Wow, two stories in three days! I'm feeling so creative!
It was mentioned by several people that my last story was excessively wordy and descriptive. I'm fully aware of that, and I apologize; periphrasis, saying a simple thing in too many words, has always been my native vice. This story should be much better on that front, as I made a point of keeping my sentence length down and my vocabulary within the bounds of reason.
This was just a random idea I had one day, and it seemed so awesome I simply had to write it down. I don't think I took any characters or anything from anyone, but it's possible that I ripped someone off subconsciously, so if I did I'm sincerely sorry and I'll give you credit for anything I stole. If it looks familiar, it isn't mine.
This story is set directly after the season three finale, during the summer between junior and senior year. Enjoy!
A revolution was brewing at Middleton High.
It started small, as such things do; a few whispers in the hallway, a restless stirring of crowds in the cafeteria, a mumble of discontent. In the last two weeks of the school year, after the robots-and-romance fiasco that had interrupted the prom, there was a tension in the student body, even more than the usual end-of-year wildness. Something had changed, or was on the verge of changing, and it was all because of Kim and Ron.
Kim Possible was the head cheerleader, the chair of the prom decorating committee, as well as the leader of all kinds of other prestigious clubs and committees throughout the student body. She was widely regarded to be one of the prettiest girls in the school, she was the poster child of the Popular crowd, and to top it all off she was a world-famous heroine. Though she never used it, she had power; though she would have denied it, she was a role model. Thousands of students looked to her for guidance, for leadership. She had even set a world-sweeping fashion trend once, albeit briefly.
Kim Possible was a public figure, and as such she had responsibilities. She had a role to play, and one of the reasons that she was so highly esteemed was that she'd played that role so well for the past sixteen years. There were things that the Middleton student body expected of her, and up until prom she'd seemed more than happy to fulfill, and even exceed, their expectations.
But during the last two weeks of the school year – ever since she'd turned up at the prom hand-in-hand with her longtime best friend – she'd been different. The crowd had cheered for her, and all the students had applauded the true love that they'd long seen coming, and that was all well and good and fairytale-sweet. But then, when she showed up in the halls on Monday, things got a little odd. Not seeing Kim and Ron together, that was normal, but to see them holding hands, and even making out in the stairwell (or so the rumor spread) – well, that was a little different. Because Ron was still his usual self, and now that he was with Kim it just screamed a little louder that he was and would always be a nerd. And not only a nerd, the very worst kind – he was a nerd, and he was unashamed of it. Hell, even proud.
Before, Kim and Ron's friendship had been acceptable, if not exactly ideal. To be friends with a nerd was okay; she had known him forever, everyone understood that, and friends grew apart, friends had different interests, friends were separate people who happened to meet at a common point. The popular crowd, and indeed most of the student body, had simply separated Kim from Ron, and considered him a mild annoyance, or even a cute accessory, like the little dog that Camille Leon carried in her purse. But dating was real. Dating was declaring yourself, completely and totally, to be involved in and devoted to another person; dating was to intertwine your image with his, irrevocably (until the inevitable breakup) and to admit him into every part of your life.
Everyone was happy for Kim and Ron personally. But seeing the head cheerleader dating this obvious and unabashed nerd, well, it turned heads. It contradicted the very heart of the Food Chain, it cut out the fundamental truth from underneath the high school structure of society. It was wrong, it was weird, and people were disturbed and bewildered by seeing one of their most beloved idols debasing herself to the level of someone they'd been taught their whole lives to shun and condemn.
Kim Possible had changed. She would no longer abide the word loser to be spoken in her presence, especially not when directed at her boyfriend. She cut herself off entirely from the Queen Bee and her entourage; instead of at least trying to fit in as she had once, she ignored the royal court completely, even snubbed them when she got the chance. Insults to high school royalty were nothing new, but they usually came from the discarded and disillusioned; now here was someone on Bonnie's level or above, someone who had long stood as a symbol for all that was good and righteous in the world, someone who was so widely adored, openly declaring the Food Chain to be a fraud?
Change is painful, change is fearful. Even a defunct and decrepit system is accepted as holy truth, if it lasts long enough; and Middleton high school had been in the thrall of various Queen Bees ever since its founding. It made the students uncomfortable to see such wanton flouting of their holy creed; it made them question themselves, their status, and their own actions. Great forces were stirring, change could be glimpsed looming menacingly on the horizon, and it was causing consternation and confusion in the masses.
Bonnie, like any queen, had long ago learned the way the mob mind works and attuned herself to its convulsions and fluctuations. She sensed the currents of her world changing, and she caught the secret looks and confused murmurs that permeated each level of the Chain, down to the very lowest. She realized how much damage Kim was doing to her image and her throne; but when she was hesitantly approached by one of her cronies – as happened often in the last two weeks of school – and asked what action should be taken, she only shook her head.
Bonnie knew that her subjects feared changed. Sure, Kim Possible was some hotshot who had decided to take social justice into her own hands, but she was only one girl; there had been others like her before, and there would be others like her again. Maybe she could even get her friends to abandon the Food Chain, but one person could never manage to overthrow the hierarchy of the entire school. Bonnie knew, or told herself she knew, that Kim would be powerless before the brainwashed masses of the Middleton youth. The old way was the best way; those who ruled were made to rule, and anything else would just be chaos. The Old Regime was destined for a glorious future long after Kim Possible was done and gone.
Bonnie Rockwaller could hear, in the buzzing of her cell phone, the coming revolution. And though she pretended to be offended by Kim's taunts during the day, at night she grinned a predator's grin and waited for summer; she was certain that when the shift finally came, it would end by destroying the deviant rebels and strengthening the foundations of the Queen Bee's throne.
