Authors Note: Don't you just love that new story smell? By the end of this chapter we may find out who some of the more savvy readers are.
Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible.
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The smell of tobacco smoke lingered in the air. Clearly this was not an establishment that adhered to the anti-smoking laws. The stench of spilled alcohol was strong, though whether it was old or new could not be determined. In other words it was a typical night for this particular bar.
A sports channel was playing on the only TV in the place, though it was hard to tell exactly what was on the screen because the quality was so bad. All in all there was nothing too special about the place; it was just another random bar for another random job. Though she wasn't exactly sure she could call it a job since she wouldn't be getting paid for her services. But that really wasn't the reason she was out here anyway.
Shego sat on a stool at the bar, her arms resting on the counter. Like so many other nights since the invasion, she sat there pouring back drinks. Her comet-gifted powers did a lot for her. She had superior strength, speed, stamina, and all kinds of "upgrades" compared to a normal human being. Not to mention the fact that she could shoot green energy from her hands. But it also made her body extremely resistant to alcohol, meaning it took a lot more for her to get drunk. She had won many contests in the past few months due to her ability to out drink even the biggest and toughest of the men she met.
She often wondered how it had come to this, being out here. Los Angeles was definitely different from Middleton, and all of the other places Dr. Drakken had called home. So much had changed since they had worked together. Not only in the world, but even her physical appearance. Her hair was shorter now, still quite long, but no where near as long as she had worn it while working for Drakken. It was also flatter and straighter now compared to how much volume it had before.
In addition she no longer donned her trademark black and green outfit. It would be extremely hard to maintain a low profile if she wore such a bizarre outfit out in public. These days she mostly wore blue jeans and t-shirts. Even with her slightly green complexion, only a handful of people in the world would be able to recognize her in a crowd now.
Beginning to feel some of the effects of the alcohol in her system, she started talking to the man who was sitting next to her at the bar.
"This city…" She began. "I don't know what it is about it, but it just seems to draw people to it. My reason, well, it's because of a girl."
The older man was sitting there by himself minding his own business until he had heard the last part of Shego's random statement. It was enough to arouse his interest.
"What are ya, some kind of lesbian or something?" The man asked curiously.
Shego merely smiled as she stared down into the contents of her shot glass. It was something she was used to. Just because she was a strong and independent woman people naturally assumed she was a lesbian. Though this time she understood the man's misunderstanding, she had kind of brought it on herself with her choice of words.
"No, I'm not a lesbian." She clarified to the man. "Things just worked out the way they did because of what little Kimmie and her boyfriend did."
"Oh." The man simply said, as if disappointed. He casually went back to drinking from his own glass, seemingly uninterested in anything further Shego had to say.
"Typical." Shego thought to herself.
She continued sitting there, knocking back her ninth shot of whiskey that night. As she did she began to hear shouting behind her. She turned around to see four men beginning to shove each other, most likely over a game of pool gone bad. The words and shoving quickly turned into fists and make-shift weapons as the melee was developing into a stereotypical bar room brawl.
The bartender, a man in his early fifties, looked up with a frown on his face.
"Oh great, these guys again." He sighed. "Last week they cost me a fortune because of all the glasses and furniture they broke."
Shego turned to him, with a slight grin on her face.
"Tell you what. I break up this fight and my drinks are on the house, okay?"
The bartender looked at her with disbelief. Had he heard her right?
"Look lady, you don't want to get involved with these guys." He explained. "These guys are more than just average drunks, they're part of some gang. You mess with one of them and you mess with all of them."
"I appreciate your concern, but my offer still stands." Shego responded. "So what will it be?"
The bartender had two options. Let them finish their fight, costing him a lot of money, or let this strange woman try to stop it. He was extremely reluctant to use the gun he kept behind the counter to scare them off. He knew that they would just be back with guns of their own. And that was not something he wanted to get involved in. He looked back at Shego, and thought there was no way they would want to hurt a beautiful woman like her. He decided to let her try her luck.
"Okay, go ahead and try. But don't say I didn't warn you." He said.
Shego stood up and walked toward the four brawling men. Already there were a few broken glasses and pool cues. She decided it was time to end this now.
"Hey boys, how about you go outside and finish this." She said as politely as she could.
The four men stopped their fighting for a moment as they looked at her, a couple began laughing.
"Hey back off lady, no one asked for your opinion." One of them yelled at her.
"Hey, how much do you charge?" Another asked her, combing his hair back with his hands in an attempt to look a bit more attractive to her.
The four men began laughing at her expense, apparently forgetting all about why they were fighting each other in the first place.
