Disclaimer/Author's Note: I don't own and probably never will. I only borrow the Disney characters to keep my fingers limber by typing. This is an alternate ending for the final episode, Graduation.
Xxxxxx
Mr. B or Not Mr. B
Xxxxxx
"Mr. B., can I talk to you for a minute?" the blond haired, just graduated boy asked the man who was decked out in the black robe and colorful hood of a person of higher education. The man who, not more than ten minutes ago, had finished handing out the diplomas to the 2006 graduating class of Middleton High School during the ceremony that'd just ended. The man who had been a thorn in the side of the questioner for the past four years, id est and to wit, one Ronald Dean Stoppable. The man who was none other than the Vice Principle and all-around teaching substitute for said school:
Mr. Steven Oscar Barkin. (The students had a running joke that his initials were the reason why the large teacher was always such a stickler for discipline. He really was an S.O.B.)
"Make it quick Stoppable," the large man grumbled in irritation, upset that he had to preside over the ceremony on such a clear sunny day. He would've rather been at home, sitting out on the back porch drinking a beer while watching some sports program or out mixing it up on the rugby pitch with his cohorts. "Now that you've graduated I don't have to see your ugly mug unless we happen to bump into each other during work at Smarty Mart."
"Well, that's the thing Mr. B.," Ron anxiously started, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. "I think we'll be seeing a lot more of each other in the near future."
"What are you talking about," Barkin warily begged in a low, menacing and wary voice.
"Well, you once told us that you were a lieutenant during the Vietnam War and that got me to thinking."
"Thinking is a good thing Stoppable," Mr. Barkin said, a little more at ease at the direction the conversation was heading. "At least you're using that small lump of gray matter between your ears." He thought that maybe the school's slacker was just looking for a little advice from the wise old teacher, considering he'd mention Vietnam. "Are you thinking about joining the Corps? That might be a good idea Stoppable. It'll make a man out of you." He paused in thought for a moment and then said, "Well it'll at least make you stronger."
"No-no," Ron nervously denied waving his hands in front of him. "I'm not thinking of joining up. It's just that I've been doing some calculations. Well actually Wade did them for me but anyway, something didn't add up so I ran some numbers and had Wade dig up some info."
Mr. Barkin suddenly didn't like were this was going once again. "Get on with it."
"Welllll," Ron nervously said as he signaled to someone in the crowd by waving them forward. Barkin noticed four very large, even larger than himself, Army Military Police making their way toward him. "According to the records here at school, you're only forty-five years old which is waaaaay to young to have fought in the war. If Wade's numbers are correct, and they always are..." Ron unzipped his robe and nudged his pocket. Rufus popped up out of the pocket and scurried up to Ron's shoulder where he handed the blond boy a piece of paper. "...that means you entered the service when you were, like sixteen years old since the war ended for the U.S. in 1973."
"I... I was big for my age," Mr. Barkin, caught off guard tried to rationalize. "They didn't check my I.D. or background very well."
"I don't buy that, Mr. B.," Ron said as he checked over the page once again. "But you did have an older brother, Samuel Barkin, who woulda been old enough to fight in Vietnam. He was seven years older to be precise."
"Steven Barkin?" one of the soldiers, a Lieutenant if you believe in coincidences, stepped up with a set of handcuffs and roughly pulled Barkin's arms back behind his back to snap the cuffs on. "You're under arrest for fraud. You've been utilizing your brother's military medical benefits while your family has been collecting Samuel's death benefits at the same time."
"You've been living a lie, Mr. B.," Ron said as he walked along side the four MPs who were now escorting his main bane of high school life toward the parking lot in handcuffs in front of the entire Class of 2006. "You've been reliving memories of your brother's war stories and not your own. You were never in Vietnam. You were telling us stories about some of the stuff your brother did in Nam that he told you about in his letters. I saw a stack of them next to the couch when I came over to talk about my feelings when KP was Moodulated last year."
"You're right, Stoppable," Mr. Barkin sighed in relief as they arrived at two puke green military jeeps in the parking lot and stopped to finish the conversation. He realized that it was time to come clean so he also admitted, "But what you don't realize is that I also don't have my teaching credentials. I never even finished high school. But I was intelligent enough to fool everybody to the point that I was able to get a teaching position here at Middleton High and then work my way up to the position of Vice Principle. The Middleton School District was so strapped for teachers when I applied that they hired me on the spot without checking."
The former students and families that had gathered around the scene were simply stunned at the revelation as they watched Mr. Barkin being unceremoniously shoved into the back of one of the jeeps and was hauled away to pay for his lies.
Kim Possible stepped up to her boyfriend. She'd been unaware of what he'd had in mind when he told her that something big was going to happen after the ceremony today.
"Ron, what tipped you off?" was all Kim could come up with to question his motives.
"Well, KP," Ron started as he wrapped an arm around his girlfriend's waist and they started to walk, side-by-side, toward their family cars where their parents were waiting, "as I said, something didn't sound right when Barkin told us about his time in Vietnam. I mean he doesn't look old enough to have been in the war cause it ended in '73, thirty-three years ago. I put two and two together and came up with seven. And then with a little help from Wade and his mad hacking skills, it all came together and added up to five."
"Ron," Kim giggled at his mad math miscalculations, "two plus two equals four."
"Well, you know me and math don't add up very well," Ron chuckled along with his girlfriend. "Anyway, I contacted Major Simms at Area 51 and told him my suspicions. He did the rest but decided to let the graduation ceremony proceed."
"You may not be good at math but this time you did come up with the correct final answer," Kim said as she planted a chaste kiss on his cheek. She didn't want to go overboard in congratulating the blond boy. Not with her father watching. "But what did you mean when you told Mr. Barkin that you'd be seeing him a lot more?"
"Do you think I'd miss out on watching his trial?" Ron indignantly begged, "even if it might be held in a military courtroom? He gave me so much extra homework over the last four years that I want to see him get what's coming to him."
"I guess you're due that," Kim ceded before she let out a light laugh. "I mean he's given you so much detention over the last four years in school, now you're giving him detention for the rest of his life."
There was only one thing Ron could say to that bit of irony.
"A BOO-YAH!"
Xxxxxx
This story came about because Mr. Barkin seemed too young in the series to have served in Vietnam for my taste, so I did a little calculations of my own. If Mr. Barkin was eighteen when he joined up during the last year of the United States involvement in the Vietnam conflict, it would make him fifty-one at the time of graduation. I never thought Mr. Barkin looked to be in his late forties or early fifties during the series so I figured something was wrong and this story was born.