The first battle was fought and the first blow struck on a hot, sticky day in late July. That summer had been one of record-breaking heat in Middleton; the shimmering haze and half-melted asphalt made most of terra firma completely unbearable, so most of the high school – and indeed any other person with the means and time to get there – sought shelter at the community pool. Of course the royal court immediately convened around the snack bar, where the cheerleaders and princesses stretched out on lawn chairs, showing off their voluptuous bodies as they crisped to a golden bronze, with the football players and athletes standing like muscular guards over their repose. They talked and chattered and laughed and shrieked, a tiny little world all their own, shining like a miniature sun and leaving the rest of the mere mortals to bask in their glory.
Among those left to bask was Marvin Macarthur, a scrawny, bespectacled boy who was very proud of being President-elect of the chess club, ready to take over the next fall. Chess is a game of strategy and battle-tactics, and Marvin was a warrior in every way except his outward appearance; his eyes flashed with remorseless fire, his mind was sharp and nimble as a rapier blade, and the strong, valiant heart of a lion beat between his meager, sunburned ribs.
He had maternal grandparents in England, and when he visited them every August they took him on month-long trips across Europe; he had stood beneath the Arc de Triomph, rocketed in an elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower, witnessed the frenzied chaos of the Spanish bull-running, and stood wide-eyed before ancient monuments and works of art, absorbing their aura of countless centuries.
He was also among the lowest bottom-feeders of the Food Chain. On the last day of school, the football team had celebrated by filing past him in a line and dumping their lunch trays on his head, one after the other, until they were all rolling on the floor with laughter.
On this particular late-July day Marvin sat in the scalding sunshine at the Middleton recreational center, clad only in a pair of flowery swimming trunks and his thick-lensed spectacles, leaving the remainder of his ivory-white skin to blush angrily and burn beneath the pounding radiation of the sun. He didn't even feel the stinging pain of sunburn; his eyes were glazed over as he sat in the chlorine fumes, dreaming of the long train rides through exotic countries that awaited him in just a few short weeks. He looked forward eagerly to his first trip to Germany, which would be the following month; he couldn't wait to get away from his mother, who had forced him to leave the basement and go out and be sociable with the other kids, after all, it was a beautiful day outside.
One of the cheerleaders at the snack bar rose languidly from her sunbathing and stretched luxuriously, showing the little there was of her brand-new bathing suit, tossing her strawberry-blond hair over her shoulder so that the sun flashed from it like a shooting star. She said something high-pitched to her friends, giggled with them for a moment, and strolled off around the edge of the pool, through the crowds of geeks and nerds and lesser students who parted for her like a Biblical sea. Marvin, who sat reclining on a bench against the wooden wall of the changing rooms, looked up at the unexpected motion, but glanced away again almost immediately. He had learned a long time ago what happened to the hapless bottom-feeders who lusted after those unattainable angels at the top; one might as well express a burning desire to kiss the sun. Not only was it impossible, but if by some miracle you did succeed, it just burned and burned and burned until it had consumed all of you but ash.
Then, by some accident or trick of fate, the cheerleader stepped awkwardly on a wet patch of concrete and slipped, a high-pitched scream escaping her throat as she plunged headfirst into the pool.
Immediately, answering gasps and screams rose from the attending crowd; they peered over to the pool's edge to see what the commotion was, and the royal court rose in a glittering horde, fearing for one of their members. For a moment there was silence, and the surface of the water rippled from the impact of the splash but no dripping blond head emerged.
Then another commotion rose from the crowded poolside, people yelped and hollered and were shoved aside, and Marvin Macarthur – "that's the chess geek!" someone murmured – came hurtling like a comet through the press, leaped over the edge of the pool in a perfect dive, sliced into the water like a knife, and disappeared.
There was another split second of bated breath; then the crystal-clear water broke, and there was Marvin, sans his glasses but with fiery determination in his eyes, one arm wrapped around the spluttering, gasping blond beauty, the other pulling steadily at the water as he stroked for the edge.
The students and spectators stepped back, confounded, as the bizarre pair reached the edge of the pool; Marvin paused, treading water, and offered his arm to help the cheerleader climb out before clambering up onto the solid ground himself. Both were dripping wet, both were shivering from the unexpected shock of the icy cold water, and as they both stood there staring at each other, they both realized at the same instant the wild, absurd, ridiculous thing that had just happened and at the same instant blushed a burning red.
Marvin managed to speak first, even as he felt himself shrinking under the cheerleader's imperious gaze, every instinct screaming at him to try and disappear. "I'm so sorry," he gasped, his eyes widening, his hair flopping down into his face, looking almost black (hers still looked like liquid gold, or maybe copper). "I'm so, so sorry, I didn't mean it, I d-didn't know what I was doing, I work as a lifeguard in Upperton during the summer and –" he'd seen the splash, he'd heard the scream, instinct had taken over and he actually touched her, he'd put his hands on one of the elite and the way-out-of-his-league, and just thinking about it was making his insides squirm (in more ways than one). "I didn't mean it, I swear!" He was babbling now, casting sideways glances at the curious crowd and imagining how easily they could turn into a lynch mob. He started backing away, blinking owlishly at the concrete under his feet, ready to retreat and disappear –
"Wait." He looked up, startled, at the demulcent voice which he could not believe he was hearing. The cheerleader hadn't shrunk back in repulsion; instead she was standing there, brushing the sopping hair out of her eyes, and smiling at him. Smiling at him! With the perfectly glossed and sugar-glazed lips which had just this morning been locked to the quarterback's! The very shock of it froze him in his tracks, and he could only stand and stare as she stuck out one perfectly nail-brushed and manicured hand, still smiling. "Don't apologize," she continued. "I should be thanking you. My name's Lindsey."
"I'm Marvin," he stammered dazedly as he reached out and shook her hand, beginning to sense that something profoundly wrong was going on here. Maybe it was some massive joke they were all playing on him; or maybe that smile signified that the cheerleader – Lindsey – had officially gone insane. He looked around desperately, searching for clues, then blinked and scowled as he realized that he had lost his glasses and all he could see was a smeared blur.
