Disclaimer: The Walt Disney owns all rights to the show Kim Possible. I receive nothing for this minor tale.
Author's Note: This is a one-shot quickie. I know it has potential to keep going but I just want to get this idea out of my head and out there before my mind melts from all the possibilities. Read and enjoy.
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Self destruct activated! Lair will self destruct in three minutes!
The computerized female voice coming from the lair's loud speaker system made Kim and Shego take a step back from each other and put their fierce, hand-to-hand battle on hold.
"Well Princess," Shego snarled as she flipped backward, grabbed her boss Dr. Drakken by the collar and slung him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, "it's been a blast. Too bad we can't finish our little tussle." Shego tossed Drakken bodily into the nearby hover car and leapt in after him grabbing the controls of the ship. "Later Kimmie!" And with that fare-thee-well, Shego pushed the throttle to maximum and shot out of the hanger doors.
Self destruct in two minutes!
"Come on Ron," Kim Possible urged her partner and current boyfriend. "We need to get out of here fast!"
"I'll be right behind ya KP," Ron Stoppable hollered back as he scrambled down from the top of the latest device Dr. Drakken had threatened the world with. "I gotta find Rufus first. He's still in the machine somewhere." He paused for a moment to look over to Kim. "You go on ahead, we'll get out on time."
Kim paused for a second before she let out a sigh. "Okay Ron, but hurry." She watched her boyfriend search the device high and low for a few seconds, then turned and raced out the door leading to the outside and safety.
One minute to self destruct!
"I know, I know!" Ron yelled at the speaker located just above his head. He turned back to the device and rapped his knuckles twice on the metal. "Rufus, we need to get going!"
The pink naked mole rat poked his head out of a panel in the lower portion of the machine. "Got it," he squeaked and hopped over to Ron's outstretched hand. He scampered up Ron's arm and down his body to jump into his normal residence; Ron's cargo pants pocket. "Let's go!"
Ron ran out of the lair and ducked behind the large pile of rocks Kim had already taken shelter behind just as the lair exploded.
"Ron, you cut that a little too close!" Kim chided her crime fighting partner. "You two have been doing that a lot lately!"
"I know, sorry," Ron quickly apologized. "I think Rufus has been eating too many Nacos lately and he's getting stuck in the machine's gears and such."
"Well," Kim hemmed for a moment as she looked to the sky where the rain clouds from Drakken's latest machine were dissipating, then let out with a broad smile. "Maybe it's time to put Rufus on a diet." With that thought she turned and walked away toward the rendezvous point where their ride home should just be landing.
Rufus scurried out of his pocket home and up onto Ron's shoulder, chattering away in anger at the receding auburn-haired woman.
"Whoa there Little Buddy," Ron tried to calm the obviously upset mole rat. "You know I'd never put you totally on a diet. It'll only be in effect while Kim is around, okay." That seemed to placate Rufus. "Did you get it?" Ron asked.
"Uh huh, Uh huh!" Rufus nodded emphatically. He held out a bunch of papers with scribbling all over them.
"Good job Rufus," Ron enthused as he looked over the papers and walked toward the VTOL jet that was landing a short distance away. "I really think we can turn this one around and make a few bucks!" He stashed the pages in one of his cargo pants pockets and raced over to join Kim getting on the plane.
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Kim looked back at the rear of the plane and saw Ron and Rufus lying on the floor, books and papers strewn out between them. She arose from her seat and sauntered back to her boyfriend. "What cha doing Ron?" she playfully queried.
Ron quickly tidied up a few pages, tucked them under one of the open books and smiled up at his girlfriend. "I'm just doing some of my homework."
"Do you need any help studying?"
Ron glanced over his books and such before he looked back up at Kim. "Nah, I think I'm getting it now. I want to try and understand the subject matter myself so I can do good on Barkin's test on Monday."
"Well," Kim paused and thought about Ron's apparent newfound enthusiasm toward schoolwork. Ron was doing a lot better since they became boyfriend and girlfriend last year and she didn't want to cramp his new ardor for studying. "If you need any help I'll be up front getting a little shut eye." She turned and went back to her seat to settle in for a short nap.
