Disclaimer and my vague author's notes will follow this installment.
This fic is (Will become) a femslash, so all of you Republicans whom squander your time away by reading the KP tier of this site, hurl your Bible-thumping pipe-bombs at me!
Kim/Ron fanatic-pixies, lend me your close-minded, whiney-ass bashing, and pathetic as it may sound, I might be 'fazed'!
Enough with that mess.
On with the show.
Prologue- "A departure from self"
The concept of clairvoyance has long been officially considered a pseudo-science, with no definable means to prove its existence. Only is that logical, but there are many fine medical minds that frown upon the entire alleged ability, because it is something they cannot see under their microscopes.
No one really knows the truth behind the matter, but how are clairvoyants, mediums and other such figures commonly represented?
Miss Cleo?
John Edwards?
Self-proclaimed 'love' psychics on local radio stations?
We've all seen this before, and it's safe to say that it is all commercial, unfortunately that widely gives us our view on someone that would really possess such a gift.
But, what if this were not the case? What if the supposed 'gift' did not follow some accident, or arrive in the guise of tarot cards, or some other trivial fashion?
What if, one day, it simply came?
Moreover, what if the person it settled on already had the world to live for?
What if the person was a teenage girl in highschool, found amongst the exclusive 'Pretty and popular' crowd?
A brunette cheerleader with a reputation to maintain, friends to keep, and enemies to remain hostile to.
How could the very sudden arrival of clairvoyance effect a life like that?
Put yourself, dear reader, in this position just long enough to realize how the lines of reality would become so very blurred.
Do this, and it won't be much of a challenge to agree that this brunette cheerleader's happy 'Devil may care' lifestyle can no longer be sustained.
But what will take its place? How will the facets of her previous life twist and distort to affirm the change?
Could society persist to hold such impact on her?
Could certain things she's always had be given more attention?
Could hate turn to love?
One thing is certain- -The future is open to anything.
-End Prologue-
Chapter one
"God is dead"
Bonnie Rockwaller was cold.
She couldn't rightly think of a reason for this, being as the place she found herself in was that of a large, empty field, canopied by a star-lit sky.
Moreover, she distinctly recalled the month being late September; the season ready to transpire into fall, but not quite there. But for some reason, it was nothing short of freezing out here.
Freezing, and lonely…
An abrupt chill that crawled up her spine snapped Bonnie's train of thought. Trembling, she grabbed onto her shoulders.
No, it was definitely not supposed to be this immeasurably cold.
Not out here, in the middle of…
Bonnie paused at that thought. Where the Hell was she, anyway?
A flat, deserted grazing pasture?
That in its own didn't make any sense, there were no pastures in Tri-city…at least, not so conventionally near where she lived. So where could this place be? And more importantly, how had she gotten there?
Despite her questions, and her slowly budding fear, the ordeal Bonnie found herself in wasn't completely alien.
A vague familiarity struck her as she looked around at the rolling expanse of land that seemed run perpetually. It was impossible for her to define, but something simply seemed charted; recognizable.
It was ominous. A dread that presided in the pit of her stomach, and told her that she didn't belong.
WhispersBonnie realized at that moment that they were whispers. Low, hushed voices of varied tones, ages and genders. They cried, the screamed, they warned, they all massed together in a disheveled symphony of noise and, in likeness, they had no source.
Her pulse quickened at this; This being the enterprise of the occult, something she never before had rewarded with such attention.
Instinct told her to run, but the rational thought process was quick to intervene.
Where could she go, after all?
With that one simple thought, Bonnie planted her feet to the ground and engaged her next best alternative; embrace it.
Pick it apart, and try to understand it.
She wasn't fond of doing this as even she could admit that Bonnie Rockwaller didn't hold the intellectual prowess to pursue something with such depth, but in truth, there was nothing else she could do.
Her hope that learning more would make the entire problem seem less frightening was anything but correct.
Firmly bracing her head with one hand, Bonnie closed both eyes and concentrated on one particular line of the many whispers that assailed her.
To her surprise, she was met with complete success. There was no struggle, no mistrial, the message she opted for simply amplified, and everything else grew very distant.
In a husky man's voice, it warned,
It felt you breathe. It knows you're here, now. It's sending something after you.
If alarm hadn't set in beforehand, it was well on its way, now. Though the words dissipated, it almost seemed as though this allowed everything else to come in with a definable clarity.
There were so many different voices, such a wide range of clashing textures and pitches and countenances, she couldn't understand how they all registered so well, but they did.
So dark, so cold…
Bonnie struggled physically, feeling her shoulders grow weak and sore. The reason for this wasn't as important as taking a long, dragging step forward, as if to escape the whispers which were only growing louder by the second.
Knowing is the worst part.
Two more steps, and she wasn't setting any distance between herself and them. In fact, she only seemed to grow more exhausted the harder she tried.
Don't worry, we all have problems here…you'll fit right in.
This was simply too much. What little of Bonnie's resolve that survived through everything else shattered, and with a resigned, plaintive cry, she stopped dead in her tracks.
"God…" She whimpered, feeling tears well up in her eyes, for the first time in a long time.
She hated being so vulnerable, so mortal, but showing such weakness admissibly wasn't foreign, given the circumstance.
"Where are you? Where's anyone?"
Almost as if to gratify, a blood-curdling voice screamed out,
GOD IS DEAD!A sharp gasp escaped her, but with her current physical frailty, she could do nothing other than listen to this morbid statement shouted by several different voices, till one added,
God is dead. We pay his debts.
Almost as quickly as those words vanished, the temperature dropped once more, and was coupled with a near suffocating gloom.
All at once, she was overwhelmed and brought to her knees by an iron hammer of raw despair.
Figurative, of course, but it wasn't too far from the truth.
In all her days, Bonnie could never recall feeling quite so isolated, so shut off from the rest of the world.
…And ironically enough, it was at that moment that she realized she wasn't alone.
"…Numbersixteen…" A voice called from behind her…an all too painfully familiar voice, that labored a gentle, singsongy tone.
