"Lesson One"
By Eoraptor
Rated T. Kim Possible 2002-2007, 2019 Walt Disney Animation. This is a fan work, not for profit, and I claim no ownership except of the concept.
WHAM!
Ron saw stars and tasted metal, and it was only by the grace of God that he wasn't taken completely off his feet.
And it was only by the virtue of a certain blue glow that he wasn't suffering a broken neck.
He didn't think he'd ever been hit that hard, and that included the time that Billy Jenkins said he was tired of his mouth in third grade.
"Awwe, did I hurt you?" A second blow followed up the first, and the blond boy's head snapped to the other side before he even had time to process that someone was speaking to him.
An elbow under the jaw sent him to his back right as the words were registering inside his mind. How did Kim keep up such witty banter? All he could do was try to count his teeth with his tongue and hope they were all still there.
Too late in his tooth-counting did he remember he was under attack. He felt very fortunate indeed that Kim had gotten him a carbon fiber cup to go with his steel reinforced belt, even though he heard the black polymer crack under the blow meant to end his reproductive life.
Refocusing his efforts on not getting killed, Ron slapped his hands on the ground beneath him and roll-flipped away from another such kick with superhuman alacrity. Looking at the troughs in the dirt, he realized that the kick had been more intended to split him in half, and a reminder that he was not facing an average foe.
He needed help, he realized. In an instant, a familiar urge tugged his hand upwards, seeking to be filled.
"Huh-uh! I told you, no outside assistance!" his hand was slapped rudely down by a tiger-claw.
The Lotus Blade, which had been heeding his call, slapped indignantly into the side of his body and clattered to the ground with a metallic clang.
His foe punched him in the nose with a light-infused jab, and again he saw stars. He could feel, more than taste, the blood running out of both nostrils as he flailed backwards, again wrong-footed by the stunning attack.
A whoop-whoop suddenly filled the air, and the lights turned red angrily around the dueling pair.
A moment later, the hologram that represented Drakken's Caribbean lair suffused orange with a simulated explosion; and then shimmered out of existence.
Kim sauntered over from the vanished button she had pressed in the simulation, and frowned at the sight before her. Ron was standing only because the Lotus Blade had transmogrified into a staff at his feet and propped him up under one arm. The left side of his jaw was swollen, and the right side was soon to join it from the looks of things.
Shego's only concern in the matter was the scuff marks and a spatter of blood on the right hand knuckles of her glove. She wasted no time in fishing out a small towel to wipe it away.
"Shego!" The redhead huffed, because already Ron's eyes were blossoming a dark purple across the bridge of his broken nose, "Did you have to be so…. Violent?!"
"Nothing I haven't done to you before, Princess…" the mercenary snorted, ignoring all concern. "Besides, he can take it. I've done worse to far bigger you know."
Kim didn't doubt it, but it didn't make her feel any better.
"Besides, he hired me, not you. He gets to say when… if I let him that is." The green woman cautioned as she finished cleaning the Ron off her gloves.
After a moment, she considered the black and blue boy before her, "Now, what did we learn?"
"You dob't puww youw puntes." He complained.
"Here."
"Unnnnff!"
"Try that again without the deviated septum."
"Oooooowwwwwwww!" Ron whined more enthusiastically as he covered his thrice-aggrieved nose after Shego rudely reset it. "You don't pull your punches."
She smiled wickedly and nodded, "Actually I did, but only a little. I don't want my first paycheck to be my last. I could have hit you with what I used to break Aviarius's reanimated Terror Bird cyborg. That kind of punch melts steel and breaks titanium."
"No," she snagged the silvery pole supporting the monkey-themed man out from under him and twirled it artfully around her shoulders, "Lesson One is, The Tank always gets hit first. Kimmie used to be the Tank, so I always went after her big gun first. Now, you're the tank. So you get hit. First, and Often."
