Special thanks to MrDrP, AtomicFire, qtpie235, surforst, and conan98002 for their reviews.
Thanks to everyone for reading!
Everything related to KP belongs to Disney.
Everything from Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland is the intellectual property of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon.
There were unconfirmed reports of incidents high above the planetary surface that no one talked about in any but the most careful euphemisms. The list of passengers who arrived was not always identical to the list of those who'd departed. Something was happening, in between, up there.
--Vineland, page 61
I.
Wade was more than a little disappointed. All of the W.E.E. systems he could hack into (which were, in fact, ALL of them) had absolutely nothing cooking about Kim and Ron. Even his trump card—the blog/forum website outside of W.E.E.'s internal server where agents secretly went to e-tantrum about Gemini's less-than-exemplary people management skills, proved devoid of anything remotely related or interesting.
On the positive side, his contact at the Allied Intelligence Archives had turned up something of interest concerning Tyrone Slothrop. Although official records still could not verify that Slothrop had been employed by ACHTUNG or had even been enlisted in the Army, the contact did dig up hard evidence that Slothrop had, in fact, been in London at the time of the V2 rocket attacks. A series of letters (okay, two) placed Slothrop in a hospital ward in December of 1944. Wade's contact IH'ed him that he would be faxing the letters over shortly.
As he swiveled in his chair to check on the fax, Wade's eye just happened to catch the monitor on his far-right. It was still channeling the feed from the security camera on the San Narcisco University rooftop. Despite the blackness of the night and the long shadows cast by the security light positioned directly in front of the camera's line of sight, Wade caught some movement in the frame.
He cocked an eye at the monitor and, with a few quick keystrokes, maneuvered the camera so he could get a better look at the whatever-it-was that was continuing to move in the shadows.
It lay hidden in the shadows of a utility door on the far right of the roof. A utility door that Wade, just at that second, realized had not been open earlier. As he attempted to lighten the image so he could "see past" these shadows, Wade began feeling the first on-rush of anxiety.
Please, don't be what I think you are.
As the screen lightened, he realized, to his chagrin, that once again he was correct.
"Shoot! Why am I always right?"
Wade immediately contacted the San Narcisco PD and, almost as instantly, tried to radio Kim.
II.
"Kim, you need to be with your mother!" Ron protested.
"Ron, I am sure Mom will understand. This is a mission and--" Kim said as she started dialing her home number on the Kimmunicator.
Ron placed his hand on the device to prevent her from finishing the call.
"Ron." She was not pleased. "What are you doing?" She never questioned the obvious unless she was getting tweaked.
"Your mom needs you, Kim," Ron said with determination. "You know she wouldn't have had your dad call unless it was way serious."
"Ron, we don't know that Mom asked him to. More than likely, he did it on his own. That's why I am going to talk to her. She will so understand."
"Kim …" Ron began, not as forcefully as before but the tone still radiated his seriousness. Although unspoken, the fact that he loved Anne Possible was quite obvious. At the very least, Kim's mom was a big part of the reason why Ron had always felt so comfortable in the Possibles' home.
"Ron, let me explain three things to you," Kim began forcefully. "One, Mom will understand that this is important. This is a kidnapping; I am not just leaving her side to help the Pixies make their muffin quota."
"Two," the heated tone in her voice was leveling off, "Mom is the one who lay down the law this morning about us not leaving each other's side during missions. Furthermore, you were so right this afternoon about this mission. I am so glad you insisted to come, and even though nothing happened I'm glad that you had my back."
"And three—" here Kim paused as her mind briefly flashed to the memory of Yori on the Space Center's roof standing over her, concern evident in her almond eyes—"and most importantly, Yori is my friend too. I need to help you do this."
Ron had known where she going with the first two reasons, and he knew that she was right too. However, he had been surprised by her third reason. It wasn't like he believed she was still jelling over Yori; he just assumed there would always be some distance between them. But Yori had surprised him the night before when she went out of her way to help Kim. Why should he be surprised if Kim would return the favor?
"Besides," Kim said holding up the Kimmunicator, "I can always talk to Mom on the way to wherever we're going." She smiled seeing that she had indeed silenced her BFBF's concerns, and then she frowned. "Where are we going?"
"Don't know." Ron replied shaking his head. "Sensei said Yori headed over to the hospital to see us early this afternoon, and that was the last he heard from her. He called one of his ninja peeps in Lowerton to check on her, and the dude found her hair band and signs of a struggle outside the parking lot." Then Ron's expression darkened, "Dude also found a few banana peels nearby."
"I'll ring up Wade." Kim said with concern. "See if the pilot is okay with an extended trip to parts unknown." Kim felt Justine wouldn't mind if they borrowed her jet for a little longer, but the man piloting the plane might have a family expecting him back in Southern California for dinner. The pilot had been borderline friendly on the flight in, but had kept the cockpit door closed the entire ride home.
Kim gave Ron's slightly concerned look a reassuring smile, "Don't worry, I'll still call Mom. Besides we have to stop by the house anyway—neither of us have any mission gear."
III.
Although Wade wouldn't know the man's identity for certain until San Narcisco's finest could arrive and untie him, he was certain that the figure wriggling angrily on the rooftop was Justine's pilot.
The fact that he couldn't get through to the Kimmunicator also did not bode well for his friends.
IV.
Why can't I reach Wade?
Just as Kim was noticing, by the Kimmunicator's (still-working clock), that they should have arrived in Middleton ten minutes earlier, Ron burst back into the cabin from the cockpit; his face was as white as she had ever seen it.