"Here, hold on a minute." Lindsey let his hand drop, and he watched her walk back to the edge of the pool (with the world all bleary, her golden hair looked like a halo), where she bent over and fished something out of the water. She returned and pressed it into his hand; with a sigh of relief he recognized the thin cold frame and the thick lenses of his own glasses, all wet and smeared now. He rubbed ineffectually at them with the ball of his thumb, trying to get rid of the worst of the streak marks, and lifted them to his eyes again – but before he could slip them on they were plucked out of his hands, and he stood stupidly for a moment, holding nothing, blinking into the blazing sunlight like a blind man.
"Here," came a soft, sultry voice in his ear, tickling his cheek with warm breath and nearly shocking him out of his wits. "Let me." He felt the cold touch of metal on his nose and the warm brush of fingers against his cheek, and when he dared to look again, he saw that the world was crystal-clear – and Lindsey was standing very very very close to him, still smiling, and this was not supposed to be happening, not while he was awake!
"Thanks for saving me," she said softly, and leaned in even closer; he squeezed his eyes shut tight, fearing he didn't know what, but he felt only the feather-light brush of lipsticked lips against his cheek. Then, when he opened his eyes again, the crowd was gone, and Lindsey had been surrounded by a flock her friends and was being escorted away.
"It wasn't even the deep side of the pool," one of Lindsey's handmaidens (for how could he think of them as anything else?) twittered; Marvin, standing dazed and not trusting himself to move, felt the sudden burning wrench of embarrassment twisting at his stomach.
But then he heard Lindsey's voice again, with a shrug evident in her tone. "Does it really matter? He said he works as a lifeguard, so he's probably seen people drown in pools before. Besides, he came and 'rescued' me. I think that's sweet." One of her friends made a scornful noise, and another whispered something about the chess team, but Lindsey seemed unconcerned; as she and her whole flock retreated out of earshot, he just barely managed to hear her reply, "So what? If Kim Possible can hang out with people not on the football team, why can't I?"
The summer was different from the school year; students were more spread out and more loosely bound, gathering in casual groups of twos and threes and fours, instead of cliques or teams of ten or more. They could lounge out in the open space of the whole wide world under the stars; they weren't channeled through narrow hallways under high pressure, liable to burst. The structures of the classroom and cafeteria were missing, so the social structures were somewhat more distant, not as looming, not as punishing. Everyone knew, almost subconsciously, that what you did during the summer didn't count; the royalty couldn't punish you for it, they couldn't prove it or hold you against you, or even necessarily hear about it at all.
If ever there was to be a revolution, it could only have happened during the summer, when the students of Middleton High were scattered all over the town, instead of being concentrated into one entity. Change works on the individual, not the collective; the students had to be reached personally, individually, one by one without the mindless mass of their fellows to protect them. Kim and Ron had chosen the perfect moment to strike.
This was what Bonnie thought to herself, sitting alone in her room at night, or lounging on park benches or fountain rims in public places. Of course, Kim and Ron thought no such thing; they would never dream of thinking in terms of revolution, conversion, or battle. They were just being themselves.
By the first week of August the punishing heat had let up a little, and people started emerging from their houses again, no longer desperate for a hint of air-conditioned shade. The pool emptied out somewhat, and the royal court took the park as its impromptu Versailles; soon-to-be-seniors could be glimpsed there at any time of the day or night, laying out supine on the grass, the rowdier boys swinging monkeylike from trees or else playing scorching-hot games with select cheerleaders beneath the branches.
Athletes of all ages could be glimpsed going about their sports again, no longer drained of all energy by the constant heat. Even the old basketball court across the street from the park was put to use again; for the first time in months its asphalt rang with the pounding of rubber-soled feet – and the screeching of rubber-rimmed wheels.
Felix lurched across the empty court, one hand darting crablike over the control panel of his chair, the other pounding the basketball into the dust and catching it again, keeping it dribbling, steering it always just beyond the grip of his wheels. He was getting faster and faster, approaching the chain-link fence that was the only barrier between him and the street, eyes darting back and forth between the gray and the orange, the fence and the ball; then, just when it seemed that impact was inevitable, he dealt the ball a resounding smack, wrenched his whole chair around, threw his weight into the curve and had spun around one hundred and eighty degrees in time to get the ball under control again when it came down. From there it was child's play to steer another lap around the court, spin and shoot; he closed his eyes, listening contently to the swish of the ball making a perfect basket through the net.
The metal arms of his chair were starting to grow warm from the friction and the sun, and Felix could feel beads of sweat starting to trickle down the back of his neck from the exertion. He swiveled around to face the street again – one more lap like that and then home – but stopped suddenly as an approaching glint of red and gold caught his eye.
Ron caught sight of him at the same moment; he had been strolling down the opposite side the street, his arm slung low around Kim's waist, but just then he turned his head and saw the wheelchair, glinting blindingly in the sun, and in it one of his best friends with a basketball tucked into the crook of his arm. "Felix!" Ron shouted joyfully, releasing Kim's waist so that he could wave; Felix waved back, biting back a chuckle at the look of mild annoyance that suddenly crossed Kim's face.
Ron started to run a few steps across the street, but before he could get more than a few feet he stopped, turned around, grabbed Kim's hand and pulled her along with him until they were both pressed up against the chain-link fence, grinning at their friend through the gaps. "Felix, my man!" Ron shouted enthusiastically, slipping his hand through the fence for a high-five. "Haven't seen you in a couple days! Whatcha been up to? Smashed any good zombies lately?"
"Nah, not really," Felix answered easily, hefting the basketball in one hand so that Ron could see the sleeveless jersey he was wearing, revealing his bare shoulders and surprisingly well-chiseled arms. "Been up at the school the past few days, actually. Tryouts, you know." He grinned at the blank looks on his friends' faces. "You, my friends, are looking at the newest member of Middleton High basketball team."