"K…Kim?" The texture of Bonnie's response was frail and helpless, to the degree that not even she could entirely recognize it as she gazed over her shoulder.
A lithe, feminine figure stood less than five feet away from her. Darkness enveloped her features, but the silhouette of long tresses spilled down to her mid-back, granting generous indication that it was indeed Bonnie's cheerleading rival, Kim Possible.
Something seemed distinctly different about her style of speaking, however, as she advanced upon Bonnie, and consoled, "Don't be afraid, number sixteen…"
No matter how proximal the figure grew, it simply would not prevail past the shadow that consumed it…even when it reached out for Bonnie's face.
Every bit of her conscience screamed at her to get away from it, and try as she might, her legs simply jellified. For that matter, everything grew too weak to support her, past her helpless crumpled position on the grass.
That accounted, she was powerless to contest when the Kim-esque figure's hand arrived at her face, and thumbed away a tear that had been rolling down her cheek. A tear that, till that instance, she wasn't even aware of.
Her mouth opened in an attempt to speak, but nothing emerged.
Thus, the figure's next words came clear, concise and free of interjection, "In a place of two hundred, two hundred shall die."
The last thing Bonnie's mind would conceive before emerging from what she would later dub as an incredibly bad nightmare was an image; a still-frame, it seemed, of a massive fire.
Little could be made out past a thick veil of bright red and yellow color, save for a network of catwalks, and a few large cylindrical forms.
---
…All the while, the early morning's usual silence and tranquility was being pretty significantly usurped…at least, in one particular room of the Rockwaller residence.
Still trapped in her Hellish dream state, Bonnie squirmed and struggled beneath the surface of a comforter. By all appearances, she looked as though she was running a high fever with her off-the-grid respiration, and well over several pints of sweat breaking out across her brow.
To follow up a low moan, she flipped onto her side, twisting the sheets in an uncomfortable way, and splayed an arm over the edge of her mattress.
A foot launched out, jerking most of the comforter off, and when this brought her no solace, she screamed.
Not for what the dream presented to her, but for the fearful emotion it placed her under.
And that scream did an effective job of tearing through her closed door, bouncing off the walls of the mirrored hall outside, and coming to rest in her parents' slightly roomier master bedroom.
Harold Rockwaller had remarked earlier that night of how dumb his luck was to have had the outgoing flight to a business meeting in Chicago canceled on count of bad weather. Finally, after all that damned alienation, he was granted some time to spend with his family.
His fortune turned its tables once more several hours after he retired to bed, and was startled awake by the sound his daughter screaming bloody murder.
Like any capable, respectable parent could, he was on his feet and cleared the hall to her bedroom in a matter of seconds, with his wife almost as promptly following suit.
Most of this feat was seen as the result of an assumption for the worst, but motivation made no difference when he burst through her door and flipped the closely neighboring light switch up.
Bathed in the luminance of an overhead fixture, he was allowed to see the full gauge of what he had gotten himself into (Not that the potential of death mattered to him).
To his visible relief, his child wasn't being bludgeoned to death or victimized by some sodomite, but her condition was, nonetheless, nothing to sigh over.
Bonnie's mother entered the scene just as her father arrived at the side of her bed and seized her by the shoulders. Shaking gently, he coaxed her from sleep with a risen, "Bonnie! Bonnie, wake up!"
The first and second attempts went in vain. The third time, however, was a charm when his daughter's writhing slowed to a halt, and her eyes gradually opened.
A warm embrace immediately greeted her entrance to reality; something that contrasted heavily with what she had just endured, but welcomed, regardless.
Another moment and a hard blink to reorient the world allowed her to see her mother standing by, genuine concern marking her face.
"Bon-Bon, you were having a bad dream." She announced gently, and her father added after readjusting himself to look her in the face,
"But it's over, now."
Bonnie only stared at him blankly, her mind stuck on a replay of the nightmare that now settled in her memory with an uninvited clarity.
A dreamThose two words were so relative, so unspecified.
To one who could recall every facet, every detail and horrible emotion, it was more than just a dream.
For all of the fretting and consolation that followed, neither parent ever asked her just what it was her mind concocted that could frighten her to this degree (and leave her so visibly shaken, as the days to come would present).
In light, Bonnie was thankful for this. To mention, or talk about it, would mean she had to think about it, and that was hardly a savory thought to entertain.
With her reputation, her efforts to maintain that reputation, and her looks, it was easily said that Bonnie Rockwaller was a pretender.
And just as she did with other deep troubles or inward pains that afflicted her in the past, she would bury this meaningless little bad dream away, and act as though it never happened.
…Or so she thought.
Regardless of how strong her resolve may have been, Bonnie would spend the rest of that night holding periodic staring contests with the unchanging ceiling.
And she stared.
And she wondered.
Morning did come, after a generous deal of reluctance.
The hours crawled by and eventually melted into one.
When her bedside alarm went off, braying its sharp cry across the room, Bonnie had long since lost sense of time, amongst other things.
Blindly, she fumbled for the nightstand that the offending appliance had been placed on, and after some struggle swatted it, striking the 'off' button in the process.
Bonnie was notorious for wasting time in exchange for a few extra minutes of sleep, but today there was little if any hesitation in her actions. Already fully awake, the girl pulled herself into a sitting position on the mattress, and almost as promptly departed from it, making a B-line for the light switch.
The well furnished, ornate room was once more enveloped in light, though it didn't receive much attention. This, as fate would have it, was a morning of many firsts, only to become genuine when Bonnie threw open the door to her step-in closet, and with hardly a second glance, produced what she were to wear for the day. There was no trial-wearing, no mix-matching, no drawn-out debate on what top would go best with what bottom, nothing to even get Brick's attention occurred to her. She simply plucked something out that looked halfway acceptable, and after producing a change of lingerie from the dresser, exited the room with a hot shower being near to the only thing on her mind.
Harold and his wife had woken with the birds that morning, and spent most of the hours prior to Bonnie's waking up in the living room.