"KP, a quick question!" Kim stopped before sitting in her seat and turned to Ron. He quickly asked, "What was the dingus Drakken made and we destroyed again?"
"It think Drakken called it his all new, Barometric Nexus Generator. He was going to use it to changed the barometric pressure of an area to create tornadoes and hurricanes and such to extort money from the world's governments."
"But," Ron arose from his study spot on the floor and walked up to Kim standing by her seat, " couldn't something like that be used for good? I mean if you can control barometric pressure, couldn't you create rain and irrigate a desert or something?"
"I suppose you could," Kim said in deep thought, before she shrugged her shoulders and sat down, "but we'll never know since it was destroyed along with all of Drakken's schematics. You know he can never recreate any of his machines."
"Well, it was just a thought KP," Ron nonchalanted with a dismissive wave of the hand as he turned and went back to his homework. "I'll wake you before we get to Middleton."
Ron paused to watch Kim settle down in her seat before he let out a sigh and sat down on the floor. He pulled out the hidden papers from under the book and looked over them again. "Rufus Old Buddy, this may be our biggest haul ever."
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"I'll have a Naco combo, two Chimeritos and a coke, Ned," Ron stated as he and Kim approached the counter at Bueno Nacho.
"And I'll have the usual, please and thank you," Kim added.
"Si Si, Amigos," Ned happily chimed and went to work getting their meals. He quickly brought their food to the counter. "That'll be eight fifty-nine."
"I got this one KP," Ron grunted and pulled a wad of bills out of a cargo pants pocket. Kim saw at least two, one hundred dollar bills on the outside of the large roll of bills. "Oops," Ron groaned, "wrong pocket." He put the wad of bills back into the pocket and pulled another smaller fold of paper money from another pocket in his cargo pants. He peeled off a ten dollar bill and handed it to Ned. "Here you go Buddy. Keep the change."
The couple picked up their meals and went to their usual table. "Ron," Kim said in concern as she sat down, "where did you get all that money?"
"What money?" Ron quickly denied as he took his usual seat across the table from Kim.
"That wad of bills you pulled out of your pants pocket," Kim quickly shot back in suspicion. "I saw at least two one hundred dollars in that big roll of cash."
"Oh that," Ron nonchalanted as he bit the end of the cover off his straw and blew the rest into the air and watched to sail away.
"Yes, that!" Kim huffed at his usual stall tactic.
"Well Kim," Ron rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "Would you believe it's from chores around the house?"
"I very much doubt you would get paid that much for a few jobs around the house."
"Well," Ron paused for a second and rubbed the back of his head as he looked away from Kim, "Dad's been keeping me busy for the last week and a half. He's been working me like a dog lately and I've collected quite a bundle."
"Really!" Kim exhaled in disbelief, shook her head and didn't pursue the matter further since Ron keeping to his earlier word of putting Rufus on a diet by trying to dissuade the pink rodent from swimming in the container of cheesy nachos.
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"Are you sure you don't want to come in and watch a movie or two Ron?" Kim questioned her boyfriend as they stood at the walkway to her house. "It's Friday and we don't have school tomorrow."
"Nah," Ron said with his goofy grin on his face. "I better go home and review my homework one more time before I get some sleep. I didn't take a nap on the plane like you did and I wanna be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in case we get called out on another mission tomorrow. I hear Motor Ed is on the loose again."
They kissed briefly before Ron waved to Kim as she walked up to her front door and let herself in.
Ron headed home, but instead of walking in the house he opened the garage door and hopped on his old, beat up scooter. Ron fired up the engine, after a few false starts, and motored toward downtown. Ron parked on the sidewalk in front of one of the city's largest office buildings. He ran inside and took the elevator up to the top floor. Getting off the elevator, Ron walked down the hallway to the Patent Office of one Patrick Pen Ding. Ron entered.
"Hey Pat!" Ron cheerfully greeted the oriental gentleman behind a desk.
"Hi Ronald," the slightly balding man in a short sleeved shirt and plain black tied return. "I was just getting ready to close up for the weekend. What have you got for me today?"