"Really? That is so bon-diggety cool!" Ron yelped, dealing out another, more enthusiastic high-five. Kim grinned as well.
"Way to go, Felix!" she cried, eyes gleaming with genuine pleasure; Felix bit back a smile, thinking briefly of the earliest, most awkward days of their friendship. Kim was much more relaxed now, and ever since prom she'd been positively laid-back; Ron's doing, no doubt.
Speaking of Ron… "Care for a game, Stoppable?" Felix asked lazily, bouncing the ball a few times to listen to the sound of it on the asphalt. "I've been playing kids with actual talent, and I could use a surefire win to help me relax." Ron only made a face at him, wrinkling his nose and sticking his tongue out to show what he thought of that suggestion; then Felix burst out laughing, and Ron joined in, and Kim could only lean her head against the fence, groaning something unintelligible about boys.
"Sorry, Felix, can't this time," Ron sighed, sounding genuinely regretful; then he looped his arm around Kim's hips again, and the happiness came back. "The lady and I are going for a post-saving-the-world-Naco. I promised I'd buy her one if Drakken's plan didn't involve stealing Christmas."
"Ron, it's August!" Felix groaned, and this time it was Kim who burst out laughing, leaning her head on her boyfriend's shoulder with a contented grin.
"I told him that," she answered. "I told him before we even left. And the bet was his idea!"
"Well, you didn't have to agree to it," Ron retorted, nudging Kim in the side. "You've known me long enough by now to know not to listen to my ideas." Kim nudged him back, and Ron retaliated, and as Felix watched helplessly the whole thing degenerated into a tickle fight before his very eyes; Ron attacked Kim's bare midriff, she squealed and batted his hands away but then dove in low to reach his stomach, he squawked and grabbed her shoulders in both hands, they started leaning into each other, and it would have gotten much worse if Felix hadn't chucked the basketball at the chain link fence, hard. The crash jolted Kim and Ron apart, and Felix took advantage of their momentary confusion to retrieve the basketball, swivel around and work in a good mocking kissy-face before Kim started tugging at Ron's sleeve, pulling him away, guilty-faced but with a coy gaze that clearly said I'm not done with you yet.
"Oh, for Pete's sake, you two, get a room! Or at least go somewhere else," Felix jeered, not unkindly. "Get out of here, Stoppable. If you're just going to go all gaga over your girlfriend, I'll have to find someone else to slaughter."
"Sorry, man," Ron muttered guiltily, but his expression was sheepish, not ashamed, and the glint in his eyes was anything but shy. Felix waved a hand dismissively, and had his fingers poised over the controls to turn away when he was stopped by Kim's voice, shouting away down the street.
"Hey, Anthony! Brian! Over here!" she called, pulling her hand out of Ron's so that she could wave, while her other hand shielded her eyes from the midday sun (Felix noted with amusement that now it was Ron's turn to look disgruntled, having been suddenly deprived of contact). Further down the street, two tall, broad-shouldered seniors-to-be turned away from where they had been standing, apparently admiring a sleek new sports car parked in a nearby driveway; they approached up the sidewalk, curiosity evident in their befuddled faces, surprise betrayed by their gaping mouths.
"Do they always come when a cheerleader calls?" Felix muttered out of the corner of his mouth; Ron snickered, and Kim hit him on the arm, but before he could say anything in his own defense Brian and Anthony had arrived within earshot.
"Felix, Ron, meet Brian and Anthony. They're both on the basketball team, and they both have grades at least as good as yours," she hissed, in something closer to a whisper that the two athletes, who had been distracted by Felix's wheelchair, didn't catch. Kim cleared her throat to catch their attention again, and they started guiltily, looking distinctly uncomfortable; Kim put on her sweetest head-cheerleader smile to reassure them, and gestured through the chain-link fence. "Brain, Anthony, you've met Ron, my boyfriend. This is Felix; he's a good friend of ours, and he just made the basketball team for next year. Ron and I have to split, so he was wondering if you wouldn't mind playing a few rounds."
Felix's and Ron's eyes both widened; Felix caught on first, and he spun a half-turn in his chair, bouncing the ball again, a bit more menacingly this time. "Cut the sweet talk, Kim," he cut in, grinning wickedly. "I don't want to play a few rounds; I want to see if these guys can hold their own against a real master." He thwacked the ball against the pavement again, and caught it without leaning over the arm of his chair. "They might think they're impressive, but I bet I could take them sitting down."
Ron couldn't help himself; he burst out laughing at the joke, and Kim grinned and giggled too, and Brian and Anthony chortled uncertainly once or twice (Bonnie was sitting on a picnic table in the park across the street, and Kim could have sworn that they glanced at her once or twice, as though begging for rescue).
"Well? How about it, fellas?" Felix asked, gunning his wheels so that they spun and screeched against the pavement without moving. "Think you can take on the master?"
The fellas in question hesitated for a moment, shared a squeamish glance, and fidgeted uncertainly once or twice. "Um, listen, that sounds really cool and all, but –" the one on the left, Felix thought it was Anthony, stopped short, obviously searching for some suitable excuse. "But, we really have to – um –"
"Meet our girlfriends," Brian cut in quickly, and the relief that flooded Anthony's features was almost palpable. "Yeah, meet our girlfriends," Brian repeated, trying to build on his success, and his friend nodded solemnly, backing him up.
Felix snorted and shook his head, turning his chair further away. "Meet your girlfriends? Like I haven't heard that one before! I knew it, you're scared. I expected this goofball to play the girl-card –" here he jerked his head at Ron with an affectionate grin, "– and since his girlfriend demolished a supervillain's lair today, I'm letting him get away with it. But you two? You're just afraid to face the facts. Too intimidated by my awesome wheels." He spun around again, to demonstrate, and waited.
