THE DISNEY EXPERIMENT
Scene 4 – Mission Kim Possible
DISCLAIMER: This Scene contains characters and references from Disney'sKim Possible. I do not own any of these characters.
Hanging over a pit of anacondas, suspended by a fraying rope around his ankle was not how Ron Stoppable pictured his date would go. He had planned a peaceful walk in the park, some ice-cream and a large cup of lemonade. They would sit by Middleton Lake and feed ducks till sunset, then have dinner at Bueno Nacho and catch a movie thereafter.
Of course, that was a foolish notion, when his girlfriend was none other than teen heroine Kim Possible. Kim Possible, who thwarted evil with ease. Kim Possible, who never failed a mission. Kim Possible, who could do anything. At least, that was what her website said. Ron knew better—there were many things Kim couldn't do, like resist a sale at Club Banana, or stop him and Rufus from stuffing themselves senseless with grande-sized nacos. Or ignore her homework.
Yet for each of her flaws, there were five other redeeming qualities which Kim Possible possessed. A world in need of saving? She was there. A rip in the space-time continuum? Been there, done that. Killer robots invading Japan? No big.
That was Kim, and Ron loved her dearly as pal and girlfriend, confidante and partner. But right now, all he wanted to do was scream at her, which he did quite often. In fact, he was already yelling her name, at the top of his voice.
"A little busy here, Ron!" Kim shouted back.
'Busy' barely even began to describe Kim's situation. Currently, she was caught between a platoon of monkey ninjas and an orangutan samurai, not to mention that her boyfriend was several threads away from sudden death. Just another typical day in the life of Kim Possible.
Performing a flawless cartwheel and overhead flip across the subterranean lair, Kim planted her heel into the ugly face of the orangutan. She pivoted, then kicked off, landing behind the monkey platoon. They spun round and maneuvered swiftly around her, cutting off her escape route. Then, baring their teeth, the shozoku-clad primates pounced.
"So not what I need right now…" Kim muttered.
She dropped low as the monkeys closed in, then pulled the tail of the closest chimp towards her, swinging it like a Morningstar. Like discarded toys, the other monkeys were flung aside, their attack foiled by one of their own. They crashed into a railing, destroying it and falling into the death pit reserved for Ron. Kim tossed her makeshift (and disorientated) weapon aside and took the momentary victory to escape the battlefield in style, with a leap and forward tumble.
A flashing katana cut her path, nicking off a strand of hair as she attempted to turn her momentum into a kick. The genetically-altered orangutan, having learnt its lesson, parried the attack perfectly, countering with a backhand slap that left Kim more insulted than hurt. Side-stepping a forward thrust, she reached into her back pocket and retrieved her powder kit.
"Please be the right one," she said as she threw the entire kit hard as she could, holding her breath.
The contents of the kit exploded, producing a gas-cloud of noxious fumes. The orangutan samurai, which ultimately proved more orangutan than samurai, took a deep whiff of the green gas and fell on the ground in a heap, snoring loudly.
"Kim!"
Ron was still screaming. Kim made a face; she had forgotten him in all the chaos. With a running start, she ripped a hairdryer from a belt and took careful aim, launching a grappling hook towards the lair's rafters. In no time she was swinging through the air, inching ever closer to Ron…
Drats! A sudden weight on her thigh dragged her down in mid-swing. One of the monkeys had recovered and made a jump at her. Left hanging, Kim flailed and kicked violently, trying in vain to shake off the chimp, at the same time attempting to regain some momentum.
No good. Her arms were beginning to strain from the excess weight, and even with her gloves she was losing grip. To make matters worse, her monkey friend was starting to claw through her cargo pants.
Greatly annoyed, Kim grunted, "You wanna play that way? Fine, let's play!"
Flicking a switch on the hairdryer with one free hand, Kim triggered the grappling hook's release mechanism, sending herself and the monkey ninja falling from the rafters. The monkey let her go immediately, using its shinobi skills to land safely back on the ground, as Kim expected it to. Now free of her burden, the cheerleader quickly reloaded her spare hook and fired, rather wildly, at another rafter.
A miss! The floor was rising up her! Then the hook dropped, lodged itself on an upper-floor railing, breaking her fall. Kim allowed herself a sigh of genuine relief.
"Close one…"
It was at that moment that the rope keeping Ron from death by anacondas gave way, and the college freshman plunged headfirst into the deep pit beneath him, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Kim acted quickly, releasing her hook once more to drop safely to the ground. Then she grabbed a pole that had once been part of a railing and vaulted across the pit, scooping up her boyfriend as she went. By sheer luck, she made it to the other side, nearly falling backwards into the serpents' waiting jaws. She recovered, and dropped Ron gently on the floor.
"Thanks, KP," said Ron, grinning sheepishly.
Heart still pounding wildly, Kim hugged him, grateful that he was alright.