The conversation that struck between the two of them was light. Their eldest daughter's college happenings, business meetings, that pain in the neck CEO, Gregory West; no matter what the subject was, it was never really built to last.
And because of that, the former was quick to find interest in yesterday's paper, which had been left atop the living room's coffee table in a neglect to be properly disposed of.
Even so, his wife dashed any potential of peace and quiet.
He realized in that instant that his leading off of subjects pertaining to him, which were generally interesting, didn't invite silence so much as it simply opened a path for her to begin rambling about the most meaningless of things.
Things that a common, red-blooded American man such as himself couldn't come anywhere near to understanding.
'This isn't fair' He fumed while doing his best to not make eye contact with her, in the vain hope that it would perspire some type of indication…
'She knows hairdressing is out of the male playing field! How'd she like it if I just went off about how I replaced that transmission in Adam's Volvo in less than an hour?'No matter how intently focused on the newspaper he seemed to become, Harold was quick to abort and drop everything when Bonnie made her entrance, stepping slowly down the flight of stairs that, conveniently enough, directly faced him at the other side of the room.
"Morning, princess." He greeted then fixed a stare unto her.
She could feel his eyes bore into her, and in an attempt to meet whatever satisfaction he sought, returned with a vague smile. "Morning."
And where this confrontation ended on a silent note, her mother, whom was known for zealously concerning over the most trivial of scenarios till the board of Hell practically threatened her, was sure to fill the living room with aimless chatter anew.
"Aww, my little Bon-Bon got up early even though she had that nasty nightmare, isn't that nice Harold?"
"Amazing." Harold replied in a flat, less audible tone of voice- -This was mostly because at the exact same time he was dragging a deep, heavy inward sigh.
She was still talking, and to him, no less. BUT, at least her central attention had redirected to their daughter. Mission accomplished, to some degree.
Bonnie just gaped momentarily, before replying with a frail, "Yeah…I didn't feel much like sitting around. In fact…" She whirled around and started for the adjacent kitchen with her sights set on the pantry.
"I was just thinking about grabbing a pop-tart or something and heading out the door."
Just as she reached the said destination, her mother's voice rung from over her shoulder, "And she doesn't even want a big breakfast or anything. Such a little trooper."
Needless to say, the pantry door swung out with a little more volatile force than what could be deemed necessary. Sporting a vague shade of red on her cheeks, Bonnie reached in and produced a flimsy, rectangular box.
It didn't matter that her mother had carried this annoying little act since she was very young.
It didn't matter that at the present moment she was doing her very best to just go art-form.
Hell, it didn't even matter that no one else was around to hear it, there was always room in Bonnie's mind and justification for her to be embarrassed by her mother.
Even so, her mind could naught but produce three simple words as a reaction.
Three words that, very shortly, she would come to wish never existed.
Oh. My. GOD.
There was little if no reluctance. Like a shot, the screams came back to her. It was nothing more than a recollection of the nightmare's details, but it felt so very much as though they were attacking her, even when awake.
GOD IS DEAD!
The box of pop-tarts hit the linoleum flooring below as Bonnie's hands shot to her ears.
Her fragile mind was assailed only briefly before the voices faded out, and over that short expanse of time, she had, fortunately enough, not made any sounds of her own.
That accounted, the falling pop-tarts were about as far as her mother's awareness of the new situation went.
"Bon-Bon?" She prompted while advancing on her now slightly trembling child.
"Are you okay, honey?"
"I'm fine!" Bonnie answered without missing a beat. Her risen, vaguely alarmed tone caught Harold's attention, and though he planned to join his wife in tending to the problem, there was no time to even rise from his couch before the very subject of his worries came striding through the living room. The following words that greeted him were so ran together, he could only barely tell what Bonnie was saying.
"I don't even think I need anything to eat, I'll just go right to school."
"Bonnie?" He called after the girl in a stern, but genuinely concerned voice, catching her just a foot shy of the front door.
"Is something wrong?"
During her pause, he had recovered from the couch, and stopped short of the corridor that led out of the house.
For a moment, father and daughter stared at one another. The former knowing something was wrong, and the latter doing her best to think of a fast way out of the confrontation.
With some process, Bonnie's eyes softened.
"No, daddy." She said quietly. "Nothing's wrong. I just…have some stuff to do."
Harold continued to gape at the closed door for sometime after she left.
Daddy.
That one word hung in his mind with much more significance than anything else in the blatant lie she had just told.
He couldn't remember when his daughter had called him that last, though he retained just enough to be sure that it was a long time ago.
And that look in her eyes as she said it…
He could wince just having to picture it again. It had to be the most shattered expression he had ever seen her hold. Some sort of desperate gaze she cast; a gaze that begged for him to keep her there. Keep her there, and not let her go till she revealed this problem.
But, he hadn't. Harold had let her walk out the door because he was rarely ever home. He scarcely knew his own child, and furthermore, he was completely in the dark about her general mood. For all he knew in that fierce staring contest, this could've been an everyday thing.
But, now as he analyzed it, there was no doubt- -something was going on behind the curtains.
Slowly, the middle-aged man turned, and begun to head back into the living room, his mind awhirl with more advanced thoughts on the situation.
Was he being overdramatic, maybe?
That thought alone infuriated him, even though no one but himself had prompted it.
Not a chance.
His child was hurting inside. He wasn't sure how, and he wasn't sure why, but by-God, he was going to find out.
And that thought led him into the kitchen, where his wife still stood.
It looked as though they finally had something to get on the same page about; helping their daughter.
Bonnie wished she could have safely said that the next eight and a half hours went by peacefully, and her attempts to play it straight hadn't gone in vain.
She wished she could say that paying attention to her off-and-on Jock boyfriend, Brick, was a cinch, and when she ran into her rival, Kim Possible, she had managed to get by with some unnecessary barb, or questionable remark on her spot as captain of the squad.
In short, Bonnie wished that she could have said today was the same as any other.
