Author's note: OOPS - the first version of this was missing a paragraph! Apparently a victim of last minute editing, but it's in there now (third from the end) been restored as of Saturday, May 14, 2011.
That said: This story contains a fairly good sized spoiler for my uber-short PUTTING IT ON and a smaller spoiler for my uber-epic AT THE CENTERFOLD OF THE STORM. You really don't have to read ATCOTS first, but if you plan on reading PIO, you might want to check it out first. That said, no one could have been more surprised than I was to discover that this little yarn I started for American Gecko's Minor Character Story Contest would end up tying the plotlines of AT THE CENTERFOLD OF THE STORM and PUTTING IT ON into the same universe; but as the plot started to unfold, the connections between the two stories simply became so obvious that I couldn't ignore them. So, despite the fact that I had never intended to create a 'series,' with the inclusion of ATCOTS's predecessor CLIQUE CLIQUE, that means that there are now four stories set in the ATCOTS mythos. For the chronologically minded, that's PIO, BIO, CC and ATCOTS. Totally unplanned, but that's how writing goes sometimes… Ye Old Legal stuff: Tara, Hope, Jessica, Crystal, Marcella, Liz, Mr. Barkin, Bonnie Rockwaller, Kim Possible, Duff Killigan, Henchco, Shego, Ron Stoppable, and all other characters borrowed from the wonderful KP Universe are the creations of Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, and those names are all trademarks of the Disney media organizations. Although use in this context may be considered fair under parody law, just in case: this work was not created for profit, no money changed hands etc.
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BRINGING IT ON
By SHADO Commander
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Walking along in a haze generated by her own overwrought mind, Tara barely even saw the dimly lit street ahead of her. That's why she never noticed the shadowy figures that stepped out of an alley behind her and watched as she continued on, completely oblivious to the world.
Of course, it wasn't as if 'oblivious' wasn't a term that hadn't been attached to Tara before, the stigma of the airheaded blonde that came with her 100% natural hair coloring having once carried with it more than just a ring of the truth. Junior High Tara had been, at best, extremely naïve and gullible, but that Tara had disappeared a long time ago as a matter of necessity. Her current mental fog was, in fact, due to her complete conscious awareness being focused almost exclusively on a weighty matter of cogitation that had been pressing upon her conscience for longer than she'd care to admit. Guilt is like that, sometimes barely noticeable at first, but as Tara was learning, it tended to cling to one like a leech, slowly gaining weight as it sucked its life essence from inside your soul until you were ultimately forced to acknowledge it. Certainly that was how it was in her case, and the pack of soulsuckers that were currently worrying at her shapely thighs were doing a very effective job of driving her towards doing something that she never been very good at before: taking responsibility for her own actions.
Tara mentally kicked herself again. Because, in the end, she HAD brought this on herself. Oh, it was true that the others shouldered a good bit of the blame as well, but in the end she had been the one who had put their thoughts into action, formulating a plan to actualize what the others were only thinking. But who could have imagined that it would come to this? Or that it would have dragged on for so long? What had begun as a temporary solution to what they had expected to be a temporary problem, had forged a chain of events that, now threatened to pull all of them down into the ooze of their own guilt with its ever-increasing mass, link by link by link. And now… now that their ultimate goal was almost in sight, it was becoming harder and harder to keep going, every new scheme making it that much harder for her to face herself in the mirror in the morning. The face of the girl who had done something so… awful.
Surely, there was some way to undo at least a part of it. There HAD to be a solution, a way out, if only she could wrap her brain about it. Yet an actual exit strategy… at least one that wouldn't destroy everything they'd fought so hard to build… kept escaping her. Just as it had continued to escape Hope and Jessica, whose company she had parted from only seconds ago, and Mr. Barkin and the rest of the cheer team, with whom she had been in a long, intensive planning session that had gone on for multiple hours just before that.
Well, ALMOST the rest of the cheer team. Notably conspicuous by their absence had been the team's nominal leaders, Kim Possible and Bonnie Rockwaller. Of course, that absence had been rather unavoidable given that they had been subject of the meeting, just as they had been the subject of every single one of the previous 56 secret meetings the team had held since the event the cheerleaders had code-named D-Day.
The day that Tara had sold her soul for a chance at a trophy.
