"Can I drop you off in the early twenty-first century?"
Kim hesitated, then said, "No thanks." Rufus 3000 stepped through the portal. When he was gone, Kim smiled back at the playground. "I'll just stay here in the good old days," she decided. She dared to say they were better than her present. Ron was with her here.
Kim crossed the street, abandoning the half-wrecked parking lot. She bit into the peanut butter cookie and tried to look casual as she approached the school playground. There, she could see the two toddlers, a redheaded girl and a blond boy. Kim and Ron, at age four.
It was extraordinarily surreal, watching herself. The little girl with the green dress and pigtails was so adorable and innocent (at least more innocent than she was now). Kim had to remind herself that it was her, Kim Possible. And yet she wasn't the same as she had been back then.
Ron bent over to pick up a red ball. "Did that one kid have opposable toes?" he asked preschool Kim.
The young Kim accepted the ball, giving the boy a queer, slightly skeptical look. "You're weird; but I like you," she finished with an easy smile. Ron looked embarrassed but pleased.
The teenage Kim smiled fondly, leaning against the chain link fence as she watched the scene. It was slightly different from her own memory—she hadn't seen Drakken, Monkey Fist, and Duff Killigan in toddler form—but she did remember saying those words to Ron. She'd had no friends, and no social expectations. She chose Ron for a friend because he was nice, without worrying about what anyone would think of her.
It had been a simpler time, when there was nothing weird about a boy and a girl being best friends.
Sometimes Kim wondered if she would have been friends with Ron now, if they hadn't forged their friendship so early in their lives. It defied the social laws of high school that a popular cheerleader could associate—much less be friends with—a socially inept geek.
Ron wasn't as driven as Kim. He wasn't good at sports, or academics, or art. He just kind of did his own thing. He lived to have fun. Kim was cool, while Ron was quirky. He didn't care what others thought of him; he embraced his nerdiness.
Kim wondered, feeling a hint of nostalgia, when she had grown up while Ron had stayed … childish? Immature? No, he wasn't really either of those. He was just … Ron.
A word entered Kim's mind: self-conscious. Of course. That was the difference between herself and Ron. Unlike him, she cared about keeping up a reputation—but not so much that she would ever dump Ron as a friend. She wasn't that shallow. She valued their friendship more than her classmates' opinions. That was one thing that hadn't changed with her age.