"Kim, there's no one flying this plane!"
V.
Even though his mind tapping subject had escaped, Drakken, with his preternaturally bad timing, chose that moment to make a small stand. "Do you mind not using that language around me?" Drakken said as forcefully as he could. "At least not so much."
"Well, excuse the expletive deleted out of me!" the young man retorted.
"You use that one word in particular so much that it doesn't even mean anything any more. I wonder if you even realize how often you say it." Drakken, whether he knew it or not, was channeling his mother, Mrs. Lipsky, full bore. Also, whether he knew it or not, he was mere seconds away from a quick and painful death.
"Lipsky," the young man responded in a disturbingly calm voice, "there are only two times when I don't use that word. One, when I am asleep. Two, when I am about to shoot someone."
"Uhhhh," Drakken said, wringing his tiny hands nervously, "should I be concerned because you haven't used it in the last three sentences? Heh-heh. I mean is this an example of time number two?"
"Well, I won't say whether my clean language is a threat exactly," the young man said, unsnapping the gun holster strapped to the belt he wore askance on his very ample waist, "but if I were you, I'd take it as one."
"Okay," Drakken smiled nervously, "zipping up." Drakken backed away slowly.
However, before Drakken had made five steps, the man, with incredible spped, drew his revolver and fired the gun … behind his own back.
The bullet lodged into the stone wall near the lab's entrance … two inches above Yori's head.
Both Drakken and Yori were frozen in shock. The moment of violence had happened within the space of a breath. Slowly and casually, the man turned to face Yori. "Hello there." he said with a suppressed yawn. He continued in the same languid, and, Yori noticed, profanity-free tone, "In case you are wondering, that was a warning shot. In fact the only reason why blood isn't running like ribbons through that pretty black hair of yours is because according to Lipsky's monitor over there, we still need 52 percent of your brain."
Yori felt very uncomfortable and not only because a recently fired gun was being pointed at her. The man's eyes, especially the way they had yet to blink, disturbed her almost as much as the weapon and his words did.
"Of course, that doesn't mean I can't shoot you somewhere else, so you won't go running off again." He gave her an easy-going, closed-mouth smile and lowered the barrel of the gun so it was level with her right thigh.
Swoosh. The doors to the lab opened and Monkey Fist, a security passcard in his hand, walked unawares between Yori and the armed psychopath. Fisk stopped cold as he realized he was directly in the sights of a cocked pistol. Considering where its low aim was directed on his person, the look Monkey Fist gave the young man was a remarkably calm one.
Yori snatched the passcard from Monkey Fist and leapt through the portal just as the doors swished close.
"Expletive deleted!" the man screamed as he fired his revolver harmlessly into the air.
Well, almost harmlessly.
A second later, Drakken screamed and clutched his head as a shower of stony debris from the lab's ceiling sprinkled his head.
VI.
"WHAT?!" Kim yelled.
Before Ron had a chance to repeat himself, his girlfriend had already passed him, running at top speed toward the cockpit.
Sure enough, it was completely empty. A cursory glance at the gauges, including the one for fuel and the altimeter, gave the impression that everything was running smoothly regardless. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except, of course, for the fact there was no one flying the plane. For a half-second, Kim entertained the optimistic notion that since this was an experimental plane perhaps it didn't need a pilot and had been programmed with their destination's coordinates and would land safely in the next few minutes.
Before even she had the chance to burst this happy thought's bubble, the plane did it for her. Suddenly, it pitched back, throwing her to the back of the cockpit. Only by grabbing the doorframe at the last second did Kim avoid tumbling back down to the cabin.
"I didn't touch anything!" Ron screamed from somewhere behind her.
After keeping this climbing trajectory for almost two minutes, the plane finally leveled off. Kim immediately jumped into the pilot's chair. Again, she glanced over the gauges and controls. Tentatively, she pressed the rudder pedals and gave the stick a couple of modest turns clockwise and counter-clockwise. The plane did not react at all.
Ron, out of breath, came into the cockpit and managed a semi-confident rendition of his BFGF's catchphrase, "What's the sitch?"
"The plane's being remotely controlled." She said succinctly. "It won't respond to any manual commands."
"Do you know how we can, ya know, break the command signal?" he asked as he collapsed into the co-pilot's seat.
"I have no idea," she said with a helpless smile.
"I'll punch up Wade," Ron said as he began fishing in his pocket for the Roncom.
"I think we're being jammed again," Kim said gently. "I tried to raise him just before you discovered there was no pilot."
"Just like in the caves back in Australia?" he asked.
"'Fraid so."
"Badical." He announced.
It was very strange, but Ron wasn't that scared. Actually, taking everything that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours into consideration, this moment was one of the least frightening ones. And the reason, of course, was because Kim was by his side. For one thing, she seemed utterly confident even though she didn't know what to do. This fearlessness in his best friend had always made him feel safe, especially when they were in situations that seemed impossible even for her. Secondly, he knew he didn't have to worry about her safety. Even though all signs indicated that bad things were going to happen quite soon (maybe even another encounter with Shego), the fact that he was in a position, however dubious, to look out for his girlfriend made a world of difference. It was a strange combination of feelings, but Ron felt equally good about being both the potential rescuer and the one who might potentially need to be rescued.
"So, I didn't know you had mad flying skills too, KP." Ron said casually.
