All characters and places in this story belong to the Disney Corporation, just like Lucasfilm,

ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, Jim Henson Productions and ABC do.

The original creators were Mark McCorkle and Robert Schooley.

I receive nothing for the writing of this story.

If anyone knows Zaratan or can get in touch with him, please let him know that I am doing

this. If he gives me permission, great. If he doesn't and wants to finish it himself, great. Either way it's a win.

Once again I'd like to thank Cajunbear73 for beta reading this chapter while Temporaryinsanity91 takes some time off to deal with some family heath problems.

I can now understand why Zaratan felt a little overwhelmed by the reaction to his original story. 18 people following it, 15 people listed it as one of their favorite stories and 18 reviews after only one chapter. Wow!

[ I wish I could get this kind of reaction to one of my stories that was totally mine. :) ]

Anyway, not all of the reviews were totally favorable. Mostly so, but some not so much.

To everyone that was expecting the big blowout fight we all imagined, all I can say is sorry. No matter how emotionally ready for it we, and K/R were, they weren't intellectually ready for it. I had to build it up a little to give them some real reasons to fight, and to get Kimberly Ann off that high horse she was sitting on, willing to make a sacrifice like that for someone she hadn't talked to since before her son was born and someone that she only thought of "from time to time?" Puh-leese.

For a very few people that think I got the whole thing wrong and should drastically change it, the answer is 'no.' I never thought I would please everyone with this conclusion, that would just be too two-pid to even consider. Although I read and relish any and all suggestions from everybody, there is only one person that will get me to change it a lot from my outline of actions and events, but Zaratan has been quiet for a few years now, hence the reason I'm doing this in the first place.

I hope to update this story once a week. It may not happen that way but that's what I hope to do. At this rate it will take six or seven weeks to complete. Time will tell since real life has bad habits of interrupting people without warning.

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Kim was beyond bristling. It looked like she was going to charge: her head was lowered, her shoulders were up, and she was glaring at him like he was waving a red flag in front of a bull getting ready to charge. But she stood there and tried to hold herself in check as she stammered, "You...You..."

His momentary feelings of sorrow having been burned away, Ron stood there looking defiantly back at her and said, "Go ahead Kim. Say it! Call me what you've probably called me whenever you happened to grace me with your thoughts. Say it!"

Her anger burned and the word came easily to her lips. "You Bastard!" It shocked her how easily that word Monique had started using to refer to him, once she and Kim had started talking again, came out. It shocked her how much she meant it too and that shock drained a little of her own anger from her.

"See? That wasn't so hard now was it?" Ron said as he paced the edge of the practice mat, keeping a close eye on her as if he half-expected her to do something as his own fire rekindled. "Ron the bastard and Bonnie the skank whore. How many times have you and Monique called us by those titles and had a good laugh about it over the years?"

Even though she was mad as hell, her curiosity was piqued. "Okay Stoppable. Explain something to me. You claim Monique gave you the title 'bastard' that day on your front porch, so who gave Bonnie...her title?'"

Not knowing what kind of game she was trying to play with him this time, he decided to go along with it, just to see if he could trip her up in her own lies. "Two days after that little 'show' you and Monique put on for me; Bonnie needed some more clothes since her father had already thrown most of hers away. Mom went to buy some that might cheer her up a little, so guess where she went."

"The Smarty Mart?" Kim said remembering his family's shopping habits.

"Club Banana." he replied as if the answer should have been obvious. "She wanted to get something that might cheer her up, remember?"

"I remember. I remember I was so decimated by seeing the man I loved with the woman I hated, that I ran home and …" she barely managed to say through her gritted teeth.

"Yeah!" interrupted Ron. "I forgot that part of your story. I don't remember anything about your family kicking you out of home. I don't remember anyone saying anything about how your parents reacted when they found out that you, their precious and perfect little Kimmie-cub, was pregnant. Did they disown you and call you a little slut? Did they kick you out of your own home and tell you to go live on the streets with the other hookers?! "

Kim's own parents were shocked to say the least at first, but after they got past that, they were more supportive than she could have expected, under the circumstances. Her father though, seemed to become reserved, often looking like the smile he wore was fake, and he only wore it when someone was looking. He tended to hide a lot behind his newspaper. He didn't come out of that till his grandson was born.