The National Cheerleading Championships. It had been years since Middleton had produced a team deserving of more than district recognition, but last week the Cheerleaders… HER team… had done the unbelievable and taken the state Cheer-Offs. Now the Lady MadDogs were on their way to the Nationals, but that meant that they had to keep the pressure up on their secret weapon, something that wasn't so easy to do when that weapon was the sheer creative energy created by throwing Kim and Bonnie at each other in an ever-escalating battle of 'can you top this?' To date, the success of that tactic had been phenomenal: Kim's incredible physicality and background in martial arts continued to generate unique and wildly imaginative flips, kicks and spins that left audience and judge's jaws hanging, while Bonnie's background in dance, both modern and ballet, gave them a musicality that was every bit the equal of the best Broadway choreography. And as quickly as one of the two could introduce something new and amazing to the team, the other would fire back with something that somehow managed to top the other's achievement.
In all honesty, there were times when it was almost too much. Tara had had more than a few evenings when she'd had to go to sleep with her legs wrapped in ice packs, especially after Kim had decided to add kick boxing to the team's warm up exercises the same week Bonnie had decided that they all needed to learn how to stand on their toes for minutes at a time 'en pointe.' Yet, somehow, they'd survived that and the resulting routine had earned a standing ovation from the judges AND their competitors. There was no doubt about it, the Lady MadDogs were the hottest thing anyone had ever seen.
But what no one knew, except for the secret inner council that consisted of Mr. Barkin and the team sans Kim and Bonnie, was that the whole thing had been built on a lie. That in order to keep Kim and Bonnie in a constant state of escalating competition, the other girls had been manipulating the events around them to keep the teenage hero and the dance prodigy perpetually at each other's throats.
Tara allowed that at least THAT part wasn't due to her. The animosity between the teams' two stars had occurred naturally at first, the inevitable result when two emerging female alphas suddenly found their territories overlapping. And when the rest of the girls had seen how Kim responded to the outrageous initial challenge Bonnie had made the redhead undertake during tryouts, with an audition that had already become a local legend on the scale of the famous stories of the killer with the hook for a foot who supposedly haunted the darkest stretch of old Upperton road... well, how could they NOT have begun to question Bonnie's self-assumed mantle as the team's next leader?
So, flipping the tables on the tan-skinned brunette, they'd elected Kim to the captains position just to see if Bonnie could rally as well as her new nemesis had… and the results had been pure gold. As a leader Bonnie would always be too handicapped by her own -absorption, but as a motivator, a stick for spurring Kim forward, she was perfection. The one-up-womanship back and forth had produced a veritable deluge of inspired routines that practically sizzled with the energy of two forces of nature colliding, irresistible force meeting unyielding object. No one had ever seen or imagined anything like it!
And then IT had happened.
Looking back, it should have been obvious where everything was heading. But they were all younger and more innocent back then, the smuggled cases of beer that they'd sneaked into the cabins during their first cheer camp being the greatest mischief any of them had ever even contemplated. And yes, they'd all been a little drunk when it happened, even prim and proper Possible, who'd let peer pressure and a challenge from Bonnie tempt her into not one, not four but EIGHT cans of Lowerton Lager as she attempted to match the more experienced bad girl ounce for ounce, swallow for swallow.
And no one was quite sure who had come up with the idea first, but it had been Crystal who'd actually said the words:
"Let's play truth or dare!"
From there events had degenerated rapidly. If only someone had remained sober, maybe someone would have headed off the train wreck that followed. But no one was… at least no one who would admit to it now, though everyone's recollection of the event was remarkably identical for something that had supposedly occurred under an alcoholic cloud…
True, there had always been a few suspicions about Kim… her lifestyle wasn't exactly normal to begin with, she kept a picture of that green woman in her locker, and there'd been a notable absence of the normal interests one would expect from, well, a cheerleader, for cripe's sake! Granted, few of the team had as many notches on their bedpost as Bonnie, but when it came to the unspoken rule that Cheerleaders were supposed to date members of the athletic teams, Kim had been a noticeable hold-out. However, given what the girl did when she wasn't in class or cheering, most of the group… including Tara… had assumed that this was just the result of the the high school players being a bit below what Kim had become used to. She fought grown men, after all, and from what Tara had seen on TV and the few fights she'd witnessed in person, Kim would probably have physically dominated most of the jocks that she knew. Then, too, Tara had met Kim's dad and the blonde had to admit that there were damn few men his age that she'd ever found to be THAT sexually attractive; and with her father as a reference, Kim's standards for guys, appearance wise, had to be just a little higher than everyone else's.