"I don't. I just figured I'd give the things I've seen on TV a try," she said briskly. It was obvious that, despite the seriousness of their sitch, she was still feeling pretty good as well. "Hey!" she said suddenly. "Maybe you can figure this out! You have always been way better at things with joysticks and buttons than me. Maybe if you treat this cockpit as one big video game?"
Ron gave the co-pilot controls a once over and then a twice over. "Sorry, KP," he said shaking his head. "If it doesn't have an 'Option' choice or a 'Y' button, I'm completely lost."
"What about Rufus?" Kim asked hopefully. "He's a mechanical genius, and I bet his teeth could chew through the console way easy. Maybe he can find and then override the control device!"
"Great!" Ron said starting to get out of his seat, "I'll go wake up the little—Eeep!" Ron fell back in his seat and pointed out the cockpit window to Kim's left.
With the almost full moon backlighting the night sky, it was quite easy to see what had Ron so excited. As Kim turned to look, a shadow fell across the window, her face, and the plane itself. Her eyes went wide.
Descending from a giant cumulous cloud to their jet's left and outlined by the moon was the largest plane she had ever seen. It was at least three times the size of a 747. It was completely black, and as it swung in parallel with their small plane, she noticed that there were no lights emanating from any of its windows (if it had any). Not even from where the cockpit should have been.
Trying to regain his composure, Ron managed to say, "That would be so cool, if it wasn't coming to get us."
VII.
Before Yori even got halfway down the first corridor, the complex's alarms erupted. Their whining was fairly piercing, but Yori knew she had to stay focused, couldn't be distracted by anything. Her little escape maneuver back in the lab might have bought her a ten second head start, maybe. And she definitely wanted to put as much distance between herself and that overweight psychopath as she could.
She remembered Drakken-san mentioning that the complex was immense. That wasn't very promising for an escape attempt. Even worse, everything about the corridors (she had just waived the passcard to enter a second passageway) screamed state of the art. There was little doubt that their security system came equipped with a monitoring video component. They probably knew exactly where she was. On the other hand, there was definitely what Stoppable-san would describe as a "low rent" element to the complex as well. Random construction raw materials leaned against the walls (two-by-fours, boxes of nails, carpet tacks, etc.) and, just as the lab's had, every corridor (she had just entered her third) had a dirt floor.
The alarm successfully blocked out all sound, so Yori had no idea if she was being followed. The charging of feet through the dirt wouldn't have been as loud as on linoleum or a steel floor, true, but her ninja training would have been able to discern such sounds through dust. The knowledge that she couldn't tell if she was being followed pushed her adrenaline level even higher. Of course, Yori knew she could always glance over her shoulder, but that would likely bring no good at all.
Suddenly, the corridor branched into two separate hallways. Yori hesitated but then took the one on the left because the foot tracks, which littered all the previous corridors' floors, seemed somewhat less in that one. If she traveled tunnels that were not used as frequently, she stood a better chance of not running into anyone. She followed this same procedure for the next three tunnel branches: left portal, right portal, and then a left. Fifty feet down the final corridor there was a door, she flashed her pass card and immediately knew she had taken a wrong tunnel somewhere along the way.
She stared at the figure that was revealed by the opening portal and breathed his name (not than she or he could hear it over the sirens).
"Darwin-san."
VIII.
Wade was trying every avenue at his disposal to locate the plane his friends were on. Since the Kimmunicator was being effectively jammed, he couldn't trace them using that. In addition, he was unable to pick up any signal from Ron's chip. (Wade had not placed a tracking device in the Roncom specifically because it would have been redundant. One day, he would have to break down and tell his friend about that microchip in his body. It was not going to be an easy thing to do … and he didn't relish explaining how he had got it there in the first place.)
Wade decided to tap into the spy satellite system operated by Global Justice. Calculating from the plane's trajectory at the last time he had communicated with Kim and provided there had not been a sharp deviation from their flight path, satellite two (SAT-2), positioned in a geostatic orbit over Kenosha, Wisconsin should have been able to locate them.
After entering a flurry of code-breaking commands (that he could type in his sleep), Wade was inside the system and effectively controlling SAT-2. Within moments, he had the small plane in view. Its path, direction-wise, hadn't changed a degree, but it was at a much higher altitude. As he was focusing in to get a better picture, a very large object entered his view from the left; it had descended from a cloud Kim and Ron's plane had just flown by. The object looked the size of a Las Vegas hotel—at least twice the size of the largest plane Wade had ever seen! As he tried to get a better look at this ominous new aircraft, the satellite signal went to static.
"Huh?" Wade was more than a little confused. Either the satellite had gone down or someone was deliberating jamming him. But to jam him they would have to know he was already hacking into them. And, no one at Global Justice was that good.
And why would they hack me anyway?
Although Wade had heard Kim and Ron use the phrase quite frequently in the past, it was only at that moment that Wade finally understood what having one's "weirdar" go off really meant.
IX.
Before Darwin could get properly into a fighter's stance (he had even forgotten to put down his banana), the monkey ninja's head felt the full force of Yori's right foot. Two seconds later, he lay sprawled senseless on the floor some feet away. The combination of his reflexes and the force of her strike resulted in the half-eaten banana being launched from its peel and landing directly onto a small table some fifteen feet deep into the room where two other monkey ninja's were playing "Go Fish."
Plucky and Santayana were not pleased to have their game interrupted. When they looked up to see Yori in the doorway above their fallen comrade, they became even angrier. Baring their teeth menacingly, they sprung at Yori. They were chattering wildly as well, but the shrieking alarms pretty much neutralized the effect of their battle cries.
