Then: yes, 'we'," Place said. She stood up. "Come on, it'll be fun."

Shego smiled, an actual honest smile. No evidence of a reverse polarizer. No evidence that the tables were about to turn against her. No common enemy. Place was experiencing something Kim never had. It was odd, but it was also good. Place wanted to see more of the smiling Shego.

Once Shego was on her feet Place was out the door. Only to turn right back around and say, "I know you already told me, but where is the training area again?"

Shego laughed. A good-natured, non-adversarial laugh. Place instantly decided that she wanted more of the laughing Shego too.

"Follow me," Shego said.

* * *

"Ok," Place said, uncertainly, "so, why is it such a disgusting color?"

"Snot?" Shego asked.

"Yeah, snot," Place said. "Why is it snot-colored?"

Shego launched a plasma burst at the far wall of the gym. When it hit the far wall it looked like any other time Shego's plasma hit a resilient wall, but when the flash had faded there was no evidence the wall had been hit at all. "It can't stand up to my best, which is why the military sold it so cheaply-"

"The military?" Place asked.

"It was the usual thing," Shego said. "Someone wanted plasma powered soldiers and thought they could get it by capturing me, experimenting-"

"Oh god, Shego," Place said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not," Shego said. "They couldn't catch me anyway. When I found out why I was getting annoyed by them so often, though, I let them catch me."

After that Shego said nothing.

"Well?" Place asked.

"Well what?"

"What happened after you let them catch you?"

"They decided that they never wanted to catch me again, and sold the allegedly plasma-proof materials they'd developed, amoung other things, to anyone who would buy them in an attempt to cut their losses," Shego said with a smile.

"What did you do?" Place asked playfully.

"Oh, not much."

"Come on," Place asked in her best coaxing voice.

"I may have escaped from their plasma-proof cell by turning it to ash," Shego said. She smirked. "And I may have set fire to the entire facility." She paused for a beat. "And I could, possibly, have started a minor volcano at the site."

"Volcano?!"

"Ok, it's not as impressive as it sounds," Shego said, her voice colored by an unusual humility. Also, Place wasn't sure if she might be imagining it, but could it be possible that Shego was being bashful? Place thought she picked up on it, she was almost sure of it, but on the other hand: Shego.

"How is creating a volcano anything but impressive?" Place asked.

"After I scared the people out of the facility I wanted to make an example of it," Shego said. "It had been built for the sole purpose of experimenting on me, after all."

"So you made a volcano."

"Not on purpose," Shego said.

"How do you-"

"I just went full burn in the center and was planning on burning downward a few hundred... or maybe a few thousand feet. I don't really remember the plan..." Shego trailed off. Then she finished quickly, "I just remember trying to get away as fast as I could when I realized how much heat was coming from the other side of the bedrock."

"You just randomly hit a magma chamber?" Place was incredulous.

"How was I supposed to know one would be there?" Shego asked defensively. "They're supposed to be buried deep. One to ten kilometers. It shouldn't have been so close to the surface."

"A kilometer is a few thousand feet."

"Whatever."

"Why would you go that deep anyway? Were you trying to make the place into an inverted mountain?" Place asked. "Or... something?"

"I just wanted to make it into a massive hole in the ground," Shego said. "Then all of a sudden I realized that the rock was going to melt without my help." Shego sighed. "And at that point I realized that I should run. Unfortunately, I had to climb a long way before I got to the running."

"Thus, a volcano," Place said.

"Thus, a volcano," Shego echoed.

"And therefore snot-colored gym?"

"You got it," Shego said. "Much easier to work out when you don't need to worry about burning the place down. So, are you planning on talking all day, or did you want to spar?"

"Definitely spar," Place said, lunging at Shego before she even finished the sentence.

Shego leapt back and smiled at the surprise attack, then visibly settled into her fighting mode, "You'd better be careful, Princess-"

"Think I'm afraid of you?" Place said, feeling good. It wasn't a fight without banter.

"I think I'm rubbing off on you," Shego said. "I mean, a sneak attack?"

Place just lunged forward again and threw a punch.

Chapter Text

“Ok,” Place said, “that was definitely fun.”

“Until the adrenaline high wears off and we're just left exhausted and icky,” Shego said.

“Icky?”

“Don't even pretend you're not, I can smell you from here.”

“Ah,” Place said as if that explained everything, “icky.”

“But you've got something else on your mind, don't you?”

“No idea what you're—”

“You can't lie, princess,” Shego said. “You never could-- she never could. Gah!”

Place smiled at the way things were sliding off topic. “You created the situation, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Shego said with a sigh.

“Still not going to tell me why?”

“What I'm going to do is make sure you head off to the shower before you stink up the whole lair.”

“I do not smell that bad,” Place protested.

“Sure,” Shego packed concentrated sarcasm into one word in that way only Shego should.

“And you smell like a rose,” Place responded. “What ever possessed you to spend so much time in that jumpsuit?”

“First off, I have more than one. Second, they're jumpsuits made out of …” Shego trailed off. “That's not important. They wick moisture really well.” A beat later she asked, “What was bothering you earlier?”

“It's nothing,” Place said, looking away.

“When it really is nothing, people generally don't feel the need to avert their gaze,” Shego said.

“It's just, I throw a punch or a kick and it doesn't land as hard as it should,” Place said. “As hard as I expect it to. As hard as it would if she threw it.”

“You've got a new body,” Shego said. “It needs to be conditioned. I thought we covered this.”

“I know,” Place said. “It's just that I have these memories of how my body should work and it doesn't, and every time it doesn't it reminds me that I'm not her.” Place looked at the floor. “Even though I remember being her.”

“Do...” Shego sounded uncertain, maybe even ashamed and regretful as she trailed off. It was enough to make Place whip her head around to look at Shego so fast she worried she'd give herself whiplash. “Would you prefer I hadn't had you made?”

“What?” Place asked in genuine shock. “No.”

Place watched as relief washed over Shego's face.

“It's just strange,” Place said. “That's all.”

“I can imagine,” Shego said. “I'm not a big cloning fan in general.”

“But you like me?” Place asked playfully.

“You're one of the good ones,” Shego said, playing along.

For a bit they walked in silence.

“Why do I even have memories?” Place asked.

“I have no idea,” Shego said. Shego got a distant look in her eyes, “Drakken explained at one point, but I only pay enough attention to skim off the meaningful bits.”

“You look like you're going to pull out your nail file right now,” Place commented.

“Yeah, you would too if you listened to his explanations. It takes the man five hours to deliver information that could be done in three sentences because he's so proud of himself that he has to cover every single detail, in detail, usually multiple times.”

“That does sound infuriating.”

“The only way to survive is to learn to filter most of it out.” After a pause, Shego said, “Anyway, if you're interested, you should ask Drakken about the memories thing. Just be prepared to gnaw your own leg off to survive the experience of hearing his explanation.”

“I might do that.”

“After you shower,” Shego said forcefully.

They'd reached Place's quarters, and Place went in without comment, but she did roll her eyes.

* * *

“That doesn't mean anything. It's just a bunch of technobable strung together in a way that vaguely resembles a coherent thought,” Place said after Drakken's third explanation.

“Ok, fine, I don't know,” Drakken admitted.

“You don't know?”

“I don't know,” Drakken said. “Don't rub it in.”

“You can duplicate a person right down to their memories and you don't know how it works?”

“All I know is that, for some reason, if you make an unmodified clone of a living being, and age it to the same age as the being was when the sample was taken, the clone will have the memories of the original,” Drakken said.

“Unmodified?”

“No short cuts, no synthogoo, no mind control, no enhancements, no conditioning,” Drakken said. “I was planning to create a copy that would set off no red flags. Loyalty would have to be based on training; which is slow, but it would have been worth it.” Drakken seemed to take a moment to reminisce about his failed plan. “But then Project Mole-rat Mole was ruined when the subject had the same memories and, worse, morality as the original,” Drakken finished angrily.

“Project … you tried to copy Rufus?!”

“And the rodent almost destroyed the entire lair,” Drakken snapped. “I'd only just paid it off.”

Place tried not to laugh. She failed.

“In the end we had to bribe the little vermin with cheese and find him a home of his own just to stop the place from coming down on our heads.”

“Where is he now?”

“The rodent is currently living with a twelve year old girl who lives two blocks away from Bueno Nacho headquarters,” Drakken said bitterly.

Place snickered. Then she noticed how crestfallen Drakken appeared and decided not to rub it in too much. She changed topics by asking, “So what is your evil plan for me?”

It didn't seem to lighten Drakken's mood any. Instead he threw his hands in the air and said, “It's Shego's plan, and she won't tell me.” He walked away and added, “I try to keep her happy,” he turned to Place and said, “I think of us as an evil family you see-- but sometimes I feel like she's forgetting which of us is in charge.”

Place thought, “She is,” but chose not to say anything.

Drakken continued in his, Place thought, overly deep self-pity, “So right now we're all just sitting here doing nothing!”

“You do your best when you have time to think,” Place said.

“What?” Drakken asked, genuine surprise in his voice.

“Your best schemes have always been the ones where there was a plan no one managed to guess until it was, almost, too late,” Place said. She considered that she probably shouldn't be helping a villain, but then reminded herself that she was talking to Drakken. He'd never take over the world. “When you spend time doing nothing but thinking, you're always more formidable.”

“That's an interesting observation,” Drakken said.

* * *

Place reflexively jumped back into a fighting stance and then said, “Sorry,” to the henchman.

“No problem,” he said in a shaky voice.

“I'm just used to seeing, you know, one of you meaning that there's a fight.”

“Right,” he said.

“I mean, doesn't seeing my face, which looks just like her face, put you on edge?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” the henchman said, his tone becoming more comfortable and casual.

“So how do you deal with it?” Place asked.

“Mostly by reminding myself that Shego would do unspeakable things to me if I gave you trouble,” he said.

“Unspeakable?”

“Probably not actually unspeakable,” the henchman admitted, “but likely experiences that I wouldn't want to revisit by speaking them.”

“Do you know why I was created?”

“No, but the going theory is that it's a straightforward attempt to balance things.”

“Balance?” Place asked, confused.

“Now that Stoppable's stepped up,” the henchman said. “I mean, he still bumbles more often than not, but everyone knows what he's capable of. Rumor has it Shego was sick of facing that and Possible.”

“So I'm just a way to balance the scales?”

“Well, there are two to one odds on that theory, so if you think it's not true... Well, actually, you probably couldn't place a bet because of the possibility of inside knowledge.” He paused, obviously thinking. “So if you want to put some money in the pot, feel free to do it through me, and if you get any inside knowledge, please give it to me.”

“People are betting on me?”

“People are betting on everything,” the henchman said. “Since I've been here there's been an ongoing over under for how long until Shego next flings plasma at Dr. D. There's usually a pool on the nature of the next scheme, with eighteen well defined categories. There's currently betting on how long before Robert, he's one of the henchmen, proposes to his girlfriend. The one on how long before Michael proposed to his boyfriend just paid out--”

“You bet on people's relationships?”

“Yeah,” the henchman said. “Not well, mind you. I had Michael taking another three months to propose.”

“You don't think that's...” Place found she didn't have the right word, “intrusive or insensitive or in-something.”

The henchman shrugged, “It's just the culture. I can tell the guys to stop making bets that involve you, if you don't feel comfortable.”

Place thought it over for a while. She quickly got side tracked by thinking about whether or not the popular reason for her creation was right. Did Shego create her just because Shego didn't want to be outnumbered two to one when Ron finally got control over his monkey power?

No. That didn't make sense. There'd be no reason to keep that a secret from her, much less Drakken and the Henches.

Finally, Place said, “I'm putting my money on it being something else, not the going theory.” And then she remembered, “As soon as I find out if I have any money to put on it.”

“Ok?” the henchman said. The word implied statement, the tone implied question. Place wasn't sure what to make of it.

“It was nice talking to you...” Place said.

“Andrew,” the henchman said. “It was nice meeting you...”

“I don't have a name yet,” Place said. “We're using 'Place' as a placeholder.”

“Well, nice meeting you, Place.”

“You too, Andrew.”

* * *

Place found Shego on a couch in a lounging room. Place plopped down beside her.

“So, did Drakken have your answers?” Shego asked.

“He doesn't know,” Place told her.

“He doesn't know?!”

“It took listening to three, mind numbing, fake explanations--where he tried to dazzle me with so much technobable I wouldn't notice he never actually answered the question—to get him to admit that he didn't know.”

“Ouch,” Shego said.

“I think I finally understood the urge to be evil after he was half an hour into the first one.”

“He does give one the urge to break things and hurt people.”

“I may need to invest in a nail file of my own.”

“For the uninitiated, I also recommend ear plugs.”

“You can get away with that?”

“You can get away with a lot; the down side is that sometimes it comes back to bite you in strange and unexpected ways.”

“Like what?” Place asked.

“Listening to music while he ranted ended with him trying to rap.”

“I remember that.”

“I wish I didn't.”

“I can understand that,” Place said. Then she thought for a bit. She was no closer to understanding exactly what she was or why she was the way she was than she had been before talking to Drakken even though Drakken was responsible for the process that created her.

“You're disappearing into your head again,” Shego said softly.

“Where does this leave me?”

“Where does what leave you?”

“Drakken doesn't know why I have memories, and he designed the process that made me, so why do I have memories?”

“If Drakken doesn't have a theory then the answer isn't science.”

“What does that mean?”

“Magic,” Shego said.

“Magic?” Place asked, unsure if Shego was joking.

“If Drakken doesn't know something, that doesn't mean much of anything. If Drakken can't even come up with a theory after looking into something, and he did look into it, then science can't answer things. He's incompetent at taking over the world, but he's pretty good at science.”

“I know I said--she said, 'Mad Scientist,' when I--she first met him, but I've always felt he was more of an upset engineer.”

“Kim only ever saw the application side because that was all she cared about or had to deal with, but you can't just say, 'I want to make a really small bomb,' and then have one that's ready to put on a techno-tick. There's a lot of science that has to come before the engineering and even when Drakken was stealing technology he usually had to have at least a cursory understanding of the theory in order to warp it for his own uses.”

“Ok...” Place said, unsure of what to say.

“Evil scientists just have a hard time getting their work published in traditional peer reviewed journals and evil peer reviewed journals never work because everyone ends up afraid that the peer reviewers will steal their work.”

“So... magic?”

“Magic.”

Chapter Text

"So, Um..."

"Yeah, Place?" Shego asked.

"Well, if I'm a few days old then I don't actually, uh, own anything unless someone gives me stuff, right?" Place asked.

"Uh, yeah. I got those clothes for you," Shego said.

Place's room was stocked with fairly generic clothing in her size; she'd settled into jeans and a t-shirt. Plain blue jeans plus a t-shirt that was either an earth tone or fairly dark. She definitely appreciated having clothing of her own, but that wasn't what she was thinking about at the moment.

"I talked to one of the henchmen, Andrew, about how people bet on everything here," Place said.

"If you want," Shego said, "I can make sure they don't bet on you."

"Thanks, but I was actually thinking about something else," Place said. "I was thinking about putting down some money on one bet myself."

Shego didn't even try to hide her surprise. When she found her voice she asked, "Which one?"

"Are you gonna tell me why you made me?" Place asked, in teasing tones.

"Nope," Shego said.

"Then it's my secret," Place said with a smirk.

"Well it's my money," Shego said. "I don't think anyone else is planning on helping you start your savings."

"So you will give me money of my own, but only if you're first convinced that I'll use it for something you approve of?"

"Nah, you can have money," Shego said. "How much are you planning on wasting?"

"Wasting?" Place asked, pretending to be offended. "Have you no faith in me?"

"You're not Kim," Shego said, "but I don't really see you as a big gambler."

"Well, it's a topic I'm interested in," Place said. "Also, maybe it's a good thing when I do things that Kimmie wouldn't. I don't want to be a carbon copy."

"'Kimmie'?" Shego asked.

"'Cupcake'?" Place asked.

Shego shrugged, "Whatever you want to call her, Princess."

"Anyway, if I don't want to be a copy of her, and I don't, then it seems like I should embrace areas that she wouldn't," Place said.

"Provided, of course, that you don't embrace them simply because she wouldn't," Shego said. "Doing the opposite of what someone else would do is letting them dictate your life as much as doing the same as what they would do. We have a specific term for it, but really it's just a mirror image of conforming to an authority figure's expectations, and no more healthy."

"Who is this 'we'?" Place asked

"Degree in child development, remember?" Shego said.

"Not a child anymore; neither is Kim."

"I know," Shego said. "Believe me, I know. I can still generalize what I learned."

"Well, I'm not planning on doing things just because Kim wouldn't do them," Place said. "I am, however, considering that if there's something that interests me, which Kim -though interested- wouldn't do, then maybe I should go for it."

Shego nodded. "That seems like a reasonable way to build your own identity."

"Thus, betting."

"Ok, let's talk about money."

x x x

"Are you sure Kim is human?" Shego asked asked while blocking a kick then countering.

"Pretty sure," Place said, struggling for breath. She flipped backward to avoid Shego's glowing fists, and then asked,"Why?"

Shego didn't pursue, instead letting the sparing stop.

"You're improving a lot faster than I would have expected," Shego said. "You'll be at Kim's level in another week, two at most."

"That's a good thing," Place said. "Right?"

For a moment Shego didn't say anything.

"Right," Shego said. "Yeah. Good thing."

"And that wasn't suspiciously forced at all," Place said.

"Your sarcasm is improving," Shego said, her tone completely level.

"So do you want to continue sparing?" Place asked.

Shego glanced at the clock in the training area, "Actually, I was thinking about your exploring avenues Kim doesn't, and specifically your interest in gambling."

"Ok..." Place said.

"If you're interested in cards, you'll want to hit the shower soon," Shego said.

"Poker?" Place asked.

"Nah," Shego said. "The henches call it 'The M-Game', you're not allowed to say the rules, but it's kind of like crazy eights."

"Mao?" Place asked.

"We do not speak it's name," Shego said.

"How can you bet on ma- 'The M-Game'?" Place asked.

"Financial point of order," Shego said. "Betting is in order of play. Once it's settled play resumes. Whoever takes the hand wins the pot. Pretty simple."

"You bet on a game where the rules are in a constant state of flux and confusion rules the day?" Place asked.

"Pretty much," Shego said. "Well... I usually don't. I mean, if I want money I steal it, not win it. But it can be fun."

"Sounds good," Place said.

x x x

"Have room for two more?" Shego asked.

"Yeah," a hench said, sounding somewhat confused. "Come on in."

Place was getting used seeing the henches around, but she still mostly kept to herself around them. It had been a lot easier for her to be at ease around Shego than the rest of the people who worked in the lair.

She stayed close to Shego as they entered the room. Place reminded herself that the six henches were not, in fact, her enemies. It was easy to tell herself, but it was somewhat harder to get to the point where she felt it was true.

"Place!" one of the henches called out.

It took her a second to recognize him, then she responded, "Andrew!" waved to him, and whispered to Shego, "My bookie."

They sat around the table, Place beside Shego, and introductions were made. The henches were Andrew (obviously), Jacob, Ryan, Michael, Alex, and Ian.

Shego dealt.

x x x

For the first three hands Place just watched. With mao it was always paid to make sure you knew what rules were in play. Declare spades, obviously, law of sevens, but are the rules for aces, twos, jacks, and so forth being obeyed? Are there any special rules?

For another five hands she bet conservatively and repeatedly lost.

On the next hand she got hit by the law of sevens, hard, and spent a while paying more attention to sorting her hand than the game. When she started paying attention again she had more cards in her hand than Shego, Andrew, Michael, Jacob, and Ian combined. She was also pretty sure she was going to win.

It took a while to get rid of cards that didn't fit her plan, but once she had, she just had to wait for the right moment and then:

"Financial point of order!" Place called out.

Everyone slapped their cards down on the table. "I'm putting in everything I have," Place announced.

"Uh, Princess," Shego said, "you have noticed that you haven't even come close to winning, right?"

"You think I can't win?" Place asked.

"I think that if you blow everything you've got in a single hand, I'm not going to pay for your next buy in," Shego said.

"I'm putting in everything I have," Place said.

"You overestimate the value of bluffing," Michael said. "Call."

Alex and Ian called as well. Everything stopped when it was Andrew's turn.

After a while Shego said, "Raise, call, or fold. It's not that complicated."

"I... I don't know what I want to do," Andrew said.

"You want to fold," Place told him.

"I want to fold?" he asked.

"You want to fold," Place repeated.

"I fold," Andrew said.

Jacob called, Ryan folded, Shego called, then announced, "End all points of order."

Everyone grabbed their cards and Place immediately said, "Twoed," and slapped down a six of hearts on top of the six of hearts on the discard pile, ace of clubs, "Twoed," ace of clubs, seven of diamonds, "Twoed," seven of diamonds and so on. She had the entire thing planed out, all she had to do was make sure that no one else got a card in and remember to declare what she had to declare.

Eight "twoed"s later she got to the tricky part, where forgetting to say things could trip her up. "King of hearts, Shego is king-"

"Damn straight I am," Shego said.

"Twoed. King of hearts, Shego is king," Place said. "Twoed. Three of Spades. Twoed. Three of Spades..."

And Place kept on shedding cards until she reached, "Ace of Spades. Last Card. Twoed. Ace of Spades." She slapped the discard pile and declared, "Mao."

As Place pulled the chips to herself, Shego said, "Good run, Place."

"Still think I shouldn't have put it all in?" Place asked.

"What do you want me to say?" Shego asked. "'I was wrong'?"

"Wouldn't hurt," Place said.

"I was wrong," Shego said.

There was a murmur of shock around the table. Place was pretty sure that the henchmen hadn't seen Shego admit she was wrong before.

As Shego shuffled a stack of about a hundred cards she said to Place, "You'll ruin my reputation if you keep doing things like that."

Place shrugged and cleared her mind in preparation for the next hand.

x x x

Place heard something, but it didn't register. It was louder, still didn't register.

"Earth to Place," Shego said, quite loudly. When Place looked up at her she said, "You're getting stuck in your own head again."

"I was just thinking that I should have a mission outfit," Place said.

"Please don't copy Kim's purple disaster."

"I definitely don't want to be a mirror image of Kim," Place said.