And as for Bonnie… well, she'd always had the morals of an alley cat, but she and Tara had gone to school together since first grade, and nothing she'd said or done had ever given any indication at all…
So when a tipsy and giggling Jessica had issued what was now simply know as THE Dare to Kim, they'd all found it uproariously funny.
"Three kisses," Jess had snorted, pointing one pretty manicured finger at the redhead's archrival. "With HER!"
Yeah, it HAD been hilarious, especially both girls' deer in the headlights expressions… until, halfway through the third of the three dared kisses, Kim and Bonnie were suddenly locked together in the most serious and determined spit swapping exchange Tara had ever seen, porn flicks snuck in on the Rockwaller's cable system included.
Tara remembered sitting there, transfixed by the sight of her best friend and the feisty redhead with their tongues thrust down each others' throats, Kim growling softly and Bonnie purring… How they had then broken apart, eyes wild and chests heaving, both obviously stunned and shaken by what had just happened, at what they had done. SHe could recal with crystal clarity how Kim had bolted from the room and Bonnie doing the same in the opposite direction a half second later. AND what she would never forget was the rest of the team all looking at each other in shock, and how she, Tara, found her own lips saying three words she didn't even remember taking the time to formulate:
"This ain't good."
"This isn't good," Mr. Barkin had corrected grammatically once he had been informed by a still wobbly Tara and Hope only a few minutes later, but otherwise he was in full agreement. Although originally hired to teach arts and crafts (his degree, surprisingly, was in Basket Weaving,) the man's seeming ability to teach any subject had led to his becoming the de facto choice for any job at Middleton that wasn't immediately filled, so when Mrs. DeDeux had retired, the now vacant position of Cheerleader Sponsor had ended up in his hands. Astonishingly, however, his military training had turned out to be exactly what the team had needed and the core group of cheerleaders who REALLY made all the decisions had come to trust his judgment implicitly. Even if it meant coming clean about a couple of cases of Lowerton Lager and the unexpected revelation of two teammates gender orientation.
"I suppose it's POSSIBLE that they might still end up using every single bit of their spare time developing cheer routines, putting all of their considerable energy and focus into collaborating on choreography to the exclusion of all else," Barkin had allowed once the full brain trust had been assembled. "But to be honest, girls, if this goes on, the odds are that one of three things will happen."
"Either they'll get so involved in each other that the cheer work will be a secondary interest at best," Tara completed, "The realities of trying to sustain a lesbian relationship in High School will keep their minds distracted with all kinds of major drama, or one or both of them will be unable to face the other once they're sober and will quit the team."
"Exactly," Barkin nodded. "Now, I don't have anything against same sex couples in general… and yes, I'm looking at you Marcella and Liz… but in this particular case, I think we have to consider the good of the many over the desires of the two."
There was a unanimous soft gasp, followed by a slightly more scattered set of thoughtful "Hmmmss" as Barkin gave voice to exactly what they'd all been thinking.
"We… we could make state champions this year," Jessica's whisper was clearly heard by all, despite the fact that it was said almost to herself, under her breath.
"With my grades, a cheerleading scholarship is my only chance of getting into Vasser," Hope had piped in next, even as Tara was thinking of how the surprise and pleasure of having a daughter in a top cheer team had finally given her some relief from years of relentless pressure to push her grades to a standard that she was never going to achieve.
"We ALL benefit from the team being successful," Crystal spoke for the group.
"Including me," Barkin admitted. "So what do you want to do about it?"
And then Tara had heard her own voice saying: "I have an idea."
And thus began the first phase of the plan: Operation Denial.