She added insult to injury by using his own pole to sweep him off his unsteady feet. "Not everyone is like Warhok, and will let you get in the first blow as a show of machismo. So, if you're going to be the tank, you gotta learn how to take a hit. It's what armor is for. Kimmie's armor is in being fast enough and flexible enough not to get hit most of the time. Obviously speed is not your trademark. So you're gonna have to get used to hitting back harder, and in blocking. But first you gotta be able to hit back after being hit."
"Now," the mercenary trainer eyed the supposedly super-human, "get up and try to hit me."
Ron managed to just get to his knees before she kicked him in the shoulder hard enough to separate it and knock him on his back again. "Get up and try to hit me."
Again Ron got to his knees, and again Shego kicked him; this time in the forehead, "I Said Get Up and Try To Hit Me."
The third time she lined up a punt and let him have it right between the knees again, no artistry to the attempt which left him sprawled on his backside with his legs akimbo.
"Get. Up. And. Try. To. Hit. Me." Shego let him have it with a large plasma ball.
This time he batted it aside with a monkey-pawed hand and swept his legs at her, hitting her in the ankle and using the momentum to get on all fours at least.
It didn't remotely begin to topple her, but apparently it was what she wanted to see, because she extinguished her hands, "Good, now, what did we learn?"
Ron was put off by the lack of response to what should have broken her ankle. But when he saw she wasn't immediately going to attack him again, he stopped and thought a long moment, sniffling through his still-bloody nose, "It's get up AND hit you; not get up, THEN hit you."
"Ah, he can be taught after all!" Shego crowed. "Kimmie, put his shoulder back."
Kim felt sick to her stomach as she did as instructed. She almost lost it as she felt and heard the wet pop of his shoulder clacking back into the socket. She hated to ask him to stop, but he was already wobbling, and that was WITH his magical monkey mojo turned on. "Ron, are you really sure this is what you want?"
"It's not what I want, it's what I need." He looked at her with blue suffused eyes. "She's right, KP. Warmonga and Warhok LET me hit them. If they had attacked first, I'd look a lot worse than this."
Kim frowned at the bloody logic of it as she leaned to him. "Ron, you don't NEED to protect me."
Whatever he was going to say back was cut off when Shego hit him in the back of the head, with a closed fist; and then tagged him in the face when he turned to question where, when, how, and most importantly, why. "Lesson Two; not everybody fights fair. In fact, most of us don't… or did you forget the robot Drakken slipped into your girlfriend's panties?"
Kim threw an elbow into Shego's side at that one, full force. She followed it up by pinwheeling into Shego's other side with the opposite elbow and then backfisting her face, and angrily spat a retort. "No, most of us don't. Off limits Shego."
"Awe? Did I hit a nerve, Pumpkin?" Shego immediately ducked out and crouched, protecting the bruised cheek, "Was it as good as the one Eric hit on that night you two snuck away?"
The redhead drove in with a one-two jab, aiming to not let the provocation get to her. Shego blocked both, and the follow-up upper-cut of the practiced combination. She didn't forsee Kim then spinning on her forward heel and wheeling an elbow into the side of Shego's head instead her usual move of jumping away.
Ron apparently took to his lesson, because once Kim was clear, he was on Shego like cheese on a Naco. "She said to leave Eric out of this."
His blows were practiced and fluid now, in the way of the monkey, and he rapidly took Shego apart with chaotic side attacks and changes in orientation that left her head spinning.
Until Shego hit him in the twice-broken cup with a hard knee that finished the job.
"Okay," she huffed and spat, her face dusky green in places where she had taken her punishment, "So you CAN fight. But only when you have something to fight for… Important lesson for me. Next week we work on making you realize there's more to fighting than fighting for the honor or the survival of your girlfriend, 'cause sometimes Bowser will hide Princess in another castle."
"A video game reference, Shego?" Kim was still leery of the whole arrangement, especially with Shego not pulling many punches, so she was still in a stance.
"I'm old school, Pumpkin," Shego spat out a bit of saliva mixed with blood, "It's before your time."
"I thought you said I say when to quit," Ron complained as he cradled his abused pride.