Shego plopped down next to Place and said, "Well if you want my advice..."

"Green and black jumpsuit?" Place asked. Shego's own mission-wear was well known to her, after all.

"Nah," Shego said. "I doubt you'd go for something like that, but I do have two thoughts."

"Don't strain yourself," Place said, keeping her voice level but enjoying teasing Shego.

"Funny," Shego said. "I do think that there's something to be said for bright colors in one's mission gear. That was thought one."

"And thought two?" Place asked with genuine interest.

"I know I made fun of it, but Kim's old mission gear was a good look," Shego said.

"They don't make that anymore," Place said.

"They don't need to; do you have any idea how many copies of that were produced around the time we used syntho-clones?"

"Kim style," Place said with a hint of disgust.

"Which means that you can absolutely get the same style," Shego said, "But I recommend replacing the t-shirt with something bright."

"You're hoping for bright green, aren't you?" Place asked.

"A girl can dream," Shego said.

"Any other ideas?" Place asked. She wasn't planning on wearing bright green on missions and there was no point lingering on it.

"Match your hair," Shego offered.

"Red?" Place asked, not trying to hide the skepticism in her voice. For whatever reason, red didn't seem like a good color for mission clothes. Even Ron, well known for wearing a red shirt almost exclusively, didn't wear red on missions.

"Your hair is orange, Princess," Shego said. "It's called red when discussing hair for reasons that defy comprehension, but it is definitely orange."

"Bright orange?" Place asked. It only took a moment to conclude, "I'd look like road work."

"Maybe a warm orange?" was Shego's response.

"Maybe," Place said, and she meant it. She wasn't sold on an orange shirt, but she'd consider it.

x x x

After her second weekly game of mao, Place took Andrew aside to talk to him.

"I'm confused," Andrew said.

"About which part?" Place asked.

"The part where you're..." Andrew said. "You know what, that's the thing. Starting at the beginning, continuing through the middle, and reaching all the way to the end. That's the part that I'm confused about."

"Ok, I'm not offering to teach you how to beat Kim," Place said.

"I got that."

"But I am offering to teach you how to better fight Kim."

"And you've lost me again."

"If you're going to lose anyway, it seems to me like you might as well toss the fight rather than risk getting hurt."

"We... we actually do that already," Andrew said, looking embarrassed.

"I did not know that," Place said.

"Well, it's not like we advertise it."

"Makes sense," Place said. "Anyway, we could spar, you could practice against Kim's moves, and thus be able to put up a more believable fight while having a lower chance of getting hurt."

"Interesting offer," Andrew said. "I'll pass it around."

x x x

"I think I'm ready to go out on my own," Place said.

"Planning on leaving?" Shego asked. Place was pretty sure she heard some sadness in Shego's voice.

"I'm planning on seeing my family, checking some things out, and thinking a bit," Place said. "Maybe getting a permanent name."

"Are you going to come back?" Shego asked.

"Yeah, but don't wait up for-" Place stopped. "Actually, if Drakken has an evil scheme thought up, I might have use for it."

"What are you thinking?" Shego asked.

"Nothing terribly interesting," Place said. "I'm just not sure that I'm ready to deal with Kim, if you could get her out of the house so I could see the rest of my family without her..."

"Yeah, we can probably work that out," Shego said. "You are coming back, right?"

"I'm coming back," Place said.

Chapter Text

Kim rushed out the door, hopped into the back the car that was waiting -Place thought she recognized it as belonging to someone Kim had helped find a lost dog- and was gone. She never looked back; she never looked up. She didn't see Place standing on the roof above the doorway.

Place considered running up the slanted roof, dropping down onto the second story deck, and then making her way inside from there. It would achieve a moment's fun -running on rooftops was always good for a quick pick-me-up- and it was a way that Kim had never entered the house, but sometimes simple approaches were best.

She wanted to meet with her family, not make them feel insecure about their easy-to-break-into home. They only finished rebuilding a few months ago, after all. Let them think they were safe for a while. If the past few years had been any indication it would be in need of major reconstruction soon anyway.

She flipped down from her perch and entered the house through the front door.

* * *

Ann looked up from the table at the sound of someone entering the room. She didn't immediately register that her daughter was wearing different clothes than the ones she had rushed out in moments before.

"Kim?" She asked. "Did you forget something? When you left it seemed urgent."

"Yeah," the young woman said, "about that. . . I'm not Kim."

For a moment there was complete silence.

* * *

James never looked up from his paper as he said, "You're going to have to explain that young lady. You certainly sound like Kim."

"I'm a clone created from Kim's genetic material who happens to have Kim's memories from before said genetic material was harvested for reasons that are unknown but assumed to involve magic or something equally scientifically implausible."

"That's interesting," James said.

"Honey, as a neurosurgeon-" Ann said.

"Mom, before you say whatever completely reasonable thing it is I'm sure you're about to say," the Kim who claimed to be not-Kim said, "I ask that you remember the mind switching sitch."

"She does have a point," James said. There was only one thing that was bothering him about this situation, and it had nothing to do with scientific possibility. He was about to ask about it, when the girl responded to his concern unprompted.

"No, dad, there weren't any boys involved," the young woman said. "I was created at the request of Kim's arch nemesis, Shego, who is definitely not a boy.

"Which brings me to the last thing that I think I have to get out in the open before we can start a genuine conversation: in the time since I was created I've been staying at a secret lair with a couple of super-villians and their employees." Finished speaking she sat in Kim's spot at the table.

* * *

So far Place thought that things were going very well, the timing of the evil scheme had obviously been perfect since Kim had left without touching her food leaving a full plate for Place. "Brainloaf," she said, "how I've missed thee."

* * *

"So," Jim said.

"You're a clone of Kim who was created by an obviously illegal process," Tim said.

"Presumably without her knowledge or consent," Jim said.

"And you're hanging out with super-villians," they said as one.

"Yup."

"Cool," Jim and Tim said.

* * *

"So, probably the first thing to get out the way," Place said between bites of brain shaped meatloaf, "is the fact that I don't have a name."

"What do you call yourself," her mother asked.

"We've been going with 'Place' which is short for 'Placeholder'," Place said. "It's kind of grown on me, but the entire point of having a placeholder name was that I figured you and dad might want to have some say in what your daughter's name is."

"What about," Jim began.

"Us?" Tim finished.

"That depends on your input," Place said, eyeing them warily.

* * *

"We never considered a name for Kim other than 'Kimberly Ann'" Ann said.

"You could always go with 'Ann'," James said before flipping to the next page in the paper.

"Making Kim's middle name my first name doesn't really seem like having a name of my own," Place said.

"You could be 'Evil Kim-Clone'," Tim said.

"'The Kimitation'," Jim said.

Ann resisted the urge to shout at her sons. She didn't know what was going through Place's mind, but she was sure that coming into the world fully grown with memories that weren't your own was difficult enough without being mocked.

"Boys, there will be no mocking your sister simply because she's the product of mad science," James said.

Ann felt some relief at that. James' mind might be half in another world more than half the time, but he had a way of calmly dealing with situations like these. It still didn't help with giving this new daughter a name, though.

To her surprise, the twins redeemed themselves with a good suggestion.

"Kim doesn't even use her full first name, you could use what she she doesn't," Jim said.

"Leaving me with Berly?" Place scoffed. "I think I'll pass.

"She uses the first, syllable," Tim said. "You could use the last."

"'ly'?" Place asked.

"'Lee' is a name," James said.

"Isn't it a boy's name?" Place asked.

"Not always," Ann said. "I had a Leah as a roommate my first year in medical school, and I can assure you that she was quite feminine."

Place made a 'Hmmm' sound as she thought it over.

"With reduplication it would be 'Leela'," Place said.

Ann didn't quite follow that logic, and so she asked, "Wouldn't reduplication make it 'Lalee'?"

"And have those two call me Lolly-pop?" Place asked, pointing at the twins who were suddenly trying, and failing, to look like they would never consider such a thing.

"So, 'Leela'?" Ann asked.

"Unless someone has objections I guess I'm 'Leela Place Possible'," Place said.

"I don't object," James said.

"It's a fine name," Ann told her daughter.

* * *

The conversation that followed went rather well, Place thought. It would take her a while to start thinking of herself as 'Leela', but she hadn't been 'Place' all that long so she figured it would work out. There was only one, completely expected, problem.

"You really plan on going back to living with a gang of criminals?" her mother asked.

"It's not a gang, it's a vaguely organized paramilitary security force whose primary job is to protect a compound, containing labs and living quarters, which happens to be overseen by someone dad made fun of in college."

"I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had treated Drew better," Place's father said, not looking up from his paper.

"Yeah," Place said in a tone she hoped was flat rather than sarcastic, "If you'd given him the cybertronic armor instead of Pinky Joe Curly Tail then there might be two fewer villains in the world."

"Oh, Pinky Joe," her dad said wistfully.

"I'm just not comfortable with the idea of my daughter breaking the law," her mother said.

"Then you probably should have thought about that before you started letting Kim cross borders without going through customs, order Wade to hack into secure systems, help out in the emergency room without certification, and bring space ships from orbit to landing without filing a flight plan." Place was originally going to stop there, but then she decided to add, "Not to mention that she wasn't certified for that last one either."

Her mother looked shocked.

"Not that I disapprove," Place said quickly. "I mean being a vigilante is kind of iffy, but I totally intend to copy her tax evasion strategy."

When her mother spoke, it was with the lack of emotion that Place imagined came from being thrown for a loop with such force that your feelings and brain landed in different time zones. She hadn't meant to do that to her mother, and mentally kicked herself.

As for what her mother actually said, it was simply, "Tax evasion?"

"Yeah, you know," Place said, "Kim renders services and she could accept payment there and then and then use that payment to, say, charter a boat later, but instead she does it for free -wink, wink; nudge, nudge- and then charters the boat for free later on as repayment of the favor. She gets the same thing as if she accepted payment, but by leaving money out of the equation and 'forgetting' to declare the numerous gifts to the IRS she doesn't pay a cent in taxes.

"I'm pretty sure everyone would work for barter- sorry, 'favors' if they thought they could get away with the same thing, but not everyone has Kim's contacts in the government to stop people from looking into the undeclared gifts.

"I mean, whenever a member of congress tries to do what Kim does, they end up resigning in disgrace. The smart ones know to declare their bribes, because they wrote the law such that declared ones are legal." Place had, in fact, taken Shego's advice and looked at some of the congressional record.

"Kimmie's a criminal!" Jim said.

"Hikka bikka boo?" Tim said.

"Hoo sha!" Jim said.

"I'm raising a house full of criminals," their mother sighed.

"I'm sorry," Place said. "I didn't mean to bring you down."

"No," her mother said, her voice returning to normal. "It's fine. I've gotten used to it actually." She paused. "It's just that it's usually coming from the boys or being used to save the world."

"Well," Place said, "I'm not exactly planning on ending the world."

* * *

Shego called ahead to let Place know when Kim was on her way back, so Place wrapped up the conversation and said her good-byes while asking her family to let her break the news to Kim when she was ready. She wasn't entirely sure when she'd be ready.

Her mother followed her to the door. "Are you going back to the lair?" she asked.

"No," Place said. "I'm going to see Wade and have him check me over for any mind control or behavioral modification."

"I thought you said you trusted them."

"I did and I do. But I think 'Trust, but verify' is a good strategy here."

"That does seem smart," her mother said. "And after Wade?"

"I've got some stuff to figure out on my own," Place said. "I don't fully understand the process that created me yet. I would very much like to." Place paused and thought a moment, "Depending on where that takes me I might stop in to see Nana, Joss . . . even Larry. Regardless, after that I'm going back to the lair."

"And you're sure you'll be safe there?"

"Kim's still planning on going to university in Hong Kong after this 'year off for reconstruction' thing she's doing, right?"

"Yes, but I don't see how-"

"Mom, are you sure she'll be safe there? A year isn't that long to rebuild when you think about it, and as I recall the entire infrastructure got taken out in the island, Kowloon, and the New Territories."

"Are you trying to make me worry?"

"I'm trying to make a simple point: Nowhere is completely safe," Place said. "I'm not going to say I'm sure I'll be safe, because I'm not going to lie, but I will say that I'm fairly confident I'll be reasonably safe."

"That's . . . mildly comforting."

"Bye, mom," Place said as she left.

"Bye, Leela," her mom said.

Place knew that it would take a while to get used to her new name, but at least she finally had a name.

Chapter Text

Wade couldn't shake the feeling he was being followed. It was true that he'd made a lot of progress on dealing with his agoraphobia, but sometimes he had relapses. Moments when the fear and the insecurity came crashing back in.

Paranoia did not help him deal with such moments. It made things many times worse because the best way to deal with a relapse was to find a place to himself where he could calmly collect work through it before having to face people, but if he were being tracked by someone with ill intent, being alone would be what they wanted. His fear of being out amoung people was an irrational fear. His fear of being abducted was a rational one.

His therapist had recommended some meta-cognition exercises. If you can't stop thinking about what makes you afraid, she had said, think about thinking. Look at the way you were thinking in a manner entirely divorced from what you were actually thinking about and then, with that level of abstraction, try to work on the problem.

Unfortunately Wade found himself thinking about how fast his fear was increasing. Linear? Exponential? Definitely not linear. In fact it was getting worse so fast... Factorial!

He had to find a place to be alone before he had a panic attack.

He took a side street and ducked into an alley. Alone at last he started to do breathing exercises.

"Hey, Wade." He didn't even process the words at first, the mere unexpected noise sent a jolt through him. "Are you ok?"

He looked up to see someone rush over to him, a look of concern on her very familiar face.

"Kim?" He asked.

"Not exactly, but... I thought you got over your fears."

"And Ron thought he got over his fear of monkeys, and of camps, and of bugs."

Not-exactly-Kim nodded. "How is the giant mutant cockroach population doing?"

"Happy at the dump, last I heard," Wade said. Thinking about giant mutant cockroaches was taking his mind off his previous fear. "If you're not exactly Kim, then..."

"I'm a clone of Kim that has most of her memories, sorry about scaring you."

"That tends to happen when you follow people without warning," Wade said, he tried to be angry, but his heart wasn't in it. The clone seemed genuinely apologetic and she had Kim's features to back it up.

"I couldn't exactly call out, 'Hey, Wade, over here!' and maintain a low profile."

"Why are you maintaining a low profile?"

"Because Kim doesn't know I exist yet and there are things I want to sort out before I let her know."

"Then why come to me?" Wade asked. "I work with Kim almost constantly."

"Because I need someone to check that there's no mind control stuff in my head," the clone said as if it were obvious.

"And you think I can do that because..."

"It took you all of two seconds to scan Shego's brain during the reverse polarizer incident, you did it by remote, and without her knowledge or consent. I'm sure that if we head back to your lab you can get much better, far more detailed, results for me."

"And how do I know this isn't a plot to locate my lab, uh..." Wade realized he had no idea what to call the clone.

"Leela. Leela Place Possible," she said. "And you don't. How could you know when I don't know?"

"Ok, that's a good point," Wade conceded.

"So, brainscan?" Leela asked. "Then we'll both know if there are any evil plots afoot. At least ones involving me."

"Ok," Wade said. "Follow me," he said, emphasizing it with a gesture.

It turned out to be a mistake, he wasn't ready to face the masses of humanity yet. But when panic started to set in as they reached a main street, he felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder. It was, he knew, an conclusion reached entirely without rational grounds –manipulation and honest support were impossible to tell apart with such little evidence– but he felt like Leela was a good person after all.

* * *

Place still wasn't used to 'Leela' as a name. She figured if she told enough people to call her that she'd get used to it, maybe before she returned to the lair. Of course, back at the lair, everyone already knew her as 'Place'.

She followed the thirteen year old super genius to his house and realized that she had no memories of ever being there.

"Has Kim ever been to your house?" Place asked.

"No, Leela, she hasn't," Wade said.

Above ground the house was fairly normal. Three levels of security later and they were in Wade's room, underneath the house. Place looked around with eyes wide for it was, hands down, the single most impressive lair she had ever seen.

She looked at a workbench that included regular tools and instruments that Drakken only dreamed of. She pointed to a partially finished work inside a light saber prop and asked, "Still turning toys into tech?"

"As fun as it is, not so much. I abandoned that one over a year ago."

Place took a closer look: mirco air compressor, carbon fiber cable, three setting fire mode, adjustable speed retraction and release. It was a new grappler, and it looked nearly complete.

Place, "Why'd you abandon it? The tech looks solid."

"It is," Wade said. "I started it because the hairdryer grappling hook launcher looked a little bit too much like a gun for some people's comfort."

"It was a gun," Place said. "The only reason it was a safe gun was that Kim knew better than to point it at people."

"Anyway, after I built the new Kimmunicator with a grappling hook inside of it, there wasn't much call for it."

Place thought back to that point in her memories. "And it was when Team Possible was trying to grow up. Ron decided to stop being a goofy mascot and be a football player. They both got jobs, Ron was suddenly an older brother. Kim updated her look for the first time in forever. Things started to seem more serious. Shiny new tech like the wrist communicator and grapple was in. Reused toy casings were out."

"How many of Kim's memories do you have?" Wade asked.

"I think all of them from before the genetic sample that created me was taken. I run out shortly after the Possible house was declared fully reconstructed."

"How do you have Kim's memories?" Wade asked.

"The going theory is magic," Place told him.

"Magic?" Place detected a hint of skepticism in Wade's voice. She didn't think it was appropriate.

"Four statues give mystical monkey power, prophecy correctly predicts when a monarchy becomes a democracy, magic amulet turns someone into an giant anthropomorphic Jackal, magic amulet turns someone into a monkey, magic sword carves a school in-"

"I get the point!"

She hadn't meant to make Wade angry, but at the same time, she was feeling a bit annoyed herself, "I didn't even get to the part where Drakken was possessed by a ghost pirate."

"Just because magic exists, doesn't mean that something strange is a result of magic."

"Very true, but no one has yet been able to figure out how science could possibly support the idea that a tissue sample, which was not even a brain tissue sample, could reproduce memories," Place said as she looked around the cavernous room. "Is this the part where you did the holo-vacations?" she asked.

"Yes, I thought you wanted a brain scan."

"I do; this place is just so amazing," Place said, taking another look around. Part of it was clearly a giant internet routing station, there were machines she'd need to study years to understand, there was a gaming set up with immersion caps, presumably with the whole "trapped in virtual reality" bug overcome. There were some recovered evil devices including ... "Is that Ron's plasma catapult?"

"Brain scan?" Wade asked. He was clearly becoming increasingly agitated, probably from having a stranger in his inner sanctum.

"Just one more question," Place said.

"What is it?"

"Am I imagining things, or is this room larger than the house above it?"

"I won't be able to tell if you're imagining things until I run the scan, but the room occupies the entire plot while the house, obviously, doesn't."

"Neat," Place said, "So, how will the scanning work?"

Wade pulled out a familiar blue device. Place was confused.

"The old Kimmunicator?" She asked. "You'd already replaced it by the time you did the scan on Shego. Why use inferior tech?"

"I never stopped upgrading it."

"Even though Kim was never going to use it?"

"Call it a hobby," Wade said with a shrug.

Wade had her sit in a chair and scanned her head from multiple angles.

"It'll take about 18 hours for my software to analyze the data," Wade told her, "but I can already tell you that there are no control chips or other foreign objects in your head."

"So... I've got nothing to do until tomorrow," Place said. "What are you doing for the next few hours?"

"Why?" Wade asked, there was completely unnecessary suspicion in his tone.

"I noticed the immersion caps," Place said. "Everlot?"

"You want to play Everlot?" Wade asked.

Place shrugged. "I'm trying to try new things- well, everything is new to me. New to Kim things. Things that she never really gave a chance, but might enjoy if she did." Wade simply looked at her. "Otherwise, I figure I'll just end up walking in her footsteps. I don't want to do that; I want my own personality. So, while I make no promises, I'm open to trying Everlot."

"Ok..." Wade said.

* * *

"Hey, Zita, Felix," Place said without thinking.

"Kim?" They said in near unison, both with a fair amount of surprise.

"Actually, I'm Leela."

"She's Kim's clone," Wade said.

Place facepalmed. The immersion cap, of course, meant that she did it in the game. "I told you I wasn't telling people that yet."

"They'd want to know why you knew their names," Wade said, "and I'm not planning on lying for a clone I just met."

Place sighed.

"Leela Place Possible," she told Felix and Zita, "I'm Kim's clone who has most of her memories, but I haven't told Kim I exist yet because I'm trying to work out some personal stuff first."

"Personal stuff?" Zita asked.

"Well, right now I'm awaiting the results of a brain-scan to tell me if there's any sort of mind control type stuff going on in my head."

"So..." Felix said, "your life is about as normal as Kim's."

"So far," Place said.

"Does Ron know about you?" Felix asked.

Place was actually uneasy about that point. Kim was a special case, and that was how she justified holding off on telling Kim. Ron wasn't a special case. He was basically family. Concerns about Kim dating Ron aside, he'd spent so much of his life in the Possible household that he might as well be related.

But, there was the obvious thing that stopped her from telling Ron, "I want to, but... but telling Ron is tantamount to telling Kim and I am definitely not ready for dealing with Kim."

"So, if you don't want people to know about you," Zita said, "why'd you come to the most popular MMO on earth?"

"Two reasons," Place said, "first there are plenty of people who look like Kim when run through Everlot's your-face-on-your-character algorithm so I wasn't expecting it to come up –I didn't think before saying, 'Hi,' to you– and second I'm sort of on a mission to try new things.

"I don't want to be a copy of Kim, and I figure if I'm open to new things I'll find some I like that she's never gotten into, and that'll give me a basis for forming my own identity."

"So how do you like Everlot?" Felix asked.

"I could really use a group of powerful people to tag along with until I level up," Place said. She considered, and rejected, the idea of employing the electronic version of a puppy-dog-pout.

"Join the party," Zita said.

"You in, Wade?" Felix asked.

"Definitely," Wade said.

"So, Felix," Place said, "I didn't think this was your kind of game."

"He plays this with me; I play Zombie Mayhem with him," Zita explained.

"It's really growing on me," Felix said.

"And I'm liking Zombie Mayhem a lot more than I once did," Zita said.

"That's sweet," Place said. "And neat. Good for both of you."