Yori snatched up the only weapon she had available, her left shoe, and spun it like a throwing star at Plucky, nailing the advancing warrior between the eyes. He dropped like a sack of bananas to the dirt floor.
Unfortunately, Santayana was on top of her before she could remove her right shoe. She batted him away with a swift left-handed blow. After he righted himself, he began circling Yori in a fighting stance. He was slightly bigger, if slower, than the other two. Regardless, not someone to trifle with.
She mirrored his movements. This was not how she had wanted things to proceed. She didn't have time for a standoff; she needed to move and quickly too. She pivoted her stance and started circling the simian counter-clockwise so she wouldn't have her back to the door if nothing else.
Where were all the guards, henchmen, and other monkey ninjas? Apart from these three and the three villains in the lab, the place seemed deserted. It also struck her that the monkey ninjas had been very surprised to see her—why weren't they mobilizing to recapture her? Maybe the security system for this complex really wasn't "all that" after all.
"I thought this complex was supposed to be all that!" Drakken screamed to Potty Mouth over the blaring of the alarms.
The man just stared at him coldly.
"ALL THAT!" Drakken repeated louder. He was not pleased when he noted the dilapidated state of the security system. Half of the security system was either offline or had yet to be installed—still in boxes even. It reminded Drakken of … well … of one of his lairs. "I thought you said this complex was top of the line! TOP OF THE LINE!" Fully under the impression the man was ignoring him, Drakken continued ranting.
Potty Mouth spun in his chair back to the control console and typed a few commands. The alarms ceased.
"SLIPSHOD, I tell you!" Drakken continued to rant not noticing the sudden absence of the sirens. "SLIP…shod, heh-heh." Well, not immediately anyway.
"I couldn't hear you." The man asked in a very, very calm voice. "Do you remind repeating what you were saying?"
"Well, uh, yes … I was just pointing out that perhaps the security system might be more effective if," as Drakken spoke, the man unsnapped his gun holster, "… yes … if … you could broadcast a message that the captive had … you know … escaped," Drakken continued as the man languidly removed the pistol from the holster, "and that this wasn't just another" Drakken stopped suddenly as the man slammed the revolver down loudly upon the console, the barrel of the gun pointed in Drakken's direction, "… system malfunction."
Drakken said nothing, just nervously twitched and twined his small fingers together.
"Nah," the man said shaking his head good-naturedly, "that's not what you said.
"If I am not mistaken," he continued, "you were apologizing for forgetting where in that cavernous tunic of yours you had placed the spare copy of the pass card. If you recall, that left the three of us locked in here for three entire minutes while the captive got away. Until, that is, you finally discovered the pass card under your foot." As he spoke, his fingers performed a mock jig on the console's surface in the general vicinity of his gun's trigger.
"Gentlemen," Monkey announced, examining something on the dirt floor, "am I correct that it is just the three of us and my monkey minions in this center?" He was looking intently at something near the edge of the lab's portal.
"Must I repeat every expletive deleted thing I tell you two expletive deleted idiots?" Potty Mouth exploded, turning his attention, much to Dr. Drakken's relief, to Monkey Fist. "My team is still down on the lower level expletive deleted monitoring that expletive deletedexpletive deleted. But, yeah, for all intents and expletive deleted purposes, you, me, Mr. Huckleberry here and your expletive deleted apes are it."
Monkey Fist resisted the urge to explain that his troops were not "apes."
Drakken, wisely, only thought, "That's Dr. Huckleberry, thank you very much."
"Excellent," Monkey Fist smiled, "she will be very easy to find then." He looked down at the very distinctive footprints that Yori's ninja-style saddle shoes had made in the lab's dirt floor and up along the corridor. Even from a distance, they were easily distinguishable from the other marks upon the floor.
X.
"Amp down, Ron," Kim said placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"Ah … what … ah … do … ah … you …ah … mean," Ron managed between deep, open-mouthed breaths.
"You're hyperventilating, Ron," Kim said assuredly.
"Ah … really?" Ron asked.
"Yes," Kim nodded, "I think there is some bottled water in the mini fridge in the cabin, grab one for yourself while you get Rufus."
"O-oh, okay," Ron walked unsurely out of the cockpit, not two seconds later, he shot his head back in. "Do you want me to grab you one too, KP?"
"Please and thank you," she smiled. After his head disappeared, she swiveled in the pilot's chair and looked out the window to face the black monstrosity that was now flying level with their small jet. Nothing about this sitch was good, but it was puzzling too.
What are they waiting for?
True, the plane was gigantic and ominous, but apart from its size there didn't seem to be much to it. She couldn't make out any weapons, bomb bay doors, or anything else visible that was sinister about it. It appeared to be just a fantastically large plane.
Then again it was night; even with a full moon, there could be a lot of obvious armaments she just couldn't see.
Ron returned with two bottles of water and the still-yawning Rufus. He tossed Kim one of the bottles and then settled his pet down upon the control console. "Okay, buddy, we need you to take a look around. If there is a control device thingie, take it out."
His pet nodded.
"You can be invasive," Ron continued, "just not, you know, with anything that might make the plane stop working and crash."
Rufus gave his human a slightly exasperated sigh.
Kim read the label on the bottle and gave an approving nod.
Rufus readied his buckteeth and proceeded to try to chew through the metal plates of the console.
"Tunguska Springs," she said unscrewing the cap.
"Top of the line, KP." Ron smiled. "The Flan really knows how to travel in style."
