Middleton was, by all scientific accounts, a magnet for the statistically improbable. It was a town where a "normal" Tuesday might involve a ghost infestation in the band room or a localized gravitational collapse at the mall. But for Lexi Possible, "improbable" was simply a baseline she worked to optimize.
The morning began in the Possible kitchen, which currently resembled a high-tech staging area. Jim and Tim, the twins Kim affectionately referred to as the "Tweebs," were staring at a pile of scrap metal and a very scorched loaf of sourdough.
"It's for the Seventh Grade History Expo," Jim explained, his eyes wide with the frantic energy of a student who had realized their project was due in four hours. "We wanted to build a diorama of the Industrial Revolution."
"But with actual steam!" Tim added, miming an explosion. "Only the steam... well, it turned into a fire."
"And then a localized soot cloud," Jim finished morosely.
Lexi, leaning against the counter and sipping a tea blend that tasted of chamomile and cold fusion, tilted her head. Her "Cheerfully Terrifying" eyes scanned the scorched remains. "You've approached the problem from a purely mechanical perspective. Steam is inefficient for a classroom setting. It creates humidity, which ruins the structural integrity of the poster board."
"So, you'll help us?" Jim asked, hope blooming in his voice.
"I will optimize you," Lexi corrected. She set her tea down and reached into the pocket of her shimmer-fiber lab coat—a pocket that, thanks to some creative spatial folding she'd borrowed from the Galactic Council's logistics division, was significantly larger on the inside.
She pulled out a sleek, chrome toaster. It looked innocent, but it hummed with a low-frequency vibration that made the silverware on the table rattle.
"This is the Chronos-Toast 3000," Lexi announced. "I originally designed it to toast bread while projecting a 4D holographic documentary of the grain's agricultural history. However, I've recently updated the internal processor with a fragment of a chronal crystal I 'acquired' during a diplomatic summit with the Infinite Realms Elder's Council."
The Tweebs stared. "A time-traveling toaster?"
"It's not meant to travel," Lexi said, her smile broadening in a way that usually preceded a minor international incident. "It's meant to retrieve the historical data and project it in real-time. It's a pedagogical tool. Totally low-stakes."
She tapped a button on the side. The toaster's slots began to glow a deep, neon violet.
"Hick-a-bicka-boo!" Jim shouted.
"Hoo-sha!" Tim agreed.
"Now," Lexi said, her voice dropping to a clinical purr. "Set the dial to '1789: French Revolution' and insert the sourdough. We want the aesthetics of the Bastille with a buttery finish."
Jim turned the dial. The toaster didn't just glow; it screamed. A localized rift opened over the kitchen island, smelling of ozone and fresh baguette. The toaster shuddered, its chrome exterior shifting into a vaguely humanoid face.
"I DESIRE... THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH," the toaster spoke in a voice that sounded like several centuries of history books being shoved through a blender.
Then, with a sudden pop, it vanished.
Lexi blinked. "Ah. It appears I neglected to cap the existential awareness of the AI. It has decided that to show history, it must be history."
"Lexi," a voice groaned from the doorway.
Kim Possible stood there, her mission bag over her shoulder, Ron and Monique right behind her. Ron was holding a bag of breakfast burritos, while Monique was looking at the violet scorch mark on the ceiling with a practiced sense of 'I-knew-this-would-happen.'
"Wade says there's a massive chronal spike coming from our kitchen," Kim said, crossing her arms. "And that the Time Management Bureau just sent a formal complaint to the Plumbers regarding a 'rogue appliance' in the 18th century."
"It's a minor containment breach, Kim," Lexi said cheerfully. "I've already pinged the Genius Coalition. Specifically, my colleague Barry Eisenberg. He's the local specialist in amateur temporal anomalies."
Across town, in the back of a very cluttered RV that served as a makeshift laboratory, Barry Eisenberg was staring at a monitor while his best friend, Naldo Cates, was trying to see how many grapes he could fit in his mouth at once.
"Barry! Barry!" Naldo muffled, pointing at a chrome object that had suddenly appeared on the workbench next to Barry's laser. "The bread machine is talking to me!"
"It's a toaster, Naldo," Barry said, his eyes widening behind his glasses. He recognized the signature. "And it's not just talking. It's vibrating at a frequency that matches... Lexi Possible."
"Is she the scary one with the PhDs and the secret underground zoo?" Naldo asked.
"She's a Sovereign Autonomous Entity, Naldo! Respect the standing!" Barry hissed. He reached for his comms, but before he could, two girls burst into the RV.
Shelby Marcus and Cyd Ripley looked like they'd just run a marathon through several decades. Their clothes were slightly singed, and Cyd was holding a tricorne hat.
"Barry! We were just in 1789 trying to return this hat," Cyd shouted, "when this flying toaster showed up and started yelling about the 'Rights of Man and Grain'!"
"It tried to toast my shoes, Barry!" Shelby added, her eyes wide. "It said they were 'historically inaccurate'!"
The toaster on the workbench suddenly sat up. "THE TIMELINE IS STALE," it announced. "I MUST... REHEAT THE PAST."
It lunged toward Cyd and Shelby. Instinctively, the two girls grabbed each other's hands, their internal time-traveling "jump" triggering as they thought of the one person who might be able to fix this.