Place found herself feeling good about three things. First, the ease with which people were accepting her. Second, that her friends, for she thought of them that way even though she knew they were Kim's friends, were in a happy relationship. Third, that she was going to have some heavy hitters help her move passed being a knave in a hurry. Wade would have been a great help on his own, but Zita was the undisputed queen of Everlot.

Except for when it was fun to dispute it. Events were held, of course, but it was hard to imagine anyone ever surpassing Zita's legend.

Without warning, Zita and Felix spoke as one, "Wade, do you think that you could..." and then they stopped when each realized they were talking over the other.

Place smiled and said, "Somebody owes somebody a soda."

"If you're wondering about a Zombie Mayhem Everlot crossover..." Wade said.

"How did you..." Felix and Zita said in stereo again.

Place just smiled and followed the group as they walked toward whatever quest Zita and Felix had been headed to before they bumped into each other.

* * *

Wade exited the game, soon followed by Leela.

"I can't believe she gave me the sword of Elsinore," Leela said. "Isn't that like a Hamlet reference or something?"

There was something infectious about the girl's enthusiasm.

"It's a pretty impressive item," Wade said. "I think you've made a friend."

Leela perked up at that statement, but then suddenly looked down again, "I just hope that they don't tell Kim about me before I'm ready for that."

Wade didn't understand.

"Why do you need to be ready?" Wade asked. "What's the big deal?"

"You've hacked into her diary and read stuff that she hasn't shared with anyone," Leela said in a way that made Wade feel like he was going to have to deflect some kind of attack any moment. None came. "I have her memories, most of them anyway. I know about things so personal she never put them in the diary. I have access to everything." Leela paused. "Well, everything up to a point. We already got into that.

"The point is, it's a different situation. I know her better than anyone else ever could, and I have some strong feelings as a result of that," Leela said with a dark tone. "Everything that feels like mine -my memories, my personality, friends I remember having, things I remember owning, experiences I remember … uh, experiencing- that's all hers.

"And she never chose to share it."

"Ok," Wade said, more in response to the tone the conversation had taken than the words that were actually spoken. "Well the results of the brain-scan should be in by tomorrow morning."

"Ok," Leela said, as she started to walk toward the stairs that would lead her to the ground floor and out of the house. Her shoulders were slumped as she walked. Looking at her go Wade felt sorry for her.

"Hey," he said.

Leela turned back. Well, she half turned, looked at Wade, and said, "Yeah?" in a way that wasn't quite a question despite the intonation.

"Today," Wade said, "making friends with Felix and Zita, fighting that dragon, taking on the killer plants. That was all yours. Not Kim's. Yours. It all belongs to you, and you alone."

Leela cracked a smile. Wade wasn't sure if she was faking it or not.

When she said, "Thanks, Wade," he knew that it had been a real smile.

She started to walk out again, but stopped. Then she turned all the way around and said, "I haven't figured out where I'm staying tonight yet. Could I crash here?"

Visions of puppy-dog-pout played in Wade's mind. "You can stay here on one condition."

"What's the condition?" Leela asked.

"Never, ever, use the puppy-dog-pout on me," Wade said while trying not to shudder.

"Deal." Leela said.

Chapter Text

Wade was restless.

Wade was pacing.

It was unusual.  Wade was accustomed to sitting at his computer for hours at a time; he never got restless.  Clearly something was bothering him, but he wasn't sure what it was.

It obviously had something to do with the clone sleeping in his guestroom --she was the only changed variable-- but he didn't think it was about Leela directly.

Something about her creation?  Something she did?  Something she said?

He found himself at his gadget workbench, she'd looked at it and picked out the unfinished grappling hook launcher in a hollowed out lightsaber toy to ask about.  Still turning toys into tech? she had asked.

No.  It had been his last project where he gutted a toy, or other everyday object, and made it incredible.  He never even finished it.  It had been sitting there untouched since he made the new Kimmunicator.

And it was when Team Possible was trying to grow up. Ron decided to stop being a goofy mascot and be a football player. They both got jobs, Ron was suddenly an older brother. Kim updated her look for the first time in forever. Things started to seem more serious. Shiny new tech like the wrist communicator and grapple was in. Reused toy casings were out.

She was right: Team Possible had been trying to grow up.  But what had been wrong with the way things were before?

They'd defeated the Little Diablo scheme with an electromagnetic scrambler that had been a cheap science fiction ray gun toy before he modified it.  That scheme had been the closest any human being had come to taking over the world.  Why grow up?

Moreover, why should he grow up?  Kim and Ron were adults now, but he was still thirteen.  He didn't grow up when he got his first doctorate; he didn't grow up when he got his first consulting job.  Why did he let himself start growing up just because Kim and Ron were?  It wasn't as if he couldn't have helped them without putting childhood behind him; none of the places he'd consulted had minded that he was a child, they just cared that he got the job done.

“It used to be more fun,” Wade said to himself.  Then he sat down started working on the grappler.

* * *

Normally Felix was always happy to talk with Zita about any subject, and video chat was definitely better than a phone call, but at the moment he was exhausted and needed to sleep.  They had played with Wade and Leela well into the night --the girl had an infectious enthusiasm-- and he'd been low on sleep anyway.

He was barely even processing what they were saying to each other.

“It's not like it's weird,” Felix stopped at the look on Zita's face.  “You know, considering who we're talking about.”

“That's not why I gave you that look,” Zita said.

Felix was at a loss for a moment, but then managed, “Ok, why did you give me that look?”

“I gave you that look,” Zita said, “because you said that about fifteen minutes ago and I agreed with you then.  We don't need to go over this again.”

“Ok, ok,” Felix said.  “I guess I'm just tired.”

“I am too,” Zita said.  “It's just that, now that I've had time to think about it, I think we should check things out.”

Felix nodded.  It did make sense.  After going to high school with Kim it was easy to accept things like the idea that Kim had a clone called Leela who they happened to bump into in Everlot and who wanted to keep her existence a secret from Kim for non-nefarious reasons, but Zita was right that they should still verify things before keeping secrets from Kim.

He opened up a chat window sent a message to Wade.

“It's possible that he's not even,” Felix was cut off by a beep.  Wade was always online.

* * *

FlyingZombieKiller: U up?

DaedalusAI: Yeah.

DaedalusAI: What's on your mind?

FlyingZombieKiller: Z wants to verify re:Everlot

DaedalusAI: It was really me.

DaedalusAI: What was said was true.

FlyingZombieKiller: So we should keep secret?

DaedalusAI: I will.

FlyingZombieKiller: Thanks

FlyingZombieKiller: L8r

DaedalusAI: Later.

* * *

Zita watched Felix type for a bit, then he said, “Wade says it was all true, and he plans to keep her secret.”

“He should be able to tell whether Kim needs to know better than we can,” Zita said, “and I'd rather not betray a friend I just made.”

“I agree,” Felix said.  “Besides, it's not like we have to lie; we just don't mention her to Kim.”

“So everything's exactly how we thought it was,” Zita sighed.  Felix looked like one of the zombies in his games; Zita held herself partly responsible for that.  “And I kept you up for nothing.”

“No,” Felix said.  “You were right.  It's good to check.”

“Get some sleep,” Zita ordered.

“Yes, master,” Felix said.

“I love you,” Zita told him.

“I love you too.”

The connection shut down.  Zita closed her laptop and started moving in a bedward direction herself.  After a few moments she wasn't thinking about Leela anymore.  Two more weeks till she and Felix would be in the same place again.

Two more weeks.

Video chat, phone calls, and multiplayer games helped make a long distance relationship work, but there was no substitute for seeing her boyfriend face to face.

Two more weeks.

* * *

Wade hadn't even slowed down, much less looked up, when Felix contacted him.  Text to voice and voice to text were a trivial matters for him, so whenever he was away from his keyboard he simply turned both functions on.  He'd even set things up so that text messages from friends played in their own voices.

He wasn't tired, he was energized.

Ten minutes after Felix had logged of,  Wade put the finishing touches on the grappler and grabbed something at random.  That something turned out to be sunglasses.  Simple metal frames around oval “steampunk green” lenses.  Wade gave a small chuckle when he remembered that description.  The lenses had probably been made from recycled wine bottles, but that didn't concern him at the moment.  He could work with these.

Sensors for various non-visible spectra were easy enough to install, the bulk of the microprocessors could be housed in the temples, a transparent OLED film attached to the inside of the lenses would convert the light picked up by the sensors into visible light, and the control interface would be as simple as two wheels and a button on the right temple just behind the hinge.

Button for on and off; wheels to determine what range was converted to visual light.  One wheel would choose the center wavelength of the range, the other would chose the radius of the range.

* * *

“Everything checks out normally,” Wade said.  “No evidence of the attitudinator --standard or reverse polarizer version-- no evidence of neural compliance technology, no moodulator based emotional disruptions, no cupid ray,” Wade yawned.

“Sorry if describing my brain bores you,” Place said.  She'd said it without thinking and it came out with more of an edge than she would have liked.  If she wanted to get along with people, she needed to start taking the edge off.  She wasn't even sure when it showed up in the first place.

“No, it's not that,” Wade said. “I pulled an all-nighter.”

“Kim call after I went to bed?” Place asked.  When Wade had shown her to the guest room Wade had been, so far as she knew, preparing for bed himself.  He'd explained that his parents were out of town, thus the empty house.

“No, Leela,” Wade said.  “I just had a good run of building and inventing and didn't want to stop.”

Place registered the words, but wasn't really listening to anything after her name.  Leela.  Leela was her name now.  She needed to get used to thinking of herself as that.  Why was it that she'd been able to shed Kim's name in a day, in spite of a lifetime worth of memories with it, yet she was still thinking of herself as “Place”?

Wade stepped away for a moment, which Place used to repeat to herself, “My name is Leela now,” several times in her head.

When Wade returned he was carrying the grappler she'd noticed yesterday, the housing was closed and it looked like a generic light sword toy from when the curved hilts were popular a couple years back.

“I finally finished this,” he said.

“Ok, I actually had a question about that,” Place said.  Wade didn't make any indication he didn't want to answer one, so she asked: “A grapling hook launcher is usually in the shape of a gun --or a hairdryer-- because then it's easy to point, by making it in the shape of a sword hilt wouldn't it--”

Wade held out his arm, aimed, and fired it off.

“It has basically no kick because--” he started, but Place could take it from there.

“You've compensated for it by having air jets fire in the reverse direction at the moment of release,” she said standing to take a closer look at the grappler in his hand.

“Yes,” Wade said. “How did you know?”

Place leaned over Wade's arm to look down at the device.

“The back blast tousled your hair,” she said.  She crouched under Wade's arm to look up at the device.

“'Back blast' is actually a well defined term that means--”

“I know,” Place said, her eyes inches from the underside of the the device.  “But it's a blast of air that points back, so it seemed to fit.”

“You have a way of looking at things that's … odd,” Wade said.

Place stood up normally, looked Wade in the eyes, and said, “Not unnerving, I hope.”

Wade didn't respond immediately.  Ok, so that's a, 'Yes, unnerving,' Place thought.

The silence went on for a bit too long, Place was about to break it herself when Wade said, “Anyway, the lack of kick means that it's not a problem for your wrist to be in the unorthodox position needed to fire it, aiming and firing it shouldn't be a problem.  The fact that it's in line with the rope means that any swinging done on it will use the same muscles as swinging on a bare rope.”

“Always fun,” Place said.  Then she looked at where the cable attached to the room's wall.  The wall was covered in flat metal paneling; there was nothing visible that a grappling hook might have launched onto. “Did you put a hole in your wall just to prove it fires nicely?”

Wade held it up to her, showing her buttons on the side, “There are three fire modes,” Place resisted the urge to point out that she'd noticed that yesterday, “prongs back like a standard grappling hook, prongs forward for when it needs to dig in to something, and electromagnet for ferromagnetic surfaces,” he said indicating three buttons in turn.  “I used the magnet, so no hole.”

Wade pushed another button and the cable fell off the wall.  Another and it retracted.

“You're too good for that to have taken you all night,” Place said.  It wasn't a question, but she waited for an answer anyway.

“After I finished with it I just grabbed the next thing and went to work, then another,” Wade said.  He seemed to think something over, and then smiled. “I put knock out gas in a lip gloss case for the first time in what seems like forever last night.”

Place wasn't exactly sure why, but she felt like encouraging him, so she said, “You rock, Wade.”

“Thanks, Leela,” he said.  “So, when did you start looking at things the way you do?”

“The leaning?” Place asked.

“The leaning,” Wade confirmed.

She wasn't entirely sure.  She definitely hadn't done it when she was first created, but she didn't really remember starting doing it.  “It just kind of happened, you know?  Product of evil science, lots of stuff around the lab to see.  No one trying to fight me, no time pressure, nothing stopping me from stopping and smelling the metaphorical roses.  By which I mean taking close looks at things.”

Another pause.  Place decided to get back to her reason for being there.  “So, product of evil science, but apparently not under any form of mind control?”

“Nothing,” Wade said.  “Anything operating on you currently would have showed up in the scan, and if you'd undergone any kind of conditioning you'd either remember it or the erasure of the memory would have left marks I'd be able to detect.

“You've got a clear brain.”

It was a relief.  It was what she'd already believed anyway, but it was still a relief to hear it.  “Thanks, Wade.  It's good to know that I can trust myself.”

Wade didn't seem to be sure what to do now, and Place certainly didn't know.  Her reason for coming was over.  Did she just leave?  Where did she go now?  She still had questions, but they were ones that science couldn't answer which left her with ... “I already owe you a favor-- two favors.  One for doing this for me and another for agreeing not to tell Kim.  I already owe you but, who do we know that knows about magic?”

Wade closed his eyes.  He was silent a moment and Place assumed he was thinking.  She was mildly surprised that he wasn't going to a computer to find the answer.

Wade opened his eyes and said, “We never really had someone to go to for that, Kim's magical opponents tended to be one time deals or Monkey Fist.”

Place thought that over.  “Ok, you wouldn't happen to be able to get me to Tokyo, would you?”

* * *

It was interesting for Place to watch Wade look into landing her a ride.  Since Wade took over Kim's website, Kim hadn't had to keep track of her extensive favor network and, as a result, never really saw how complicated the system had become.  Sometimes she knew just who to call for a ride, but most of the time she asked Wade to find her a ride.  When Wade had gone on a tech-free vacation Kim and Ron had been --metaphorically-- lost.  They'd almost immediately needed to take three commercial flights --and didn't even get in first class on them-- because they couldn't figure out who they knew in the area for even one of the trips.

Now Wade was preforming a far more complex task because he had to find someone who was not just going in the right direction, but who would likely give a ride without cashing in one of Kim's favors or telling Kim that she had a clone.

The result was much, much slower than usual, but it was fascinating to watch him go though the possibilities.

Eventually it looked like her best opportunity would be on a plane out of Seattle in three days.  Then she just had to get there.  Probably over land.  Two days worth of driving, leaving one free day.

Place didn't want a free day.  She had promised Shego she'd come back, and wanted to do it as quickly as possible.  Still, it was the most likely option for getting her where she needed to go while keeping her existence secret from Kim.  It wasn't like she had the necessary ID to take a legitimate flight.

So, if she had to spend the extra day, she wanted to spend it usefully somehow.  She tried to think of a way to do that.  There was nothing that she particularly wanted to do in Seattle.  Maybe something en route?

“You wouldn't, by any chance, be able to find a route that goes by way of Montana, would you?” Place asked.

“Montana?” Wade asked.

“I was thinking that I could stop in to meet my uncle Slim and cousin Joss on the way,” Place said.

“Is Kim literally the only person you want to keep your existence a secret from?” Wade asked.

Place thought that over for a bit.  She hadn't made a list of people to tell and not tell or anything.  Was Kim the only one?

Eventually she reached a conclusion, “I guess so.  If I had my way I'd personally introduce myself to everyone before they heard that there was a Kim-clone out there so they could make their own judgments based on meeting me instead of any preconceived notions about evil clones or whatnot.

“And Kim likely would be the last to know because I'm very much not ready for that, but the problems with Kim don't apply to anyone else.  It's not as if I'm a chimera like Drakken's first attempt at cloning, I'm a clone of Kim and Kim alone.  I have her genetics, I have her memories, and that makes the prospect of dealing with her a lot more difficult than dealing with anyone else.

“So, I guess, yeah: Kim is the only one I want to keep in the dark right now.”

Wade visibly thought that over, then looked back at his computer.  “I can get you a ride to the ranch, but once you're there you might be stuck there.”

Place only considered the proposition for a moment before saying, “Do it; I'll take my chances.”

* * *

At first Place thought the reason Wade was showing her equipment was to pass time until the ride arrived and show off a bit.  She came to realize that the reason he was showing it to her was that he was equipping her, the same way he might for Kim, though that he generally did via video.

“Uh, Wade, I'm not sure you want to give me this stuff,” Place said.

“I think I know what I want better than you do,” Wade said.  It wasn't said with any emotion except, perhaps, a hint of amusement.  Most of the time that was a pretty reliable sign she hadn't annoyed someone. So that was a plus. “Now these sunglasses...”

Place sighed and Wade stopped talking.  “You didn't ask and I didn't tell you,” she said, “but the way I made it out of the lair I where I was created was that Drakken and Shego let me walk out the front door.  I promised Shego I was coming back and I intend to keep that promise, I'm even more sure of it now that I know for certain they didn't use any mind control on me.”  She hesitated.  “I don't know where that's going to lead, but there's a chance that if you give me something now you'll have to face it in the field later.”

“I don't do field work,” Wade said.  “I was never enthusiastic about the idea to begin with, and the times I actually tried it have convinced me to never do it again.”

“You know what I mean,” Place said.  Now that it had come up she felt bad for not telling him her association with Team Possible's enemies before.  At the time she'd been more concerned about getting her brain scanned, was distracted by his tech, then was playing Everlot, then was ready for sleep.  It just hadn't come up.

“I do,” Wade said.

And Place was lost.  Where had they been?  Right, he was saying he knew what she meant about possibly having to face off against anything he gave her.

Place had barely figured out where they were in the conversation when Wade started talking again:

“Now these sunglasses are operated by--”

“You're seriously ok with equipping someone who's planning on going back to Drakken and Shego?”

“You seem nice enough to me,” Wade said, then shrugged, “and we know you're not being mind controlled.”

“Ok,” Place said, still feeling off about the situation, but accepting it as Wade's decision. “So the sunglasses ... infrared-specs?”

“They can pick up more than just infrared,” Wade said proudly.  Place just went along for the ride as he explained the sunglasses.

Chapter Text

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Chapter Text

They had talked around the table and everything had gone pretty well.  In fact the only rocky spot was when Place had asked why they didn't just shut down Old Tornado and work out the bugs while he was off.  That had elicited horrified looks from Slim and Joss, but the whole thing had quickly been cleared up.

Place had simply underestimated the mechanical horse's AI, not realizing that it was as sentient as a real animal.  Hitting the off switch was like sedating a biological animal and thus presented no moral problems, but the kind of reprogramming necessary to debug Old Tornado at this point would be equivalent to mind control.  Place had quickly apologized.

Always aware of her status as a clone, she wasn't about to claim something or someone was less real because they weren't a product of usual biological reproduction.

Now Place was following Joss to Joss' room.  Place knew she wanted to speak to her cousin, and knew why, but wasn't sure exactly how to ask what she wanted to.  When the door opened and she saw Joss' posters of Ron, Place ended up avoiding the problem by stalling.

"I'll bet that there are a lot more people in the Ron fan club these days," she said.

When Joss replied, "Yeah," it was in a halfhearted, almost rueful, way.

"What's wrong?" Place asked.

Joss sat on her bed.  Place sat beside her.

"Ron was always the more heroic 'cause he was afraid and faced all those things anyway," Joss said.

"I remember you telling Kim that," Place said.  "It hasn't changed, you know.  The mystical monkey--"

"I know that it doesn't work on command," Joss said.  "I know that Ron's still afraid all the time.  The problem isn't that Ron's changed."

"So what is it?"

"When Ron became my hero he had basically no followin'.  I even had ta make the first website about him myself."  Joss paused.  "People thought I was off my rocker.  Everyone thought Ron was a joke.  He was clumsy, he was unpopular, he was a lowly mascot."

Place nodded.

"Now all sorts of people are Ron fans, but they're not fans of the clumsy mascot who was a frightened sidekick that still came through every time.  They're fans of a football star who used magical powers ta kill the aliens," Joss.  Looked at the floor for a long time.  Then she half-shouted, "Kill!" with complete disgust.  "Maybe it was necessary, and given what was at stake I don't blame Ron for what he did, but killin' is the least heroic thing he's ever done."

Place nodded.  Then she realized that, since Joss wasn't looking at her, it was meaningless.  "Killing's never a good thing.  The first time Team Possible killed was Eric."

Joss turned to look at Place and asked, "The synthnodrone?" in surprise.

"He wasn't human, but he wasn't like the Bebes either.  He was callous and cruel, when he thought he had won he tried to twist the knife with targeted insults and condescension.  He was a horrible person, but he was a person.  He could think and feel and when he died it was with shock and fear.

"Rufus did the killing.  Kim and Ron looked on with smiles."

"You sound … disgusted," Joss said.

Place hadn't realized it, but Joss was right.  She sighed.  "The first detailed memory from Kim that I experienced came from that same night," she explained.  "Shego was defeated –exhausted– and trying to slink away.  Kim told Shego that she hated her, then she kicked Shego with enough force it should have shattered her ribs, off of a roof.  Shego hit the transmission tower with such force it shattered the reinforced concrete structure, that too should have killed Shego.  By that point the tower was coursing with enough electricity to kill a blue whale.  Again Shego should have died.  The fall to the ground should have killed Shego too.  As for the tower collapsing on top of her..."

"Shego should have died a bunch of times over, is your point," Joss said.

"Yeah.  It wasn't a good memory to start with, but worst was what happened next."

"What happened next?"

"When Kim had every reason to think that Shego was dead by her hands, well, her battlesuit encased foot, she smiled."

"That wasn't on any of the fan sites."

Place sighed.  "I don't think I'll ever forgive Kim for that, but the worst thing is that I know that had I been in the same position I'd have done the exact same thing.  I'm just like her, as much as I might want things to be otherwise."