"I call it BANG," Ron replied and spread a few pages of paper out on the Patent clerks desk. "The BArometric Nexus Generator. With it you can control the weather of an area and maybe create enough rain to change a desert into usable farm land."
Pat looked over the schematics and descriptions in front of him for a few minutes with only an occasional "Hmm" coming from his deep thoughts. He finally asked, "Does this thing really work?"
"The prototype worked before I had to blow up the lair," Ron answered with a slight smirk.
"One of Dementor's gadgets?"
"Nope," Ron chuckled. "It was one of Drakken's."
Pat Pen Ding let out a light laugh as he continued to peruse the papers in front of him. "I don't know why Drakken and Dememtor don't patent their own inventions… But if they don't want to use their gadgets for good, then I don't see why you can't benefit from their mistakes."
"That's the way I see it," Ron enthused as he leaned on the desk.
"Do you want this under the usual name Ron?" the oriental man asked the young blond still standing in front of his desk.
"Yeah," Ron sighed and stood back up. "Register it under R. Stoppable. And if anyone asks…"
"…R stands for Rufus," Pat finished Ron's sentence. "Are you still standing by your 'No Interviews' decision? I mean one of the other patents you registered last month is drawing some very high notice in the scientific community and people are clamoring to talk to the inventor."
"Which invention?"
"The Gravitronic Ray you borrowed from Drakken," Pat replied. "They say a focused gravity ray could be useful in a lot of situations from space travel to simply reducing the amount of the garbage in a city dump."
"Well," Ron pondered the situation for a few seconds as he finally sat down in the chair in front of the desk, "I still don't want any press coverage. Let em do whatever they want with it just as long as it's not used for evil. I don't want to have to blow it up again on one of my missions."
"I'll make sure of that just as long as they pay you for the use of the patent," Pat added with a broad smile as he reached into one of the desk drawers. "By the way, here's another check for you and Rufus." He handed the check over to Ron.
"That's why you're getting twenty percent of the fees," Ron laughed as he gazed at the awesome number of zeros on the check. "How much are we talking about for the Grav Ray?"
"Well," Patrick Pen Ding pondered as he scratched the back of his head, "the usual rate to use a patent ranges from a mere few dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, with the potential use of the Gravitronic Ray? I wouldn't ask for less than ten million dollars from each potential customer like I did for the industrial laser there."
"A-Boo Yah!" the blond cheered and tucked the check in a pocket. "Oh, you mean the Death Ray I borrowed from Dementor a few months back.
"No," Pat laughed at Ron's antics, "I mean the industrial laser schematic you borrowed from Dementor a few months back." He pulled a few papers from a desk drawer and handed them to Ron. "I just need a signature on the usual paperwork for the BANG gadget you brought in today."
Ron stood, pulled a pen from one of his many cargo pants pockets and signed the standard contract that he and Mr. Ding had drawn up for the first of many invention Ron had invented. (Read "procured.")
Ron picked Rufus up from the desk where he had been watching the proceedings and stuck the pink rodent in another pocket. He made his way back to his scooter, started it up and drove toward his house. Rufus, liking to be able to see where they were going, moved out of the pocket and took up residence behind the windscreen. (A totally useless thing on a motorized bike that normally couldn't go more than two miles per hour without the help of jet engines and experimental rocket fuel.)
"You know Rufus," Ron said to his petite friend, "with this last invention, our net worth could be inching back up towards where we were after I got that first check for the Naco."
"Millions!" Rufus squeaked in delight with a thumbs up to his best friend.
"Which means…" Ron egged on the naked mole rat.
"More Cheese!" Rufus enthused with a greedy broad grin while rubbing his tiny paws together.
"You got that straight," Ron huffed proudly as he sat up straight in his seat and enjoyed the little wind there was in his hair from the agonizingly slow ride home. "That, and maybe a better scooter."
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Author's notes: Is Ron's ethics beyond reproach? I say definitely not. Take, for example, his borrowing Kim's Super Suit in the fourth season to get on the football team before he was caught. I rest my case.