Fortunately, given the amount of alcohol both girls had consumed, it hadn't been hard to convince both Kim and Bonnie that much of what had happened had been a combination of false memory couple with a momentary aberration of behavior that was far less severe than what they seemed to remember. Then, to clinch the deal, everyone had gone to each of the two, separately and 'secretly' afterwards, to inform them that what little that HAD happened had all obviously been the other's weird idea of a prank. A little reverse psychology had further elicited each of the tongue crossed duo to invoke a set of vows and promises that, if pressed on the subject, the 'incident' had officially never happened… and nor would it ever be spoken of again.
It wasn't brainwashing. Not quite. Although in retrospect, Tara couldn't believe how cold-blooded and calculating they'd been about the whole thing. And to make it worse, while Kim DID seem to have bought the altered chain of events hook, line and sinker, it was equally obvious… to Tara at least… that Bonnie wasn't quite as sure. Oh, she had gone back to her old pattern of a new guy every couple of weeks with regular rebounds to Brick in between, but there were times when Tara had seen her friend looking at Kim when she thought no one else was looking that… well, it left Tara feeling really dirty and disgusted with herself inside. Especially since the entire team was still actively involved in the second phase of the plan, Operation Dissent.
Given the way the two had gone at it with only the slightest provocation once alcohol had temporarily taken the blinders off them, the conspirators had determined that ever allowing Kim and Bonnie to take even the most tentative steps toward friendship again would be a 'bad idea.' Therefore, to insure that such an event could never happen, the team had been intentionally manipulating events to insure that the acrimony between their two stars never dropped below a seven on a scale of one to ten. And, whether by bumping Kim's elbow so that she bumped into Bonnie during practice, or manufacturing gossip that intentionally sent Bonnie steaming towards Kim's lunch table with a new set of insults aimed at the redhead, or any of a thousand other dirty tricks they'd come up with, the team had been highly successful at keeping their unwitting victims at each other's throat all season. At this point it only took one or two 'incidents' a week to keep the mutual animosity running at full tilt.
And every time they manufactured one, Tara felt a little piece of herself die inside. Because, despite the monstrous fraud that they'd committed, the members of the team were friends. All of them, Kim and Bonnie included. They crammed for tests together, went shopping and exchanged gifts for the holidays. But how did you reconcile being friends with lying to two of them every day? With pitting them against each other?
And at this point, how could you dare tell them about what you'd done, knowing that all you would accomplish would be to destroy the one thing that everyone did have in common, the cause that they all fought for?
The worst part, Tara knew, was that if they did tell them… if SHE told them… it would probably destroy Bonnie completely. Kim… well, with her missions and Ron, Kim would survive the hurt. But as proud and headstrong as Tara's best friend was, learning that she'd been played for a fool would be more than just humiliating; it would shatter her, especially if also ended the one real, close friendship she had in her life… but if she discovered what Tara had done, how could she not hate her forever? Not that Tara didn't know that she'd deserve it but why should BONNIE have to suffer for it? And as the final complication, it was increasingly becoming apparent to Tara that Bonnie NEEDED Kim. Bon Bon had always needed someone to compete with, a standard to attempt to rise above, and for years that had been her own sisters. Her attempts to steal her parents's attention from Connie and Lonnie had spurred Bonnie into becoming the drama queen of their junior high, but once she came to Middleton HS and met Kim, it had been as if a whole new, better Bonnie had been born… a Bonnie who went from c's and Bs to B pluses and the occasional A, who dressed just a little sharper, involved herself in every extracurricular activity she could and was an athlete second only to, well, Kim Possible…
Ironically, it was this aspect of Bonnie that currently had Tara thinking about Kim. Like yin and yang, you couldn't really think of one without the other. Unfortunately, the problem was that was that Kim had been getting increasingly distracted by her hero activities, and when SHE failed to step up to the plate, Bonnie was less inclined to push her own game to the limit. Not only had the last two or three routines not been quite as crisp as their predecessors, but Bonnie's grades had started to slip as well, and on one occasion Tara actually had to send Bonnie back into her own house to change jackets because she was wearing the same one that she had worn three days previously. All of which brought her to her current quandary…
SOMETHING had to be done about Kim, but how could anyone, in good conscience, think about doing something that would cut back on Kim's heroing?