Kim had thought it incredibly odd when the dark brunette crossed paths with her in the halls, before second block.
Where she prepared her wit for some brief scuffle, as was uniform, her bitter, jaded instinct was replied to with so much less.
Yet, so much more.
Kim, for her part, had been rummaging through her locker (what little of it was available past Wade's large, domination monitor) for the appropriate textbook when she caught a wholesomely unfamiliar sight further down the hall, before a choice T-junction.
Bonnie Rockwaller stood in perfect silence, strangely enough, with no one around. Generally, Brick, or Terra, or someone that ran in her circles was always in company.
Kim could feel the set of narrow, teal eyes bore into her, as if to requisition an exchange.
Something was out of place; that much she could tell.
And rationality coupled with good, raw experience told her that in most cases, when something was out of place, something was wrong.
That alone wasn't enough to make her completely respond to Bonnie's stare, but while doing her best to look busy with the recesses of her locker, Kim cast a series of sidelong, exploratory glances.
What she saw inwardly shocked her.
Over the time the two had known each other, Kim had seen Bonnie put on a great deal of emotions- -All of which held some stake in the rivalry variety, but she could never once recall seeing Bonnie as she was now.
Vulnerable.
There were no hands on her hips, no pompous sneer, no vexing, cocksure demeanor.
In a drained fashion, she leant against the wall with her arms folded protectively across her chest.
That was second, though, to the look that came across on her face.
Somehow, she managed to combine fear, underlying admiration, and desperation all into one simple, readable expression.
An expression that, amongst everything else, harbored no threat whatsoever.
After seeing this, Kim found herself staring back with a uniquely puzzled look of her own.
She didn't mean to hold it for any timeframe longer than a second, but that look, simply said, placed her under a frail trance.
But the second surprise of the last three minutes struck when Bonnie failed to avert her eyes.
In fact, as Kim's returning gaze drug on, the most change her rival adopted was a slightly quivering lower lip.
The exchange may very well have persisted, had Ron not chosen the following seconds to make his appearance.
"Yo, K.P."
Kim wasn't sure just how grateful she was to hear a familiar voice in that awkward moment, but she certainly welcomed it- -Namely because it didn't take her childhood friend long to cue into the strange scene.
"Woah…" He silently remarked at seeing Bonnie's face.
In a hushed tone, he leaned over and whispered, "Why's Bonnie staring at you like a puppy that just got kicked?"
"Not a clue…" Kim replied, sound just as genuinely perplexed as he.
"I've never even seen her like this. That face is…so not Bonnie."
"No kiddin'…"
Quiet settled upon them, which prompted Kim to redirect focus to her locker.
Ron, however, continued to gape at Bonnie.
Gape, and audibly observe, "She looks downright scared."
"I know."
"Scared, and something else…"
Kim paused at hearing those last two words.
She cast an inquisitive look at her friend, and after prompting with a subtle, "Huh?" caused him to focus onto her.
In as serious a look as he could present, Ron answered, "If I didn't know better, I'd say she was almost oggling you…While looking scared."
"Oggling…" Kim repeated, not stuck on a lack of definition, but simple disbelief that she had actually just heard him say that. "You mean, like, checking me out?" Her voice told of her revulsion, but Ron failed to follow it up and insert the punch-line of a particularly nasty joke, like she had been hoping.
Instead, he clarified, "I wouldn't call it 'checking out'. That doesn't do the look she's giving you any justice. It's a lot deeper than that…"
Another silence fell upon them, only contrasting from the other occasions in that now, it was incredibly awkward. So much so that it almost made Ron wish he hadn't told the solid, honest truth.
He had only opened his mouth to suggest forgetting he had ever said anything when Kim abruptly grated, "Get real!" and returned to the sanctity of her locker.
"Bonnie hates my guts, and believe me, the feeling's way mutual. You're telling me that a person who tries to ruin not only my reputation, but my life at least three times a week is actually showing me some weird sign of affection?"
Her eyes followed a lone finger that, for emphasis, had come to point at Bonnie.
…Or at least, where she should have been.
Ironically enough, the brunette had chosen just the moment in which Kim's confusion begun to morph into anger to make her leave.
Ron allowed a lopsided smile to cross his face while replying nonchalantly, "Yup. Pretty much."
Kim would have given him some gratification in a not-so-warm fashion had the tardy bell not chosen that moment to ring.
"Ah, great…" Ron's voice went sour. "Late to second again. I'd best get moving before Barkin does his little 'sweep' through the halls. Later, K.P"
The most she could offer was a frail "See ya'" while watching her best bet for a confidant walk away.
The halls had pretty quickly cleared out after the tardy bell. The 'sweep' Ron had mentioned was Principal Barkin's way of snatching the unfortunate folks that didn't manage to make it to their classes in time.
The deal was that the doors were to be shut and locked immediately following the bell. Least, that was what your standard protocol defined it as. Barkin did all kinds of things like this, and once you got so many similar rules and guidelines, the teachers themselves begun to care less and less.
Kim's second block teacher just happened to give a two-minute grace period after the bell, so she was hardly in a rush. Given what had just happened, the teacher could've been Barkin himself, Kim wasn't so sure she would've cared.
It was amazing how, even past the delicate circumstances, Bonnie had still found a way to make her late to second.
For a very brief, ignorantly hopeful moment, Kim wrote it off as just that- -some new, slightly better articulated attempt to mess with her.
But that was shot down when she arrived at the closed door of her second block, and managed to recall the look on Bonnie's face- -that was authentic.
Bonnie had her strong points, Kim had to admit, but acting was not one of them.
Not for someone so irritatingly charismatic and petulant.
And this, Kim concluded while grasping the knob, was where she was getting stuck at.
She and Bonnie had been rivals since day one, and where the former used her wit with some unexpressive comparison of their cheerleading, the latter just aimlessly attacked.
Their relationship was a tale as old as time, Hell, it was a classic.
Because of that, they were supposed to play their rolls correctly and hate each other right up until the bitter end.