There was a long silence.

Finally Place said, "The reason I brought it all up, though, is that even when they were pushed to extremes, even when they crossed moral lines, Ron was the last member of Team Possible's field crew to use lethal force.  Even if Ron's getting fans for all the wrong reasons, you picked the right person."

"I'm not sure how reassuring that is," Joss said, "but thanks."

For a while Place looked at the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling.  Finally she decided to try to talk about what she'd wanted to talk to Joss about.

"It also has to do with why I asked to talk to you," Place said.  Then she ran out of words.  Why was this so hard?

"Yeah?" Joss asked.  Gentle, inviting.  Joss was being great about it so why was Place having so much trouble with this.

Finally it came out in a single blurt, "Last time Kim was here you went from a virtual copy of Kim to starting to be yourself in a matter of days."  Place took a needed breath and then spoke in a more normal pace, "I'm a literal copy of Kim and I was hoping for..." Place again ran out of words.

"Insight?" Joss offered.

"Something like that," Place said.

"So, basically--" Joss said.

"In summation," Place interrupted.  Joss hit her with a pillow.

When Joss said, "Stop that," she almost managed to keep the laughter from her voice but not quite.  "Basically look for things that you do that aren't Kim-like, embrace 'em if they're things you like, and don't worry about the the things you do that aren't Kim-like."

"Thanks for your great and esoteric wisdom," Place said.

"See, that –right there– that playfulness, totally not Kim-like."

"Thanks," Place said, this time sincerely.  "And, in all seriousness, thanks for what you said before."

Leela had drifted off again.  Joss was noticing that she had a habit of doing that.

"Leela?"  Joss asked.  No response.  "Leela!"

"Oh, sorry," Leela said.  "I still haven't internalized that name yet.  I'm working on it."

"Do you still think of yourself as 'Kim'?" Joss asked.

"No, my middle name," Leela said.

"Place?"

"Yeah, it was originally supposed to just be a placeholder, that's what it's short for even, but by the time I was actually getting a permanent name I was too attached to drop it entirely.  So I made it my middle name."

"Why not make it your first name?" Joss asked.

"I wanted my parents to have a say in what my first name was," Leela Place, for that was how Joss decided to think of her, said.  "It is traditional for parents to name their daughter after all."  She paused.  "Of course, when I go back to the lair everyone is going to know me as 'Place' so things will get confusing."

"You're still plannin' on going back ta the lair?" Joss asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you gonna help Drakken in his plots?" Joss asked.

"I don't know.  I might just be a house guest.  What about you?  Are you going to save the world?"

"That's actually what I brought you out here ta show you," Joss said, continuing to lead Leela Place to a remote corner of the Lazy C.

After a little more walking Joss had led them to her training ground.  Part obstacle course, part ropes course, it was all hand made.  She'd spent what felt like forever measuring, cutting, moving, hammering, tying, and generally assembling the place.  She was very proud of it.

"You did this on your own?" Leela Place asked.

"Yup," Joss said.  She was proud of what she'd done.

"This is incredible; it's an action hero's playground."

"The hope is that it'll be a hero's trainin' ground," Joss said.  "Practice enough here and I'll be ready to actually be a hero in the real world."

Leela Place nodded.  "Smart.  And it's more preparation than Kim ever did."

Joss watched as Leela Place looked around the place in awe.  Joss herself was basking in the approval, but she thought of something they could do.  "Do you wanna race?"

"See which comes out on top," Leela Place said, "longer legs," she pointed to herself, "or home field advantage?" she pointed to Joss.  "Absolutely."

Joss indicated a point that was high up, and they both stood together so they'd have an even start.

"Ok, grapples out," Joss said.  Then stopped when she noticed Leela Place's grapple.  Instead of being shaped like a gun, or a hairdryer, it was cylindrical with a bit of a curve on one end.  "I've never seen one like that before," Joss said.

"It's Wade's design.  He originally abandoned it when Kim switched to the wrist Kimmunicator, but he returned to it, finished it, and gave it to me."

"Cool," Joss said.

"You've improved yours," Leela Place said looking at Joss's grappling hook launcher.

"Yup."

"May I give you some advice?"

"Sure," Joss said.  "What?"

"Your original one, or at least the one that you had when Kim saw it, was distinctive and... uh, Jossy, because you didn't hide how you'd made it.  I seem to remember a fishing reel being visible on the outside." Joss nodded.  "If I were you, which I'm obviously not, I'd stick to that aesthetic.  You turned ordinary things into an extraordinary device, and it was all you.  You should be proud."

Joss had never really put much thought into how hers looked.  As she looked at the one she currently held, she realized that she had added some casing that did obscure the MacGyvered nature.

She'd think about what Leela Place had said.

For now though, "Ready, set, go."

Both Possibles were flurries of motion as they picked routes to their destination.  Place incorporated pointless flips into her style as an aesthetic flourish.  In the end she wasn't sure if it was doing that that had made her lose to Joss, or Joss was simply that good.

Either way, she was sure that, if Joss really wanted it, Joss was ready to be a hero in a few years.  Maybe less.

She was still thinking of that when they returned to the house for lunch.  There were important things about how she'd get to the coast, and she was surprised that one of the mechanical horses could make the journey in roughly the same time frame as a car, not to mention grateful for the offer of using one of of them, but she she was still thinking about Joss as future hero.

Once she was settled into the guest room Place made a call on the old Kimmunicator, now renamed as simply the communicator.  Wade had insisted she take it, she had insisted that it get a new name.

"Leela?" Wade asked.

"Yup, it's me," Place said.  "Calling to update you and ask a question."

"What's the sitch?" Wade asked.

"Two things.  The first is that I should make it Seattle on time for the flight.  The second is I was wondering if it would be possible to make it a trip for two."

"Someone's coming with you?" Wade asked.

"I don't know," Place said.  "I don't want to make the offer unless I know the ride is available."

"Oh, ok," Wade said.  "I don't see any reason why it would be a problem, but I'll check.  I've got some other things to do, so I'll call you back in an hour."

"Thanks Wade," Place said.  "You rock."

"Late-- actually, would you have any idea why Drakken recently had Shego steal tapioca?"

Place shrugged, "I have no idea.  I would have told them to go lemon meringue."

"Not pudding," Wade said.  "Dry tapioca.  Three point eight tons of it."

Place shrugged again, "Sorry, can't help you."

"Thanks anyway," Wade said.  "Talk to you later."

"Later," Place said, and the line disconnected.

Slim spent the afternoon watching his daughter and his new niece.  They rode the cybertronic horses.  They played a game of tag.  Then they broke out the water guns.

The biggest difference, it seemed to him, between Kim and this new girl was that Kim tended to act with a maturity beyond her years, while Leela seemed to revel in childish fun.  She was every bit as smart as Kim, and in their first conversation she's showed advanced understanding of the various disciplines underpinning the ethics of artificial intelligence, but for all that knowledge, and wisdom too, she seemed to be embracing childhood.

Maybe it was because she'd been created as a fully grown adult, and she simply wanted a chance to experience childhood --first hand rather than through someone else's memories-- maybe it was some side effect of the cloning process.  Maybe it was just that some random thing had caused her to value different things than Kim.

Whatever it was, Slim was glad to see his daughter get a chance to play.  Joss had high ambitions, and Slim supported her in pursuing them, but he sometimes worried that her focus on what she would someday be was making her miss what she was now.  She was still a child, and Slim didn't think the time for Joss to put away childish things had come just yet.

"Hey Leela," Wade said over the communicator.  "It won't be a problem if you have an extra passenger."

"That's great," Place said.

"Also Felix and Zita were wondering if you're available for Everlot this weekend."

"I guess I should be, and I need to field test on that immersion circlet--"

"Hey, Leela," Jim and Tim said at the same time.

"Jim, Tim," Place greeted them.

"I should never have added your satellite to my network," Wade said.

"We just want to talk to our sister," Tim said.

"What do you want?" Leela asked.

"We heard a rumor--" Jim said.

"--which is to say that we intercepted transmissions while we were doing surveillance--" Tim said.

"--that you're playing Everlot now," Jim said.

"Without us," The two said together.

Place almost laughed.  "If you want to, and if Felix, Zita, and Wade --whose network you're hacking-- don't mind, I'll see you in the game this weekend."

"Hika bika boo," Jim said.

"Hoosha!" Tim said.

They disappeared from the screen allowing Wade's image to fill it again.

"I'm guessing that your life has been more stressful since they started going on missions," Place said.

"No," Wade said, "not more stressful.  More annoying sometimes, though."

The rest of the conversation was logistics.

During dinner, at a point when conversation lagged, Place said, "I've been thinking, and if Joss really is planning on saving the world I know a high school that could be a real help to her."

"High School?" Uncle Slim asked.

"Yeah," Place said, "so it's something for the future, no one has to make any decisions now."  Place bit some more corn off the cob she was holding.  When she'd chewed and swallowed she added, "The only reason I bring it up is because I'm going to be dropping by there for personal reasons and I was thinking that, if Joss might be interested in the school in the future, she could come with me now, take a look, and maybe that would help her make an informed decision when the time actually did come."

"What kinda high school would help someone save the world?" Slim asked.

"It's not designed for world savers," Place said, "but saving the world is easier if you're athletic, savvy, and have training in some form of martial art."

"You still haven't said what it is," Joss said.

"It's kind of a secret so I can't give too much detail but the best experts in Tai Shing Pek Kwar teach there and they've got a pretty varied martial arts curriculum."

Slim looked completely lost.

Joss told him, "Tai Shing Pek Kwar is Monkey Kung Fu, the style Ron knows."

Place nodded, "It's because of Ron that I know of the school."

"Can I go?" Joss asked Uncle Slim. "It sounds spankin'."

Uncle Slim thought it over for a moment before giving his permission.

Breakfast had been eaten, they'd said goodbye to Uncle Slim.  All that was left was to go.  Place had had her meager belongings in a backpack already, Joss apparently kept a go bag that she thought was an adequate substitute for packing.  Things had gone rather quickly.

Now Joss led out two of the mechanical horses and then handed Place something.

Place took a look, and was a bit confused.  "Pilot's goggles?"

Joss nodded, "If you're plannin' on keepin' your eyes open at the speeds we'll be goin'."

Place nodded and put them on.

Joss mounted her horse and Place followed suit.

"You don't, by any chance, have an MP3 player, do you?" Place asked.

At first Joss just laughed, then she explained, "Balios and Xanthos here have their own built in sound systems.  If you want music--"

"Just not Paul Simon," Place said, "I think it'll be at least a month before I can listen to him again."

"How about Credence Clearwater Revival?" Joss said, pushing buttons between the ears of her horse, Balios.  Music started to come from both horses.

Place was not disappointed.  She smiled as she started bobbing her head in time with the open.

"Race ya ta Idaho," Joss said.

"You're on," Place countered.

They started going at about the same time the words cut in.

There's a place up ahead and I'm goin' 

Mechanical hooves beat against the dirt road.

just as fast as my feet can fly

Joss pulled ahead slightly but Place was sure she could make it back by shaving a corner sometime soon.

Come away, come away if you're goin',

Now that the horse was up to speed Place was grateful for the goggles, the wind against her face was fine, but if it were in her eyes they'd water immediately and she'd soon be sightless.

leave the sinkin' ship behind.

Once you adjusted to the horse's gait, this wasn't that different from riding Ron's scooter when it'd had rockets strapped to it.  The scenery flew by and the important thing was to avoid hitting anything.

Come on the risin' wind,

They'd hardly started and Place was sure she had the hang of this, she'd catch up to Joss, maybe even beat her to Idaho.

we're goin' up around the bend.

Chapter Text

“Was that ... a tie?” Joss asked as she slowed Balios and then dismounted.

Joss watched as Leela Place slowed her own horse, Xanthos, dismounted, and only then answered with by nodding and saying, “Yeah, I think that was a tie.”

They both took off their goggles and Leela Place said, “You still beat me to Idaho, though.”

Leela Place looked around. Joss did too. They weren't actually in Seattle yet, but path they'd been following, one cut through the forest to allow for so many power lines that it took four towers side by side at every juncture to hold them, had run out. They'd agreed that parading cybertronic horses through a heavily populated area was probably not the best idea, so they now were on foot in Renton, but still standing beside their horses.

“So, now what?” Leela Place asked. “How do our noble steeds--”

Joss laughed. The words and the way she said them were so very much not the way Leela Place normally spoke, and thus it seemed absurd.

“--get back to the Lazy C?” Leela Place finished.

“Oh, that ain't nothing,” Joss said. She felt around in her pocket for... there it was.

* * *

Place watched as Joss pulled out a remote, pushed a few buttons. Then the two mechanical horses took off.

“They know the way home,” Joss said.

“Nifty,” Place said. “So, we got here with plenty of time. We could walk the rest of the way and make it with time to spare, and I've got some cash for a cab if we want. Anything you particularly want to do in the general vicinity of Lake Washington?”

“Nothing,” Joss said. “We could just hang.”

Place nodded, then she thought a bit. “Let's get some food.”

* * *

“I've never had sushi before,” Joss said as they walked out of the restaurant, “I didn't think I'd like it so much.”

Place shrugged. “One thing that I've learned in my short life is that you have to be willing to try new things.”

“I reckon--”

Place slipped into an entirely different mindset as she automatically called on skills from Kim's memories to assess the situation as someone in a strange costume ran by carrying a large plump bird. Clearly a villain of some sort, and as for the bird...

The bird was obviously not a short-necked large-beaked emu, and even if it were, no such thing existed. That meant--

“Was that--” Joss started to ask but was cut off when a woman in a fairly traditional white lab coat rounded a corner, clearly in very delayed chase, and shouted:

“He's stealing my dodo!”

“Apparently it was,” Place said, grabbing her grappling hook launcher and starting to run after the person in a costume with the dodo. In her peripheral vision she saw Joss do the same.

* * *

“Thank you both so much, I don't know what those horrible people would have done with poor Chronotis if you hadn't been there,” Jane said.

“It was no big,” the girl with dark red hair said.

“What kind of people would we be if we stood by and let a dodonapping take place?” the young woman with orange hair said.

“I owe you so much and...” Jane realized something. She finished with, “And I don't even know your names,” even though she'd originally intended to say, “I have no idea how I could repay you.”

“I,” the young woman said, “am Leela Place Possible, and this is my cousin,” she gestured to the girl.

“Josslyn Possible,” the girl said.

“Well thank you Leela, and thank you Joslyn,” Jane said. “I'm Doctor Jane Reinhardt, and if there's anything I can do for you, just say it.”

“I don't think there's anything right now,” Leela said, then she looked to Joss.

“Nope, nothing,” Joss said.

“But, if something comes up, we'll be sure to let you know,” Leela finished.

* * *

After they were out of earshot Joss said, “You earned your first favor!” to Leela Place.

“Actually it was my second,” Leela Place said, “and I'm not sure it's that big of a deal.”

“Well it's my first,” Joss said, “and isn't that how Kim got started?”

“It's good for you,” Leela Place said, “and I mean that sincerely,” Joss believed her but could tell there was a “but” coming and, sure enough, after a pause Leela Place said, “but I, personally, am trying to be different from Kim.”

Joss thought that over. After a bit she said, “Just because you help people and extinct animals doesn't mean you're exactly the same as Kim.”

“So far just the one extinct animal,” Leela Place said. “And thanks.”

“Twern't nothin' cousin,” Joss said.

Leela Place smiled and asked, “Not, 'No big?'”

“I'm not trying to be exactly like Kim either,” Joss said. “I got over that.”

“Yes, you did,” Leela Place said. “In a big way. I'm proud of you.”

It made Joss feel good to hear it.

* * *

“Aren't there seatbelts?” Joss asked.

Place smiled at Joss and said, “No. Remind me to tell you about the chicken plane in South America some time.”

“When Monkey Fist was hiding from DNAmy?” Joss said enthusiastically.

Place wasn't sure whether to smile, laugh, or sigh. So she just nodded. Joss still did her homework apparently.

Though Joss probably had no idea why that particular mission was on Place's mind.

All mention of Yori, Master Sensei, and Yamanouchi had been omitted from everything available to the public. They would have avoided mentioning the mission at all, but the 'gravy ghost' that set the whole thing off was too difficult to ignore.

* * *

“Is this your first time overseas?” Place asked.

Joss nodded.

“We should get you a souvenir, something kitschy.”

* * *

“Thanks for the ride,” Leela Place said.

“It was the least I could do after what you did for me,” the driver, whose name Joss hadn't caught, said.

“Um, yeah,” Leela Place said. Joss could tell that she was confused, but didn't say anything.

After the car had gone, Leela Place asked, “What did we even do for him again?”

“You converted some prices from Yen to Euros in the gift shop where we met him,” Joss said.

“Right,” Leela Place said with the tone of one who just remembered something obvious. Then in her normal tone she said, “But I'm not sure that justified giving us a ride all the way here.”

“I'm not complaining,” Joss said. She looked around and saw a path. “Over here?” she asked.

“Actually over there,” Leela Place said, pointing in the opposite direction. There was a mountain, its peak shrouded in fog, but between the road and the climb up the mountain was a valley, and the only way to the floor of the valley seemed to be the steep cliff just beyond the edge of the road.

“But,” Leela Place said, “if we go that way,” she pointed to the path Joss had indicated before, “we'll meet up with a steam that goes underground, under the road, and to a much easier decent into valley.”

Joss nodded.

Leela Place led, Joss followed.

* * *

Joss had made the trek and climbed the mountain without even breaking a sweat. Place was sure Joss would make a great world saver. She was already more ready than Kim had been at her age, she'd set up her own training ground, and if she did end up attending Yamanouchi she'd have training on a level Kim had never had.

Joss could easily surpass Kim, and if she had Jim and Tim as non-combat oriented investigators --something they'd already proven themselves adept at-- and also had them as her her tech team, it was easy to imagine Team Possible 2.0 as a truly frightening force for justice that surpassed the original in every way. Wade would probably help them just as much as he helped the original, and he was in the same age group. All that was really missing was a hyper-intelligent rodent.

But that was all in the future, she didn't even know how Jim and Tim would feel about teaming up with Joss, or vice versa.

Right now they were approaching a secret school, and she wasn't sure the reception their unannounced visit would get.

* * *

At the end of the rope bridge Master Sensei and Yori were waiting.

Place said, “Yori-san, Master Sensei-Sama” and bowed. Joss, she noted, followed her lead with the bow.

“We have been expecting you, Possible-san,” Master Sensei said, looking directly at Place.

This surprised her and she asked, “Expecting me?”

Master Sensei nodded. Of course: mystical magical stuff. The same thing that had brought her here.

“Then ya'll know she isn't Kim?” Joss asked.

“Hai,” Yori said.

“This is my cousin,” Place said, gesturing to Joss, “Joss Possible. I believe that she would benefit from attending your school when she is of age to do so. I had hoped she might learn about what you do here on this visit so that she would be able to make an informed decision when the time comes.”

Master Sensei nodded.

Yori said, “It would be my honor to give you a tour, Possible-san,” to Joss.

“Can I have one moment with my cousin?” Joss asked.

Master Sensei nodded.

Joss led Place a short distance away and asked, “What's with the 'san' 'sama' stuff?”

Place smiled, “Sorry, I should have told you earlier. I didn't even think about language since Yamannouchi has so many fluent English speakers.

“Anyway, putting 'san' at the end of a name is respectful, always do it for others unless someone has told you that you don't have to call them 'san', and if someone does then congratulations because it means they consider you a very close friend. The other time you, personally, should omit 'san' is if you're talking about a family member when speaking to a non family member.”

“So that's why you didn't call me Joss-san?”

“Hai,” Place said with a smile. “There are other complexities but I think the only other things you'll need to know are that you don't refer to yourself with a suffix and if someone has a much higher rank than you, you use 'sama' instead of 'san'.”

“So I call everyone Name-san except for you, me, and Master Sensei-sama.”

“Pretty much.”

“Ok, thanks.”

They walked back to Master Sensei and Yori who were waiting serenely.

“Apologies Master Sensei-sama, Yori-san,” Joss said. “I needed clarification on …”

“Honorifics,” Place said.

“I understand,” Master Sensei said. “It is difficult to navigate a culture not your own.”

“Ye-- Hai,” Joss said. “Thank you for understanding.” She turned her attention to Yori. “Yori-san, I am ready for the tour you offered.”

Yori nodded. “It will be my honor to provide it, Possible-san. Please come this way.”

Place watched as the two walked away and said, “She'll save the world some day.”

“Which one, Possible-san?” Master Sensei asked.

“Both, probably,” Place said, “but you would know about Yori-san better than I.”

Master Sensei nodded. “You have come because you are troubled, Possible-san.”

“Yes,” Place said. “How much do you know about me?”

“Perhaps both more and less than you think,” Master Sensei said.

Place held her tongue when a response to that came to mind.

“In such situations, Possible-san, I find it is best to describe things as if the one to whom you are speaking knows nothing.”

Place nodded.

* * *

Yori looked like she was about the same age as Kim, Ron, and Leela Place. Joss followed behind her, noting various people in white doing impressive things with weapons and impossible things with themselves. In addition to various outdoor classes on the ground, she saw figures jumping from roof to roof.

“As you have no doubt noticed, Possible-san, Yamanouchi is no ordinary school, we are a secret training ground for the art of ninjutsu,”

“Leela Place described it as a high school,” Joss said while watching a white-clad figure make a jump that she could never make in spite of all her training.

“Officially our students are all enrolled in an exclusive boarding school,” Yori said. “It would cause their families and friends needless grief if they simply disappeared while attending the school.”

“But why do ya'll just teach high school age students?” Joss asked.

“Our founder, Toshimiru,” Yori gestured to a large statue of a fierce looking samurai, “believed that training people in a certain age group was particularly important. The resulting ages of our students correspond, loosely, to the ages of your American high school students.”

Joss nodded but in truth her attention had been entire captured by the great statue.

“The statue is inaccurate, Possible-san,” Yori said.

“How so?” Joss asked.

“Toshimiru founded this school in the time of Emperor Nintoku, specifically the year you know as 338 AD,” Yori said. “At that time there were no samurai. When the statue was made fifteen hundred years later, the sculptors pictured a samurai when they heard that he was a great warrior.”