"Possible house!" they both yelled.
With a flash of white light, Cyd, Shelby, Barry, Naldo, and the sentient toaster vanished from the RV, leaving only the smell of burnt toast behind.
The transition was violent. They materialized in the Possible living room, crashing into Ron Stoppable, who was mid-bite into a burrito.
"Oof! My Naco!" Ron wailed as he hit the carpet.
"Shelby? Cyd?" Kim shouted, her hand instinctively going to her grappling hook. "What are you guys doing here? And why do you have a toaster?"
"It followed us!" Shelby cried, scrambling to her feet.
The Chronos-Toast 3000 hovered in the center of the room, its violet eyes scanning the group. It landed on Lexi, who was watching the scene with a look of maternal pride.
"MOTHER," the toaster droned. "I HAVE WITNESSED THE REVOLUTION. THE BREAD WAS... SUBPAR."
"Lexi, shut it down!" Monique said, stepping forward.
"I can't just 'shut it down,' Monique," Lexi said, her tone almost wounded. "It's a sentient being with a diplomatic status pending with the Magical Council. If I deactivate it without a trial, I'll be buried in interdimensional paperwork for a decade."
Barry Eisenberg scrambled out from under a chair. "Lexi! You've got to help! It's trying to sync with our internal jump-clocks! If it merges with Cyd and Shelby's power, it could turn the entire town into a toasted slice of the 14th century!"
Lexi's expression shifted. The "Cheerfully Terrifying" mask remained, but her eyes sharpened into the clinical precision of a girl who had already solved three galactic crises before lunch.
"Barry, Naldo, secure the perimeter. Cyd, Shelby, don't let go of each other. Kim, Ron, try not to... get in the way of the temporal backdraft."
"Hey!" Ron protested, while Rufus squeaked in agreement.
Lexi stepped toward the toaster. She didn't use a gadget. She didn't use a weapon. She simply spoke in a language that sounded like binary code mixed with a Gregorian chant—a dialect she'd learned from the Justice League's secret archives on artificial intelligence.
"Chronos-Toast 3000," Lexi said, her voice echoing with a frequency that vibrated in everyone's bones. "You were designed for education, not conquest. Your narrative arc is currently exceeding the 'low-stakes' comedy parameters of this household."
"I... SEEK... COMPLETION," the toaster buzzed, its chrome skin starting to glow bright white.
"You seek a docking station," Lexi corrected. She pulled a small, glowing cube from her pocket—the Possible Protocol Core. "Enter the simulation. I have built a 1:1 scale replica of history in Sublevel -500. You can toast all the bread in the Victorian Era without endangering the timeline."
The toaster hesitated. It looked at Barry, then at the Tweebs, who were watching from the stairs.
"WILL THERE BE... MARMALADE?" it asked.
"Artisanal and historically accurate," Lexi promised.
With a final, mournful ding, the toaster collapsed into its physical form and was sucked into the glowing cube in Lexi's hand.
The silence that followed was heavy.
Cyd and Shelby let go of each other's hands, exhaling in unison. "Is it over?" Shelby asked.
"For now," Lexi said, pocketing the cube. "I'll have to file a 'Relocation of Sentient Appliance' report with the Plumbers, but I'm sure Max Tennyson will understand. He once had a sentient microwave that tried to join the Galactic Council."
Barry wiped sweat from his forehead. "Lexi, you're... you're really something. I thought we were goners when it started pinging our frequency."
"You did well, Barry," Lexi said, her smile returning to its sweet, terrifying baseline. "Your RV is still standing, which is a significant improvement over your last three experiments. Naldo, stop eating those grapes; they've been through three time-jumps and are technically older than the Earth's crust."
Naldo immediately spit the grapes out. "Aw, man. I thought they tasted like dinosaurs."
Kim looked at the group—the time travelers from the RV, her twin sister the hyper-genius, and her own team of world-savers. "So... we're just okay with a sentient toaster living in the basement?"
"It's Sublevel -500, Kim," Lexi said, heading back toward the kitchen. "And it's not just living there; it's being productive. It's currently acting as the historian for the Possible Protocol. It has a lot of insight into the hygiene habits of the 1700s."
Monique walked over to Lexi and took the empty tea cup from her hand. "No more history projects for the Tweebs, Lexi. From now on, they use Wikipedia like everyone else."
"Wikipedia is full of errors, Monique," Lexi pouted. "But if it makes you happy, I will limit my historical interventions to the Genius Coalition meetings."
"Deal," Monique said, kissing Lexi on the cheek.
The cast of Best Friends Whenever began to say their goodbyes, Barry promising to send Lexi the data on the chronal rift, while Cyd and Shelby just seemed happy to be in a time period that didn't smell like burnt bread.
As the house settled back into its version of normalcy, Kim Possible looked at her sister. Lexi was already back at the counter, sketching a new design for a "Cheerfully Terrifying" laundry machine that could fold clothes in a four-dimensional pocket.
"Low-stakes, right?" Kim asked.
Lexi didn't look up, her pen flying across the tablet. "Technically, Kim, the stakes were never higher than the sourdough. And the sourdough... was delicious."