Her silence told Ron what he wanted to know so he went on. "Mom went in and I guess your best friend..."

"You were my best friend."

"I used to be a lot of things. That all changed when you dumped me."

Not giving her a chance to reply this time, Ron went on. "She went in and Monique either didn't recognize her or was too busy talking to her audience to notice, telling them the tale of how poor Kim Possible's boyfriend got drunk at a frat party and got that skank whore Bonnie Rockwaller knocked up and had to marry her, breaking your heart. And it was all that bastard's fault. She just happened to leave out anything about you breaking up with me first, so the whole town blamed me and Bonnie. Only one person in this town would listen to my side of it…Only one.

It wasn't long till the hate letters and such started coming to the house addressed to The Bastard and The Skank Whore, warning that bad things would start happening if the two of us didn't get out of town. All courtesy of the Kim Possible Fan Club."

"So you ran away like a coward?"

"I had other people to think about besides myself. Some of those threats included Bonnie, Mom and Dad…and even Hana!" He yelled back at her to try and justify himself.

"And you blame me for that? I wasn't even in the state when that happened."

"Maybe not, but your mouthpiece, your new best friend, your sidekick was and it made a much better story for her to tell it, then you."

"I was so mad at her for her advice to not going to talk to you that night that it was almost a year before I even spoke to her. In fact it was years before we got to be friends again. And I didn't know a thing about any rumors about you and...and..."

"How many?", he asked suddenly calm.

"How many? How many what?"

"How many months before you two started talking again? How many years till you became friends again?" he asked as the calmness disappeared and the volume of his questioning increased with each question. "Less than five? Less than three?"

"Sounds like a pretty light sentence to me, but then I got life with the only chance at possible parole coming because of our children."

"Shut up Ron! Just shut up!" she finally yelled at him. "I'm sick and tired of listening to you piss and moan about your life. Yours and...Bonnie's. We both know right now the only way we're going to get this out of our systems is to fight it out. Something you've probably wanted to do since you were stupid enough to throw your Kimmunicator away, so we might as well get it out of the way right.

Who knows? You might even get in a few lucky shots." she added, trying to taunt him into acting without thinking, like he used to do, but his reaction wasn't what she expected. It was the combined look of confusion, anger and astonishment on his face that confused her.

"You...? You want to fight me Kim?"

"Yes." was her first response. "Right now I want nothing better than a chance to get in a few shots to make you pay for my son finding out how he came to be and insulting my mother. That is unless you're too scared you'll get hurt. We use to spar."

"We use to do a lot of things..." he said to more himself as his expression softened almost to the point that Kim could imagine him looking if they hadn't broken up so long ago. It didn't last long as he snapped back to reality and said, "And I didn't insult your mother. I only pointed out that she had to pay off her school loans too. I remember her talking about having to bus tables every night as she worked through her internship. You're the one that called that girl a whore because she took a job that paid. Some people have to work their way through life the hard way and they can't live off their reputation."

"What in the hell is that supposed to mean Ron?" she demanded as she growled out his name. "I've earned everything I've accomplished through hard work because I put in the time."

"I never said you didn't. I'm only wondering if you would have gotten the high profile cases, the choice assignments if you hadn't gotten that little Gold Star on the top of your report card about defeating the big green guys."

"That was entirely your idea Stoppable so don't go trying to blame me for..."

"I'm not trying to blame you for anything. I just wanted to see if you'd ever, even considered the possibility."

She had. She'd gotten some of the bigger cases that helped her stand out to the higher ups right off the bat. It'd been hard back then to break her old habits and for her to start relying on people other than her old teammates, Wade had totally disappeared shortly after she left Middleton and went back to college, but she'd gotten through it.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Me? Forgettable. Easily Forgettable…At least according to you."

"I didn't forget who you were or what we had together when you threw it away for a one night stand with Bonnie!" she yelled back at him. "I had to get on with my life for my family and I got over it! Something you never did apparently."