"Oh well, can't say I didn't try." Shego said to herself.
As the men continued laughing, Shego lashed out with a fist, connecting hard with the nose of the man who had just insulted her. He was sent flying back a couple of feet before landing hard on the floor clutching his face.
In the blink of an eye she sent another fist into the first man who had spoken to her, yielding the same results.
None of the men were laughing anymore, and two of them were incapacitated on the floor. The other two then began to attack her. Even if they were sober, they would not have stood a chance against the green-hued woman.
One of the two remaining men lashed at her clumsily with a fist of his own, but Shego was easily able to evade the attack. The missed punch left the man's right side very exposed, and Shego took delight in exploiting it as she sent a strong elbow into the side of his head. The man stumbled forward a couple of steps before landing on the floor.
The final combatant decided to try to even the odds by picking up one of the remaining unbroken pool cues. He gripped it in two hands and swung it like a baseball bat at Shego, missing with his first few swings. Deciding to end this fight, Shego grabbed hold of the cue with her right hand when he swung at her. She snapped it in half before kicking upward, higher than anyone would have thought possible in her tight jeans. Her boot connected with the man's chin, sending him backwards before he too fell to the floor.
One by one she grabbed hold of the four incapacitated or unconscious men, and threw them all out onto the sidewalk in front of the bar. When she was finished she went back to her seat while the people inside just stared at her in amazement.
"Another shot of whiskey, please." She said to the bartender.
The man quickly poured the liquid in her glass which she took and poured down her throat. The other man she had been talking to earlier turned to her once more.
"You sure you ain't a lesbian?" He asked.
Once more, Shego smiled.
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It was another lonely night in Middleton. It had been this way for the past few months now. There was nothing to do, except watch reruns on TV, and maybe play a video game here and there. At least when it was daytime he kept himself busy with work and school, but the nights tended to be extremely boring.
Tonight was no different. Well actually, it was different. Tonight was New Years Eve. And for the first time in a very long time, Ron Stoppable had nothing to do, and no where to be. It had been this way since school began. He was still at home attending Middleton Community College part time, the other time spent working at Smarty Mart. But at least he had a position of moderate authority there, being the assistant manager. He considered that to be a little success. But still, he couldn't help feeling like a failure. The people around him seemed to have much more exciting and fulfilling lives.
His good friend Felix was way out east attending M.I.T. Of course he was happy for his friend, but still it hurt to be so far from him. But that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that Kim was gone.
Earlier in the year she had been exploring all sorts of possibilities when it came to college. She even began looking all around the world. She had finally come to the conclusion that she would attend school in London of all places. And like with Felix, Ron was thrilled at his girlfriend's success and all of the opportunities she would have by going to school in England. But once more, he was saddened by the distance it put between them. It was more than just being physically separated, the time difference made it extremely difficult to communicate with each other. In the end they had decided it was best to stay in touch through e-mail. This of course led to another problem.
They both knew it would be difficult to maintain such a long distance relationship. So they had mutually decided to stop dating for the time being. They had not broken up, and there were no hard feelings, but they had agreed that it wouldn't be right to stay in a relationship under the current circumstances. But they also agreed that when Kim came home for the summer, they would attempt to resume dating.
Summer was such a long way away, however. It was still the early days of winter, and already much snow had fallen. Five months seemed like a very long time for Ron.
When he thought about this situation with Kim, he couldn't help but think about what had happened earlier in the year. The whole Lorwardian invasion had changed a lot of things in the world. It wasn't just the fact that aliens had invaded the Earth. The amount of damage caused by their war machines was horrific. So much pain and suffering had been brought upon the world, and even around seven months later many cities were still struggling to recover from the damage. And Kim couldn't help but blame herself for it all.
She had fought Warmonga prior to the invasion, and had humiliated the female alien. She then came back with a vengeance, bringing an ally of her own, Warhok. Together the two had nearly succeeded in conquering the Earth. But thanks to the combined efforts of a few select people they had been defeated once and for all.
It was after graduation that Kim started to become more reserved. She even quit doing her missions altogether. Whenever someone brought up her heroic actions against the Lorwardians, she quickly changed the subject. But Ron could tell she was upset inside. He knew that she blamed herself for the Lorwardians coming back to Earth and wreaking such terrible havoc upon it. But whenever he had tried to convince her otherwise she once again just changed the subject.
And then she had decided to study in London. He couldn't help but feel she was running away from her problems. But there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He just sat on the couch on this Friday evening, getting ready to watch all the New Years programming that was going to be on TV tonight with Rufus.