…Weren't they?
What an injustice.
If cruel reality hadn't already given Bonnie some pretty big indications that her attempt to act relatively normal was going over like a led balloon within the first hour, the ordeal that occurred before second block was going to plainly SCREAM it at her.
For all of the solemn, definable facets that moment boasted, Bonnie couldn't explain just why she acted the way she did.
Beforehand, she hadn't given Kim much thought and, that considered, assumed that being the ordinary, stuck-up bitch around her would have been the least challenging order of the day.
But in the instant that her eyes made contact the redhead's unresponsive back, something she didn't plan on struck her.
It was a vision- -the silhouette in her dream; the only thing that she felt welcomed by. The sensation of its touch so heavily clashing in a bottomless world of cold, and suffocating isolation.
Faster than she ever could have boded, Bonnie was hit by that warmth, and that fear, and God strangely willing, everything else the nightmare had put her through.
All of her attempts to combat such a front simply collapsed when Kim noticed her observation, and returned with that confused stare.
All of her protective walls were stripped away, and she stood there, naked before something she had always considered unworthy of sharing her air.
Things seemed so different.
It took all of her slowly detiorating determination just to keep from breaking down into a defeated pile of sobs right then and there, and she was almost grateful as Kim when Ron showed up.
In the moment both turned their eyes away, Bonnie found it in herself to turn and stagger off like a wounded animal.
Arriving to second block on time thereafter was hardly her first priority.
Less than five minutes later, Bonnie ducked down in one of the school's more secretive 'faculty' restrooms, and struggled to compose herself.
Over a filled sink that's contents were half comprised of tears, she looked into a vaguely distorted reflection.
Her hope was to see something significant in the gently undulating water.
Some sort of explanation for what was happening to her, or a perspective on the sick yearning she had just felt.
In the end, all she saw looking back was a hopeless red-eyed girl, every bit as lost and scared as she.
There was only one thing she could truly be positive on as she prepared to vacate the bathroom- -the more she tried to put it all off, the more she hurt.
The chemical plant off 517 in the scenically rolling Dairy Hills had been something of Tri-city's industrial 'Old Faithful'. Built in the mid sixties and set a reasonable distance from the city, the massive establishment received, fired and handled a great deal of the region's raw chemicals.
Crude oil, reagents for hair care products, pesticides, soft drinks…you name it, chances were this plant had worked with it at some point.
It had no standard shipment percentile, but crude oil was handled quite often, making an 'upset' (which is defined by the good folks in the field as, simply put, a problem) have the potential to be extremely volatile.
That accounted, safety was the primary objective for the men and women employed here.
…At least, it would have been, if the plant had ever really given them reason to worry.
In forty solid years of service, there never once was an 'upset' that surpassed that of terminal failure, or some other small, trivial dilemma.
That is, right up until four or five months ago when its aging wear-and-tear begun to show.
Again, the problems themselves were small, but came to be more and more common with each passing day.
After one week passed in which a particular operator had to tend to at least three upsets on his shift each day, management of the plant's corporation agreed to take action.
For the next four months, all operation at the Dairy Hills plant was ordered to an immediate halt.
This was to ensure the safety of the maintenance workers as they tore everything down, cleaned each individual unit and conspiring piece, made repairs (if they were deemed necessary by management), and rebuilt.
The entire process took a relatively (and surprisingly) short frame of time. At the conclusion of those unproductive four months, the plant was back up, and in full operation.
It is often said, however, that quality requires time, and on the same bright, sunny morning that Bonnie was having her Hellish schoolday, a certain operator at the plant was finding that old saying to be quite agreeable.
Second class operator Jonathan Carbone sat lazily in the rolling chair of a monitoring room.
Though his eyes fixed onto the numerous screens before him, his mind had wandered off onto subjects completely unrelated to his job a long, long time ago.
For the rough four-hundred-something employees the plant had, he found it amazing how divided the general workforce seemed.
Honestly, you had your Whites, your Blacks, your Mexicans, and even your man-hating feminists (for the few women the worked alongside them) and caught in the middle of that mess was him- -a simple family-man operator in his forties, striving for the position of engineer.
…Well, regardless of the sad fact that everybody has their own rationally constipated opinion, there was one thing they could all agree on.
After that 'big maintenance resolution' undertaken a few months back, working the graveyard shift was a tried-and-true BITCH.
John half-chuckled and half-grimaced at that thought.
He could distinctly recall remarking to a coworker that the problems the plant experienced prior to the reassembling hadn't really diminished, so much as they just went nocturnal…and slightly amplified.
That declaration, he now concluded, he would defend to the death after working the graveyard shift last night.
There didn't seem to be a moment's peace- -distillery towers systematically lost contact with the mainframe, storage units weren't getting the right amount of contents, pipes that ran the fired chemicals around from one unit to the rest weren't getting enough pressure…
John could go on and on, but he stopped himself short.
All of those 'upsets' qualified as minor inconveniences that, ironically enough, took hours to appropriate.
That was all behind, him, though.
For the time being, everything was working as intended and John himself only had another hour before his shift ended.
That alone was enough to bring a smile to his face- -Despite all of the labor the graveyard shift put him through, it got him home in just enough time to see his little girl off to school.
Sure, that doesn't sound like much, but compared to those few miserable years he worked the day-shift and didn't get to see her at all, those few minutes meant the world to him.
Consistent pain-in-the-ass work and a graveyard tan were small exchange for at least getting to see his child's bright little face once a day.
Just. One. More. HOUR.
Unfortunately, John had made a rather big mistake in the balance of cruel fate.
He let his guard down and begun to bank on the hope that the next hour would go by peacefully.
At the precise moment he thought this, the console before him let out a sharp, loud 'BEEP'.
John started and, before even bothering to affirm anything, groaned, "Awwww, DAMN it!"
In light, it wasn't anything to get so excitable over. According to the mainframe, one of the furnaces in a neighboring building had just shut off a third of its receiving end.