"I don't know if I should really be drinking this. I'm still over-hydrated." Kim groused lowering the bottle from her mouth without drinking. "I mean, seriously, look at my legs!"
"If you insist," Ron said wagging his eyebrows wolfishly at her as he struggled with the cap on his own bottle of water. "Can't get enough of your bondigity gams!"
Kim shook her head and rolled her eyes as she lifted the bottle back to her lips. Kim reflected on how surprisingly laid back she was. How relaxing it was to be back in a potentially dire situation with her boyfriend by her side.
"Owowowowowow!" Rufus exclaimed suddenly. He was gently massaging his enormous front teeth with his tiny hands.
"Are you okay, buddy?" Ron exclaimed. "Oh man, the metal is too hard for his teeth to break through."
"I'm sorry, Rufus," Kim said, "Here, have some of my water."
Rufus thankfully took the bottle from Kim and begin to chug down a few naked mole rat sized "sips."
"Well, what do we do now," Ron asked as he finally succeeded in unscrewing his bottle.
"I'm not sure," Kim admitted. "Okay, let's review the sitch—"
Thump.
Both Kim and Ron's eyes were drawn to the cockpit's floor were Rufus had collapsed and was now snoring soundly next to Kim's knocked over water bottle that was quickly emptying its contents across the cockpit's floor.
Ron swiftly picked Rufus up and listened to the little guy's chest. He was fine, just knocked out soundly. Ron gently placed him into his cargo pocket. Ron screwed the top back on his bottle. Tightly.
"Did you?" he asked Kim.
She shook her head 'no.'
"You were saying, KP?" Ron prompted.
"Yeah, I don't believe they want to kill us."
"Yeah, they would have put flesh-eating acid or something in the bottles instead of knock-out drugs." Ron agreed.
"Or they would have just crashed the plane." Kim suggested.
"Oh, yeah. That too."
"But I have no idea what it is that they do have planned." Kim said. "They just seem to be sitting there. Are they waiting for something?"
"You know, KP, I was thinking about that Star Conflicts movie, you know the first one, well, not Chapter One, but the first one? Where that big ship sucks the tiny one into it's ... uh ...belly?"
"I was just looking at that plane, Ron," Kim said shaking her head, "and there isn't any thing odd about that plane's," here she slightly rolled her eyes, "belly."
"Well, what's that?" Ron said gesturing out of the window behind her.
"What?"
There was something extending from the side of the larger plane toward the side of their jet. No, make that four somethings. They looked like robotic arms, even equipped with hands at the end. Each one looked like it was snaking out to grasp the smaller plane.
"This is so not good." Kim and Ron said in unison.
Neither one thought about jinxing the other. Ron didn't because he was too frightened. Kim didn't because any soda on board that she might win from Ron would most likely be drugged as well.
XI.
Santayana suddenly charged Yori. Yori evaded the his flying attack by crouching to one knee at the last possible second.
As soon as Santayana landed he did a black flip and surprised Yori by forcing his feet into her still turned back. She was forced face first into the dirt floor. Other than being covered in red dust and having the wind knocked out of her, she was okay.
Honorably, Santayana held off his attack. He stood, in a fighting stance near Darwin's still unconscious form, patiently waiting for his opponent to right herself.
"You have been training, Santayana-san," she said she got to her feet. "You are much swifter then when we previously met."
They exchanged bows.
Suddenly, the piercing alarms ceased. Both combatants shook their heads and sighed with relief. They exchanged relieved smiles.
Then Santayana charged. Unfortunately, in his swiftness, he neglected to notice he was standing a half step away from the banana peel in Darwin's unconscious hand. A combination of the viscous properties of the peel with the lack of friction in the dirt floor caused the monkey warrior to fall forwards, not backwards. He landed on his head and was out cold.
Yori sighed and bowed to her fallen opponent. "Perhaps I was mistaken. You seem as swift as when we previously met. Once again, it is your honor to defeat yourself, Santayana-san."
Breaking out of her bow, Yori rushed over to the room's entrance and plucked up her left shoe. She ran deeper into the corridor as she struggled to put it on. She hoped that her fallen enemies had been, at least in theory, guarding something while they were playing cards … with any luck, an exit.
"Ok, is everybody expletive deletedclear on what they're supposed to do?"
Literally, the question seemed to concern both Monkey Fist and Drakken, but, in reality, it was only addressed to Drakken.
"I stay here, baby sit the machine, and wait for you to return." Drakken sighed.
"And …?"
"I don't touch anything." Drakken said in a small voice.
"Wrong! You don't touch a expletive deleted thing!"
Drakken nodded sheepishly. He had never missed Shego so much. Sure, she was ill-tempered, lippy, and caustic, but with a certain flair, a certain charm, a little wit. Potty Mouth was just a bully.
"C'mon, Fisk!" the man bellowed still eyeing Drakken darkly. Finally, he turned and followed Monkey Fist up the corridor.
As they made their way up this first hallway, Monkey Fist became more than a little unnerved by the other man's disturbing habit of tracing the path of Yori's footprints with an imaginary line that extend from the barrel of the readied revolver he held in his fully extended right arm.
XII.
Kim and Ron were each looking out of a small cabin window on either side of their jet's cabin door. The four robotic "arms" had attached themselves to the four corners of the door. Once this had been accomplished, the arms lost their serpent-like flexibility and had become rigid and taunt.
