The Power of Love, Chapter 6-2

Kim Possible

The Power of Love

by Cyberwraith9

===============================================================================

-TUESDAY-

        “…There’s something I have to tell you.” he said, lowering his gaze to the floor as if ashamed, not of what he was about to say, but for not saying it sooner.

        She reached forward, cupping his chin with her slender fingers as she gazed into his warm, affectionate eyes. “Say it.” she whispered. “You don’t have to be afraid any more…”

        Gathering his courage, he grasped her by the waist and pulled her close. Their noses were almost pressing, their lips trembling with mutual hunger as he murmured, “I love you.”

        Ron’s lips synched in time with the silver-screen starlet’s (which were uncannily large thanks to several collagen injections) as she replied, “And I, you.” Then he snorted, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his craw as the two stars of the movie, ‘Hearts of Crazy Flame’, shared a deep, passionate kiss. “No one really talks like this,” he complained softly to his friend.

        “Muh-oh.” Rufus shrugged, scampering up his arm and diving into the bucket of popcorn. His blobby body melted into the cracks between each kernel, and a moment later the level of the popcorn began steadily dropping with a soft slurping sound.

        The teen sighed, setting his bucket in the noticeably-empty seat next to him. He wasn’t sure why he was stuck in the stupid theater watching the stupid movie anyway, seeing as how Kim had stood him up…again. He had waited for her outside the theater all the way through the previews, and even past the first ten minutes of the movie before giving up and heading in.

        ‘Meet me outside of the theater,’ she said. ‘Seven on the dot,’ she said. ‘My treat, and dinner too,’ she said. Now it was a quarter to nine, and the movie had reached its gag-worth climax. “Feel-good hit of the year my pasty white butt.” he muttered darkly, stealing a few morsels of popcorn from his bucket before Rufus could finish it off.

        The movie itself was almost as painful as knowing Kim had blown him off a second consecutive time. The entire theater was filled with couples, watching a movie about two best friends who fell in love with each other when they went to college. Sometimes irony wasn’t funny at all, and Ron suspected that if he knew what irony meant exactly, it wouldn’t be funny at the moment.

        ‘Where are you, Kim?’ he groaned inwardly, praying for the credits to hustle up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        “Eighteen…nineteen…twenty!”

        Kim gasped, allowing Will to help her lift the bar back into its cradle. She had never tried the bench press before, and was pleased that her cheerleading muscles, while not huge, would at least start her out on the road to becoming leaner, meaner, and feistier in a fight.

        “Very nice, Kim.” Will congratulated her, giving her a hand as she sat up, careful not to bang her head on the bar. He tossed her a water bottle, which she graciously accepted. “Would you like to try the leg press?”

        “And humiliate you on it?” With her cheerleading and general leaping and jumping that her previous missions had afforded her, she was willing to lay down money that her vertical was a lot higher than Will’s. She shook her head, handing him the empty bottle as she sat up. Her sports bra and spandex pants were soaked with sweat, evidence of the effectiveness of Will’s workout regiment. “I should probably get going anyway. Plans tonight.”

        He shifted uncomfortably as he asked her, “A date?”

        “Not really.” she grinned, wondering why he was so uncomfortable discussing her personal life. Maybe it was because he didn’t have one of his own. Then again, he seemed to be opening up more and more to her as they spent time training together. Perhaps he finally felt he had someone he could talk to about all of the Global Justice things that monopolized his life. “I’m just meeting Ron for a movie.”

        He checked the wall chronometer, frowning. “A little late to catch a movie on a school night, isn’t it?”

        Her eyes flashed up at the clock, growing wide. It was already past nine…the movie had not only started, it was probably over with by now. “Oh man!” she cried, thumping herself in the forehead. “I can’t believe this…”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-WEDNESDAY-

        “So if acceleration is the derivative of velocity, what is velocity the derivative of?” Ron looked up from his book, casting a puzzled glance at his study partner. More physics. It seemed to go on forever and ever, and none of it was making sense. Maybe he really ‘would’ use the Kimmunicator to ask Wade for some help. “What do you think?”

        Rufus looked up from his bottle of cheese sauce, grinning at Ron with a pink-and-yellow face. “Cheeze!” he squeaked, offering the vial to Ron. The teen politely declined, which prompted Rufus to dive back into his late-night snack.

        Ron sighed, sliding his book across his living room rug as he let his face drop into the worn fibers of the carpeting. Physics, he decided, was just too much for one person to understand on his own. Two or more were needed (and it was especially preferable if one of those people had a degree to begin with!).

        He had talked briefly with Kim at the lecture, but she was almost as distant then as she had been the entire week. Besides taking notes together in class, they hadn’t spent any time together, and it was starting to bug him a lot. She always claimed it was some sort of ‘training’ or whatnot. And when they had been together, and not buried in some notebook, all she could do was talk about Will. ‘Will said this,’ or ‘Will did that,’ or ‘Will’s so funny, he reminds me a lot of you.’ Well, who needed Will to remind her of him when he was right there, for pity’s sake!

        

        Naturally, he hadn’t breathed a word of his frustration to Kim. She was undoubtedly doing her best, and taking on more than a normal person could possibly handle. Still, that didn’t change the fact that he missed his best friend.

        

        Sensing Ron’s depression, Rufus scampered off. A moment later, the mole rat returned with the cordless phone, squeaking and shoving as he bonked Ron on the head with the device. Ron lifted his face from the floor, smiling at Rufus’ suggestion. “Think I should?”

        

        “Uh-huh, uh-huh!” Rufus nodded eagerly, jumping up and down as Ron took the phone.