In the beginning it had only been a few times a week, usually for no more than a few hours at a time. Then the missions had not only started to become longer, but also more frequent. What had really opened the floodgates, though, was when recent city budget cuts had resulted in a reduction in the number of police officers patrolling Middleton at night. So of course Kim, being Kim, had automatically stepped into the resulting gap and was spending more and more of her time out late at night, trying to keep the streets clear of the common crooks and muggers that had previously been handled by the MPD. And how could Tara and the team argue with that? The fact was that Middleton was getting more dangerous, especially as thugs and other socially objectionable types began to filter in from Upperton and Go City once word of the reduced police patrols began to hit the criminal communication networks. Not even Kim Possible in full vigilante mode could stop everything, but if Kim were to stop putting in the night shifts…
The unexpected scraping of a shoe, followed by the sound of a handful of pebbles being kicked across the concrete behind her, caused Tara to freeze in her mental tracks. In the micro-second that followed, the mental fog that she'd been wandering in suddenly lifted, leaving Tara acutely aware of the patter of footsteps behind her. Multiple footsteps. Fortunately, she'd never actually stopped moving… at least not long enough for it to be noticeable… which perhaps bought her a few seconds of time in which to react, but it was way too late for any kids to be out, which meant…
Oh SHIT! She'd been so caught up in her thoughts that she'd automatically walked home the OLD way. Just a few years ago it would have been the safest way as well, with small, well lit business on both sides of the small commercial strip that served as a buffer between the more expensive subdivision where Hope, Jessica and Bonnie lived, and the less expensive one where her house was, a good five blocks away. Since the new Smarty Mart opened, however, most of older businesses had shuttered. Now empty and derelict, those former safe havens with their familiar employees would now be the perfect place to drag an unwilling girl into. The perfect place to…
Refusing to let her mind go down that path, she slowly began to pick up her pace… nothing too sudden… her hand snaking down oh-so-casually down into her purse as she dared a quick glance into an unlit window. That brief cursory look was all it took to confirm that her followers were NOT people she wanted to become more closely acquainted with. There were three of them, all dressed in dark colors designed to blend into the darkness, and while the distant light of a streetlamp struggled to pick out their silhouettes against the gloom, the fading illumination was quite sufficient to create a reflective glint off the short, sharp knife that one of the three was carrying in his left hand.
With the energy of an Olympic sprinter, Tara burst into a run, throwing her purse to the ground behind her in the desperate hope that all they were after was her money. The only two items of importance now were in her hands. Maybe if she was lucky…
That hope was dashed as the harsh shout of "Get Her!" from behind gave final confirmation of her pursuers' true intent. Her heart was beating like hummingbirds as she desperately dashed for the next intersection, praying that she could make it and that a car would be passing by and that the driver would be willing to stop…all while her fingers desperately hit he speed dial on her phone…
And then a hand grabbed her shoulder and she was spun around like a rag doll being torn by a Rottweiler, the sudden jarring impact snapping the phone out of her hand and sending it flying into the street where it slammed across the pavement in a spray of shattered plastic parts!
That left Tara with only the object in her other hand to defend herself with. But thanks to Kim, it wasn't just a token response.
Kim had actually taken quite a ribbing when she'd given out the keyrings at the Holiday sleepover. Bonnie's presents of twenty dollar gift certificates for Shower and Skin Bathworks had certainly been much more immediately appreciated, but it was hard not to follow the thought process that would have driven the redhead in making her selection. It was classic Kim, after all. She'd always tried to ground the other girls in the basics of self-defense, and the large, wire loop keyrings, with their attached whistles and small cans of pepper spray, fit in with that basic line of thought. Tara often wondered what sort of things Kim had seen to make that such a priority, but the haunted she occasionally saw in those huge green eyes had made her afraid to ask.
Now, bringing the spray up to meet the eyes of the first attacker even as she turned, Tara understood, and inside her soul said a prayer of thanks for Kim, for what could prove to be the most valuable gift she'd ever received.
Training.
A quick squirt and the man who'd grabbed her shoulder screamed in shock, his hands releasing her in order to claw in agony at the glowing hot coals that had been his own eyes. But those were only the beginning of his problems, as kickboxing lessons absorbed as dance suddenly manifested and Tara felt her left leg kick out, slamming the blinded man in the crotch! Feeling absolutely no guilt at all, Tara followed up with a second kick aimed at the man's knees. There was a horrible cracking sound, his left leg bent at an impossible angle in the wrong direction and he went down, still screaming and obviously crippled.