The two jocks' faces were masks of indecision; one on hand, this kid was weird, handicapped, and apparently insane, and the further away from him they were, the better. But on the other hand, he had just insulted them – brashly, boldly called them wimps and weaklings – and if there was one thing they were under no circumstances allowed to do, it was let a challenge go unanswered.
Felix stayed silent, still grinning like mad, holding his breath, waiting to see what would result from the clash of two taboos. Which was the more forbidden; associating with an oddball outcast, or letting an insult slip by without retaliation? He stole a glance at Kim – did she know what she'd done? What kind of inner conflict she'd initiated in these goons? – but she was leaning into Ron, her face flickering, trying desperately not to laugh as he blew kisses into her ear and flicked his fingers against the sensitive skin at her navel. Though Felix understood how vital this was, that Anthony and Brian were on the verge of a break with the Food Chain, he couldn't help but roll his eyes at the phenomenon that was Kim and Ron. (How had those two ever managed to function apart?)
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, a feral grin broke out on Anthony's face, and he slipped through the door in the chain-link fence, padding onto the court with a spring in his step. "You're on, kid," he growled, but there was a smile on his face; Brian shrugged and followed, and neither of them glanced across the street at Bonnie for permission first.
"The name's Felix," the wheelchair-bound teen corrected, turning his chair with one hand and hefting the ball up high with the other. "You'd better learn it, although after I beat you, 'Master' will do just as well." Anthony let out a startled guffaw at this absurd claim – the kid was in a wheelchair! – and Felix flipped around to face him, grinning evilly. "Two against one, then, gentlemen?" he asked cordially, in the same voice he used to taunt pixel-painted zombies before he severed their heads. His two opponents moved into position, nodded, and the match began.
In the frenzy of the game, Felix managed to steal a glance back out past the chain-link fence; Kim and Ron were long gone, but then after the game the Brian grunted, "You're all right, Felix", and after the third game both of them had finally stopped glancing awkwardly at his chair. When Felix pivoted on one wheel to shoot the winning basket at the end of the fifth game, he realized that even though Kim and Ron were probably happily cleaning Naco cheese from each others' lips by now, their influence had broken a barrier between muscle-bound jocks and wheelchair-bound outcast.
Kim's status and Ron's goofiness had breached a wall, and as all three young men left the court after six games (of which each team had won three), Felix understood that a major shift had taken place. Brian even slapped him on the back after a particularly funny joke, and didn't seem at all disturbed when his hand hit leather and metal instead of skin.
The summer was long, and the bizarre breaches and changes worked quickly, spreading through a grapevine all twisted out of shape by time and distance but still very much operational. By the time August dwindled to a close, the entire basketball team had played and struggled against Felix Renton; they had learned, painfully, not to judge others by appearances. The lesson had then immediately been put to the test and reinforced when they'd commented on his chair, and he'd introduced them to the AV geeks (horror of horrors!) who'd helped him enhance it.
By September, more than half of the cheerleading squad had gone to hang out with Kim and been introduced to those whom they would have considered the scum of the earth months before; several of them found, to their surprise, that these lowly creatures could hold conversations about things that the cheerleading squad had never dreamed of.
On the first day of school, old friends and new friends clustered in the hallways, talking in low voices, telling strange tales of unreality; how they had been invited to a party, only to find the luscious mingling with the losers; how they had discovered a passion for Shakespeare or singing or swimming, thanks to an unlikely new friend; and, sometimes, how they weren't going to go near those dorks and geeks and goofballs, but, well… it didn't seem fair, beating them up like before. It didn't seem right.
School reconvened; the Middleton High building was the same as it had always been (sparse and ugly), but the student body that inhabited it was a changed one. A revolution had taken place over the summer; and through the middle of it walked Kim and Ron, holding hands and stealing kisses from each other, meshing with both ends of the Food Chain and twisting it all around until it was less of a chain and more of a circle, if it could even be said to still exist. Though they had never intended to lead anything, they led by example; and if Felix or Monique noticed the effects they were having on everyone else, neither one mentioned it.
Bonnie Rockwaller, arriving back at school that first morning, was shocked into a state of near-catatonia when her expected entourage failed to appear around her. As the day progressed, she was disturbed by the consistent lack of adoring worshippers and the whispered stories about the parties Kim Possible had held, the friendships Ron Stoppable had arranged; finally she was discovered in the girls' bathroom after third period, screaming and crying and banging her fists against the clouded mirror, screeching something about kings and queens and thrones.
The cheerleading squad was summoned, because most of them had been her cronies, handmaidens, and friends, so it fell to them to calm her down; they had almost succeeded when Kim Possible, driven by the compassionate yearnings of her heroine's heart, stepped in to see if she could help in any way. Bonnie's rage at the sight of her was so intense that the hapless heroine was driven out of the room, into the waiting arms of her boyfriend, who soothed her trepidation with a chaste kiss before offering his arm and proudly, conspicuously, escorting her to her next class.
The bell had already rung by the time a few of the cheerleading squad managed to coax Bonnie out of the bathroom and into the ebb and flow of society which had once been her plaything, to utterly control, and now seemed to be slipping out of her grasp. Bonnie immediately began to freak out again, and allowed herself to be consoled only under the condition that an emergency cheerleading meeting be called the next day, and that Kim Possible be excluded from its ranks; this was promised, and Bonnie relaxed somewhat, feeling the old sense of complete power starting to ease back into her system. She regained some of her confidence as she walked, surrounded by a posse of concerned cheerleaders, to her fourth period class; already she was rehearsing the lie she'd tell to explain her tardiness, readying herself to pull off the puppy-dog pout and the trembling lip, relishing the manipulation to come.