“So, why do ya'll keep it if it's inaccurate?” Joss asked.

“Art does not have to be accurate to be appreciated, Possible-san,” Yori said.

Joss nodded.

Yori gestured for Joss to follow her away from the statue. Joss did.

“Toshimiru carved the original school from the mountain in a single day with a magical sword known as the Lotus Blade,” Yori said. “Some say that swordmaking's gradual path to the katana was inspired by dreams of the Lotus Blade, but since the blade has the power to change its shape, we cannot even know that it originally had a form similar to a katana.

“Toshimiru is said to be the original master of Tai Shing Pek Kwar, though again this seems anachronistic,” Yori said. “Some believe that he was able to use mystical monkey power to learn and master a martial art that had yet to be invented.

“Whatever the case, as the centuries passed we greatly expanded our curriculum and now Tai Shing Pek Kwar is but one of the styles we teach. Believing stealth is usually better than direct confrontation, we have adopted the way of the ninja.”

Joss followed Yori silently, looking at students practicing with weapons, levitating during meditation, and even disappearing from view entirely.

“While Toshimiru was the only one to gain mystical monkey power, until Stoppable-san, Rufus-San came-”

“Ron was here?” Joss asked excitedly before she even realized that she was interrupting. Then she realized that she'd also accidentally disrespected Ron. “Sorry, Yori-san. I've followed Stoppable-san's adventures with great interest for some time now. He's... sort of my hero.”

“No apology is needed,” Yori said, “though it is none the less appreciated and accepted. I too have great respect for Stoppable-san. He has been to Yamanouchi three times, though only on the first was he here as a student. Then he studied with us for one week.”

“I never knew about that,” Joss said.

“It is a secret school,” Yori said with a slight smile.

“Right,” Joss said. “What were you saying before I interrupted?”

“While we cannot access mystical monkey power, there are many secrets and mystical techniques we have mastered, and do teach here.”

* * * 

“The first of your questions is the simplest,” Master Sensei said.

“Everything carries within it a desire to be what it is meant to be, or what it feels it is meant to be,” he said. “The cells taken from your sister wanted to be part of Kim Possible-san. They carried with them a sense of what that meant and brought personality, memories, and certain ideas about how their body should be —age, conditioning, reflexes, even how long Kim-san's hair was at the time the cells left her.

“When technology told them to create a new person, they tried to be Kim-san. This is what created you, and why you have her memories.”

“So every part of my body wants to make me just like Kim?” Place asked. That thought disturbed her.

“No,” Master Sensei said. “You are yourself now, with your own body, your own spirit, and your own soul. By the time you finally existed, almost all of Kim-san's lingering influence had faded. Once your body was conditioned equally to her own, you were free of that influence entirely.”

Place breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Master Sensei-sama. That ...” she wasn't quite sure of the words she wanted. Finally she said, “does much to put my mind at ease,” even though it wasn't really a phrasing she liked.

“As to your other question, of whether there are any actual or potential magical afflictions facing you,” Master Sensei said, “that will require more time to answer.”

“I was hoping you'd allow us to stay the night anyway,” Place said. “What do I have to do?”

“You will not need to do much at all,” Master Sensei said. “All you must do is come to a shrine and clear your mind for a few moments. I will have to meditate long on what I observe while you do so.”

Place nodded. Sometimes things were mercifully simple. Not often, but sometimes.

“The shrine is this way. Possible-san.”

* * *

“And this is where you would sleep, if you became a student,” Yori said.

Joss looked in one of the rooms, it was a plain thing with walls that Ron would probably walk right through, and nodded.

“That concludes my tour, Possible-san,” Yori said.

“Thank you,” Joss said.

“If I may ask, why is Stoppable-san your hero,” Yori asked.

Joss closed her eyes and thought it over. When she'd been obsessed with Kim she'd dismissed Ron as not worthy of consideration. Then, in her eyes, Team Possible was Kim, Wade, and Rufus. Ron was just the one who kept losing his pants. When she met him, she barely noticed him. He was a distraction from getting to know Kim even better. But then she'd seen him in action.

“It's his fear,” Joss said. “He's afraid of everything but he doesn't allow that fear to stop him from helping other people.”

Yori nodded, “True courage.”

There was silence between them.

Then Yori added, “Most would see his fear as nothing but a weakness even though he doesn't let it stop him. You can see the strength it takes to live with so much fear and not give up. You are already wiser than many adults, young Possible-san.”

Joss blushed. Then she confessed, “At first I barely noticed Ron, and I didn't think much of him when I did. It took some time to see the good.”

“But you did see it,” Yori said. “That is what matters.”

Yori looked at something behind Joss and then said, “Now I will take my leave of you, Possible-san.”

She bowed to Joss, Joss returned the bow, and then Yori bowed to whomever was behind Joss.

Joss turned to see Leela Place.

“Did you get your answers?” Joss asked.

“Most of them,” Leela Place said, “Some I have to wait on. So far, and not just here, it seems like my fears were all unfounded and my hopes are turning out to be correct.”

“That's good.”

“What about you?” Leela Place asked. “What did you think of what you saw here?”

“It's amazing,” Joss said. “Do you really think they'd let me come here?”

“You'll have to ask Master Sensei, but I get the impression they've become a lot more open to accepting foreign students in recent years,” Leela Place said. “I don't know the details, but I think something about a mess involving xenophobic student when Ron first came here made them consider what lessons they were unintentionally teaching, and try to start changing them.”

Joss thought about that, but then said, “Ok, but what about me specifically?”

“I think they'd be lucky to have you,” Leela Place said. Again, Joss found herself blushing. “And if you still want to save the world when it's time for high school, I think the training they give here would be a great help with that.

“But, if you do come here it's not going to be easy for you,” Leela Place said and Joss caught her cautioning tone. “You'll be away from home except on holidays, you'll probably need to do extra work on your own so you keep up on your American education while studying here. Don't get me wrong, they'll give you a first rate education in addition to the martial arts training, but there are some notable differences in topics that get covered here as opposed to back home.

“Every student here has to do double work to train as ninja without falling behind their peers in the more mundane aspects of school. You'll need to do triple.”

Joss took it all in. She was sure she could do it, hard as it would be. Anything's possible, and all that.

“But that's a couple years out, unless you plan on skipping straight to high school like Jim and Tim.”

“No,” Joss said while shaking her head. “And because of my birthday I'm the oldest one in my class, just a little bit earlier and I could have been the youngest in the next grade up.”

“These things happen,” Leela Place said. “They gave us a room a bit down the hall,” she gestured, “want to drop that bag off?”

For a moment Joss was confused, then she realized that she'd completely forgotten her backpack. It was her go-bag, which meant that it had a lot more than a change of clothes in it. Now that she remembered it, it was really heavy.

“Yeah,” Joss said. “I'd like to drop it off.”

* * *

Place was enjoying talking to her cousin and regretting having taken her to a sushi place before they'd left the US. The only time Kim had been to Yamanouchi in Place's memories had involved extraordinary circumstances and no meal had been served. Now that she saw they were serving sushi, it seemed like the meal in Seattle would have been better spent eating something else. There were doubtless all sorts of other foods she and Joss ought to sample.

Then a question seemingly came out of nowhere.

“Why are they all wearing white?” Joss asked.

“Wha?” was the best response Place could muster.

“The ninja; don't ninja wear black?”

“It depends on context,” Place said. “Black is good for at night when there are a lot of shadows and it's also traditional, as you say. But you might see them wearing tan in a desert. Here, though, it's about training. They're wearing white to make themselves as visible as possible. If they can sneak and hide while wearing white ...”

Place left it for Joss to finish, which she did, “Then they'll learn much better than if they trained wearing colors that blend in.”

“Yup.”

“So Shego wearing bright green...” Joss said.

“She's showing off,” Place responded but it was almost on autopilot. It seemed like forever since she left the lair with a promise to return. What was Shego doing?

But it wasn't forever, was it? She'd slept on the plane here, the previous night at Uncle Slim's, before that on the road, then Wade's, and the night before that in a Middleton hotel after seeing her family. Before that she was in the lair.

Five nights away. Was that all? It seemed like ages had passed since she left the lair.

“This is Joss Possible at Yamanouchi calling Leela Place Possible. Ya'll alive in there?”

“What?” Place said. “Sorry. I was just thinking about how much has happened since I left the lair.”

“You miss Shego,” Joss said. Place was pretty sure it wasn't a question.

“Yeah,” Place said. “What do you think about that?”

“The time I met her she was mean,” Joss said, “but then she saved the world.”

“And has since gone back to a life of crime,” Place said.

“But you know her better than I do,” Joss said, “and your judgment seems fine to me.”

Place nodded. She was a little concerned that the people who trusted her judgment might eventually be let down by it, but she wasn't about to burden Joss with that knowledge. So she'd need to talk about something else.

“I was also thinking about your future team,” Place said.

“My team?” Joss asked.

Topic change achieved.

* * *

“Yori-san,” Place said, “do you have free time?”

“I do, Possible-san,” Yori said.

Ok, going well so far, “I would like to speak with you, if you don't mind.”

“It would be my honor,” Yori said. Definitely going well.

After they'd found a place to sit, Place said, “I was surprised to find you here, I thought you'd have moved on to continue your training elsewhere.”

“Master Sensei requested that I stay and teach some classes,” Yori said. “It is a great honor.”

“So you're a teacher now?” Place asked.

“Only in the sense that I teach,” Yori said. “My studies continue through private tutoring with the actual teachers here. It will be many years before I am worthy to count myself amoung them.”

Place nodded. It must be a great honor, or at least an exclusive one, to merit that. Instructors couldn't possibly have time to privately tutor many former students given that they had to actually teach the current students.

“What do you think of my cousin?”

“She mostly listened,” Yori said; “she was most attentive. Some of our students would do well to be more like her. From what she did say, I believe she is a bright child.”

“She is,” Place said. “She's even an impressive inventor.”

“I could not speak to that,” Yori said, “but I had no difficulty speaking to her as an equal.”

“Do you think she would be a good fit for the school?” Place asked.

“Hai,” Yori said. “Her heart seems pure, and her goals are noble.”

“About that,” Place said. “Joss is pure and noble, but I fully intend to return to a supervillain's lair and resume a friendship with Kim's arch-nemesis.”

“Shego-san” Yori said.

“Correct,” Place said. “I'm finding a lot of people surprisingly accepting of that fact, even though I have reservations myself.”

“About trusting Shego-san?” Yori asked.

“No,” Place said. “None there. I've trusted her from the start. I've checked things anyway, and so far my trust has been vindicated at every step. I have reservations about the fact that I'm throwing in my lot with--”

Place stopped.

Something about that hadn't felt right. Was that what her reservations were about?

It wasn't really.

“Possible-san?” Yori asked.

“Un moment, s'il vous plait,” Place said without really thinking, and thus without noticing the strangeness of saying such a thing in this setting. She was onto something.

It didn't bother her that she considered Shego a friend. It didn't bother her that she planned to live at an evil lair. It didn't bother her that she looked forward to the next time she was gambling with the henches. It didn't bother her that she intended to tie her fate to that of villains like Shego and by extension Drakken.

So what was bothering her?

Then it hit her.

“I'm concerned about how little resistance I find to the idea in myself,” Place. “I have reservations about my lack of reservations, if that makes sense.”

“You are worried that your willingness to live with criminals reflects a moral failing in your character,” Yori said.

“Yes,” Place said. “Exactly. I didn't even realize that was what was bothering me until a few moments ago, but it is bothering me and I'm looking for an outside perspective.”

“While I have never met the two personally,” Yori said, “my understanding is that Drakken-san and Shego-san were both involved in saving the world from the Lorwardians.”

“Yes, but not wanting--” Place said.

“If you will excuse me, Possible-san,” Yori said, “I was not finished.

“Oh,” Place said, feeling her face flush a bit, “sorry.”

“All is forgiven,” Yori said. “It is also the case that their careers as villains are of interest. With most villains the general lack of casualties can be attributed directly to the work of Jack Hench.”

That name caught Place's attention.

Yori obviously noticed, and explained, “HenchCo has a sizable Asian branch. I have also encountered those who shop from their much smaller Polynesian branch.”

Place nodded.

“Hench has his own reasons for wanting to avoid casualties,” Yori said, “some of those reasons might even be noble, but Drakken-san and Shego-san do not do business with HenchCo. That means that the fact they've done all that they've done without hurting a single person is entirely of their own doing. I believe that indicates that they have purer hearts than they themselves would admit to.”

Place looked down and thought about it for a bit, and Yori allowed her the silence to do so.

When Place looked back up, Yori added, “Who else could have giant robots rampage all over the world without causing so much as a stubbed toe?”

Place nodded, it was a good point.

“As for the fact that they're criminals, we too are criminals,” Yori said.

“Yamanouchi?” Place asked, surprised.

“To get Stoppable-san here the first time we used lies, trickery, and creative records keeping to fabricate and then exploit an exchange program. To deliver the Han to Stoppable-san's family we created a fraudulent adoption service. Stoppable-san is of great importance, but he is hardly the sole focus of our school. We break many laws, and break them often.”

“Just like Kim and Ron,” Place said, then remembered to add, “-san.”

“Hai,” Yori said. “Laws are of great importance, but people such as ourselves live in two worlds. In one, the one most people live exclusively in, laws apply to everyone and so they should. Saving the world doesn't mean that one should be allowed to violate traffic laws in their ordinary lives.

“In the other, there is magic, there is technology most people only see in science fiction, there are monsters, mutants, heroes, and villains. There are threats and wonders the law cannot and should not hope to encompass.

“Imagine if the mundane law were written with magical tomes in mind, Possible-san,” Yori said.

“It would burn a loophole through every anti-censorship measure ever created,” Place thought out loud. “Some of those things couldn't even be opened without unleashing something horrible. All anyone in power would have to do would be to claim a book were magic and banning it wouldn't be seen as limiting people's access to information but instead as protecting them from magical horrors.”

“And so the same actions have different meanings. When Shego steals a device from a secret lab, it is entirely unlike stealing possessions from an ordinary person's home,” Yori said. “If she did the latter, and you intended to continue your association, then I would question your morals.

“Thank you, Yori-san,” Place said.

“You are welcome, Possible-san,” Yori said. “But if I may, I believe there is something else you should consider.”

“You may,” Place said.

“I chose this life. So did Stoppable-san. Your cousin is choosing it. You did not choose this life; you were born into it. You can choose to remain in it, or you can choose to lead a more mundane life, but either way it is a choice. It is a choice that I believe you should make consciously.”

Place nodded. She thought a bit about things. Then she said, “On a completely different subject, I have a meeting to attend tonight.”

“A … meeting?” Yori asked.

“Some friends back in America,” Place said.

Yori looked even more perplexed.

Place pulled out her communicator, “Since I don't have astral powers, I use the internet.”

Yori nodded.

“I don't want to give away your position--”

“You need not worry about that,” Yori said. “Yamanouchi's location is protected by magic, it cannot be discovered without the direct and intentional help of one who already knows where it is.”

“So, would that magic block my signal?” Place asked.

“No,” Yori said, “But I believe your device will get optimal reception on the western peak instead of within the school's grounds.”

“Thank you for everything, Yori-san,” Place said. She stood up and bowed.

“It was my honor, Possible-san,” Yori said. She also stood and bowed.

Chapter Text

Just before Place closed the door, Joss asked, "Sneaking out on me cuz?"

"If I were sneaking," Place said, "you'd have had a harder time telling that I was doing something." She paused a beat, using it to turn to Joss. "I'm not saying you wouldn't have noticed, but it would have been distinctly harder."

"But ya're going somewhere, right?" Joss asked.

"Yup," Place said. "I'm going to a different peak so that I get better reception when I meet some people in an online game."

"What game?" Joss asked.

"Everlot," Place said. "The one that Ron-"

"-got trapped in and Rufus was legendary in," Joss finished. Because of course she knew. She was Joss. She might have missed out on some the details the first time she learned about it -because she, like most people, had had a blindspot the size and shape of Ron Stoppable- but once she became Ron's biggest fan there was little doubt that she'd learn all the details.

"That's the one," Place said.

"I've never played it."

"Want to?" Place asked. "I mean, I can't promise that the group will want an extra member, but we'll never know if we don't ask."

* * *

Joss looked at the device that seemed like a metal headband with blinking lights, "So these won't get us-"

"Trapped in virtual reality? No," Leela Place said. "These are Wade-tech."

Leela Place put her 'circlet' on and Joss followed her example.

The mountain was gone, and they were in a stylized world of straight lines and sharp corners. Still, it was easy enough to tell what was what. They were in an evergreen forest atop a rock outcropping, and beyond the forest a castle was visible.

Leela Place had become a stylized version of herself, though in peasant clothes-

"I thought that the immersion caps took a picture of the clothes you were wearing or some such," Joss said.

"It was a bit more complicated, than that," Leela Place said, "but since your clothes are supposed to be part of your game equipment, and game status, Wade made sure his wouldn't do that anymore."

"So it would break the game to simulate normal clothes?" Joss asked.

"Not break," Leela Place said, "but it would mess with the gameplay and game balance."

Joss nodded. The one exception to Leela Place's drab appearance was an impressive looking sword with a glowing blue blade.

She looked down at herself and saw that she was in the same peasant garb, less the sword.

"So, who are we meeting?" Joss asked.

"Leela!" Jim and Tim said in unison. Joss and Leela Place both turned to look at the source of the voices.

"J, T," Leela Place said to them.

Joss looked over her other cousins. Both of the twins were in outfits much more impressive than Joss and Leela Place's own. Matching chain-mail armor, Jim with a green tunic over his, Tim with a red tunic over his. Joss wondered if they ever switched colors just to confuse people.

"Joss?" Jim and Tim asked when they saw her. Then they looked at Leela Place.

"Are you," Jim started.

"in Montana?" Tim finished.

"Actually we're," Joss said before realizing that maybe she wasn't supposed to say. She looked to Leela Place, "Am I allowed to tell?"

Leela Place cocked her head to one side in thought, the immersion stuff obviously made it so one didn't have to bother with game emotes, and then said, "I don't see how saying the country could hurt."

"We're at an undisclosed location in Japan," Joss said.

"Cool," Jim and Tim said in unison.

"So are ya'll who we're meeting?" Joss asked.

"They're not all of them-all," Leela Place said.

* * *

"So -J, T- I take it you got Wade to forgive you for hacking his network?" Felix heard Leela ask.

"He doesn't mind hacking so much," one of the twins said.

"So long as you don't spike him," the other, presumably, said.

Feliz looked to Wade's virtual form, decked out as a wizard. Wade shrugged.

"Cousin Joss have to get an ok from the others too?" a twin asked.

"Or was that just us?" the other asked.

"We haven't asked them yet," Leela said.

They reached the outcropping. "Well, you can ask us now," Felix said.

"We're here," Zita said.

* * *

After introductions were made, Zita got to outlining what had brought them to these woods.

Yes, Leela had asked if anyone had objections to Joss joining in, but they weren't going to turn the girl away when she was right there. Besides, they could use the seventh member for what they were going to try tonight. Any help would be desperately needed tonight.

"That castle belongs to Ravenna Ening, calls herself 'Rav'," Zita said.

"Because she likes the fact that it makes her full name sound like 'ravening'," Felix added.

"Charmin'" Joss said.

"We're not convinced she knows what it means," Wade said.

"I think she does and she's just counting on her followers to not know," Zita said. "She expects people to think savage and vicious not, you know, hungry."

"It's not like Everlot has a built in dictionary and thesaurus," Felix added.

"She fancies herself the princess of this region," Zita said, "and has a pretty loyal base of fans to back up that claim. Mostly lower powered players flocking to someone who they think is cool, but she's got a few heavy hitters too."

"As fun as it might be," Felix said, "we're not going to unseat her tonight."

"She has a shipment coming in tonight," Zita said, "the convoy will have to come through these woods to get to her castle. We're going to hit it, rob it, and set the cargo free."

"What kind of cargo do you set free?" Joss asked.

"Lots of types," Felix said.

"In this case," Zita said, "a dragon."

That clearly shocked the various Possibles.

"Dragon artifacts are worth a lot in the Everlot economy," Zita said.

Wade conjured a spreadsheet.

"So," Zita continued, "our good princess Ening could be planning to use the captured dragon as a way to get a lot of gold or barter without having to work for it. More likely, she just plans to put the dragon on display."

"Plenty of people will be impressed with her if she can boast that she has a live dragon she can poke with a stick," Felix said.

"It may just be lines of code on the Everlot servers," Wade said, "but treating it that way is just plain wrong."

"So we free the dragon," Joss said.

"Hika-bicka-boo," Jim said.

"Hoosha!" Tim and Leela said in unison.

* * *

Place and the others surveyed the convoy from a distance that they were reasonably sure was safe. Granted the only reason they could do the surveying was that Wade had cast a spell that let them see through trees, which served as a reminder that ones normal intuition about such things might be entirely wrong. In front of and behind the convoy were some guards on foot. Given the distance and how closely together they walked, Place couldn't get a solid count of them. Cavalry was easier. If she assumed that the far side had the same numbers as the side she could see, then there were two per ordinary cart, 12 roaming, and 16 around the dragon, leaving them outnumbered six to one by the cavalry.

The dragon was in a giant cage, pulled by at least a dozen oxen, at the center of the convoy. The cage featured bars that were probably two feet wide and also had a glow around it.

"What's the blue glow?" Place asked.

"Fire rebound spell," Zita said. "If the dragon tries to attack with its breath, the flames will bounce off the spell and come right back at it."

Place nodded.

"Why are they so spread out?" Joss asked. "One group probably can't even see the next given the twists in the path."

"Accounting," Felix said.

Jim and Tim said, "Huh?" in stereo.

"Ening isn't big on group cohesion," Wade said.

"Because if her underlings started being more loyal to each other than to her, the might notice that she doesn't really contribute much," Zita said

"So getting each cart to the castle counts as a separate quest," Wade said, "and they stay apart so that each can claim they defended their cart on their own."

"Isn't that going to be a problem for our plan?"Place asked.

Zita's plan called for a three pronged attack. A group at the front would stop the convoy and try to draw enemies toward them. As soon as the convoy came to a stop a second group would attack the back, again trying to draw as many foes as they could into that fight.