"No. I merely got though it!" he thought to himself. There were several things he kept locked in his heart that he'd never really gotten over or understood. The breakup was one, although he was sure he understood why it happened. It happened because he wasn't...enough. Handsome enough, smart enough, coordinated enough, good enough, rich enough. Just fill in the blank with any of them 'cause he wasn't. Then.

He'd changed most of those things in his life when he was trying to make his marriage with Bonnie work, but in the end that wasn't enough either. He hadn't gotten over that either because her final words to him haunted his mind and she never explained what she'd meant by them. Maybe they were just to torture his soul or keep him guessing for the rest of his life.

"This is for your own good."

He'd talked to Michelle about them when she asked about why they got divorced. She'd said that when she and her mother had tried to connect during the dinners for just the two of them that she'd given her the same reason but would never explain. That almost led to words that almost got them thrown out of one of his own restaurants.

The death of...a good friend was another thing he'd never gotten over. Just gotten through, but he didn't have time to think about that now since Kim looked like she wanted to dismember him where he stood.

"Whatever!" Kim almost screamed at him. "You're just stalling now 'cause you're afraid I'll beat the crap out of you. Let's just get this match underway and be done with it."

"Match? You mean a sparring match?"

"Of course. What were you expecting?"

"I thought you wanted a fight."

Her moment of confusion gave him a chance to explain. "A sparring match is like one of Michelle's teas parties when she was a little girl, all show and pretend, not really real. All rules and safe. A fight is real with real consequences with real broken bones. No rules. No quarter given, taken or expected. Now which do you want, because of it's a sparring match, you can take your ass to the gym. You might be able to find some kid there you can beat."

"I'll have you know I know 16 styles of Kung Fu, I'm also Deputy Director of Global Justice and a martial arts teacher. I think I can handle myself against you just fine."

"Pardon me. I should have said 'some kid you could impress.' You knew 16 styles of Kung Fu back in high school so that doesn't impress me. And Hana could have beaten any member of GJ back when she was eight so that impresses me even less. What you used, and Shego did too, was very big, very flashy and dramatic moves. More like Jackie Chan. I only know one style which in the advanced stages is more like Bruce Lee. Maximum effect, minimum effort."

"Bullshit! I don't care if you are a Monkey Master."

"Magician." he corrected her.

"What?"

"The level after Master is Magician."

"Fine then." she spat out. "Magician. Let's just find out who wins."

"Okay then Kim. Let's find out." he said as he slipped his shoes off and left them in front of his feet. Still standing off the edge of the mats, he assumed a casual stance as he said, "Attack me."

It didn't help her temper to be spoken to like she was back when she first started to study martial arts. Her instructor would have said something like 'attack me,' so he could test her abilities so far as what she'd learned and practiced. Time for Ron to learn what she could do. She charged his position, her intention was to move to close the distance between them and then attack, but she'd taken no more than two steps when his right foot flipped one of his shoes up and he hit it with an open palm. As it came right at her head like a Kim-seeking missile, she blocked and dodged it, making her first mistake of their fight, when she blinked. The basement went pitch black without any light even coming through the small windows above the couch.

Stopping in her tracks, she said, "Using some of Hana's tricks Ron? Who did you have turn off the power?" She started to move her way towards the weight machine. She thought he might try something like this.

"No one." Came his voice from behind her. "And I'm not using one of Hana's tricks. She used one of mine." His sound of his voice then sounded like it was to her immediate right as he added, "Just like this one."

"No one turned off the power. I just used my own bio-electrical field to turn the lights off. No one is standing by the breaker box. Just you, headed for the weight machine to try and get one the kids' jump ropes to swing over your head to try and find me."

"Damn it!" she thought to herself. That had been what she was going for. What she said was, "I thought we were going to fight. How are we going to do that if I can't see?"

"You were suppose to attack me." he said, his voice now sounding like he was standing an arm's length in front of her. "And so far you're doing a pretty piss poor job of it. Hana said you didn't even come close to hitting her when she 'talked' to you."

Still moving to get the ropes, she said, "I suppose her breaking into my home was your idea. Trying to scare me?"