"No, I said you got to say when YOU stop…" she corrected. "Besides, now I know what you can do, I have to fine tune my teaching method. Next week, same time."
Shego left the holographic training room without further word.
"For what it's worth, I think you wounded her… pride?" Kim carefully helped Ron to a seat in the anteroom. "Ron… Why? Why this? And why SHEGO?!"
The blonde boy was rapidly coming to look like a toppled prize fighter as he flopped into a chair, carefully. After a long moment of trying to stop the pounding in his pounded head, he sighed, "Cause I can't be the distraction anymore, KP. At least a couple of people already know what I can do. And sooner or later either more people will find out, or someone will see me do something really schway on camera. And… Shego's right. I need to learn how to fight for real now."
"Leaving all that aside for a moment, even though we'll be coming back to it 'cause it's all totally false," the redhead sighed, cradling his abused face in her hands, "Why Shego?"
He laughed and shook his head, and immediately regretted it, "Concussion no Bueno… Ugh… gimme a minute."
Kim did as he asked, knowing from experience what a concussion from Shego was like.
"Shego is… like, a teacher right?" He searched Kim's green eyes after a moment, his own once again soft brown. "I mean, yeah maybe she doesn't really have a teaching degree like she said that time… but, she taught Junior how to be an actual criminal. And I'll bet she totally taught Drakken not to be a complete flub too! If she can help those two, what can she do for the Ron Man?"
"But why not, like, Yamanouchi or something?" the eighteen year old complained as she tried to clean Ron's face, "They wouldn't break your nose on the first day, right?"
Ron winced, and resisted shaking his head this time. "KP, Ninja school? Sounds cool, but so totally not for me. I spent my first day tangled in, or out of, my own clothes; couldn't eat a meal for like a week, and almost wrecked the joint with a magical sumo stomp. And on top of all that? No fast food!"
He saw his girlfriend about to interject and shushed her with a finger to the lips, "But Shego? She's used to this sort of stuff, right? I mean, she didn't like, maim her brothers growing up! And she has experience with the same sorts of stuff we do. Besides… Um…."
"Um what?" The redhead eyed her partner and boyfriend archly.
"I figure, if I'm paying her, she won't be as inclined to go back to being totally evil?" he hedged as he leaned against her. "And she's one less person I don't have to worry about trying to hurt you."
"Ron," Kim growled irritably, "I told you. You don't need to protect me. I'm the girl who can do anything, right? I started this whole… thing. Yeah, you saved me this summer. Once. But how many times have I saved you? Or has Rufus had to save both of us?"
Gripping the back of his hair lightly, she sighed, "We help each other, we are a team, always, right? You don't have to do this because you feel weak, or scared, or some weirdo macho thing about saving the damsel in distress. I've never been a Damsel. Now, tell me the truth?"
"I did," Ron whined a bit, resting his forehead against hers, "And… also… promise not to hurt me more?"
She nodded conspiratorially at him.
"Because I didn't want to put it on you to try to teach me." He mumbled, "I didn't want you to be afraid of hurting me, or worse, go all Coach Kim on me."
"Oh, and Shego's better? I wouldn't break your nose, Ron, or your… Ahem." She countered, looking pointedly downwards.
"Kim, you made an entire fourth grade class cry!"
"Fiiiiiiiiiine." She bemoaned the open secret of her harsh methods.
"Stoppable," came a bark from the door.
The high school graduates looked up, surprised to see Shego peeking back in.
"You weren't a total loser today. And you didn't whine, which is more than I can say for my last couple students." She nodded, one eyelid slightly drooping, but her cheeks already less swollen or dusky than moments earlier, "Good job."
"Did you hear that KP?!" he enthused, "She said I did good!"
AN: Not sure if this will turn into anything more ever, but I felt inspired to try something a bit more canonical than my other stuff. Sorry if you follow me for my kigo stuff, but no femmeslash here. With thanks to MagicFlyingSpud for the inspiration and ReaperGrimm for feedback. Remember, Reviews = Love and Resharing is Caring!