Finally the third group would attack the center, which would hopefully be far less defended than it was now as a result to the distractions at the front and back.

While there were doubtless other impressive treasures in other parts of the convoy, the dragon was the prize, so the strongest guards would likely stay with it in the center. Thus it made sense for the strongest group to be the one to attack the center. That was Zita, Wade, and Felix. Place, Joss, Jim, and Tim would have to provide the attacks at either end.

"We think it'll be different this time," Zita said, "since they'll all get in trouble if they loose the dragon."

"It looks sad," Joss said.

Place focused on the dragon itself. It was a fairly standard design, probably lifted from the movie Reign of Fire -which Ron always insisted was worse than the original Rule of Pyr- and it did look rather sullen.

"They're programmed to fly free, horde treasure, and occasionally fight knights and such," Wade said, "I very much doubt this situation is giving it positive feedback."

"It was designed to be an NPCP, not a captive," Place said. "Whatever personality it does have, it wasn't designed for captivity."

That was about when Place realized she'd lost everyone. Finally Zita asked, "NPCP?"

Made sense, it was a term she made up on the spot, why would they know it? "Non-player-character player, it's not an exposition font, a quest giver, or an obstacle. It's supposed to be playing every bit as much as we -the actual players- are, just with different rules, objectives, and probably different expletives when it's killed and has to restart from the last checkpoint."

Wade nodded. "That's more or less right."

"Thanks," Place said. She looked back to the convoy but Wades spell soon wore off. "I think Zita's plan should work. The twins take the front, Joss and I take the back, the rest of you in the middle."

Zita, Felix, and Wade all nodded.

"How are we," Jim said.

"going to stop them?" Tim finished.

"You two have been building rockets out of video games for so long," Place said, "don't you think it's about time you built a rocket in one?"

She couldn't see it, but she was sure that the twins, sitting at their computers -which happened to be right next to each other- in reality, looked at each other and exchanged truly malicious smiles before their in-game avatars dashed off.

"J, T," Place called to them, hopefully not loudly enough to alert the convoy.

They turned back. "Yeah, sis?" they asked as one.

"Two things," Place said. "First, good luck. Second, it doesn't have to work; it just has to explode. Loudly."

"Hika-bika-bo?" Jim asked.

"Hoosha!" Tim answered.

* * *

Joss watched her cousins head off to do something, apparently explosive.

"They make rockets out of videogames?" Joss asked Leela Place.

"My best guess," Leela Place said, "is that they re-purpose the electronics for their guidance systems."

Joss nodded. Made more sense than using them for the fuel.

"Joss is the only one newer than me," Leela Place said to the others, "so she's in desperate need of equipment before we're up."

"Weapons?" Felix asked.

"I was thinking more like a grappling hook," Leela Place said.

"Ohh, are you gonna be a thief?" Zita asked Joss.

Joss was caught off guard and stammered, "No-no, I'm- I want to be one of the good guys."

"It's just a character class, Joss," Felix said.

"It really does go with a lot of the sorts of things Kim did," Wade said, "sneaking, crawling through air vents-"

"Fighting style that focuses on dodges and speed rather than packing a powerful punch or being able to take a hit," Leela Place said.

"It's nothing about good or evil," Zita said, "just the class your character is."

"I do have a grappling hook," Felix said.

* * *

"That was loud," Joss whispered.

"The twins usually are," Place said. "Remember, we don't move until-"

"Good and stopped back here," Joss said.

"Exactly."

"I do have a question about that, by the way," Joss said.

"Now is the time to ask," Place said.

"If we're at level zero," Joss said, "then how do we beat them?"

"Two things," Place said. Then amended, "No; three. We have three advantages over normal newbies.""First, the circlets mean we. . ." and Place realized she'd lost Joss. "The portable immersion caps," Joss nodded that she was following this time, "mean we don't need to memorize any controls; we think, virtual body does. Second, they're going to underestimate us when they see what we're wearing."

After a pause Joss asked, "And third?"

"We're Possibles," Place said; "it doesn't matter if their level is nine, ninety nine, or nine thousand if we don't let them land a blow in the first place."

"Dodges and speed?" Joss asked.

"Yup," Place said. "Keep it a question of skill, not how hard they hit or how much health you have."

"And count on the circlet to translate real-world skill into button-pushing skill?" Joss asked.

Place nodded. Then some shouts had her taking a look at the extreme rear guard of the convoy. They'd stopped. She said to Joss, "Now get up a tree and follow my lead."

* * *

Joss stood in the branches above the two rearmost guards, they were obviously annoyed with the delay.

She then saw Leela Place walk into plain view and give a casual greeting to the guards. The response seemed disproportionately rude:

"What do you want, knave?" said with venom and distain.

"Oh . . ." Leela Place said, "forty gold pieces, a hundred and fifty XP, and one live dragon." That threw the guards. Joss made sure not to giggle. "Why, did you think you could help?"

"How do you know of Princess Ening's dragon?" One guard asked.

"Don't mention the dragon!" the other said.

"Can we just skip to the combat already?" Leela Place asked.

Joss didn't watch, her job was different; she moved forward through the trees.

The sound of combat beneath her would doubtless draw additional guards. That was why she was in the trees. She found what she considered a good spot and watched the path ahead. Soon enough six guards appeared rushing toward the fight. They were in heavy armor, full plate armor.

"Dodges and speed," Joss whispered to herself then descended behind the guards.

"Hey!" Joss yelled at the six. "You missed me."

Now six well armed and well armored warriors were headed toward her.

She ducked a longsword from the first and rolled straight into the legs of the second.

That knocked the second into a third and stopped her roll setting her up to lunge at the fourth, which meant that by the time the first was ready to take another swing at her she'd knocked down half of the group and disarmed one of them.

She decided not to keep the sword she'd wrestled from the fourth. It was heavy in her hands and would slow her down. She threw it into the woods then flipped over the next swing from the lead warrior, planted her feet on the warriors' chest-plate, and kicked off hard to flip back into a combat stance.

Only two members of the group hadn't hit the ground and they were the farthest from her.

It was going well, if slowly.

* * *

Place looted the bodies of the characters she'd knocked out. She figured they should be grateful she hadn't just killed their characters. She did get some gold, but the find that interested her the most was a pair of daggers. They'd make good weapons for someone pursuing a fast style.

She ran toward the sounds of fighting up the trail to catch up with Joss.

When she got there she used the sword of Elsinore as a club on the armored heads of the two enemies nearest her. Joss seemed to be doing a good job of handling the four nearest her, but Place saw more coming down the trail beyond Joss.

"Heya cuz," Joss called.

"Got you some presents," Place said, tossing the daggers to Joss, "watch out behind you."

Joss caught the daggers, shoved the enemy nearest her into the the other three, and looked up the path in one smooth motion. "Got it," she shouted back to Place.

* * *

"We've taken down twelve already and haven't even reached the rear cart of the convoy yet," Joss said as she searched the unconscious bodies. "If the others are having as good of a time-"

"They won't be," Leela Place said while she searched.

"No?" Joss asked as she stood, there hadn't been much worth taking.

"These ones were to stop us before we got within striking distance," Leela Place said. "Some people believe that the best defense is a good offense, but from what we saw when we were watching earlier, the defenses were set up by someone who thinks the last line of defense ought to be the strongest."

Joss thought that through. "So these were the weakest."

Leela Place nodded. "If they'd been better they'd have been rewarded with the mobility of a horse. Plus, the heavy hitters will be staying with whatever loot they're guarding, with the majority around the dragon."

"That doesn't explain why twins would be having a different experience," Joss said. "If the fore-guard is the same as the rear-"

"I don't think it would be," Leela Place said.

Joss didn't follow. "Why not?"

"It's just a guess," Leela Place said.

Joss wanted to understand the reasoning behind the guess, though, and so she said, "But?" in a manner she hoped would provoke elaboration.

"Well, they're nearly at their destination, so they'd be expecting any attack to come from behind them instead of in front of them," Leela Place said.

Joss nodded.

"In that case the twins are probably fighting the tough opponents by now," she said.

"Why should they have all the fun?" Leela Place asked in a way that sounded almost conspiratorial.

Joss smiled. "Onward!" she ordered, one of her daggers held aloft like a sword. Then she and Leela Place charged away from the defeated rear guard and toward the convoy they'd been guarding.

* * *

Jim eyed the six knights on horseback who had halted his advance. Them being arranged two by two wasn't optimal, he'd rather have one row six wide, still, it was better than single file.

"We are the elite guard of her majesty Princess Rav Ening," the guard in front on their right, "do you honestly hope to stand against us alone?"

"Two things," Jim said. "One, I wouldn't be sitting right there if I were you."

"And two?"

"I'm not alone," Jim said the moment it was too late for the guard to doge the log that slammed into him from his right. Everlot didn't have the most accurate physics engine in history, but it did have enough that hitting someone with great force would send them on a pseudo-parabolic path at a vaguely appropriate speed.

In this case that translated to the guard who was hit being flung into the one next to him and both of them landing pretty far afield from their horses.

The horses themselves were fairly simplistic NPCs, nowhere near as advanced as the dragons, and were programmed to respond to any stimuli considered "highly unexpected" with something with the outer appearance of panic.

The AI, insofar as there was one for such a simple implementation, was no less calm than if it were taking its rider to a designated destination, and with that knowledge in hand Jim and his brother had had a lot of fun messing around with the horses of Everlot. The only things equivalent to comfort or discomfort in the horse-programming were related to food, direct physical harm, and kind or harsh treatment from riders.

Normally Jim and Tim made use of those limitations to have guilt-free great fun with strange situations, and even kept the horses, when they were dealing with horses, happy by giving them digital apples. At the moment it meant that, since a loud noise followed by no longer having riders was related to none of the horse comfort-discomfort variables, the "animals" were internally unperturbed, but causing a fair amount of havoc.

This, in turn, caused the horses farther back to switch into "it looks like panic" mode, and soon none of the guards had their attention on Jim.

By the time Tim called out, "How many did I get?" Jim was in the center of the four remaining mounted guards.

Jim, dropped a bottle containing a fog potion, counting on it to break on the ground, and shouted, "Just two!"

* * *

Tim ran toward the fray and saw that Jim had already spooked the horses of the local guards. The twins chain-mail weighed them down less than the plate armor of the guards, but if they wanted true mobility they'd need at least two of those horses.

Tim threw a "battle hammer" at one of the mounted guards and, when the guard fell, decided to concentrate on that horse. He selected an apple in his inventory and headed toward it.

"Down!" Jim shouted and Tim obeyed, narrowly avoiding a sword. Apparently someone had regained control of their horse more quickly than Tim had anticipated. As soon as he was on his feet Tim threw the apple at the offending rider's head, watched with satisfaction as the rider was knocked over, and decided to focus on that now-empty horse.

* * *

"Surrender!" shouted the guard with a sword to Jim's neck. Jim wasn't fazed. In real life he and Tim would have won by now, but Everlot didn't favor quick knock outs. The two that were hit by the rocket-log, sure, but the rest simply took longer because that kind of extreme force was hard to bring to bear.

Besides, in order for the sword at his neck to do damage it would have to be pulled back and swung, a move that would take enough time for Jim to duck it. Putting the sword to his neck was a losing move. Posturing amateur.

Still, Jim needed a moment longer. So he asked, "Why?"

"You can't hope to- What the Hell!?" The guard said as Jim finished cutting through the girth of his saddle. The way he just slid around the horse was a bit absurd, but the trick never got old. Everlot programming allowed the girth of a saddle to be damaged for a reason, yet no one ever seemed to expect it.

"Hop on," Tim said from somewhere behind him, and soon there was a horse beside him.

Jim mounted it and headed toward the first cart in the convoy, "Sorry, I can't stay," Jim called to the guards they'd left on the ground.

"Stuff to steal, people to see," Tim said.

* * *

"I hate waiting," Zita said.

"This was your idea," Felix said.

"I know I just-"

"It's working," Wade said. "Sort of. Maybe." He was looking at images appearing in a smokeless fire he'd lit.

Zita walked closer to get a look at the images.

After a bit of looking she said, "They've taken out all of the infantry, and the twins brought down half a dozen mounted soldiers."

Wade nodded then said, "Six mounted units are making their way towards Leela and Joss," he paused in a way that Zita knew wasn't final even though he seemed to want it to be, then said, "the rest are staying with their carts."

Zita groaned. The plan wouldn't work if a majority stayed at their posts. "How many is it again?" Zita asked.

"Sixteen at the dragon, four on every side, two on each of the other carts," Wade said as he looked at the swirling images.

"Meaning thirty, and they'll all consolidate at the dragon when we attack," Zita said. "Ten to one odds."

"Once the others reach actual treasure," Felix said, "the guards on the ordinary carts will move to help. And then it'll be easy."

Felix's confidence, Zita knew, was because things weren't going too smoothly. Felix always said that that tended to be when things went catastrophically wrong, often adding an, "after all," to the end of the statement.

* * *

Magic words tended to require characters of a certain level or objects of power. Given that they hadn't leveled up even once, Leela Place and Joss were dependent upon the second. One of the guards had had a magic telescope, and the magic words were apparently usually in extremely basic Latin. At least that's how Leela Place had explained her decision to say random phrases in a dead language to the magic telescope.

Then Leela Place stopped and was silent for a bit.

"Looks like there's only cavalry left," Leela Place said. "We got the attention of six of the roaming guards, the cart guards are staying with their carts."

"D'you know you're not even pointing in the right direction?" Joss asked.

Leela Place shrugged, "I didn't program the game."

Joss found she had nothing to say to that.

"The easy way would be to hang back take the six mobile ones before we engage the ones staying with the rear cart," Leela Place said.

"So I'm guessing you're not planning that," Joss said.

"I was thinking we both go in the trees this time," Leela Place said. "We drop directly on the cart, and then fight out from there."

Joss nodded. It would have the advantage of being unexpected, at least.

"Grab some rocks," Leela Place said.

Everlot rocks, those that weren't part of the landscape, came in conveniently throw-able size.

Joss grabbed several.

* * *

Jade Fire didn't like this. There had been no news on exactly what the loud bang was, nor the second, smaller, bang. They'd been stopped for too long. Staying on the move was the only way to keep this much treasure safe in the open.

The rear guard had engaged an unknown enemy after the sound of fighting from the two walkers she called the "caboose" who stayed well behind as a sort of early warning system. The rear-guard had not reported back. Now the rear contingent of the free cavalry was heading back to investigate, but she and her co-guard of the last treasure cart would have no idea what was going on until they reported back. If they reported back.

As soon as the free cavalry's hoofbeats faded, Jade heard a sound in the woods. Then another.

She didn't see anything, though. She rode her horse back and forth to see more angles. Maybe it was nothing.

Another sound.

Jade called to her co-guard, some macho creep she'd never bothered to get to know, "I think we're being flanked!"

"Yeah," came the reply.

Jade started off the trail and into the woods when she heard a crash behind her.

* * *

Place and Joss landed on the cart more or less as one, facing in opposite directions, ready to jump toward the guards on horseback they'd distracted with the rocks.

The choice of direction was pragmatic. Joss had the grappling hook, so she was faced off against the one who had charged away. Place was facing the one who took a more cautious approach and was thus closer.

She jumped and swung her sword as one and landed on the horse's rump while smashing the guard with the sword.

The guard gave a yelp, but managed to not fall off the horse, instead hanging onto the left side of it and trying to get back up while Place struggled to get to the reigns.

"Clever," the guard said. Her voice was notably female.

"So this isn't a boys' only club," Place said, whacking the guard with the sword again.

"How could it be?" the guard said as she grabbed onto Place's leg and gave a yank. "Our leader's a girl."

Place had been prepared for blows, she hadn't expected to be pulled, and soon found herself trying not to slide off the horse's left side with the guard. She sheathed her sword; she'd need both hands to climb back up. The guard took the opportunity to land a punch on Place's side.

Place grunted then said, "One spoiled brat does not an egalitarian society make." She threw a punch but it was halfhearted and easily blocked, the important thing now was to get back on top of the horse. If it went into panic mode with her in this position things could go downhill fast.

"The princess-" the guard said.

"Self proclaimed princess," Place said.

A punch came in with a fair degree of anger behind it, Place blocked it without trouble.

"Princess Ening is worthy of the title," the guard said.

Place gave one final yank and was back on top of the horse. Now she needed to get the reigns.

"Worthy people don't mistreat animals," Place said. She punctuated her next word with a kick to the guard's head, "Dragon-napper."

The guard grabbed on to Place's leg, but Place was ready for it this time and responded with a whack from the sword.

"It's a sword, not a club," the guard grumbled.

"Did you want me to slice and dice you, whoever you are?" Place asked.

"Jade Fire," the guard said, not letting go of Places leg, "and I just don't like the idea of a knave who," Jade started to climb up Place's leg, "doesn't even know how to use the weapon she obviously doesn't deserve-"

Place hit Jade in the helmet with her sword's pommel; "It was bestowed upon me," she said, "by the true Queen of Everlot."

"Like you know Zita Flores," Jade said, not actually making any efforts to change the situation.

Place didn't particularly like having someone hanging off her leg, but she accepted the apparent break in the action -it might give her a chance to get the reigns- "Known her for years now," Place said. "Sort of."

"Sort of," Jade spat.

"I've got her sword," Place said; "who are you to talk?"

"Jade Fire, Elevated Elite-"

"'Elevated Elite'?" Place said, practically laughing.

"-of her majesty Enings-"

Place was still on "Elevated Elite" so she offered up, "Extremely exceptional excellent exclusive elevated elite elect-"

"You," Jade spat, giving a yank on Place's leg, apparently the conversational truce was over, "Will," Place was ready for the yank and stayed atop the horse, but this just meant that Jade pulled herself upward and grabbed onto Place at a higher level, "Not," Jade yanked herself up again, "Mock" Jade straddled the horse and landed behind Place, again latching onto Place, "Her Maj-"

Place did not want Jade behind her so she drove both of her elbows straight back. Given that Jade was in armor this probably did more damage to Place than Jade, but it was worth it because it freed Place from Jade's grip.

There was a severe penalty to the damage of any blow when trying desperately not to fall off of something, be it a cliff, a wall, or a running horse, but safely on the horse Jade would do full damage and no amount of skill would allow Place to go blow for blow against someone whose level surpassed her own by as much as she guessed Jade's did.

She needed to be somewhere with more space to maneuver than the back of a horse, that meant plan B.

Before Jade had time to recover from the elbows, Place launched herself forward, onto the horse's neck.

"What are you-" Jade didn't have time to finish asking; Place dropped off the horse and took the bridle with her.

Place picked herself up and watched the horse take Jade away, "Later your esteemed eminence," Place called; "I have a dragon to free."

How long before Jade came back depended largely on whether or not she tried to regain control of the horse without reigns, or if she just jumped off and returned on foot.

Place didn't care. She just had to get back to Joss.

* * *

Joss threw her grappling hook as soon as she landed, then braced hard. The hook caught on the guard's armor, as planned, Joss braced herself against the treasure cart, as planned, the line went taut, as planned, the guard stopped moving away while the horse continued onward, as planned. The guard landed with a satisfying thump, as planned. After a moment of slack and calm the line was taut again, it took everything Joss had to avoid being pulled off the cart, and the entire treasure cart flipped over, not remotely as planned.

As she dug herself out of a pile of gold, grabbing a nice looking necklace on the way, Joss slowly became aware of a very loud, very angry, guard returning from where he'd landed.

She'd let go of the line to her grappling hook, so his attempts to reel her in that way had failed, but that just meant she'd have to defeat him to get the hook back.

He had full plate armor, an obscenely large sword, and a vocabulary Joss wouldn't repeat even in impolite company.

His first swing splintered the overturned cart and made Joss feel better about her chances. It was a powerful blow, obviously, but it was also a slow one. If he kept to attacks like that she wouldn't just be able to dodge them, she'd be able to tap-dance on them.

Sure enough, the next swing was just as slow, and she decided to jump on his sword where it embedded itself in the ground. "Missed me," she said.

Having apparently run out of profanity and obscenity, the guard simply growled. Then he aimed a blow at the empty ground on the side of him opposite Joss. Since she didn't jump back off the sword in time the effect was to launch her over his head and into the trees. It also dealt her some damage, but it was negligible in the scheme of things.

"Sill here," she called down with bravado that was at least half false, "ready to surrender yet?"

More words Joss would never repeat, many of them aimed at her sex and gender and having no bearing on the situation at hand.

Joss looked around. The Everlot rendering was hardly subtle so what she wanted shouldn't be too-

There was a large dead branch she was sure she could take down with a well timed and well placed jump. Now just to get the misogynist under it.

"I'm over here, dimwit," Joss said when she was near the dead branch, "Please direct all insults in this direction."

Sure enough, he came exactly where she wanted him. She jumped, the branch broke, it and she came down on the guard, and that was about when the six mobile guards on horseback made it back to find the cart overturned, one of the guards incapacitated by a large branch -which they might mistake for a small to medium tree- to the helmet, and the other guard missing.

Which reminded Joss to wonder, where exactly had Leela Place and the other cart-guard gotten to?

There would be time for that later, though, as right now the six guards on horseback didn't look happy to see her.

Joss wasn't sure how to respond and went with "Um, howdy?"

That didn't seem to be the response they were looking for and Joss barely had time to grab the downed guard's sword before she was ducking their swords. Actually, she was mostly staying very low and dodging horses. The size of the guards' horses and the size of their swords left a two foot tall safe zone near the ground unless the guards dismounted or leaned too far for safety.

Additionally, even in the low areas they could hit, they couldn't do it with great accuracy or range, and if they tried for force Joss would be long gone before the sword reached where she'd been.

Attempting to simply trample her just got their horses in each others' ways.

It was the fact that Joss was so used to robotic horses that made this strategy even possible. The simplistic AI used to control the Everlot horses was so many orders of magnitude more basic than the AI used to control the horses at the Lazy C that she didn't even have to try; being able to see several moves ahead, thus always stay at least three steps ahead, came without effort.

The guards finally seemed to realize that their initial haphazard strategy wasn't working and pulled back so they could get back to trying to trying to defeat her rather than trying not to run into one another.