"Nope. I didn't know anything about it till after the fact. That was all her and she probably wouldn't have done it if you hadn't pissed her off trying to pretend you didn't know what she'd been doing with her life."

"Why would she think I was pretending? It's not as if I'd been keeping tabs on her." She judged she was only a few feet from where she judged the ropes were. She wanted to keep him talking till she got them.

"Remember her saying something about doing the 'save the world thing' that we... you used to do?"

"You were there too!" she said, now that she reached the crossbars of the machine and only had to locate the skip ropes that were hanging from it.

"Naah. I was just the bumbling sidekick there only for comic relief. The distraction so you could save the world. Now if she was saving the world, better I might add than even you use to do, I wonder who would have given her rides to where she had to be. Some people that thought they owed her favors certainly, but a lot of those rides came from a certain government agency that only used two initials to identify themselves with. One that she carried out some missions for in exchange for those rides. Can you guess which agency that was Miss Deputy Director of G. J.?"

"Oh, and I've already moved the jump ropes."

"I...I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Now either the Deputy Director had been kept totally in the dark about what goes on in her own agency or she just didn't care to give credit to someone else when they do good work, especially when that person's last name is Stoppable. Which do you think is the more plausible scenario?"

"The Director must have kept all that from me, thinking that it would only stir up old memories that I didn't want brought up again?"

"Yeah, Betty always impressed me to be a soft hearted person." he said barley keeping his sarcasm from dripping on floor, requiring a mop to clean it up. "Maybe you should have done a little more checking before you started telling people things they know are lies."

"I'm telling you the truth damn it! I didn't know about Hana. I didn't know about what Monique did, but I'm telling you the truth. What do I have to do to convince you?" she demanded, her anger and frustration plainly coloring the tone of her voice.

Silence followed as she gave her statement a little time to soak in. She knew her side of things sounded weak compared to what he must be thinking, but he was right about something. She should have checked some things out a little more than she had, but then she really wasn't expecting to have to.

Finally he broken the silence when he said in the same sarcastic tone he had before, "Alright Mrs. Sanders. Because I still remember what I still consider ' the best times of my life' and what I, at least, thought our relationship meant, I'll give you a chance. One chance to convince me that you are tell me the truth. Answer one question. Just one, truthfully, and I'll try and listen to your side and believe."

"All right Ron."she answered after collecting herself and trying to let her feelings not cloud her good judgement. "Ask your question."

"According to your story, you never meant to break up with me. You were so torn up by what you saw as my dumping you over Bonnie, that you ran back to college and in less than three months hooked up with your future husband and performed an act of indiscretion, which caused you to get pregnant and get married. Now that's the exact same thing that happened to Bonnie and me with her getting pregnant. Now the question is, if I became the bastard and Bonnie became the skank whore of Middleton because of what we did, what does that make you?"

"What did you ask?" she asked him, not really believing what she was hearing.

Saying the words slowly and softly, he said "You heard me. If I was the bastard and Bonnie was the skank whore and you did the same thing that we did, what does that make you? What name would you be called?"

She quickly thought about all the things that Bonnie had done to her...them, not only causing the breakup but every comment, dirty trick and lie she'd said about her..them even back in high school and he wanted her to compare herself to Bonnie? Without anymore than a seconds though, she quietly gave her answer breaking the silence like a thunder clap.

"Fuck you Stoppable."

So much for her one chance. Her anger left her as the frustration set in of what she'd not accomplished so far this night. She'd learned some things about her now distant past, mistakes that had come back to haunt her, both with Ron, Monique and her son. She'd learned that maybe Monique was right and maybe Ron had changed. Changed so much that the man she thought she knew, was no longer there. At least for her. She thought it would be a simple job to push his buttons to get him into a fight to fully vent on her. She had gotten him to vent alright, but it was like expecting an old locomotive to totally vent its full head of steam after blowing the whistle several times. It was still headed down the tracks at full speed and only warning people to get out of its way.

"Damn it, Ron!" she finally said, her voice not hiding her emotions. "This isn't working out the way we wanted it to. Maybe it never will."