When the first "arm" had made contact with the plane ahead of the others, Kim had rushed from the cockpit to inspect it and any resulting damage to the plane. The sight of his girlfriend, or anyone for that matter, leaping from a pilot's chair and rushing to the back of a plane while the plane was still in flight had given Ron a slight, yet powerful, panic attack. He had started hyperventilating again and reflexively grabbed for his bottle of Tunguska Springs.
"Ron! Are you coming to look at this or what?" Kim asked from the cabin.
"Ah … yeah … ah … just … ah … second … KP."
"Put down the water bottle, Ron." Her voice dictated sternly from the rear of the plane.
"Oh man!" Ron mumbled, smacking himself on the forehead.
"And don't hit yourself!" Kim chided.
Ron reached Kim, who was peering out the window of the cabin door just as the other three "arms" hit.
There was a sudden surge of electricity that briefly flowed over the cabin door. Kim screamed as she received the brunt of a shock that knocked her back a few feet.
"KP!" Ron said in alarm.
"Snap!" she groused, shaking the residual tingling sensation from her hands. "I'm okay, Ron. Stings a bit, but I'm fine. Ow!"
Ron immediately felt better after glancing in his girlfriend's eyes. Not only was she uninjured, she was getting majorly tweaked. That always made Ron more confident (so long as she wasn't tweaked at him).
They stayed away from the door after that and were silently studying the arms from their respective windows. For a good five minutes nothing else happened.
"What do you think, KP?"
"They're planning to board us." Kim said evenly.
"Who's 'they'? Dementor, Shego, Drakken, Monkey Fist, the Seniors, the Beebees?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Ron. The only major freak I think we can rule out is Frugal Lucre."
"I don't know, Kim." Ron said in an earnest voice, "That thing might be a rental. Some companies give sweet deals if you make return drop offs before Saturday morning."
She gave him a semi-annoyed look. "Seriously, Ron, I have a bad feeling that this is somebody new."
"Well, after these newbies board us what do you think … uh, will happen?" Ron asked as confidently as he could.
"They'll kidnap us." She said flatly. "Take us aboard The Unfriendly Skies over there, detatch from our plane and then let it crash. That way, they'll have us, and everyone will think we're dead."
At that very moment, a clear plastic material started extending from numerous points all along the four "arms." Within a few moments it became clear that the material was webbing together, forming a clear tube, or temporary passageway, between the two aircraft.
"Y-you Blue Foxes think you know everything," Ron tried to joke.
"Not everything, Ron," Kim said turning from the window to face him. With concern showing in her voice and eyes, she admitted, "I have no idea how we're going to get out of this."
XIII.
Yori made her way to the rear of the room. There were two doors. There were more footprints before the one on the left, so she immediately when to the one on the right, waved the pass card, and stepped through the opening door.
Less then a minute later, the right doorway opened again. Yori stood with her back to the opening. She was walking backwards, carefully stepping back into her own footprints. Once she made it to back into the anteroom so she was facing both doorways, she gingerly stepped out of her saddle shoes, and, as lightly as possible, placed her stocking-encased feet on the floor. She picked up her shoes, waved the pass card in front on the left door, and, in one gigantic step entered that doorway instead.
On a mission earlier in the year, Ron had told her about a "super freaky" American horror movie called The Shining. Intrigued, Yori had watched the film not too much later.
I must remember to thank Stoppable-san for recommending that movie.
Yori ruefully acknowledged that she also owed a debt to the one Drakken referred to as Potty Mouth. She may not have hit upon her ruse if his foul language hadn't reminded her so vividly of Jack Nicholson's in that same film.
Monkey Fist had initially planned on leading the search, but when it became obvious that his associate was not going to put away his gun, he decided that hanging back might be more … prudent. Especially since his associate was not being particularly prudent with the said weapon.
"I really don't expletive deleted like this, Fisk," he grumbled. "Corridor after expletive deleted corridor, she's taking us expletive deleted closer to The Chamber!"
"That is a most disturbing coincidence," Monkey Fist acknowledged.
"Coincidence, my expletive deleted! She knows, she expletive deleted knows!" Potty Mouth objected, turning around and gesticulating, a little too carelessly for Monkey Fist's tastes, with the gun.
As they made their way through another portal, Monkey Fist tried to reason away the young man's mounting paranoia. "If she has never been here before how would she know how to find it? Or even that it exists?"
"That IS a good question, Fisk. How would she know about it?" he retorted in an even, calm tone.
Although Monkey Fist's goal had been to calm the young man, he did not like this relaxed voice. "Are you suggesting that I would have informed her? You cannot be serious!" he said with unbridled indignation.
"Do you think Huckleberry did?" the other man countered.
"I doubt Drakken even understands what's in there in the first place."
"Fine. Expletive deleted fine!" Potty Mouth spat as he headed through the next set of doors.
Loping behind on his genetically altered hands and feet, the former Lord Fisk could only shake his head and mutter underneath his breath, "Hopelessly and utterly deranged."
Making her way down a flight of stairs, Yori thought, more than once, about turning around. When she had awakened in the lab, she had instinctively felt that she was a few stories, at least, beneath the surface of the earth. And now she was going another level deeper into the earth—surely, this was not the correct path to an exit.
As she was hesitating she heard a sound coming from below. Instead of forcing her decision to return back the way she came, the sound compelled her to continue further.
At the foot of the stairwell, there was yet another door. The floor was also concrete, not dirt. The coolness of its surface bled through her stockings into her feet. She was about to put her shoes back on when she heard a very perplexing noise coming from behind the door.