A tiny squeaking noise from Ron's pants pocket disrupted the couple's little moment. Rufus, Ron's trusted naked mole rat, popped out from its hiding place to see if the coast was clear. It had lodged itself deep in the pocket to prevent from sliding out while Ron was dangling upside-down, and had spent much too long a time too close to its owner's crotch. Obviously traumatized, the rodent made a dramatic display of breathing a sigh of relief, at which Ron laughed.
"I'm glad that's over."
"It isn't just yet," said Kim. "All of this was just a distraction. We still don't know what Monkey Fist is up to."
Monkey Fist, originally the famous archaeologist Lord Montgomery Fiske, was the main man behind Kim and Ron's rather dreadful date. Leader of the monkey ninjas, Fiske was so obsessed with Monkey Kung Fu and Mystical Monkey Power that he modified his own genetics to suit his obsessions, becoming part-man, part-monkey warrior. Kim and Ron were originally sent to track him, but he had lured them into his underground base and eluded their grasp.
"Well, how do we find him? This place is huge!" said Ron, making an exaggerated gesture to show just how 'huge' the lair was.
"Let's split up."
Kim was about to move when Ron protested, "Oh no! We're not splitting up again. That's how we got into this mess in the first place, remember?"
She made a face. They had received some sort of distress call from this vicinity earlier, and upon discovering the lair (guarded, of course, by Monkey Fist's ninja pets), had decided to split up. Kim faced some opposition trying to locate Fist, and eventually found her boyfriend here, on the verge of becoming snake food. In all honesty, she wasn't sure how Ron had gotten into his predicament.
Whether or not Ron had figured this out, he made it a point to talk about it again, if for nothing other than to make himself feel better after a near-death experience. "We decided to search the lair separately, then I went to this dark place and got knocked out by something. Next thing I know, I wake up to a bunch of man-eating anacondas!"
"Alright, alright," said Kim, a little exasperated. She loved the boy, but man could he whine. "We'll search the rest of the place together."
They went up a flight of metal steps and did a sweep of the upper level, keeping close to the granite walls for better security. There were a three hallways that stretched and looped into one another, and several iron doors which required security passes to open. Kim took out her state-of-the-art Kimmunicator, and the image of Wade came alive on the screen.
"What's up, Kim?" asked the child prodigy who had, over the years Kim had known him, grown taller somewhat. A little on the chubby side, he was black with dark curly hair and a brain which made Steve Jobs look like a washed-up college drunk. He played an integral role in Kim's mission successes, and practically managed her entire career.
"Hey, Wade. I've got a door that needs opening." Wade gave a thumbs up and Kim placed the Kimmunicator near a socket in the secured door. A wire shot out from the device, and seconds later the security screen turned green. The door opened with a clunk! There were many more clunking sounds, and Kim realized Wade had taken the liberty of opening all the other doors, which probably all functioned under one main security unit. "You're the best, Wade!"
Inside, the room was dark, carved right out of the stone. It wasn't all that big, and furnished with steel cabinets and tables. The floor was littered with scientific notes, unfinished packs of chips and some lab equipment. No people, no scientists and no sign of life.
"It's a ghost town in here, like they all just…vanished," remarked Ron, shivering. Rufus squeaked in agreement.
They checked the other rooms, and they were mostly the same. There were indications of a struggle, or perhaps the previous occupants of this lair were just really messy. All the notes the duo found were incomplete, encrypted or rendered unreadable. Had Monkey Fist been working on something so top-secret that even the threat of Kim Possible finding them called for a complete evacuation? Or did something far more sinister happen to the scientists and workmen who labored here? Either way, there was no real way of telling what Fist had been planning in this vast, underground installation.
In one of the rooms, there were engineering tools and blueprints Kim (and Ron, obviously) didn't understand. She took snapshots of them and sent the pictures to Wade before continuing her search. After sweeping three more rooms without finding anything noteworthy, they came to a door which, interestingly, hadn't been unsealed by Wade's tampering. It was marked "Testing Room".
Kim shot Ron a look, which he replied to with a shrug. After some of Wade's hacking actions, the door slid open, and Kim and Ron stepped into a room almost as huge as the rest of the lair. The fluorescent ceiling lights were still on, albeit flickering rather annoyingly, and under their glow Kim could see sparking wires and cables sticking out of the walls, and marks on the floor to indicate something huge had been here before. Here and there, small pockets of purple flames flickered, and the teen adventurer watched them with curiosity and interest.
"Kim!" exclaimed Ron. He was pointing at a heap of something lying in the far corner of the room. Kim couldn't make out what it was, so she jogged towards it.
And as she got closer, she stopped dead in her tracks, a sharp sense of terror hitting her like ice water to the face. Ron came up beside her and said something which sounded like a cross between 'yikes' and a dog throwing up.
There, lying facedown on the cold stone floor, clothing torn and burned away, was the bruised, blackened and bloodied body of the late Lord Montgomery Fiske.
"Ron," said Kim, her voice trembling, "we're gonna need some extra help on this one…"