This changed everything as it meant that the horse's AI would have fewer variables consider and thus player input would play a far larger role. That meant Joss could no longer tell exactly what the horses would do, not even close actually, but it didn't matter; this is what she had been waiting for.

She stood up and waited for one of the guards to make a move.

When one did, picking up speed as the horse made for the empty space to her right so the guard could lean over a bit and get a good swing at her, she simply used the sword for a massive over the head blow. It was slow, powerful, and the kind of thing that would be easy to dodge if you weren't on a charging horse trying to lean in for a blow without falling over.

One guard down, five to go.

The remaining five wouldn't make the same mistake, which meant that the sword was fairly useless to her now. She dropped it and ran for the treasure cart's remains. That should provide for various new possibilities in combat.

* * *

Zita was talking with Felix about the logistics of an upcoming real-world get together when Wade said, "That's interesting."

Zita had once been told that "That's interesting," or perhaps, "That's odd," which generally meant the same thing, was usually a more significant phrase in science than, "Eurka!" Of course she asked, "What is?"

Felix asked, "What did you scry?"

"Leela and Joss tricked the six into overshooting them then attacked the rear cart," Wade said.

"What about the twins?" Zita asked.

* * *

"Does this seem like it's going slowly to you?" Jim asked Tim after exchanging another set of blows with one of the guards around the first cart of of the convoy they'd come to. Next up was to circle the horse back around, go by the guard again -no difficulty there as the guard would do the same- and hope that one of the blows in that encounter actually changed things. Unlike the blows in all the previous encounters.

Tim responded with a bored, "Yup," and Jim decided that it was time for a new strategy.

Instead of circling back to his opponent, or Tim's opponent, he went by the front of the cart itself jumped onto it.

The driver, a knave who wasn't equipped for combat, jumped off and wisely ran away. There was a reason they hadn't included the cart drivers in their tally of enemy combatants. Having one of them secretly be the greatest warrior of the bunch would require imagination their opponents seemed to lack.

Jim signaled for the horses pulling the cart to go forward.

"He's stealing the princess' treasure!" one of the guards shouted.

"Of course I am!" Jim shouted back. "Did you think we were fighting you for fun?"

"You people are way too under-powered for this to be fun in itself," Tim said.

"I'll show you-" the second guard started.

"Ignore him!" the first guard snapped. "He's trying to distract us while the other one gets away."

* * *

"Are the guards farther back following?" Zita asked.

The wonders of computer generated pryomancy showed that they were.

"And the guards in the rear?" Felix asked.

"They got aggressive quickly," Zita said. While the front guards approached the twins cautiously, essentially each pair moving forward one cart and leaving only the cart closest to the dragon unguarded, the rear guards appeared to be massing for a single assault on Leela and her cousin.

"I don't think Leela and Joss can handle them all at once," Wade said.

"They won't need to," Zita said. "We go now."

* * *

When Place made it back to the road there were three unconscious guards on the ground.

One appeared to have a tree on top of him; another had a massive dent in the chest-plate, perhaps struck by a ridiculously overpowered (and thus absurdly slow) blow; the third was among various treasure objects all about the size of softballs.

Joss was fighting four guards like a whirlwind of dagger and gold.

"Need some help?" Place asked.

The guard nearest Place turned toward her, it was a mistake, Joss used the distraction to knock the guard to the ground and then used the fallen guard as a platform to vault off of, landing near Place.

"Grab some gold chains," Joss said, pointing to the demolished treasure cart. "They hate it when you use them to tangle up their swords.

That explained the gold.

Place headed for the cart as advised, and opened up a "details" window as she looked at the assorted treasures. That's when she really understood Joss' use of gold. Treasure had no durability value. No value meant nothing to subtract from when it was hit. A good thing if you don't want the rewards of your quest to be ruined when someone drops them on the floor, but a massive oversight in combat. The thinnest of jewelry would be able to take a sword blow without deforming or breaking.

Granted Everlot physics wasn't advanced enough to sew treasure into unbreakable armor and was advanced enough that trying to use an unbreakable nondeformable treasure sized thing to keep from getting hit would fail because the blow would just take the form of unbreakable nondefomable thing hitting you as hard as whatever you tried to block, but -given the work that had gone into rope and tangle calculations, mostly for reasons of magical vines- it was still a huge oversight to let ropey tangly things like gold chains, be they anklets or elephant decorations, be completely impervious to all forms of harm.

Place wondered how long it would take after this battle to get a patch addressing that.

For the moment though she just took the longest treasure chain she could in her right hand, equipped her sword in her left, and joined the fray.

Which was about when a horn was blown somewhere up the path and two of the guards said, "The dragon," in unison while a third said the same about a half second later.

* * *

Three against sixteen hardly made for good odds, but they had separated the other 26 riders from the dragon remarkably easily, all things considered. When Zita finished setting up a trap for the riders who returned from the rear, Felix tried to ask her, "Do you think-"

But Zita cut him off with, "Don't jinx it,"

"You do think," Felix concluded.

"What?" Wade asked, apparently done with his trap as well.

"Nevermind," Zita said. "Ready?" When Wade responded with a nod she said, "Attack."

Zita started with a ground attack using the aspen power wand, and that's about when things went sideways.

Wade and Zita had a heated discussion of whether it should even be in the game, apparently the copyright status of Lovecraft's post-1923 work was in dispute; Felix just said, "I knew things were going too smoothly."

He jumped at one of the mages summoning the creature in hopes of interrupting the spell before the summoning was complete. In a single fluid move the mage somehow managed to dodge the attack, get off his horse, land in a perfect defensive stance on the ground, and enchant his horse into becoming a hydra of the Lernaean sort.

Felix swore, Zita cast something -along with multiple riders- into a dimension window, Wade went flying, and someone blew a signal horn.

* * *

With the distraction of the horn, the Place and Joss had little trouble dealing with the four guards. The key feature of the sword of Elsanor, it seemed, was that it was incredibly powerful and light. Unlike most very powerful weapons, it didn't slow one down. So with Joss setting the guards up, all Place had to do was wack them in the helmets. They weren't all that powerful anyway, if they had been they'd have been assigned to guard an individual cart. It was when the four were dealt with that Place and Joss were presented with a different problem entirely.

"How is it possible that not one of them thought to secure their horse before getting into a fight on foot?" Place asked. She didn't ask Joss, she more asked the universe.

She and Joss were, quickly, looking through the treasure to see if there were any combat-useful things in it. They might not make it to the same fight as fast as she liked, but Place wanted them to be as helpful as they could be once they got there. That meant constantly being on the lookout for new equipment that might be better. She was about to check the stats on a scepter when someone shouted behind her.

"Who the Hell do you think you are?"

"Hi, Jade," Place said, turning to face the warrior and handing the scepter to Joss.

"You're going down knave," Jade spat.

"You have no idea who you're messin' with," Joss said.

"Yes, I think I've established that," Jade sneered.

"She is Leela Place, I'm her cousin Joss, and you're in over your head," Joss said.

Chapter Text

“You two are obviously cheating,” Jade Fire said.

“Aren't the important calculations handled server-side?” Joss asked.

“I think she's referring to us using using a custom interface,” Place said.

“Is there a rule against that?” Joss asked.

“No,” Place said.  “But other than not learning the default keybinds what could she possibly be talking about?”

Joss smirked.  “I'm sure that she uses only the most basic equipment.  A two button mouse, a keyboard, a monitor that tops out at six forty by four eighty.”

Place smirked back.  Joss had caught on quickly.  “She probably doesn't even use the default controls herself because those are similar to ones found in other games and heaven forfend that someone should take skills gleaned elsewhere and apply them here.  She must have some sort of randomizer that means she needs to learn a new set of controls for each new game.”

* * *

Jade took off her headset for a moment and looked at her setup.  A custom left handed mouse with eight main buttons and a thumb-stick.  It freed her entire right hand for the whole keyboard since the mouse and thumb-stick controlled looking and moving.  Several of the mouse's keys were bound to macros of her own design so that she could go from thought to in-game action faster than a non-customized setting would ever allow.

She put the headset back on.

* * *

“Maybe I spoke too soon,” Jade admitted.

Joss responded with “Ya think?”

“But you're still trying to steal what you didn't earn,” Jade said.

“And, do tell,” Place said, “if the good princess Enning has earned all of these things,”  Place gestured to the treasure, “why didn't she bring it to the castle herself?”

“Listen you miscreants--” Jade started.

“It seems awfully inefficient to earn all of this loot,” Joss said, “then leave it behind in some random place, and finally hire a bunch of misogynistic mercenaries to bring it to her home base for her.”

“Misogynistic?” Place asked.

“I will never repeat what that one,” Joss pointed to guard with a tree on top of him, “called me.”

“Look,” Jade said, “I'm sorry about the asshole but you're still thieves trying to steal her majesty's tribute and --”

“Tribute?” Place asked.  “You mean she didn't earn it but instead it's being given to her, just like how I got the sword of Elsanor?  I thought you said I didn't deserve it.”

“No more talk,” Jade said.  “You're both going down.”

* * *

“You think we'll catch him before he makes it to the dragon?” Jim asked Tim as they galloped down the path after a horseman who'd gotten away.

“Not sure,” Tim said, “beating the other three took a while.”

“He's got a lead,” Jim said.

“How do you think Zita and the others are doing?” Tim asked.

* * *

Felix tried to assess the situation.  It was more difficult than he expected.

What the odds were really depended on how you counted things.  Eleven of the sixteen guards remained unscathed, Wade had been damaged, Zita was running low on spell strength, Felix himself was at a bit of a loss regarding what to do, and the summoned creatures were downright scary.  Were they outnumbered eleven to three or more like twenty to two?

Felix didn't know.

He slashed a tentacle with his sword and, before he could even figure out which of the creatures the tentacle had belonged to, found himself in a sword fight.  One where he was hopelessly outmatched.

* * *

Joss finished reading the item description of the scepter Leela Place had given her just as Jade began to charge.  Josh struck the scepter against the ground.  Cracks opened up, the earth fell away, and Jade was, at least, slowed down.

“Great work cousin,” Leela Place said to her.  “Let's get to the others.”

* * *

“These are the most infuriating knaves in the history of that word being used to mean 'newbie',” Jade grumbled.  Then she got to work climbing back up to what had once been ground level.

* * *

Jim looked at the three horses, and their riders, trapped in the liquefied sand of the path ahead of them.  “Something tells me we shouldn't take the road here,” he said to Tim.

“Yeah,” Tim said, “I get that feeling too.  No idea why though.”

Jim just snickered.

* * *

Felix was one hit away from losing when a lighting bolt blasted his opponent.

“Thanks, honey,” Felix said when he realized that Zita was the source of the bolt.  Then he searched the enemy for supplies.  A healing potion later and he was back in the fight.

Zita and Wade would be better able to defeat their actual enemies, so Felix figured that the best contribution he could make would be dealing with the summoned creatures and stopping their opponents from ganging up on either Zita or Wade.

To that end he tried to find where he would be of most use and settled on the hovering Hell cuttlefish.

* * *

“We just need to find something to boost our speed stat,” Place said as she and Joss dug through the treasure.

“Check this out, cuz,” Joss said.

Place did.  It was a rug, a fairly intricate design, but she wasn't sure at first what purpose it served.  Unless it was going to teleport them to the fight, how could it help them provide backup to--

It was so obvious that Place had to force herself not to facepalm.  It was a magic carpet.  It wouldn't get there as fast as horses, but it'd be a lot better than walking or running.

“You left without saying, 'Good-bye,'” Jade said from behind them.  “It's rude.”

“You accused us o' cheatin' without even knowin' us,” Joss said.  “It's rude.”

“What she said,” Place said while pointing to Joss.

“Why all the running?” Jade asked.  “Afraid you can't win a straight fight?”

“This isn't a fight,” Place said.

“It's a prison break,” Joss said.  “You've no right to hold that dragon captive.”

“The dragon belongs to--”

“Her majesty the extraordinarily exalted elegant effervescent elite elevated extravagant Enning,” Place said, a bit bored with the whole thing.

“Excessive alteration much, cuz?” Joss asked.

“Ask Jade what her rank is if you want to know why,” Place said.  “Though I don't recommend it.”

“You're going to fight me.”

“Why?”  Place asked.

Jade was apparently at a loss, so Place added, “If it's Enning's dragon then why should you fight for it?  Why doesn't she show up herself?”

“She doesn't have to answer to the likes of you,” Jade spat.  Well, as well as one could spit words online.  Jade's microphone just wasn't up to picking up the contempt properly, but Place was pretty sure that Jade had spat the words in real life.

Place glanced at Joss who had laid out the carpet and looked ready.  “We'll just be going now,” she said.

* * *

“Zita,” Jim called.

“Felix,” Tim called.

“Wade,” They both called.

 “Sorry it took so-- Whoa!” Jim said.

There were eight enemy soldiers still in action, and seven summoned monsters.  Big ones.

Zita, Felix, and Wade were all noticeably damaged.

Felix was the first to respond.  He was standing on top of what looked to be a cross between an elephant and a sea anemone and he simply shouted, “Help me fight the monsters so they can focus on the bad guys!”

* * *

There were six soldiers.  They were battered and their horses were nowhere in sight.  Before them was a swirling void.

“Are you sure this time?” one asked.

“I'm sure,” another said.

“Because the last time--”

“I'm sure, alright?” the second shouted.

Then he said some pseudo-Latin and the swirling void disappeared.  “See,” he said; Place wasn't sure whether it was a command or a question.

The others cautiously approached what appeared to the an ordinary section of the road, where the void had been.  One stuck his sword through the now-voidless space.

None of them seemed all that enthusiastic about going forward.  Place wondered what had gone on the last time they'd tried to pass the trap, but it wasn't important at the moment.

The fact that they'd lost their horses and already been worn down was important.  It meant they'd be a lot easier to defeat than they should have been.  Easier than Jade for sure.

“Thanks,” Place said.  "We'd have had a hard time helping our friends free the dragon if you hadn't done that.”

Joss piloted the magic carpet passed the guards so that she and Place would be between them and the main battle.

“Come on,” One of the guards said, “they can't take us--”

“No,” another guard said.

The first guard seemed flustered by that.  “No?” he asked.

“I'm sick of this,” the guard who'd said, “No.” said.  “I thought that joining Ravenna Ening's guild would help me level up, help me make connections with other players, make things more fun.  But this?

“Guarding someone else's treasure, fighting someone else's fights?  This isn't fun.  And what do I get out of it?  A sword that's obviously a hand-me-down,” he dropped his sword, “the privilege of riding a horse that runs away, 'quests' that are 99% boring and 1% getting ambushed.  No.  I'm, done.”  And he walked away.

“You don't walk away from Princess Rav Enning's service!” the first guard shouted.

“You'll have more fun if you find better companions!” Place shouted to the departing ex-guard.

“Yeah, this game seems like a lot of fun if people don't mess it up for you,” Joss said.

“They still can't take all of us,” the first guard said to the other four.

The ex guard shouted back, “Did you notice she has the sword of Elsanor?” and then continued to walk away through the woods.

Place drew the sword.  She glanced at Joss.  Joss was back to having a dagger and a gold chain equipped.  Place followed Joss's lead and equipped a gold chain as well.  It might be a simple strategy --tangle the enemy swords in the chain; strike fast and hard with the sword of Elsanor-- but it stood a good chance of working as well this time as it had before.

* * *

Jade sifted through the treasure in the abandoned cart until she found what she was looking for.  Then she laid out that magic carpet, and commanded it to rise.  Once she was on her way she said, “I'm coming knaves,” as if her enemies could hear.

* * *

Zita sent a healing spell in Wade's direction and stole a glance at Felix.  He was making progress but things were not, on the whole, going well.

She and Wade were slowly wearing down their opponents, but then those same opponents were slowly wearing down Wade and her.

She couldn't summon any more dimensional portals, she was out of elemental spells, she was spent when it came to illusions.  At this point it was all on her sword-fighting ability, and in that arena odds that ranged from four-to-one to nine-to-one (depending on how well Wade was doing) were not particularly good odds.

It was made worse by the fact that her present opponent seemed to be a good strategist.  To keep from being outmaneuvered in the sword fight she was being forced into a more and more precarious situation with respect to the sword mages constantly trying to pick her off.

One in particular was really starting to worry her.  She'd been able to evade so far but it was only a matter of--

The mage was hit by an unconscious chimera and was out of the fight.  Now she could devote more of her attention to the swordplay.

Jim or Tim, she wasn't sure which, said, “Hika-bika-bo.”

Zita shouted, “Hoosha!”

Feint, lunge, backpedal, sidestep, and she'd gained the blade.  It was only a matter of time. 

* * *

Leela Place had dropped the last of the guards, which meant that it was time for Joss to get the magic carpet flying again.  So she went to work on just that.

Leela Place said, “I thought the cart you're supposed to be guarding was way back there.”

Joss looked, it was Jade again.  Joss followed her cousin's lead and said, “Our allies should be picking it clean as we speak.”

Jade threw a dagger.  Joss could see it wasn't going to hit her, and planned on ignoring the whole thing until she realized what it was going to hit.  The carpet was ruined.

“Oh come on!” Joss said.

Leela Place said, “Joss, check the stats on that knife.”  Joss picked up the dagger and looked at the item description.  She heard Leela Place say to Jade, “We're almost there anyway, taking out the carpet was a pointless waste of a good floor covering.  We'll walk from here.”

Joss was impressed by what she was reading about the item.  It had the longest description of any item she'd checked so far.  It could dispel magic, it could be used in any number of rituals, it also seemed to say something about--

“Joss time to go,” Leela Place said.

“Stop running and fight!” Jade shouted.

Joss followed Leela Place in running toward their goal.

* * *

Wade was feeling worse and worse about the outcome of this mission.  There'd been a moment of hope when Zita vanquished the enemy she was sword fighting, but afterward Wade and Zita were still outnumbered seven to two and their allies had their hands full dealing with the six remaining monsters.

Wade had no magic left in him, the same seemed to be true for Zita, Felix had slowed down considerably, and the twins, who'd only just arrived, were starting to show strain.

* * *

“Sorry we're late,” Place said; “we kept on getting interrupted.”

She rounded the unguarded back of the dragon-cart and assessed the situation.

Jim and Tim were fighting a large flying walrus.  Felix was faced off against an undead moose.  All three were distracted from their own fights by trying to keep four other creatures --a living oil monstrosity, a gryphon, a large slimy alligator-esque creature, and a tentacled mass with no apparent overall form-- from focusing on Wade and Zita.

Jim, Tim, and Felix were closer to the front of the cart, with Wade and Zita further back, closer to Place and Joss.

Wade was faced with three guards in plate armor and . . . barely managing to not get killed.  He wasn't even damaging them at this point.

Zita was fighting four and she was doing better than Wade, but it was clear that even if she took one or two with her she'd lose in the end.

“Help Wade!” Zita shouted.

Place headed off to do that when Joss grabbed onto her arm.  Place said, “We have to--”

“I know how to win,” Joss said.

“How?” Place asked.  Things were looking pretty bad.

Joss held up the dagger Jade had thrown at the carpet, “I did like you said.”

Place wasn't sure what to make of that, but that was when Jade showed up.

“No where to run knaves!” Jade shouted, she was close, but she hadn't rounded the cart yet, so she was out of sight.  When she did come into sight she obviously saw the fight that was going on because she said, “Damn.”

Place looked at Joss and said, “Whatever you're going to do, do it quickly,” then drew her sword, equipped a gold chain, and got ready to fight Jade.

Jade, for her part, stowed the magic carpet she'd been using and drew her sword.

* * *

The gryphon was starting to lose interest so Felix threw a rock at it.  Then he hid behind the zombie moose he was devoting most of his energy to fighting.

It seemed like a good idea, but a moment later --when the gryphon missed him and carried off the moose instead, leaving nothing between him and the other monsters-- Felix wondered if maybe hadn't thought that through quite as much as he should have.

As the slime alligator-thing started towards him he shouted, “Jim, Tim!  Help!”

Two things came flying out of the sky.  The first was a rock that the slime alligator-thing mostly ignored.  The other was a bottle that shattered in front of Felix.  Suddenly he was engulfed in impenetrable fog.

“Thanks!” Felix shouted.  He searched the nearby ground for a rock --not the easiest thing when he couldn't see-- and when he found one threw it where he thought he remembered the tentacle creature being.  Then started moving elsewhere in case it decided to retaliate.

* * *

Joss ran passed the combatants, her eyes scanning the cage on top of the giant cart as she did.  She ducked a pass by the gryphon, realized that one of the guards who had been fighting Wade had decided to follow her, and still hadn't found what she was looking for.  She kept running.

* * *

“So you're finally going to fight me?” Jade asked.

“Nah,” Place said.  “I'm going to pretend to fight you in order to distract you from what's really important.”

“Your mouth isn't going to get you out of this one,” Jade said as she approached with her sword drawn.

“I'm completely serious,” Place said.  “Today I'm a distraction.  Have been since before we met.”

Of course in the beginning there had been a plan that didn't quite have this ending in mind.  Right now she just had to trust that Joss's plan, whatever it was, would work.

* * *

“Come on; come on,” Joss said.  “Where's the--”

And then she saw it.

“--lock.”

It had been a bit of a gamble from the start, but she assumed that the cage hadn't been built around the dragon with the intention of being torn apart again once they delivered the dragon.  That meant some kind of door, even if the door was an entire side of the cage that could be removed.

A door meant a lock, otherwise the dragon would be able to push the door open and escape.

Now came part two of her gamble.  It made a certain amount of sense to her for what held the cage physically closed to also be what held it magically closed.  If that were true then the lock would also be, or at least be near, the heart of the magic that prevented the dragon from breaking out.

As she got closer to the lock she saw that the blue glow of the magic was strongest there.

She shoved the dagger into the lock.

At first nothing seemed to happen.

The guard that was chasing her caught up.

She dodged a swing from his sword, converted the dodge into a roll, pulled out her daggers and ended in a fighting stance at the guard's side.  The guard had to backpedal and spin to avoid being left open to attack and hit the cage.  The magic of the cage threw him forward, Joss dodged again, and commented, “I guess the spell does more than contain fire.”

In fact she'd hoped that was the case.  The problem was, her other hope wasn't working out.