The cause was a mystery, but John didn't let that worry him- -the most it could do was muddle productivity, far as he knew.
Regardless, however, it was an 'upset' and thus his duty to check it out.
While preparing for the short trip, he grabbed his staff-issue radio and sent an alert to his zone leader, Marc.
Marc was one of the baby-boomers that practically ran the entire plant, and while the others were getting to be annoyingly stubborn and senile in their old age, he had always been opened minded, clear and very direct.
That character effectively defined itself in his return, "What's the problem, Carbone?"
After giving the terminal another once-over, John replied, "It's the furnace in the building behind mine. Damn thing just shut off two of its feeding lines."
There was a short pause on the other end before his answer came, "Alright, go look into it, I'll get Vanderslice and Martinez to help out."
"Ten-four."
John was sure to face-fault while throwing open the door, which allowed some natural light to grace the other wise fluorescent-lit monitoring room.
Looked like he had a few more hours of work ahead of him.
That wasn't how it came to be, though.
Had Marc or Jonathan Carbone considered everything this particular 'upset' could have implicated, they would have realized that there was something more to it than just computer failure, or a disrepair problem.
The furnace itself had been running smoothly all night, but was yet to be dealt any crude oil.
For each different incoming chemical, there is a specific 'outgoing' line to feed the fired product to its proper destination.
These lines have to be welded and manufactured to a very precise grade in order to be of effective use, and can only be comprised of a material called Molybdenum, which is capable of enduring the thousand degree temperatures of the heated chemicals.
Here inlay the tragedy- -During the plant's reconstruction, the pipes intended to send off heated crude oil had not been replaced by anything of the same structural integrity, but instead was given small network of steel tubes.
Steel tubes that, when hit with the heated oil, could not hold the job.
The pressure that ran through the piping coupled with the furnace room's explosive equipment ensured an outcome far more destructive than melted property, or a small fire.
The eruption that followed was so abrupt and so massive that John, Marc, and the two hundred operators and engineers working on that fateful day were barely given time to register surprise.
It was later declared that the plant's reclusive placement had done Tri-City a grand favor.
The violent tremor that was shuddered across the earth in its wake supported that, as it was felt by just about everyone- -The destruction that very well could have been had the ill-fated workplace been any closer was a constant reminder.
What seemed more surprising, though, was the lack of any evidence of the disaster before its occurring.
For the tragic loss of two hundred lives and well over fifty million dollars, it seemed unfathomable that such a thing could have come as such a surprise. But in the investigations conducted by the EPA and environmental crimes unit of the Justice Department within the days and weeks to come, no discovery of the steel tubing responsible was ever found. Even past its complete annihilation in the pressure-sparked eruption, there was never any match found in the plant's stock records to affirm that the furnace's lines had been replaced with anything other than molybdenum.
Even in bitter truth, it is unsure as to whether or not the records were altered to cover up any negligence, but for all of the investigations, news reports and observation that followed, the only thing that could be ascertained was a wholesome lack of explanation.
Everyone in Tri-City inwardly deemed the tragedy an enigma because none of them saw it coming.
…No one, save for one young lady.
Bonnie was a girl.
That really went without saying, moreover, she was a physically average girl, if not above.
And that considered, her body did average things- -every now and again it would flood the undigested food in her stomach back up on her, if left unbathed for too long, it would begin to produce foul smells (She, of course, never let that happen), and right at the top of the list was an ungratified menstrual cycle.
Because of that alone, she liked to consider herself something of a veteran when it came to irritating pains.
The day of the plant explosion showed her just how wrong she was.
Right about the time in which the steel pipe was on the verge of submitting to the torrid substance that ran through it, Bonnie was having a similar struggle with her own innards.
In retrospect, it was your regular nausea fit- -a strange, upending pain in the pit of her stomach that held no determinable cause.
It, fittingly enough, struck during lunch, and in its growing caused her to entertain the thought of pushing a barely touched carton of nachos to the side to create some space for her steadily lightening head.
That thought was dismissed, however, when she turned her eyes back to the people she sat with.
Terra had cast several worried glances toward her, but was stalling to voice a budding concern. Everyone else was pretty significantly absorbed in their own conversation- -Awkward as Bonnie's dead silence may have been, it wasn't appearing to have much effect.
Even Brick, who was sitting right next to her with his arm haphazardly thrown over her shoulders, hadn't noticed anything.
Maybe alone, Bonnie wouldn't have been above resting her head on a cafeteria table, but in this setting, she knew better.
Chances were, nasty judgement would overcome any sort of concern.
So, she sat still and silent with a hope that these odd, abrupt pains would soon dissipate.
But all at once, the emptiness in her head transcended into a skull-splitting headache, so quick and sharp that it forced a gasp from her lungs.
Now Brick's attention was caught, and while readjusting to accommodate his girlfriend that had fiercely grasped the sides of her head, he voiced the three words that had long since come to rest in Terra's mind, "You okay, Bonnie?"
As if that were a signal, Bonnie squirmed away from him and slid her chair back, allowing space for a groggy slouch forward.
"No!" She managed through the jackhammers pounding away on her skull.
Finally, Terra's panic alarm went off.
The once noisy table was silent as a grave while the blonde cheerleader opted to make a move, but she wouldn't arrive in time.
In that instance, the Dairy Hills refinery more than twenty miles away blew, and to let the better part of Tri-City know it sent a hard, violent quake out.
Terra was taken completely off guard when she rose to her feet, only to find her balance faltering.
While attempting to steady herself, she looked past the alarmed faces, and even her suffering friend to realize that the entire cafeteria was trembling.
The cord-suspended fixtures overhead flickered while sporadically rocking back in forth, then simply died.
Amongst this, falling objects, deep rumbling, and a distorted symphony of panicked screams accentuated and confusion.
In fact, the only two girls present that didn't let the ordeal get to their vocal cords were Bonnie and Kim.
The latter held the experience to keep calm, the former, however, was met by a new challenge that coupled with trying to retain gravitational constants in her head.