"Hey Rufus, I got us plenty of meat and cheese to eat tonight!" Ron said as happily as he could.
The old naked mole rat looked up and gave a weak smile of his own, before putting his head back down and returning to sleep. Ron's old friend didn't have nearly as much energy as he used to. These days he spent much of his time sleeping. This fact made Ron feel even more alone. When nobody was around he used to have Rufus to keep him company. But this for the most part was no longer true.
"Oh well..." He sighed. "Let's just hope I don't get another vision tonight."
The 'visions' Ron spoke of were something fairly recent. Since he had demonstrated his newly awoken powers during the Lorwardian invasion, Ron had changed. It started out as having incredibly vivid nightmares, and then waking up with a very bad headache. He figured that he had just been under a lot of stress because of the attack, and Kim going to England. But then one day he saw on the news that one of his nightmares had come true.
He thought it was just a coincidence until it started happening more and more often. Sometimes a few times a week his nightmares would come up either on TV or in the newspaper. Then he started having these nightmares while he was wide awake. For a few moments he would be in terrible pain, like the worst headache he had ever experienced. While this was occurring he saw a series of seemingly random scenes taking place in his head, with people and places he had never even seen. He really didn't know what to do about it all.
He figured it was somehow part of his newly awoken Mystical Monkey Power. But so far he had received no word from the Yamanouchi School. However, he could think of no other explanation for what was going on with him. And it seemed like there was nothing he could do about it either.
It was still several hours before midnight, and Ron was bored. He got up from the couch to go get something to drink. He decided that he would continue to watch whatever he could find on TV until it was time for the New Years countdown.
He walked into the kitchen and got a glass. Looking inside the refrigerator for something good, he found nothing all that appealing. In the end he decided to have some soda. He reached to get the bottle when it hit him.
He stumbled backwards a step clutching his head with his hands. The sharp pain in his head was horrible. And then he began to see the pictures.
It was a dark alley, somewhere not in Middleton. There was no snow to speak of. He saw a young woman being mugged by two men, but he couldn't make out any faces yet. He saw random pictures of street signs and buildings until the visions once more focused on the woman. She was very young, with brown hair and teal eyes. She was wearing a lovely red dress, like she had been attending a party of some sort. It was… Bonnie?
The pain stopped and the visions ceased playing in Ron's head. He was breathing hard, and his hands were leaning on the counter to support his weight. Had he just seen what he thought he had seen? Was that really Bonnie Rockwaller in his head being attacked in an alley?
Ron knew it was true. And he also knew that he couldn't ignore this. So many times in the past he had seen the faces of strangers and knew there was nothing he could do. But this time he could. He knew exactly who was going to be in trouble. He also knew the person very well. He quickly grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket and began scanning through his list of contacts. He found Tara's number, the only cheerleader other than Kim who had given him her number. He called her up, almost frantic. But he knew he had to calm down and speak normally when she picked up.
"Hey Ron!" Came the happy voice of Tara on the other end.
"Hey Tara, how's it going?" He asked her casually.
"I'm Great! I'm at this party with my sorority. It's going to be awesome! What about you?"
"Oh I'm fine, lots to do, big plans, all that good stuff." He replied.
"Awesome! So what's up?"
"I know this is weird, but I was just wondering if you could give me Bonnie's number."
"Bonnie? Bonnie Rockwaller?" Came the surprised reply from Tara. "Yeah I can do that, but I'm just curious as to why you want to talk to her."
"Uh…" Ron stumbled. "I just, you know, want to try to get back to talking to her. Ya know, stay in contact with old high school classmates."
"Okay, sure. Here's her number."
Ron grabbed a pen and piece of paper and wrote down Bonnie's cell phone number.
"Thanks Tara, you're awesome." Ron said.
"No problem. But just so you know she's in Los Angeles right now."
"Really? Why's that."
"She's trying to make it as an actress out there. She decided not to go to school. You know her; she thinks she can do anything."
"Oh. Well thanks again but I gotta go now. Nice talking to you Tara."
"You too Ron. Have a great night!"
Ron hung up and immediately dialed Bonnie's number. He was hoping this wouldn't be too awkward, or that she wouldn't hang up on him as soon as she heard his voice. After all, they didn't have the greatest history together.
"Hello?" Said the voice of Bonnie.
"Hey Bonnie, this is Ron."
There was a brief pause after Ron had spoken.
"Ron Reiger?" She asked.
"Uh… no. Ron Stoppable."
Another pause.
"What do you want, how did you get this number?" She demanded.