Unfortunately, he hadn't been the one with the knife.
No… one of the ones with knives. Plural.
"Son of a bitch!" The second man exclaimed, motioning to the third to flank Tara. "The little cunt wants to fight!"
Tara knew she was in a desperate situation now. If they took her from both sides, there was no way she could use the spray on them at once! That's when she pulled the other item from the keychain off, sticking it in her mouth and blowing as hard as she can. It was a whistle… just a whistle… but one that was mind-numbingly loud and could be heard for blocks. At this point Tara's only hope was to hold them off for as long as she could, praying that the men would start to fear that someone might recognize and answer the distress call.
But in this part of town, at this time of night? The odds of rescuers arriving soon, if ever, were slim to none and they knew it. That's why they were hunting here, after all.
Still blowing the whistle furiously, Tara flipped her keys around as Kim had shown her, sticking the points out through her fingers like short knives. Her cheer training had left her surprisingly strong… serving as the base of human pyramids would do that for a girl… and she might get in at least one hit. In the back of her head, a voice was telling her not to be stupid, that it would be safest to just drop the weapons and let the guys do what they wanted. But the other half… the intelligent half… was thinking about the fact that she'd seen their faces and that they'd done nothing at all to even try to disguise their features. That sounded like someone who didn't expect anyone to be able to identify them later… and her purse lying half a block back was proof that it wasn't her money they were after.
She was also aware that they were attempting to back her up against a wall… why hadn't they simply rushed her? She didn't think she could look all that intimidating in her little cheerleaders skirt, even with the keys and the spray, so they really must think they had all the time in the world… She had no idea how terrifying she actually looked in the martial arts pose she had automatically assumed, courtesy of the Thai-bo Kim had worked into the latest routine. All she knew was that she could never give up, so she never stopped blowing the whistle, even though she knew they were going to…
And then, out of nowhere, a garbage can lid flew like a flying saucer out of the darkness. With a cymbal-like clang, it smashed into the temple of the man on the left with such force that he was spun like a rag doll, dropping his knife in the process!
"Gah!" he screamed, blood running into his left eye from a jagged cut the covered half his forehead as both he and his partner turned/looked up to face:
Two more girls in cheerleader uniforms. Jessica and Hope. Both were holding pepper spray can's identical to Tara's, while Hope also had what appeared to be a two foot long length of lumber held like a baseball bat in her right hand. Far more intimidating, though, was Jessica's second weapon, and even as Tara recognized what it was, Jess was hitting the trigger on the taser, sending two thin wires flying across the alley into the chest of the last uninjured man.
His yells of pain were even louder than those of the last man standing, who withstood two pepper sprayings but not the volley of kicks the girls all unleashed on him once he could no longer see. A good part of that, though, was that it was rather hard to make sounds through a mouth full of shattered teeth.
They kept kicking him long after he was down. In fact, it was only after Hope had pounded the others a few extra times with her improvised club, and all of them were barely breathing that Jessica finally thought to wrap her arms around a now trembling Tara.
"You okay, T?"
"Y..yeah," The blonde stammered, looking down in shock at the red splatters that covered her white sneakers. Was bleach going to be able to get that out?
And then, suddenly, she WAS better! Hell, she felt fantastic! Not only had she avoided… well, something she'd still rather avoid thinking about… but she'd done more than just defend herself. She… and Jess and Hope… had taken these sickos out for good. Oh, they'd probably live, not that she cared, but the complete and total terror that had been on their faces as they'd felt their own ribs and bones snapping beneath the cheerleaders' feet meant that none of them would ever even think about taking on a Lady MadDog again!
And that felt… good.
"Fuckin' A," Hope suddenly grinned, hefting her bloody hunk of wood like it was the state trophy. "I finally understand why Kim does it now."
"Yeah…" Jessica agreed, looking at the others in awe. "We made a difference."
"Group hug!" Tara laughed, and then the three of them were closer than they'd ever imagined being before. More than teammates, more than sisters, they were…
And then Tara grinned. 'Of course!' she realized, 'Of course!' It was so simple now that she'd thought of it!