She stealthily crept into the shadows and waited a few moments. When nothing happened, she carefully approached the door, took a strategic stance and waived the pass card.
Thankfully, the noise produced by the opening of the door was drowned out by the cacophonous wall of sound that came flooding out once it was open. As carefully as … well … as a ninja, Yori made her way through the door and surreptitiously looked upon the noisy and immense room that it revealed.
Two things immediately caught her eye. At the opposite end of the gigantic hanger, the equally immense hanger door opened unguarded onto a desert floor and a star-filled night sky. Two, between her current position and freedom, floating midway between the hanger's floor and ceiling, was the most frightening thing Yori Morituri had ever seen.
XIV.
"Kim."
"Hmm?" Kim was looking intently out the window at the tunnel that was rapidly taking shape between the two planes.
"That sounded a lot like 'I've got nothing.'"
"What?" she quickly turned to face him.
"What you just said. It sounds like you're giving up." Ron said in a determined voice.
"Oh, nonono, Ron! When they come over, they are still going to feel all 16 kinds of kung fu."
"But …" he prodded, serious face in full force.
"I don't know, Ron," she said with a sigh. "We don't have our gear, Wade's being jammed, even Rufus is out of commission and …" she explained, not looking at him.
"Kim," Ron maintained in a level voice. "You can do this. You can save us."
"I guess I need to make a trip to that tree house of yours, huh?" she laughed weakly as she looked back at him. When their eyes met, her words caught in her throat.
His eyes were back to normal. She had had no idea how accustomed she had grown to his kaleidoscopic eyes, but suddenly seeing his "plain" cocoa eyes proved to be quite the jolt for Kim.
"You can do anything, Kim." He said this as a matter of fact. Then the edges of his pupils, ever so gradually, began to break down and swirl again.
"You're right, Ron." She smiled. There's got to be something I can do. She headed back to the cockpit.
"Should I just keep watch," he called after her.
"See if you can do something to slow down our guests," she chimed back.
Ron felt pretty amped because he knew he had just given his BFGF a confidence boost she sorely needed. Energetically, he looked around the cabin for something that might deter whoever or whatever was coming down that tube from Monstro, the killer plane. He immediately seized on the thought of blocking the cabin door and tried to lift the couch he had been sleeping on earlier.
Inside the cockpit, Kim had found a toolbox and was on her knees trying to see if she could pry open the bottom of the control console to locate the control device. She could hear Ron straining and loudly grumbling from the cabin.
"Stupid couch!" Ron said as he reared back to kick the apparently un-budge-able piece of furniture.
"Ron," Kim called out loudly, "what're you doing?"
"I was going to stack all the furniture against the door—you know, buy us a little time," he answered out of breath.
"Ron, they bolt down the furniture on planes."
"Oh … yeah."
And doesn't the cabin door open out anyway? She thought but was too kind to say out loud.
Her luck wasn't going any better. There was a panel beneath the console that definitely looked out of place, like it had been put there quite recently—but it had been welded fast on all sides. Her tools were useless.
If only we could reach Wade!
XV.
Yori found it very difficult to draw her eyes away from the floating monstrosity that filled a third of the immense hanger. Fortunately, a flurry of very loud voices below her brought her out of her mesmerized daze. In a flash, she hid behind a stack of large canisters just to the right of the door.
She tried hard to focus upon both the details of the hanger and the snippets of conversation that floated up from the floor below. However, she was distracted by an odd smell that seemed to be emanating from the canisters. It was a warm, dank smell. A smell that seemed completely foreign to her … seemed. If it reminded her of anything, it was of nightmares. She had never come across the stuff among the daytime coordinates of her life, still, down here, back here in the warm dark, among ancient, dusty shadows in a building she had never been before she felt that she could speak its name if given the time, the time for her voice to unlock its foul and permeating secret.
Yori shook her head and then held her nose. If she were going to escape, she would have to stay focused.
Monkey Fist was loathed to admit it, but there might have been something to his cohort's paranoia. At every possible fork in the path, Yori had chosen the portal that led her closer and closer to The Chamber. As they followed her tracks to the entrance of The Antechamber (what Potty Mouth had dubbed The Monkey House), Monkey Fist had a sinking suspicion of what the opened portal would reveal.
All three monkey ninjas, who were still massaging the wounded parts of their bodies, cowered in fear when they saw the look in their master's eyes. A few seconds into The Stare, and Darwin scurried to the table and hastily starting packing away their cards.
"Playing 'Go Fish' again, I see? You are my three champions and this is what I get!!" he screamed, kicking one of Darwin's uneaten bananas across the room.
Ignoring the "apes" and their monkey lord, Potty Mouth rushed to the back of the room. Sure enough, the young ninja's tracks led him right to the final two doorways. He seethed when he saw that her tracks went straight into The Chamber.
"Expletive deleted!" he bellowed as he waived the pass card and rushed headlong into the room on the right.
"How are your experiments progressing?" one of the voices below her scoffed.
"Well, I think he might like one or two of our findings," another voice responded with some indignation.
"Like?!" a third voice broke in acidly, "what does he ever like?"
A small chorus of other voices laughed bitterly in answer to this question.
Still holding her nose, Yori surveyed the hanger. She was on a catwalk that inched along the walls of the hanger in a rough U-shape whose center point was the door through which she had come. Each of the "arms" of the "U" ended in a long staircase that seemed to bottom out directly in front of the open hanger door. As long as she didn't do something foolish, she should be able to sneak out of the complex without too much trouble. The voices below seemed pretty engaged in their fruitless bickering—at least engaged enough not to notice a ninja making a quick exit. Of course, once she was outside the complex, she had no idea what her next move would be.