"That's not important. Look Bonnie, I don't know how to explain this to you, but you're in a lot of danger tonight. Whatever you do, don't go out. Just stay inside." He explained.
Yet another pause.
"Are you serious Ron? Is this some kind of lame prank of yours? It's New Years Eve. I'm not staying home. I'm going out to a party. Just because you have nothing to do doesn't mean you can go around ruining other people's nights."
"No that isn't how it is at all. Look I know this sounds weird but I just know you're in danger."
It was after that statement that Bonnie hung up on him. Ron flipped his phone shut in frustration.
"Well, at least she didn't hang up right away…" He said to himself quietly.
He knew there was only one thing he could do now. He had to go there himself. But seeing as it was only a few hours until midnight, he had to act very quickly. He had to somehow get a flight out to Los Angeles at this hour. He knew of only one way.
He dialed yet another number, this time the one belonging to Wade. He had not spoken to his old friend much since summer, seeing how the missions were the main thing that brought them together. But this was important, and he knew he had to make the call.
"Hey Ron, what's up?" The young boy asked.
"Yo Wade, we have a situation here." Ron replied.
"Really? It's been a while."
"Yeah I know, but it's that time again."
"Okay Ron, what's the sitch?" Wade asked, mimicking one of Kim's catch phrases.
Ron ignored the reminder of Kim and got straight to the point.
"I need a flight to Los Angeles, like right now. I don't care if it's commercial or something else, I just need to get out there."
"What's the occasion?"
"Just another mission, another person in trouble who needs saving." Ron explained.
"Alright." Wade smiled as he cracked his knuckles, followed immediately by furious typing on his keyboard.
"Okay, it looks like I can get you on a flight that leaves in about two hours. No charge of course."
"How did you manage that?"
"I'm just that good." Wade grinned. "I also got a cab coming to pick you up as we speak, again no charge."
"Wow Wade, you seriously rock." Ron said.
"I know."
"Thanks Wade, you have no idea what this means to me."
"I'm all about helping out, especially when it comes to missions." Wade said.
With that Ron once more shut his phone, and began gathering up a few things he thought he would need before he set out on this latest mission. He didn't even bother putting on his old mission outfit as he would be in a public place rather than a super villain's lair. He just grabbed his wallet and keys before sitting down on the couch to wait for the cab to pick him up.
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Ron arrived at the airport approximately an hour later, and found that a ticket was waiting for him at one of the counters. It took some time to get through the airport security as he would expect, and he barely managed to make it on the flight in time. He had no luggage, only the clothes he was wearing and the items he had picked up before he left his house.
The flight was not all that terrible. There were no screaming babies, and there was surprisingly a decent in-flight movie to enjoy. The trip took a couple hours, and Ron was happy that Los Angeles was an hour behind Middleton. When he landed it was only around eleven in the evening which gave him a short amount of time to search for Bonnie. The problem was he had no idea where to even begin.
Los Angeles was a huge city, the second largest in America. There were millions of people living here, and he was looking for one of them. He knew he had to narrow it down somehow, so he once more grabbed his phone and started making calls. His first was once again to Tara.
"What's up Ron?" She answered.
"Weird question again, I know, but do you happen to know where Bonnie's party is tonight?" He inquired.
"Uh… hold on let me check her Facebook page." Tara replied.
A few moments passed while Tara was looking for the information Ron sought.
"Got it." She said happily. "Her status says she's at some party being hosted by a guy named 'Steven Jackson'. I dunno, he's probably some Hollywood guy or something."
"Okay thanks again Tara!" Ron said.
"No problem."
The next call Ron made was once again to Wade. After a ring the young genius picked up again.
"Everything okay over there Ron?" He asked.
"So far so good. Hey can you check something out for me?"
"Sure. What's up?"
"I need to know where some guy named 'Steven Jackson' is holding a party tonight. He might be some actor or director or something."
"Okay. Hold on a moment."
Wade once more began typing and after a few seconds he had found what he was looking for.
"Got it. There's a big party tonight at the guy's house. I can give you the address if you want."
"Yeah, that would be a big help." Ron replied.
"Got something to write on?"
He did not.
"Uh… nope. I'll just put it into my phone. Okay, ready when you are."
Ron proceeded to put the address in his phone, hoping that it wasn't too far from where he was right now.
"Thanks again Wade, you've been a huge help."
"No problem dude. Call me if you need anything else."
Ron put his phone back in his pocket and began walking, hoping to find his way out of the massive airport. He would then need to find a taxi and get to this party as soon as he could.