Then, as Bonnie and her makeshift entourage approached the classroom door, one of the cheerleaders turned and called a cheery greeting to an AV geek who rattled past them, pushing a rickety TV cart with scrawny, twig-thin arms. Bonnie felt suddenly sick; then, as if that wasn't bad enough, the geek stopped in the middle of the hallway, turned around and waved back at the cheerleader, then pushed his glasses up on his nose and blew her a kiss.
Bonnie screamed. She screamed with rage at the crumbling of her security and her power, she screamed with the hurt, the betrayal of having everything she knew demolished, she screamed with the tragedy of having her throne knocked out from under her just when it had seemed the most secure. The very foundations of the building seem to rattle with the sounds of her anguish; it was all she could do to keep herself from flying at the betraying cheerleader, the slut, the whore, going out with geeks of all things. Instead she buried her head in her hands, screaming with all her might and all her breath, until she had no more breath and the screams dwindled away to sobs. A terrible silence fell over the hallway; her posse stared at her, wide-eyed and frightened, and several teachers were peering out of classroom doors, but Bonnie didn't care. There was no sound at all; the air was thick with bewilderment and fear, for it was clear that their queen was perilously unstable and liable to explode at the slightest provocation.
" 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,' " the nameless AV geek observed, before pushing up his glasses on the bridge of his nose and trundling on his way.
The gym of Middleton High had seen all sorts of meetings, committees, and councils of war, peace, and strategy in its time; but never one quite as poignant as this. As the bell rang for dismissal on the first day of school, as the majority of students rushed joyfully back into the afternoon that was still as warm as summer, the cheerleading squad shuffled instead through the wide double doors of the gymnasium, and clustered in a knot in its center. Their leader's mane of bright auburn hair was conspicuously absent, and a few of the cheerleaders cast wistful glances or longing sighs at the door, envying Kim Possible (who everyone knew would be at Bueno Nacho with her boyfriend, holding a sort of geek-and-goofball court of her own).
Bonnie Rockwaller, who had led the group down the hall, had stopped outside the doors and allowed them all to file in ahead of her and close the doors so that she was able to burst through them in a grand entrance (she still had some sense of propriety, after all). Instead of the anxious, concerned, loyal soldiers she had hoped to find, her imperious gaze met only a group of blank, bored, or curious faces; but she barged ahead with her plan anyway, stalking forward and tapping one stiletto heel on the gymnasium floor, like a gavel, pounding for order.
"This is an emergency," she declared, her voice shaking with anguish and anger, so high-pitched with hysteria that it bordered on the yapping of a diminutive dog. "There has been some seriously weird stuff going on and someone has got to put a stop to it. It isn't right, it isn't fair, and someone has to show Kim Possible what happens when you mess with the way things are supposed to be!"
Bonnie was so caught up in her own righteous rage that she didn't notice her audience's inattention, their wandering eyes, and their hastily-covered yawns. This was a good thing, as she only would have flown into another screaming fit if she had noticed Lindsey waving up at the window to the control room, where the light switches and wire circuits were coiled; or noticed that Lindsey giggled and blushed when a bespectacled silhouette appeared on the other side of the glass, waving back.
Marvin Macarthur leaned against the cool, thick pane of glass that separated the dark, clicking cave of the control room from the wide-open rubber-smelling spaces of the gymnasium. He couldn't help but sigh, in contentment or confusion he didn't know, as he watched the pastel flock of cheerleaders form in the center of the floor; his breath fogged up the windowpane, and in the white cloud he traced a circle, a halo, around one particular blond head of hair. Just at that moment Lindsey looked up and caught sight of him; she waved, and Marvin grinned so widely that his teeth ached, waving frantically back. "Hi!" he called, but of course she couldn't hear him, and all the shout did was fog up the window even further.
"Hi," came a muffled voice from behind him, mired in the wires and circuits and plugs of the light systems, clicking and ticking somewhere in the dusty dark. "How are you today? What's new in the ten seconds since I've talked to you?"
"Shut up, Jacob," Marvin answered absently, wiping the cloud of his breath away with his sleeve. "I wasn't talking to you."
"Of course not. Why would you ever want to talk to me?" Jacob emerged from the dusky depths of the control room, a pair of pliers in one hand, a fistful of wires in the other; he cast these tools away into a corner and turned to shut a gaping panel, then trotted up to join his friend and chess opponent at the window. He was a short boy, a sophomore, with hair that stuck up in all directions like he'd suffered an electric shock, and eyes that seemed always slightly askew (one was blue, one was green); he was also one of the most brilliantly convoluted minds ever to get his hands on a wrench and sparkplug. He played chess as he did everything else; demonically, as if possessed, throwing pawns and knights and even his queen away in reckless bids for power, then twisting his opponent's mind in an effort to follow his strategy so that he ended up winning in some improbable, impossible stroke from out of the blue.
Now he leaned his elbows against the ledge that bordered the observation window, turning his lopsided lightning-demon grin on his friend. "Which one you looking at?" he asked bluntly, wickedly, trying to poke through Marvin's quiet reserve. Instead of the blushing denial he was looking for, Marvin just pressed a finger against the glass, pointing at a blond on the edge of the little war council.
"That one," he answered simply. "Her name's Lindsey. She's a junior this year, and she's next in line for captain when Kim Possible and Bonnie Rockwaller graduate."
"Yeah?" Jacob pressed his forehead against the glass, his hair flattening in the front and bulging in the back of his head, as though transferring its outward thrust from one side to the other. "She'd never talk to you," he announced, his mismatched eyes flicking hungrily over the meeting down below. "She'd never even give you the time of day."
"She already has," Marvin countered, a faint smile touching his face. "She was the one at the pool that I told you about, remember? I thought that would be the end of it, but we bumped into each other again a week later, just before I left, and she made me promise to tell her all about the trip when I got back. I thought she was kidding, just being nice, but today she stopped me in the hall and asked me all about it. She seemed genuinely interested; turns out she's got family in Berlin."