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"Ach! Be careful and haud yer wheesht, you daft fools!" Duff Killigan swore as he and his team of Henchco thugs crept into the darkened alley behind Wedgie, Mashie & Niblick's new state of the art Middleton golf club factory. The graphite centered titanium shafts from their new Whackmaster line would be perfect for his latest golf-related weapons delivery system, but he was taking a huge risk in coming to this city with only a handful of Henchmen… and now the eejit galoots were making enough noise to wake the dead! "We're on Kim Possible's hame ground now, so any idle blether out o' ye and someone gets a foot wedge or a skelpit lug!"
Five of the Henchmen immediately turned to the sixth, MacDonald, who had been appointed the job of translator under the terms of the new Henchco contracts for dealing with non-English speaking employers. Technically, what Duff was speaking WAS English, but after more than one hench had met his unfortunate demise while trying to figure out what "gonnae no' dae tha"or "Yer pints are loused" meant, the rule had been extended to cover him as well.
"He said to be quiet and keep our voices down, that this is Kim Possible's home town and threatened anyone who talked with a foot in the mouth or a slap on the ear," MacDonald rattled off.
"Aw…," Said a soft, feminine voice out of the night. "What a shame it is that it's a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht."
"That means it's a bright night tonight," McDonald added, then did a doubletake as the voice's gender registered.
"And that's the only Scottish phrase I know, I'm afraid," the voice continued with a giggle.
"Kim Possible!" The henches screamed in terror, all simultaneously double-checking that they'd remembered to put the cups in their jock straps as they looked up at the girl standing on the eave of the building behind them.
Which was followed by an equally unanimous "HUH?" as they realized the girl in question was a blonde, not the redhead they were dreading. A blonde in a skintight black camo suit, wearing a black sash mask that obscured the upper part of her face.
"Ye nae be Possible," Duff accused.
"Nope," The blonde smiled, "But here I am anyway."
With a quick vertical leap that wasn't perhaps quite as good as Kim's, but still staggeringly impressive, the girl flipped in midair and landed lightly on her feet in front of the group. "Kim's busy with something right now, and I'm here to make sure she gets all the time she needs to do the job right."
"Yer bum's oot the windae, wummin!" Duff laughed. "There's no way you can tummel yer monkees or donnybruker like Possible. I'll mollicate you!"
The blonde merely shook her head, then cocked it at an angle towards MacDonald. "Translation?"
"Er… you're crazy, and since there's no way you can move or fight like Kim Possible, he's going to kill you."
"Hmmm, I thought it'd be something like that," the blond nodded. "However, there IS another factor in the equation… Ladies?"
As she spoke, a half dozen other figures rose from the eaves of the buildings surrounding them. All also female, and all of them carrying…
"They've got guns!" one of the Henchmen gasped, as a half-dozen red laser dots suddenly tracked from the sniper rifles to the areas just over the henches' assorted brains, hearts and other vital organs.
"Yep," the blond grinned savagely, producing her own Colt .45 from the concealed holster across the small of her back. "Ya see… here's the thing. Kim doesn't know we're doing this as a favor to her. In fact, no one knows that we've been doing this except for the crooks we've already handled. And if we hadn't wanted to send a message, you wouldn't have known about it either until we ended your criminal careers."
"Fortunately for you," one of the other girls added from the darkness, "You're the first supervillain to try to pull something here, and your little toadies are the first Henchco employees we've run across. The NEXT ones aren't going to be so lucky, but YOU get to carry the message back."
"Yeah," a third female voice picked up, "Kim may like the hand to hand stuff, but us… we just want riff-raff like you to stay out of our town."
"So here's your one time, get out of jail with your balls intact card," the blonde continued. "You promise to stay out of Middleton, and we'll let you go this one time." Her face darkened. "However, if we ever catch any of you here again, you'll be bringing it on yourselves…"
For emphasis, the girl calmly squeezed her Colt's trigger once… twice… and the buttons holding up Duff's kilt simply disappeared amid a deafening thunder. "What's that other Scottish phrase I never can remember? Tickle me, tickle me you know where: under the kilt and through the…?"