In the moment, Bonnie didn't care to identify if it was her slouching, or just crap luck, but as soon as the lights died, her nausea amplified.
With that, the contents of her brooding stomach departed, and broke north.
Her jaw dropped almost involuntarily, and everything from the waist up accordingly snapped forward.
As she begun a series of long, painful heaves, Principal Barkin made his entrance by bursting through one of the large cafeteria's sets of double-doors.
His straight-faced, no-nonsense attitude finally fell into the proper context as the startling volume of his voice bounced off the four largely separated walls, "Alright, everybody hit the floor NOW!"
Compliance was, if anything at all, immediate.
Chairs scrambled out, and almost as promptly, everyone was becoming rather well acquainted with the soiled tile floor.
Everyone, Kim noticed while following suit, except for Bonnie.
She was still hunched over in her seat, letting out everything she had eaten for the past few days.
Better still, the table her 'popular' crowd chose to sit at was right by a wide picture window.
Kim wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew better than to stand by and leave someone open to harm.
…Even if it was Bonnie.
The strange staring contest before second block, their rivalry, nor anything else Kim felt toward Bonnie overcame her sense of duty.
…Or at least, that was what she would later determine it to be.
As quickly as she could manage, Kim recovered to her feet and took off in a dead sprint for Bonnie.
The quake grew worse as she drew closer, causing her sense that time was running out to motivate a snapping dive forward.
Everyone at the 'popular' table had adhered to Barkin's instructions pretty quickly, but only Terra entertained the thought of getting back up and dragging her still vulnerable friend to the ground with her.
Just as she begun to teeter on the brink of doing such, a blur broke across her field of vision, tackling Bonnie to the ground.
Kim wound up on top, but didn't abandon her place. If what she boded was coming, the still hurling brunette underneath her wouldn't be out of the woods, lest she had some sort of cover.
The largest documented explosion was heard in Middleton High, clear as day.
A deafening clap, and time slowed to a near still-frame.
Where Kim shut her eyes tight, Bonnie's snapped open to perceive an image of the large window she was sitting directly before no less than a few seconds ago burst inward.
Shards of broken glass vented across the tables and floor, a few going as far as to skim over her human shield's back, but she was held fast to the floor.
An encore of screams clashed with the intense shriek of busting glass, and shortly thereafter battled for dominance with the school's fire alarms, which were tripped as a result of the quake's devastating climax.
In the end, the latter of those truly maddening sounds was the only thing that proved to endure.
The world returned to normal almost as quickly as it changed, causing a great deal of the ducked people to hesitate in recovering.
But they did, and with them, Kim climbed up.
The sun, which now filtered through a great open space, hit her in such a way that all of her details became veiled in shadow.
Bonnie could offer only a frightened, awed gaze as response.
It took several hours just for Barkin and several of Middleton High's other figures to get their bearings straight.
The school's power was restored shortly after the incident (which would later be unoriginally deemed "The big bang" by many) and with it came the discovery of just what happened.
The cafeteria was, obviously enough, restricted to the maintenance staff, but after learning that a plant explosion was the cause of this entire mess, Barkin was quickly hard pressed to just release the student body.
As it stood, the Dairy Hills refinery was still enveloped in flame, more explosions threatened to usurp the peace, and it was unsure of just what was being released into the air as a result.
Barkin frowned upon any dismissal that didn't follow SOP, but he also knew that doing something like this called ungodly amounts of negative attention to the school, generally, but to him, specifically.
So, come second to the last class of the day, it was announced over the PA systems that the students were to gather their things and calmly vacate the school grounds.
It was also stressed that this did not mean they could head straight for the mall, or parks, or anything else that necessitated being away from home.
Barkin concluded his announcement with a particularly memorable statement- -
"This…early release is the result of an unsure state of emergence. I expect all of you to treat it as just that."
A great deal of the teachers were ordered to refrain from turning on radios, televisions, or any other appliance that could reveal the plant explosion, where several news teams were already on-scene.
This was mostly to prevent any great amounts of panic, but hardly anybody adhered to it.
One in particular, Bonnie's social sciences teacher, whom had been in trouble with administration before.
"Y'know, it says in all the books not to let you guys hear about stuff like this when it happens…" He remarked while producing a remote from a drawer on his desk.
"But I think you've got just as much of a right to know what's going on as I do…I was never much of the consensus type anyway."
The twenty six inch T.V cattycornered along the room's left wall blinked to life, and almost as quickly switched to channel two.
Several others present noticed Bonnie focusing on this far more than what was deemed becoming of her.
The screen was dark, having just come into the swing of operation, but it wasn't difficult to see the scene it presented- -Fire.
Fire everywhere, enveloping catwalks and cylindrical storage tanks, running rampant across the better part of the plant.
"…And it is not looking good here, in the Dairy Hills, ladies and gentlemen. The TCFD is on-scene trying to contain the fire, but two distillery towers and several silos have already exploded, and the fate of the two hundred employees operating at the time of the initial eruption is still unsure."
By observation, it looked as though the report had simply locked Bonnie into a trance of morbid fascination, but in truth the scene that was caught in the lens of a sky-cam had shocked her speechless.
…And as the picture from her dream attacked her once more, a lone voice detailed the fear that was quickly colonizing her mind,
"We can only hope that this matter is resolved before it reaches the refinery's more hazardous chemicals…but for the engineers and operators, I don't know…" The reporter's voice seemed to weaken, either for the sake of lame sensationalism, or an effect of his story's overwhelming circumstance.
"What kind of God would let this happen?"
Bonnie's way home was pretty significantly clear- -to simply say there was no traffic would be an understatement, as Middleton really looked like a ghost town.
The only vehicle she encountered while navigating the empty, department-flanked streets was a speeding police cruiser head in the opposite direction with its sirens blaring.
That isn't to say, though, that Bonnie really noticed. The most she could do to escape the restraints of her mind was register the concrete driveway of her home as she closed the distance on it.