"In the hallway, huh? In front of her friends and everything? Wow." Jacob whistled, low and drawling, obviously impressed. "That's a first. And she knows who you are, right? She's not getting you confused with some football hottie hunk?"
"She remembered my name," Marvin sighed, his smile growing wider. "At first I thought –" but he was cut off mid-sentence by a sudden movement from the gym floor; Bonnie, who had been sitting on the floor, had jumped to her feet with a piercing shriek of rage that filtered even through the thick glass of the observation window. Marvin and Jacob both jumped, startled; they watched, spellbound, as Bonnie proceeded to have a minor meltdown, shouting half-unintelligible insults at the girls who had once been her closest friends.
"Hey, Jacob, can we get an external-audio-feed-thingy hooked up?" Marvin asked, his brow furrowing in uncertainty and trepidation, his spectacles sliding down on his nose. "I want to hear what's going on down there. Something's up."
"Ooh, spying! I love it! Give me a sec!" Jacob yelped, and then he was gone, diving back into the piles of wire and lights against the back wall.
"It's not spying!" Marvin called after him, helplessly, but Jacob was long past listening; his only answer was a rude noise from within the electronic maze, and then there was a high whine of feedback, a crackle of static, and the mouths moving down below suddenly corresponded to words crashing over the control room's speakers. Jacob reappeared a moment later, the manic grin twisting his face, and leaped over to the window to watch the show.
" – betray me like this! You've betrayed yourselves!" Bonnie was shouting. "Is this what you want? Chaos and anarchy? You're cheerleaders, you're seniors, and here you want to go lowering yourselves to the level of dirt and slime! Why would want to mix with the geeks, the nerds, and the morons? I can't believe this! Perfect little Kim Possible runs off with her pet dork, and suddenly you're all lusting after losers –"
Lindsey stood up at this, her face flushing with rage. "They're not losers, Bonnie!" she snapped back, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "Don't say things like that! Ron's really sweet, he's a real gentleman, and I'm glad Kim's going out with him – and he's not the only one who's worth dating! In fact, I'm going to ask Marvin Macarthur, the captain of the chess team, to homecoming – and I bet he'll be a hell of a lot better date than that beast of a quarterback you set me up with last year!"
There was a ringing, shock-blasted silence, tinged with horror down in the gymnasium and disbelief in the control room; then Marvin let out a wild whoop, and Jacob had to tackle him and throw a hand over his mouth to hear what happened next.
Another cheerleader stood up, an exquisitely pretty and sharp-minded Korean senior, who tossed her straight black hair over her shoulder and narrowed almond-shaped eyes at the self-styled queen. "The football team is slimier and scummier than the chess team, Bonnie," she said flatly, danger in her tone. "I spent all summer with John Hamilton, who you said was the only 'acceptable' guy for me; he only wanted me for one thing, and he made sure I knew it. I finally talked to Kim about it, and she told me that I didn't need some ass-groping animal just because everyone else said I did. I dumped him, and it was the best thing I've ever done."
Bonnie stood open-mouthed, a look of cornered desperation in her eyes as the cheerleaders stood up, one after another, and tore the foundations of her world apart stone by stone. They tossed around weighty names, holy names, as though they were curse words; they said things that everyone had known but no one had dared to voice. They who had once been in the highest echelon of society were outing the corruption in their own ranks. Finally Lindsey shook her head and turned to walk away, into the locker rooms; Marvin and Jacob gaped goggle-eyed at this show of defiance, but then she returned, carrying the purple-and-saffron pom-poms that were the cheerleader's symbol of office. She raised them high over her head and threw them down at Bonnie's feet, head held high, eyes twinkling with triumph.
Immediately, silence fell. There was a moment of shocked breathlessness, and into the silence Lindsey spoke, her voice trumpeting out like the very music of truth. "We're not better than anyone else, Bonnie," she said loudly, proudly. "Yes we're cheerleaders, and yes, we're upperclassmen, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is scum. People aren't nerds or dorks or losers. People are people. For ages and ages we didn't know that, and now that we've finally learned it, you expect us to give it all up again just to be able to sit at the best lunch table? If Kim Possible can go out with one of the people you think is a loser, then so can I! So can all of us!"
As if on cue, the rest of the squad stood and dashed for the locker rooms, returning with their arms full of confetti and pom-poms which they then threw onto the growing pile at Bonnie's feet. It was magnificent; they were denouncing their corruption, their prejudice, and their false identities, all in one fell swoop. Marvin felt his voice and strength deserting him, drowned out by an overpowering, overwhelming sense of awe and gratitude that welled up from the bottom of his soul. Here was the heart of the matter, the black rotten core of all that he hated about high school; here it was, thrown onto its knees in broad daylight and denounced for the poison that it was. Down below, as Bonnie stood speechless and looking suddenly small, the rest of the cheerleading squad turned on their heels and walked out of the gymnasium, as one; Bonnie fell to her knees before the pile of pom-poms, and Marvin slowly reached over and turned off the microphone that had transmitted the scene into the control room (he didn't have the right to eavesdrop on her ruin).
Jacob clapped his hands slowly, once, twice, and the expression of awe on his face was the same as what Marvin felt. "Wow," he said softly, bobbing his head in approval, his hair rippling like the ocean blown by a storm. "Wow, that was something else."
"August fourth, 1789," Marvin said quietly, turning away from the window, leaning back against its cool surface and closing his eyes. He felt Jacob's gaze on him; the younger boy's eyes always burned like electric lasers.
"I know I said it's something else, but it's not that else," he said, obviously puzzled. "You're about a hundred-nineteen years and three weeks too late." Marvin didn't reply to this; he only leaned his head back against the glass, not caring that his glasses were perched precariously on the tip of his nose, about to fall off. Jacob sighed and leaned back next to him, lacing his hands behind his head. "Okay," he groaned, "I'll bite. What happened on August fourth, 1789?"