Duff's face went red as the truth about what was under HIS kilt was revealed to all as said garment fell to the floor. Fortunately for him, no one was really in the mood to comment on his shortcomings, but his embarassment was obvious as he frantically dropped to his knee and attempted to recover both his skirt and his dignity… only to freeze when he realized where the red laser point from the blonde's gun was now pointing.
"Nae!" He wheezed. "Ye nae want to be doing that." A sore fight, he thought to himself, no matter how hard you struggle, you never get the full loaf. What the hell. There were other golf club manufacturers in other cities that didn't produce crazed female superheros the way Glasgow produced fried foods. "Gonnae no' dae that lass! I widnae wish to test your skill with that wee iron again… especially not onna target I hold so dear…."
"He said…" McDonald began…
"We get the idea," the Blonde cut him off. "Now you've got ten minutes to get out of town."
"Ten!" Duff almost exploded in fury, then suddenly managed to implode it all back in as a half-dozen red dots instantly congregated over his McTallywacker.
"Fine!" He continued after he'd once again picked up his spilt kilt. "I'm a leaving an' I won't be back!"
"And you'll be in Scotland afore me!" Sang two of the girls from the roof as the disgruntled and bottomless Scotsman led his ragged bunch of hunches back to the tiny microbus they'd rented for this mission (golf carts not being street legal in greater Middleton county.) It was rather like watching a clown car being unloaded in reverse, but somehow they managed to get inside the wee vehicle in remarkably good time while never once not looking back at the young hellions they'd just confronted.
"Do you really think they'll stay gone?" Hope asked softly, hopping down beside Tara once the morally handicapped golfer had made his final exit. The blonde had ordered Liz and Marcella to tail the villains discretely… with orders to shoot out their taillights if the van showed any indication of turning or slowing, while the tag team of Jessica and Crystal had gone forward to do a sweep of the Sleepy Hollow subdivision.
"We'll see," Tara smiled tightly. "There are rules that Kim and these guys play by; and we just pushed the edge a bit. I imagine that once word gets around, they'll decide there are a lot safer places to practice evil."
"And if they don't? Hope asked?
"Well, in that case," Tara grimaced, checking her gun carefully before shoving it back into its holster. "Those sharpshooter lessons Mr. Barkin's been giving us will come in handy, won't they?"
It wasn't the kind of solution that Tara had envisioned when she originally started thinking that there had to be some way to undo the wrong they'd done to Kim and Bonnie… but at least it was a way of paying Kim back in some small portion. Her friend and teammate didn't need to know the reason crime in Middleton had been dropping lately, but the simple fact that it has was giving the young hero some desperately needed personal time. If some of that time went into creating new routines, that would be nice too, but Tara really didn't feel like pushing it anymore. There were a lot more important things, after all.
And as for Bonnie… they'd always been friends, but Tara had sworn an oath to herself to be the true friend the girl so desperately needed. That was actually a little rougher to handle than these missions, to be honest, but Tara really did like Bonnie, and if a little penitence was good for the soul, the blonde had a good chance of making arch-angel someday. She'd learned a lot about self-discipline in the ROTC program she'd signed up for as a way to explain her sudden interest in firearms and the time she was spending at the shooting range. How convenient that, among other things, Mr. Barkin was a fully qualified instructor for the Marine Sniper School.
Tara wondered if Kim even questioned the sudden drop in local crime… or if simply looked on it as an odd bit of luck? Certainly, Tara had no intention of ever telling her the real reason, and the rest of the team had all agreed that since what had been done couldn't be undone without even more hurt, it was better to make their amends in the form of deeds rather than words. What were a few hours of lost sleep compared to that? And at the same time, it had given the entire team a new sense of empowerment… it was hard not to feel self confident when you were reducing the lowest crooks, muggers and rapists to shivering wrecks on a nightly basis, especially when her shooting off of Duff's buttons had been the most extreme level of violence that they'd actually had to indulge in since the original incident. It was surprising how effective simply being caught in a maze of red targeting dots was at convincing he less desirables to leave town.
"No," she told Hope softly, thinking of the person she'd been then and the person she was now… "I'm not worried, as long as we stick together. Like I told the fat guy, if they come back, they'll be bringing it on themselves… and if there's one thing we cheerleaders CAN do…
"It's bring it on," Hope smirked, turning her portable police band radio back on as she and her patrol partner strode off together into the long dark night.