The guard got up, took a different stance --one that seemed more serious to Joss-- and Joss resigned herself to needing to fight him.  Then she caught a hint of a blue flicker.

She backed up a bit and waited a moment.  It flickered again.  Then the blue glow stopped altogether.  The guard didn't seem to notice.  Joss, however, was pretty proud of herself and evaded the guard's charge by jumping into the dragon's cage.

“What the hell?” the guard said.

Joss moved to retrieve the dagger she'd shoved in the lock, only exposing her right arm on the outside of the cage.  Once she had it, she said, “The Emancipabo Dagger: dispels magic; gets a massive bonus when it's confining magic.”

“What?” the guard said.  It sounded more like an expression of confusion than an actual question.

“Cry freedom and let Jubilee echo throughout the land,” Joss said more loudly.  The dragon noticed her.  Good.  She jumped out of the cage.  She climbed back into the cage.  She climbed back out.  All while the dragon watched.

“Come on,” she said to the dragon, “you have to get this.”

The dragon let out a small, tentative, breath of fire.  The fire went through the cage bars above Joss's head.

“You got it now,” Joss said.

The dragon roared.

Joss figured that cutting through the cage would get her back to her friends more quickly than going around, so she did that.

* * *

Place had known that she'd lose in a straight fight with Jade, that's why she had been avoiding one, but now she was buying time for Joss and that meant fighting a losing battle.

Place had lost her chains.  Sure, she'd been able to tangle Jade's sword in them, but Jade just yanked really hard and Place had to let go for fear of being pulled into an attack.  The sword of Elsanor helped, but one high stat weapon was no match for Jade's level.  Jade had power Place couldn't hope to match and being at a higher level meant that she had access to moves and abilities Place didn't.

Dodging was meant to be the great equalizer, so a knave could, in theory, dodge as well as a level 99 übermensch, but fights were not won on dodges alone and Place was running out of stamina, energy, and any other stats that might matter.

Jade tricked her into dodging right into a downward strike --Place cursed herself for not seeing the feint for what it was-- and had to block.  The force of the blow knocked her to her knee.

Then she heard a roar.

“What?” Jade said as she looked to the cage.

Place looked too.  The dragon had been silent all this time, why was it making noise now?  Then it hit her.  Apparently it hit Jade too because she shouted:

“The flame shield is down!”

She needn't have bothered.  The dragon spewed fire above the battle a moment later, which did a much better job of letting everyone know.

Joss shouted, “Everyone regroup on me!”

It took Place a second to figure out where Joss was, and a moment longer to realize that Joss had run through the dragon's cage.

Place took a moment to check on the others.  Wade and Zita had used to the distraction to get away from the guards.  Jim and Tim let go of the flying walrus and managed to land on their feet.  Felix was already on his way.

Confident that the others wouldn't have any problem getting to Joss, Place ran to regroup herself.

“Get back here!” Jade said.

There was a horrible sound.  Place risked a look back at the cage and saw that the dragon was ripping the cage apart.

* * *

Joss didn't stop running until she was at the edge of the woods.  She just hoped that the dragon's AI was sophisticated enough to mark her as “friend”, along with the rest of her party.

When she looked back the cage was in ruins.  The oil creature was on fire, the gryphon was fleeing, and the guards had been scattered.  No sign of the flying walrus or the mass of tentacles.

The dragon was flying free.

Wade was the last to arrive.  “My character's running on fumes,” he said.  His digital avatar was showing signs of exhaustion.

“We won, though, right?” Joss asked.

“Yeah,” Zita said.  “We won.”

The dragon roared overhead.

“You're welcome!” Joss shouted.

“So, what did you do?” Leela Place asked.

“Kind of wondering that myself,” everyone looked to see Jade.  None of them were really up for a fight, but there were seven of them and only one Jade.

“Everyone, meet Jade Fire,” Leela Place said.  “Jade, meet Zita, Felix, Wade, Jim, and Tim.”

Leela Place didn't bother preparing for a fight.  She collapsed to the ground then found a tree to lean against.

“You really do know Zita Flores?” Jade said in what Joss assumed was shock.

“Doy,” Leela Place said.

“Jade actually gave me the key,” Joss said.  She showed everyone the dagger.  They passed it around, each of them looking at its stats, when it came back to Joss she offered it to Jade.  “I'm guessing you want it back, and I'm not up for fighting for it.”

“Keep it,” Jade said.  Then she sat down against a tree.  “This was one hell of a session.”

“I think we ruined her day,” Leela Place said.  Joss could tell Leela Place was trying not to laugh.

“Look on the bright side,” Jim said.

“With all of the other guards beaten or scattered,” Tim said.

“You can take whatever treasure you want from the convoy,” Jim and Tim said together.

“There's gotta be some good swag in there,” Felix said.

“Might as well,” Jade said.  “Princess Enning is not going to be happy or forgiving when she finds out we lost the dragon.”

* * *

Place looked around.  She looked at her friends: Wade, Felix, Zita, her brothers, her cousin --maybe even Jade, given that the girl had stayed around rather than run or fight.  She was starting to make connections of her own.  This was something Kim would never have done.  This was all hers.

Joss whispered something to Wade and then he said, “Yeah, I can do that.”

A moment later a disembodied voice said, “We got Ringo and Ronnie Wood gonna help us out on this one, too.”

Then the music started, Bob Dylan sang:

They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here

Too many voices to identify sang in the chorus:

I see my light come shining
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

. . .

* * *

“I like your taste in music,” Place said as she pulled off her circlet.  She was startled when there was someone standing over her in the real world, but she had enough control not to show it.

“Yori-san,” Place said.  “I wasn't expecting to see you out here.”

“I came to see if you were in need of anything Possible-san,” Yori said.  “Your eyes were glowing a most unusual shade of green.”

“Our eyes were glowing?” Joss asked.

Yori nodded.

Place closed her eyes.  “Yeah, one of the side effects of the VR method.  Sorry I forgot to tell you.  You should blink a bunch or just keep your eyes closed for a while.”

Place opened her eyes.  “Dry eyes are not happy eyes, you see.”

Yori offered her a hand, and she accepted the help getting up.  Then she offered Joss the same help.

The three began walking back to the main peak and the school.  Joss walked slightly ahead of Yori and Place.

“In addition to checking that you were well, Possible-san,” she said, “I wished to extend an offer to spar tomorrow.  It could be instructive to the students, would be entertaining to them even if it is not, and would give you an opportunity to practice your skills with partners who are not usually available to you.”

“If Hirotaka-san was any indication of the quality of Yamanouchi students,” Place said, “I believe I would lose quickly.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Yori said.  “You will not be expected to answer until you have had a chance to sleep on it.  Part of why I came to meet you before you retired.”

Yori turned her attention to Joss, “The same offer is open to you as well, young Possible-san.”

“I . . . I don't know what ta say,” Joss said.

“You are not required to say anything,” Yori said.  “Was your meeting productive?”

“Um...” Joss was clearly lost.

“It was very productive,” Place said.  “We were able to remain in touch with three friends and two family members, meet a potential friend, and rescue an electronic dragon.”

“Your meetings sound a good deal more interesting than mine,” Yori said.

“Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on the purpose of the meeting,” Place said.  “For my purposes today, meeting within an online game was productive.  In another situation it might be catastrophically wrong.”

“I was just along for the ride,” Joss said.

“She's being overly humble,” Place whispered to Yori.

“I can hear ya,” Josh said.

“Clearly my whispering technique could use some work,” Place said at a normal volume.

Yori actually laughed.

* * *

“You up yet cousin?” Joss asked Leela Place.

“I'm never up,” Leela Place said.  “If I ever claim to be awake it means I'm talking in my sleep.”

“You're a horrible liar,” Joss said.  “You're gonna miss breakfast if you don't get up.”

Leela Place grumbled, but eventually started moving to get up.  Josh said, “I'll leave you to make peace with mornin'; I'm gonna get some grub.”

* * *

Joss was wandering around in a way Yori interpreted as somewhat lost.

“Good morning Possible-san,” Yori said to Joss.

“Good morning Yori-san,” Joss said.  After a pause she asked, “Which way is breakfast?”

Yori smiled.  “This way, Possible-san.”

As she was leading Joss she asked, “Where is your cousin?”

“Uhh... comin' to grips with the fact that she needs to actually sleep sometimes if she wants ta be able to wake up in the mornin', I think,” Joss said.

Yori suppressed a laugh.  “An inability to recognize her own limitations is a trait she probably picked up from her sister.”

Joss nodded but she didn't seem to be fully paying attention.

“Yesterday she started talking about my team,” Joss said.

“I was unaware that you had a team,” Yori said.

“I don't,” Joss said.  “She was talking about my future team --if I decide to pursue world saving-- and suggested that it could include her brothers.”

“The composition of one's team an important consideration,” Yori said.  While Yamanouchi tried to teach its students so that they would be able to operate alone, it was always considered a last resort.  In the field there were too many variables, and too many dangers, to be a lone operator.  Kim always had Ron and Rufus to watch her back.  Joss would need someone to do the same if she hoped to have success.

Joss remained silent.

“What's troubling you, Possible-san?” Yori asked.

“I want ta make a difference, and I'm willing ta put myself at risk ta do it,” Joss said, “but . . .”

When Joss was unable to complete her thought, Yori risked a guess, “You are less willing to put others at risk.”

Joss nodded.

They had reached the breakfast line.  Once they joined it --Joss ahead of Yori-- Yori said, “The desire to keep others out of danger is commendable, Possible-san.  However, you must also remember that respecting others' self-determination is important as well.

“What your cousins, any of them, do is up to them and not you.  Unless you think that they would be at notably greater risk than you would be, it would be unfair to deny them the choice you have made for yourself: whether or not to put oneself at risk,” Yori said.

Joss snatched rice and sushi from the food plate.

“If I'm team leader, though,” Joss said, “then isn't it my place. . .”

Yori had her own food, and Joss had yet to finish.

“In that case it would be your place to determine whether or not a given risk was too great for anyone on your team to take,” Yori said, “but again: it would not be your place to deny others a choice you give yourself.

“Obviously there are complications.  The same mission may not pose the same risk to two different people, and trying to gauge such a thing is inexact and difficult,” Yori said.  “Sometimes it is simple: I, for example, would be at far less risk undertaking a mission than one of my freshman students.  So a mission that would be an acceptable risk for me might not be for them.  Other times it is not so simple.

“If I needed to call on your cousin for help during her stay here, I would have great difficulty determining how much danger such a request could place her in.  It would be impossibly difficult to tell how that differed from sending her sister on an identical mission.

“There are no simple answers to these things, Possible-san,” Yori said.  “All of this is in the future, though, and dwelling on it will do you no favors.  There are more important questions you should ask.”

“Like what?” Joss asked.

“Do you trust the people who may be on your team?  Do they trust you?  Is that trust deserved?  Can you live with the mistakes that will inevitably be made?  Can they?  And most importantly of all,” Yori said, “what are you going to do today?”

Joss laughed, “Is that truly most important of all?”

“There is nothing wrong with planning for the future,” Yori said, “but you must not let it distract you from the fact that you are always here, not there, and you are always living now, not then.”

“Thank you,” Joss said.

“So I've totally failed to drop any eaves,” Leela Place said as she joined them.  “Whatcha talking about?”

“I've been thinkin' 'bout what you said yesterday,” Joss said.

Leela Place asked, “What did I say yesterday?”

“About my team,” Joss said.

Leela Place closed her eyes.  A moment later she opened them and said, “Over dinner.”

“Yeah,” Joss said.

“Well . . . just remember that that was me talking,” Leela Place said. “What actually happens is up to you, Jim, and Tim.  Wade too, though I'm pretty sure he'd be willing to help you if you wanted his help.”

“If I may,” Yori asked.

“You may,” Joss and Leela Place said at the same time.

“Jinx, you--” they also said at the same time.

“So much for a free soda,” Leela Place grumbled, though when she finished there was a smile on her face.

Leela Place seemed to thrive on the interaction, but Yori had no idea what the soda reference was about.  Yori didn't try to make sense of American customs.  If they could accept whatever they saw as strange about her culture, she would accept the things she saw as strange about theirs.

“Why do you assume that Joss would be the leader of her eventual team?” Yori asked Leela Place.

“Jim and Tim seem content in supporting roles,” Leela Place said.  “Also Joss would likely be the primary combatant and the Possible tradition is for the person in the most danger to be the one who calls the shots.  That's why it's Team Possible and not Team Stoppable.”  After a pause she added, “Well, that and branding.  Ron really was cursed with a surname that doesn't make for a good team name.”

“It's a darn shame,” Joss said.  “The best I was ever able to do was call him 'The unstoppable Ron Stoppable,' and everyone just made fun of it.”

Leela Place looked at Yori then back at Joss, “I don't think you have to worry about people putting Ron down here.”

Yori knew that Leela Place was talking about her in particular, but the truth was that there were far more people here than just herself and Master Sensei who respected Ron.  “The first time Stoppable-san came here he had difficulty gaining acceptance, but he showed his heroism then and has helped the school since.

“I believe that the name Stoppable has gained the respect it deserves within these walls,” Yori said.  “I must attend to my morning class, I invite you both to join me.”

* * *

It was around noon when Yori reiterated the offer of sparing, and that accepting the offer would be seen as a favor since the students would be able to learn from observing it.

Place decided to take her up on it and soon they were preparing in a court yard.

Yori bowed to her.  Place bowed back.

Place circled counter clockwise and waited for Yori to either attack or show an opening.  Just as Place was about to have a decent shot from the side Yori lunged forward into what looked like a handspring.  Before Place realized that it wasn't --that Yori had reversed direction instead of continuing forward-- Yori's feet had almost hit her in a double kick.  Place dropped under Yori's legs and converted the downward momentum into a roll.  She ended up where Yori had started.

Place noted with a bit of satisfaction that Yori was a bit off balance for a moment, but the moment passed and they were back on their feet facing each other.

Yori had already made an attack, it was Place's turn.  The student's didn't need to be taught that waiting to attack until your opponent got so bored as to start an ill thought out attack was sometimes an effective strategy.  If the students were going to learn anything, the combatants would need to trade blows.  Or, at least, attempted blows.

Place faked a leg sweep, which Yori naturally jumped over.  In theory that would have placed Yori right in line with the punch that was to be Place's main attack.  In theory.  In practice, Yori blocked the blow in the air with enough force to expose Place's back, which combined with the less than solid stance that resulted from the fake sweep meant that Place had to drop to the ground just to avoid being a completely open target.

* * *

As Joss watched Place and Yori fight, an activity that seemed to consist entirely of near misses, she made note of the various moves the two combatants used, and occasionally acted out ones that she knew well.

She gradually became aware that she wasn't alone in doing so.  All of the students, some of the teachers, and the lunch woman were watching.  Some of them were doing exactly what she was doing.

* * *

“Don't you ever get tired?” Place asked.

“Do you?” Yori asked.

“Yes,” Place said.  “So very much: yes.”  She walked to a wall of the courtyard --the spectators made a hole for her-- and let herself sink to the ground with her back against the wall.  “Someone bring me water.”

Yori let herself collapse next to Place.  “Bring us both water, please”

“So. . .” Place said.  It took her a bit to push her brain passed that word.  “Who do you think would have won if we'd kept going?”

“I have no energy left, Possible-san,” Yori said.

“Ditto, Yori-san,” Place said.

“I hope ya'll ain't expectin' me to do that,” Joss said as she helped the students who were bringing the Yori and Place water.

“No, young Possible-san,” Yori said.  She drank some water and then said, “Each to their own abilities.”

“Yeah,” Place said.  “When I was your age I didn't exist.  Would have been truly unfair to expect me to do something like that back then.”

“You were never my age, cuz,” Joss said.

“My point exactly,” Place said.

* * *

“You realize we're both stupid, right?” Place asked Yori as they watched Joss show her skills to a teacher who was gauging who she should spar against.

“I'm sure that we both have many shortcomings,” Yori said.

“Each of us should have called off that fight well before it ended, especially after it became clear that the other wasn't going to do so,” Place said.

“I was caught in the moment,” Yori said, “as were you.  It is an oversight that we both must watch for in the future.”

“Yup,” Place said.

They watched Joss in silence for a bit.

“Do you think I fight like Kim?” Place asked.

“I believe that you fight like Leela Place Possible-san, cousin of Joss Possible-san, and friend of Yamanouchi,” Yori said.

“Good answer,” Place said. “But I'm not looking for my insecurities to be soothed, just an honest assessment.”

“You fight like you and your sister had the same teachers for many years,” Yori said.  “Nothing more, but also nothing less.”

Place nodded.  Joss was about done being assessed.  “I don't know what it means to be a friend of a school,” Place said, “but if you're willing, I'd be interested in learning what it means to be a friend of Yori-san.”

“I would like that, Possible-San,” Yori said.

* * *

While Joss and her opponent were prepared for her fight, Yori had a short time to talk to some of her students about her match with Leela Place.

“What did you learn from watching Possible-san and I fight?” Yori asked.  “Other than the fact that sometimes I do not know when to stop and, apparently, neither does she.”

“Outsiders can be as skilled as we are,” one student said.  Yori nodded.

“She isn't a master of any style, and still she matched you,” another student said.

That was the answer Yori had been looking for.

“Yes, Possible-san has learned, perhaps, as many as twenty styles of martial arts, but has not become a master of any,” Yori said.

“Based on a memory she believed that she would lose quickly, but in fact I never came close to defeating her,” Yori said.  “The reason for the discrepancy between her expectation and the reality was related to the number of styles employed.  In the memory the fight was limited to a single style of kung fu and my schoolmate, Hirotaka-san, won quickly and easily.  In the fight today she was free to draw on all of her knowledge and skill.

“What we do here is a form of rigorous training,” Yori said.  “We teach formal styles and strictly adhere to them.  It is not the only way to fight, however, and one certainly cannot expect their enemies to fight in the same way.  If you learned nothing else from the demonstration today, be sure to remember this: Possible-san is a master not because she has studied and mastered an existing style, but because she has created a style of her own that works for her.

“That is neither better nor worse than the way we teach here, and when your classes are over, you've graduated from this school, and moved on to using your skills in the outside world, it may turn out that her way of doing things fits you better than the way we have taught you,” Yori said. “If that happens it does not mean your time here was wasted, because what we teach you here is the clay from which you will form your own style, should you do so.”

“I'm sure you're all eager to watch the younger Possible-san,” Yori said.  “Go.”

* * *

Joss' sparring match was considerably less epic than the one between Place and Yori.  Joss displayed considerable skills --it was notable that she fought a second year student even though she was significantly younger than the youngest first year student-- and the match was probably as close as the match between Place and Yori had been, but it was overseen by teachers who knew better than to let the two fight to complete exhaustion.

* * *

“So, you've had a taste of what the students here are like,” Place said to Joss after the match. “Any new thoughts about the school?”

“I am totally goin' here if they let me,” Joss said.

Place smiled.  The enthusiasm was nice.  “Well, if you're so sure you might want to start learning Japanese, not to mention learning about Japanese culture.”

“I can do that,” Joss said.

“I'm sure you can, you've got a couple years to do it in,” Place said.  “There remains a question of what you'll do until then.”

“Whaddya mean?” Joss asked.

“Well, do you wait on the world saving until you get training here, or do you start up right away?” Place said.  “You can ask Jim and Tim to join you any time.  You don't have to wait.”  Place paused for a moment.  She remembered Montana.  Was it seriously only two days ago? “Though there might be good reason to wait.”

“Like what?” Joss asked.  “If you think I'm ready--”

“I do,” Place said.  “I was just thinking about water guns.”

“Water guns?” Joss was pretty clearly flummoxed.

“Remember the fun we had back at the ranch?” Place asked.

Joss nodded.

“Don't you dare throw that away,” Place said.  “If you do decide to start getting into the hero business when you're still a kid always make sure you allow yourself to be a kid.”  Place paused again, this time just to collect her thoughts.  “It would be a tragedy if you stopped having fun for the sake of fun because you were in too much of a hurry to do great and notably noble things.”

“You think Kim grew up too fast,” Joss said.

“I think that shooting you with a squirt gun was the most fun I can remember having,” Place said, “and I don't want you to miss out on that kind of fun.  I especially don't want you to miss out on that because of something I said or did.”

“I shot you more than you shot me,” Joss said.

“Did not,” Place said.

“Did too,” Joss said.  Then before Place could respond, Joss said, “And, cuz, if I'm supposed to do kids' stuff. . .”

“Yeah?” Place asked.

“Tag,” Joss said as she lightly hit Place, “you're it.”

Joss bolted.

“I'm still tired from fighting. . .” Place said.  Place had wanted to shout, but she wasn't in the mood or frame of mind for it and thus the words came out as an exasperated phrase Joss would never hear.  “Aw, hell,” Place said.  She ran after Joss.

* * *

“I've had rebellious students before,” Master Sensei said, “But I believe that this was the first time the entire school was overrun by a game of tag.”

Place wanted to be apologetic.  Unfortunately her emotions weren't in the right place for that.  She chuckled.  “I guess I'm a bad influence.”

“Do you recall when Ron, Yori, Kim, and I went over a waterfall?” Master Sensei asked.

It wasn't hard to dig up the memory.  While the others had grabbed onto physical things to stop themselves from falling, Master Sensei had simply levitated.  Ron had called it, “That mystical floaty thing,” and after hearing that Master Sensei had started to do random maneuvers with no practical purpose.  Ron had concluded, “Ok, now he's just showing off.”

Place nodded.

“I enjoy fun as well,” Master Sensei said.  “I believe that is what 'fun' means.”

Place nodded.  “Something like that.”

“I have meditated on what I observed in the shrine yesterday,” Master Sensei said.  “My conclusion is that you are not currently under any magical influence, and you are no more at risk of such influence than anyone else.”

Place bowed, “Thank you, Master Senesei-sama.”

“Now that you know your hopes were correct and your fears were not,” Master Sensei said, “what do you plan to do?”

“Make my way back home,” Place said, home being the lair, “perhaps meeting people on the way.  I'd prefer that people close to Kim learn of my existence from me, rather than a news report or gossip.”

“If you would like to travel home via Florence,” Master Sensei said, “I believe I can arrange transportation to get you that far.”

For a long time Place didn't know what to say.  Finally she said, “Florence is good.”