"It was in the early days of the French Revolution," Marvin said quietly, opening his eyes to stare up into the ceiling with a burning gaze. "The monarchy was being overthrown, and a government of the people was trying to get itself established. On August fourth, all the nobles and courtiers met; one by one, they stood up and denounced their ancient privileges, their tax immunity and high status and special favor from the government. They gave up their nobility, willingly, and made themselves just like the common people."
"Hmm." Jacob bobbed his head again in a thoughtful nod, apparently digesting this. "Was the whole thing over after that?"
"No, the revolution lasted for years," Marvin replied, still staring up into the distance. "That was only the beginning. But for the monarchy, for the nobility, for the old regime of oppression… it was the beginning of the end."
After the great upheaval over the summer and into September, things at Middleton High stabilized back to a sort of equilibrium, as they always do; a measure of normalcy returned, except that the definition of what was normal had changed. The new openness was not total – few changes are – and there were some, there would always be some, who violently resisted it, and clung to the old ways out of tradition, or stubbornness, or fear. Bonnie Rockwaller, predictably, was one of these, and it was widely suspected that she was among those who were afraid. But there were others – athletes who didn't want to relinquish their feelings of power, bottom-feeders who were so used to being afraid that it would almost be worse not to be. There were those, like Felix Renton, who had found a comfortable place for themselves outside of the social tangle, and wanted to remain there with only a few close friends; there were those who alienated themselves from others by trying to claw for a top that no longer existed. These people were left to their own devices; but for the first time, social acceptance waited for them if they wanted it.
Kim and Ron, whose illegal relationship had sparked this whole dervish of change and redemption, started noticing the new order shortly before homecoming; they were pleasantly shocked to hear that cheerleaders were going with chess champions, football players were asking spelling-bee winners, and for the first time ever, the star quarterback had not found an acceptable date.
Kim, being a sleuth at heart, made delicate inquiries; Ron and Wade, having essentially ten-year-old souls, devised, printed, and passed out a questionnaire on which each question was followed by a smiley face, a frowny face, and an indifferent face. (Surprisingly, a good number of them got filled out and returned.) What they discovered was a reformed social structure; that the relationshipbetween a dork and a cheerleader had inspired others to break social taboos, and though there had been some conflicts, the results had been mostly good.
An exchange student, who had transferred to Middleton to partake of its excellent athletic program, tried to stuff a math whiz into a locker; a muscular football player who happened to be passing picked up the new kid, held him up against the same locker, and politely explained that this was not the way things were done. The star of the basketball team tried out for the school play, and gave one of the best, most stirring performances in the drama department's history. Cheerleaders whiled away the time after practice by playing chess, and the Math club started devising new cheers and acrobatic feats for the squad to perform, calculating force and vectors and airborne velocity.
There was still bullying and teasing –there always would be – but it significantly decreased. D hall no longer inspired fear in the hearts of the defenseless, and the defenseless weren't so defenseless anymore; a surprising number of the Food Chain bottom-feeders had knights and warriors ensconced within their souls. Laying up in the treehouse, curled in each others' arms, Kim had hesitantly asked Ron why this should be; he had explained to her the bottom-feeder's fantasy of becoming someone else, someone who could protect others from the teasing that he himself had experienced. And what better way to develop this fantasy than through role-playing games of wizards and monsters and knights?
Everything is interconnected; every event influences every other, even if only in the smallest and subtlest of ways. Nothing was a better example of this than the Middleton High social revolution, in which a single robot-vanquishing kiss, an isolated happy ending for one fairy-tale heroine and her often-pantsless knight, inspired even more happy endings for so many. Those who heard about it -- families of Middleton attendees, exchange students, and others -- marveled at the fact that such a simple thing could spark such a widespread reformation, that one person could overcome the system, the structure, the Queen. Kim Possible, they said admiringly, reverently. She can do anything.
Kim was always quick to insist that it wasn't just her who could do anything, she needed Ron by her side and Wade at the helm and all of her friends and allies. Team Possible. But the fact remained that it was her senior year, she was still head cheerleader, and some formed a faction to try and reinstate the old regime with Kim taking Bonnie's place as queen.
The one and only time this was suggested, Kim had smiled and called Ron over from across the hall; when he arrived she had kissed him, slipped her hand into his, and politely declined. There should never have been a queen in the first place, she'd said, and she certainly wasn't going to have there be a new one. She didn't care what the rest of the school decided to do, but she wasn't going to be a part of it; all she wanted was to be with her friends and her boyfriend, together for ever and ever and ever, amen.
This decision was applauded by those around her; as Kim blushed and tried to duck out of the spotlight, as the swim-team captain who'd offered the crown walked away rejected, Ron could distinctly be heard to say from his spot at his girlfriend's side, "That's great and all, K.P., but I would've really liked to be a king!"
Kim had only laughed, and kissed him, and even the klaxon ringing of the bell hadn't interrupted their passion; it took Felix Renton gunning his chair and hurtling past them at hypersonic speeds, yelling taunts as he passed, to do that. Ron had grinned, bowed, and offered his arm in the chivalrous gesture of someone who doesn't care that others were watching; Kim took it, and -- cheerleader and bottom-feeder, hero and sidekick, outcast and once-queen --they walked to class together.
The End.
That was fun. I tried to write it more in the style of my Avatar story, 'Destiny', which is less wordy and descriptive, not to mention faster. I hope you liked it! I have tenative plans for a second installment, so if I get enough positive feedback I'll start working on that straightaway.
I looked up the French Revolution stuff in my European History textbook, so it should be at least mostly accurate.
Moral of the Story: Tolerance is good. Social labels are overrated. Kim and Ron are squee-worthy adorable together, and Bonnie needs to get her comeuppance.
Tell me what you think!