Deciding that she wasn't going to learn anything of value from the bicker-fest below, she started to make her way across the catwalk. She was still holding her shoes in her left hand. For a second she had considered putting her shoes back on but then realized that they might make too much noise against the metal beneath her feet, especially if she had to run at any point in her escape.
As she crept out from behind the canisters, she released her nose. She had not gone five feet before her ears caught a voice from below that froze her in her tracks.
"Seriously, dude, this Hephaestus stuff is heavy, man, no joke, seriously!"
"Ed Lispky-san!" Yori exclaimed under her breath.
"I thought your cousin developed it, Ed. How complicated could it be."
"No, man, Cousin Drew didn't develop it! He just jacked it from some other science dude and fine-tuned it, seriously."
"Didn't Drakken give you those notes of his on the technology?"
"Sure did, but, dude, his notebook is like thicker than my high school yearbook, seriously. And his handwriting is smaller and sloppier than mine even!"
"You went to high school?" one of the voices asked incredulously.
"For a year."
There was a pause in the conversation.
"Seriously."
How did Drakken and Lipsky-san manage to again steal Possible-san's technology?
Like most of the citizens of the world, Yori had been quite relieved a week earlier when it was announced that in addition to capturing Drakken, Team Possible had helped GJ confiscate all the remaining rogue elements of the pilfered Hephaestus Project.
"Of course, Ed, the most crucial point right now," a rather sober voice interjected, "the most vital thing is whether or not that technology can bond with Imipolex G."
Before Yori could begin to puzzle out what any of this might mean, her ears registered the shrieking of monkeys.
She turned and, to her horror, saw Darwin, Plucky, Santayana and Monkey Fist charging across the catwalk toward her. More distressing than this was the sight of the young loutish man entering the hanger behind them.
He had a broad, lazy, sinister smile on his lips. And twirling around the index finger of his right hand was a revolver.
XVI.
"So," Kim began, "do you want the 'good news' or the 'bad news' first?"
Ron, sitting in the co-pilot's chair, in an effort to focus on the bright side of things and not let his mounting nervousness overtake him, had been focusing on his girlfriend's extremely attractive legs and seemed, at first glance, to not be listening.
"Ron?" Kim said, tweaked when she started to realize what he was doing.
"The bad news, Kim," Ron said seriously as his eyes locked with hers.
"Well," Kim said in a deflated tone, "unless we can somehow get Wade's assistance, I'm not going to be able to break the control signal."
"The good news?" he asked hopefully.
"I know that I can so fly this plane," she said with resolve. When she had been unable to break open the mismatched panel beneath the console, Kim had focused on familiarizing herself with the instruments, gauges, and controls of the plane. Given her extreme brightness and the surging confidence Ron had given her, the plane didn't seem like more than she could handle … if she got the chance to handle it.
"Of course," she continued," that depends on …"
"The bad news." Ron sighed. He looked out Kim's window and blew a stray hair out of his eye. "Oh man, here we go."
Kim turned and looked. Sure enough, a small cabin door had opened on the side of the larger plane, piercing its black surface with an oval of eerie red light. Who lights the interior of their plane with puce bulbs? The color of the light made the plane's cabin door look like a small wound in its side. The light was momentarily blocked as a shadowy figured passed out of the door and made its way into the passage tube. Then another and another and another.
"Well," Kim said readying her fists, "are you ready for some smack monkey my Mystical Monkey BF?" She smiled at Ron. As dismal as the sitch was, she always enjoyed engaging villains with her BFBF at her side.
Ron gave her a few monkey hoots and kung fu poses. "Right with you, KP!" He smiled back as confidently as he could under the circumstances.
They kissed briefly and then walked back into the cabin hand in hand. They positioned themselves in front of the cabin door and waited for their "guests."
"Ron," Kim asked, "do you think your new powers might be able to help?"
"Maybe, KP. I just wish I could turn them on whenever I wanted—they just seem to come and go. I mean, I couldn't even move the couch earlier." He sounded really depressed.
"I guess we'll see." She said and gave him a smile and a reassuring wink.
"All things considered, KP," Ron said in as breezy a tone as he could muster "I would really like to have Yori's marker right now."
"Marker?" She asked quizzical.
"Paint-ball gun," he explained.
Kim arched a surprised eyebrow and exclaimed, "Yori is into paintball?"
"Oh, you have no idea, KP!" Ron enthused. "She is like the grand master champion paintballer in all of Japan!"
"Really?" Kim was definitely surprised by this news. She had never given much thought to what Yori's hobbies might be, but paintball was certainly not one she would have imagined in a million years of the polite, soft-spoken ninja.
"Yeah, a few Yamanouchi missions back … I'm not sure how the subject came up, but she started talking about it and she couldn't stop –for like hours! She's got mad paintball fu skills."
"Wow, I never would have guessed!"
"Oh, that's nothing," Ron continued, "You should hear her go on about punk rock!"
"What!"
Their conversation on their mutual and, to their knowledge, still kidnapped friend was interrupted by the sound of metal clanking against metal from the outer side of the cabin door.
"Do you want me to get that, KP?" Ron asked with a goofy smile.
"I'm thinking not so much," Kim answered.
They gave each other an "are-you-ready" smile and got into fighting stances.
Beep-be-bee-beep.
The Roncom went off.
TBC ...