Nights in the Big City
is a Kim Possible fan fiction written by Mr. Wizard.
Sergeant Sasha Barkin, of Go City's finest, gets a call one night to deal with two kids in a warehouse. What starts out as a typical call goes awry when it becomes clear that neither of them are from her reality, and one of them is grievously injured. What follows is part mystery, part noir, and part political thriller as Kim and Ron, now lost in another universe, struggle to get back to their own. Attracting the interest of powerful foreign governments, they navigate drug rings, kidnapping attempts and unfamiliar politics while living with the police officer who first found them.
This story provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: Some of the doubles of villains from the show are positively nice people in this universe.
- Cryptic Background Reference:
- In this universe, Robert E. Lee fought on the Union side and became the 17th President of the United States, the cars run on ethanol, the Pope is a woman and so is God. Details like this are casually thrown out now and then, sometimes because they will be significant later, but mostly to create a world that's living and working beyond the story.
- Adolph Hitler was apparently "Vienna's most celebrated set designer."
- Darker and Edgier: The story is suffused with a noir tone. There is a rather high level of violence, accompanied by realistic consequences up to and including characters being Killed Off for Real.
- Jacob Marley Warning: Sasha is called in on a child-neglect case; the mother died and the father fell completely to pieces and started drinking heavily. Afterwards, she becomes more cautious in her investigations and makes Steve promise to hold himself together if anything does happen to her.
- Knowledge Broker: Sasha's brother Mike (alt-Mego) has a finger in every pie and knows the dirt on everyone in Go City.
- Little Miss Badass: Kim, of course. Everyone who encounters her at the GCPD is amazed that such a cute slip of a girl can also be a physics-defying fighting machine with the constitution of an Olympic athlete.
- Narnia Time: Kim and Ron spend months in the Alternate Universe, and return home to find that only a few hours have passed from when they left.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Alt-Sensei, expecting the Imperial Japanese government to order Kim and Ron eliminated once the reports make their way to the top of the bureaucracy, uses every protocol maneuver he can, such as channeling communications through people hostile to the Yamanouchi school and thus inclined to sit on his reports as long as possible, to delay matters while warning them to make their escape ASAP.
- Shame If Something Happened: The bad guys threaten Sasha by hacking into her computer and editing her daughter's image out of all her photos.
- They Would Cut You Up: The head of the OSS (alt-Nana), warns Kim and Ron that factions in the US government are proposing extreme measures to extract the secrets of interdimensional travel, and that she'll only be able to block them for so long.
- Villain Decay: Thoroughly averted. While a lot of fanfiction tends to have Drakken as a rather harmless villain, this story has him very much in his first season, pre-decay mold. Before the start of the story, he hits Ron with a flamethrower.
- Visions of Another Self: This universe's Kim doesn't believe she could ever be as extraordinary as her Badass Normal Teen Superspy alternate self; canon-Kim just thinks she was dodged a bullet in not meeting alt-Kim's abusive boyfriend.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: This fic places Middleton in Michigan, which helps give the impression that Go City is Chicago with the serial numbers filed off.