"We?" he quietly asked after a moment.

"You were suppose to fight me and maybe finally get it out of your system so we could all get through this wedding, like a family coming together."

"We?" he repeated only not as quietly this time.

"The kids and me."

"When did Michelle...?" his question trailed off as the lights came back on, almost blinding Kim with their sudden brightness. She saw that he was standing in the same spot he had been before the lights went out. The only sign that he had moved at all was the two jump ropes lying next to both of his shoes on the floor in front of him.

"Last night, after Hana left. She wanted me to do something to get you to move on with your life. I thought that giving you a chance to strike back at me would..."

"Michelle knew you were going to do this? Without saying anything to me about it? Without talking to me about it?"

"Well...yes."

"She...you expected me to feel better after hitting you a few times? Like some man that feels better after beating on a woman or a child?" his own anger building with in him at the implications of what the two women thought about what he 'needed.'

He moved over to near the couch and picked up an old style landline cordless phone and called his daughter to see if Kim was telling the truth.

"Daddy?" she asked immediately when she answered her micro cellular phone, her voice sounding like she'd been crying. "Daddy, I'm still about thirty minutes away. Michael already called me and told me..."

"Michelle." The tone of his voice surprised her, almost shocked her into silence with its mixture of hurt and anger mixed together. "Did you ask...Michael's mother to come here tonight to try and manipulate me, make me jump through her hoops into doing something that I normally wouldn't do?"

Her heart beat too long in answering his question, which answered his question before she said anything. "Daddy I didn't know she was going to..."

"After what I told you she did to me all those years ago? Michelle, you should have said something. I thought you could talk to me about anything, I thought we could talk about anything."

"Daddy, we both know you need to move on with your life and..."

"I thought I had some say in that."

"Daddy, you need this." and then she added something to explain her desire to help him through it. "This is for your own good."

As soon as she said it, she gasped at what had come out of her mouth trying to take back the words. The same words her mother had said to him the day their divorce became final. Her parting words that hurt him for so long.

"I...I didn't mean it Daddy. At least not the way they came out." she said almost crying again into her phone, but all she heard in response was silence. "Please don't be angry with me."

"I'm...I'm not angry with you Michelle. I'm just...I'm just a little..." he said as he tried to hold back his own tears. "A little disappointed right now."

He'd never said that to his daughter. Never even thought it about her or their relationship. He put the phone back into its cradle and stared at it for a full minute before it started ringing, Michelle trying to call back. He told Michael earlier that he was afraid to put his heart out there to be crushed a third time. He'd never expected that third time to come from his daughter.

He looked up at Kim and she saw the expression he probably had on his face when she'd said the wrong thing to him over a Kimmunicator some twenty three years ago. It broke her heart to see him like that.

Even more when he said, "Go home Mrs. Sanders. Go home to the comfort of the house you built with your husband and family. The place where your life happened. That life you didn't want me involved in, in anyway shape or form. I'll make sure that you never have to involve yourself in something like this again."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'll go back to...well...my home is gone now. The house is already sold and since Michelle would rather talk to you about...things… then me, I've lost the only thing that gave me a reason to keep going all these years.

You win the fight, Mrs. Sanders.

Again."

He turned and headed for the stairs, his head down, emotionally devastated. Her own feelings of anger forgotten at seeing him like that, she knew she had to do something. Something to slap him into...

She made up her mind to return to her original plan. He'd never see it coming now. Even though he would hate her for the rest of her life, and Michael and Michelle probably would too, she thought she knew what had to be done.

"Hey! Stoppable! Tell me one thing before you run away and hide from everybody that cares anything about you."

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited.

Taking a deep breath and silently praying to God for forgiveness, since he would probably be the only one that could forgive her for what she was going to do, she asked, "Just how many men did Michelle sleep with before she found one that would marry her?"

Ron head jerked up and he turned to look back at her over his shoulder.

"I guess she inherited more than some of her looks from her mother. Although I hadn't realized that being a slut was an inheritable trait!"

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To Be Continued...

Now...they are ready to rumble.

As always, if you have a question about something or you find an error, drop me a note or put it in a comment.