Even though the curtains that concealed the windows of her living room were pulled back, she didn't see her father.
He, however, saw her.
From inside, both parents were waiting for their child to step through the front door.
Though the plant explosion on TV had given them a lot to be distracted over, neither had forgotten about Bonnie.
Harold, particularly.
He tore himself away just as the car begun to roll to halt in his driveway.
"She's back. Think you're up for this?"
His wife, whom he directed the question to, gave him an unsure look.
"You know, we haven't been a very big part of Bon-Bon's life lately."
Harold nodded. "I know, but you know as well as I do why things happened the way they did. We can't turn a blind-eye to this just because we don't get to spend much time with her."
"…but how are we supposed to confront her?"
Almost as promptly as this issue was risen, the front door's handle begun to jiggle.
"Any way we can." Harold replied deadpan while turning.
The first thing that greeted Bonnie as she entered her home was the sound of war.
The Rockwaller's wide-screen TV that bore the ongoing news report was now a scion for the most recent event of devastation.
Everyone, even Bonnie whom was drained in all fashions, looked toward the screen as a loud eruption broke out across the speakers.
A panel-shaped heat-exchanger that once canopied the side of a distillery tower broke from its moorings, and now plummeted toward the earth in a shower of sparks.
Over this, the reporter's voice bristled, "Oh my God! The sixth tower has just blown! The sixth tower is gone!"
Everything hit Bonnie at once, as it had so many times before.
But this time, she simply couldn't take it.
Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground. Victimized by her own horror, not at what she was seeing, but that she knew it was going to happen.
She had seen it, every last sordid detail of the day, before it even fell into place.
Harold was first to avert his gaze from the TV and see his daughter come to rest on the flooring of the entrance corridor.
He showed no reluctance in coming to her aid, and in her desperation, she clung to him.
"What is wrong with you?"
His voice alarmed Bonnie's mother to the situation at hand, and although her approaching form blocked all sight of the TV, the girl's eyes remained locked on its locale.
And all she could do to answer was murmur three words.
Three words of brutal truth that now did nothing short of torture her.
"God is dead."
-Chapter 1 Fin-
…Now that that's all out of the way, on with the crap you don't want to read!
Wow, there was a whole lot of crap that didn't come across with this fic the first time I tacked it up.
Damned site and their pointless guidelines.
Oh well, I'm actually somewhat grateful for that, being as I just skated right through the initial post. I suppose I was somewhat euphoric that I had managed to finally get it done (…Or, it could have been my being wired on Red Bull and caffeine chewing gum at the time).
Whatever the case, I was a figurative comatose patient while sticking in my author's notes, but now I see some of the screw-ups, and would like to revise.
BUT, before I get too far into that, the legal what-nots come first.
Disclaimer-
'Kim Possible' is the property of Disney (…Gawd, that doesn't roll of my tongue),
as are the characters, locales, etc, etc…
The events aren't even really my own creation, as most are inspired from things that occur near me in real life (…Big, nasty BP plant explosion that happened down here in Texas last March)
For this fic, there were a lot of things that flew in and out of my head.
'The Mothman Prophecies', Sophia Coppel's 'The Virgin Suicides', I could go on and on about similar major productions that touched base on what this little grand tale I'm writing is all about, but I'll stop there, because great as they may be, there was only one thing that inspired me enough to get off my ass and consider doing this at all.
I am, of course, leading you, dear reader, to Zaratan's fic, "Bonnie's curse"
You were kind enough to review, Zaratan (and what a flattering review it was), and you strike me as a laid-back guy, so I'll give it to you straight- -I used your fic for a great deal of referencing.
I jumped right into the middle, if not the end, of the whole KP thing after reading a Racewing fic, and thus had no idea of what the Hell I was doing when I undertook this fic.
Oh, I scoured this site (The site I am apparently not allowed to directly identify…) for some good KP fics to give me a bit more of an application on Bonnie, and who she was according to the series, but just as you said, Zar, there aren't many fics willing to focus on her.
Or even mention her.
So, I just pulled a 'monkey-see, monkey-do' thing, and used some of the basics from your fic for my own.
For instance, Bonnie's father's name being Harold.
I've got no clue what his actual name is. I'm not even sure if you knew. But, the simple fact that it was used in your fic, which I regarded pretty highly, was good enough motivation for me to stick in my own. You'll notice that I never directly mentioned her mother's name.
…That would be because I couldn't recall it being in your fic.
Pathetic, I know.
I fail to do my homework, and wind up letting my fear for being caught making a mistake over-ride my sense of creativity. It's pretty sad, and I'm whore of a man for letting it happen (as Tabris Macbeth once said), but it's how I roll, so I just do my best to go with the flow.
I'm sure you'll recognize the whole pop-tart bit towards the beginning, as well.
…I was hoping you wouldn't .
BUT, enough about you and your superiority, lets talk about me.
Why have I decided to make this fanfiction a femslash, I'm sure you're wondering.
Easy question to answer, really.
Aside from the fact that I'm your standard human male, I also have a penchant for breaking molds in a more taboo fashion.
Don't get me wrong. I like the whole Kim/Ron thing, nice couple, but it's just too predictable for me.
No, writing a femslash is NOT my own little stupid, pointless way of battling conformity.
It's just my patteren of operation.
Okay, believe I've gotten everything I wanted to mention out, now.
For the frame of time to which you could predict the next instalment, I won't any guarentee, or even a qoute.
I mention in my profile that when I do things like that, it tends to morph me into great, big mound of stress (and I'm a college/highschool student, so I don't need any more of that crap), and though all of that stuff was written several months ago, I'm still holding myself true to all of my shortcomings.
I can, however, tell you that I'm working tenaciously on it.
Of course, if you've got criticsm (…pipebombs) of a more 'personal' affair, both my email, and my AIM adress are in the profile.
Now, I bid thee a good night, and do hope you enjoyed yourself.
PopWar out.
"I love you too. Why the hell else do you think I keep doing this?" -- Warren Ellis