        

        With a sour face, Ron looked back at the counter, which held Will’s ridiculously comprehensive file he had to finish filling out before he could actually visit Kim. ‘They can stop me from coming,’ he thought mischievously, ‘But they can’t stop me from calling!’

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        

        The phone beeped incessantly at Kim as she unburied her nose from the thick tome of GJ regulations and procedures Will had given her to study. She would be expected to know them and follow them relatively soon, so it was best to get a jump on things. If Global Justice was trying to contact her for mission-related stuff, they would have used the new Communicator hanging from her belt at the foot of her bed. She was engrossed with the new book of rules, and had already talked to her family earlier that night, so she figured the phone couldn’t be too important.

        

        ‘Who could that be?’ she wondered silently as she lay on her bed, using the tiny reading light at her side as her only other companion. Sometimes the big, empty place could feel a little lonely, but she knew that if she got ‘really’ desperate, she could always visit Will. He ‘had’ told her she was welcome any time, day or night. ‘And there’s Ron, of course.’ she thought, wishing that he and Rufus could visit her there. She never had time anymore to go to the other side of campus, and desperately missed her best friend.

        

        ‘I should give him a call tomorrow before lecture,’ she thought to herself as she returned to the rulebook. Down below in the living room, she heard the phone’s beeping cease, but didn’t hear the answering machine pick up in its place. ‘Must not have been too important.’ she affirmed her earlier thought. ‘Now where was I?’

        

        “Regulation Alpha Charlie Three…always respond to a communiqué when able…”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-THURSDAY-

        Ron hung low in his lecture hall seat, barely paying attention to the enormous image of Wade lecturing them on gravitational acceleration. Next to him, his backpack sat in the seat he usually saved for Kim. In this case, she hadn’t needed it, seeing as how she hadn’t even showed up for the lecture.

        Jim and Tim, sitting in their usual spot behind him, leaned forward on either side of his head, murmuring right in his ear so as not to disturb the other students. “Where’s Kim?” the fifteen-year-old set asked in unison.

        “How would I know?” he snapped back bitterly. Heavy bags hung under his eyes, a sign of the late-night studying he had pulled trying to figure out the day’s lesson, as well as a three page essay in his literary analysis class. Likewise, his pocket was devoid of any furry, amorphous pink mole rats; Rufus had decided that Physics disturbed his breakfast digestion, and thus also had left Ron adrift in the sea of useless equations.

        “You mean you aren’t in the loop?” Jim asked, slightly astonished.

        “Dude…” Tim agreed. Ron and Kim were so close, if a stranger were to have to decide between him and the twins as to which of them were actually her siblings, both Jim and Tim would have laid cash that the stranger would pick Ron in a heartbeat.

        All of that was forgotten for a moment when Wade’s lecture suddenly stopped. The young teen stared at something on his own computer, reflected many times in the multi-screened lecture hall. Suddenly, he looked at the class and said, “People, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment. Urgent business.” He began typing furiously on his computer, frowning in concentration as the rest of the class buzzed.

        Ron was just about to mutter something himself when four musical tones erupted from his backpack. Glancing between the backpack and the hall’s enormous main monitor, where Wade was staring patiently at his computer, Ron finally reached in and pulled the Kimmunicator out. He flipped it on, and was hardly surprised to find Wade waiting for him on the tiny screen.

        “Ron,” Wade said, his voice emerging from the Kimmunicator’s miniscule speakers, which were drowned out by the lecture hall’s main sound system (also carrying Wade’s message to Ron). “We have a hit!”

        “Um, Wade…” Ron glanced around, blushing furiously as people began noticing the very public private conversation their professor was having with him. “You might want to…”

        “What?” Wade asked. “Is everything okay?”

        Ron turned the Kimmunicator’s camera towards the main screen, allowing Wade to see himself in ‘surround-vision’.

        “Oh. Heh. Sorry about that, people. Class dismissed, or whatever.” The hall’s screens all winked out as the class raised their voices in a cheer. Not needing a second opinion, they began filing out in droves as Ron turned back to the now-mercifully confidential conversation. Jim and Tim leaned over as well, curious as to Wade’s sudden interruption.

        “What’s the sitch, Wade?”

        Wade split the screen, pulling up a map of the southern Pacific. Ron was a little familiar with it, having flown over it when he had traveled to Japan (to say nothing of the previous weekend’s trip). “GJ’s got a hot tip on Drakken’s next move. Info’s been leaked about a heist at a local technology consortium.”

        Ron’s frown deepened as he considered the facts. “I don’t get it,” he said at last. “Drakken’s working with those Roddigan guys. I thought they had all the tech he needed.”

        With a shake of his head, Wade withdrew the map. “They wouldn’t have anything close to this. Cutting edge stuff…military, too.”

        “Wonderful.” He stood up, packing his things quickly. The twins jumped up and down behind him, straining to get a good look at the screen as Ron and Wade continued to talk. “Got a ride?”

        “Us too!” Jim exclaimed.

        “Yeah,” Tim added, “We wanna help.”

        “Great. Play back-up.” Ron gave them a brief, half-hearted smile.

        “All right!” the twins traded high-fives, then looked confused. “Wait…” they said, still speaking in unison, “How do we do that?”

        “You can back up and out of the hall, go home, and stay safe.”

        “Awww, Ron!”

        “C’mon Ron!”

        He shushed them both, turning back to Wade. “Back to the ride issue…”

        Wade seemed a little embarrassed. “Uh…slight problem. But,” he added quickly before Ron could ask, “I think I have the solution. Only ‘real’ problem is, you aren’t gonna like it.”

        “Let’s hear it.”

        So Wade described the problem to Ron, as well as his solution. And it turned out, as with most things, that Wade had been right.

        Ron didn’t like it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------