Many thanks to Mr. Wizard, Eddy13, Katsumara, CajunBear73, MrDrP, and campy for their reviews, as well as some excellent ideas and suggestions. And to all of you out there who continue to read. Now hold on to your ticket stubs for this week's musical mayhem, The Long Goodbye, or, When The Fat Lady Sings ... And Sings ... And Sings ...
Kim and Ron each made one last effort at escaping from their bindings, but the high-quality speaker wire known as Monster Cable was too strong for them. No matter how much Kim flexed or contracted her muscles, the flexibility of the wire kept her tightly secured.
The lugubrious music of the finale from Mahler's Ninth Symphony began, the rich string playing immediately tugging at Kim's each and every heartstring. Its depressing mood was further enhanced by the insidious effect of the Mahlerinator.
As the videoscreen began showing the "Never Let Go" scene from the movie Titanic, Kim immediately began to feel the device's devilish influence. But having already been exposed to its infamous progenitor, she was prepared for its devious effects.
She grunted, "Oh, man, this thing is working like the Moodulator set on Despair! But I'm the girl who can do anything, and that includes resisting this!"
As soon as the finale concluded, the dark somber chords of The Song of the Earth began their sad tolling. Ron was soon breaking down, swept away by the music's unremitting gloom.
He lamented, "Kim, this music would be so cool if it weren't so incredibly depressing!"
As the music played on, pictures of sad farewells scrolled by in endless succession. Couples saying goodbye at airports and train stations, bus depots and cab stands. The montage was capped off by the last scene in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart bidding his sad adieu to his former love, the beautiful Ingrid Bergman, now married to a brave resistance fighter in World War Two. As he wiped away a tear from her face, he uttered the immortal line, "Here's looking at you, kid." She slowly turned and boarded the plane, never to be seen by him again.
Under the powerful influence of the Mahlerinator, Ron began to imagine himself in the part of Bogey, playing an identical final farewell scene. But instead of bidding au revoir to Bergman's tragic character, he found himself saying a sad goodbye to Kim as she left with Josh Mankey.
With sorrow in his voice, he began, "If that plane leaves and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but maybe by the end of next week. On second thought, probably not until Regionals are over. But maybe kinda soon, and for the rest of your life."
She sadly looked back at him with her huge beautiful green eyes. "But Ron, what about us?"
He wistfully replied, "We'll always have Middleton."
As a tear trickled down her cheek, she responded, "But when I said I would never leave you ..."
"And you never will. KP, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a plate of warmed-over Nacos in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Here's looking at you, Kim."
As he bent his head down to kiss her, the scene faded, and Ron likewise faded into a semiconscious stupor.
Deprived of sleep and under the terrific emotional pressure of the Mahlerinator, Kim similarly began to hallucinate as yet another blockbuster movie's ending began to play.
Kim found herself at a funeral, along with Ron. He slowly began, "There's something I've wanted to tell you, KP. When I was up there on top of that light pole last night and I thought I was gonna die, there was only one person I was thinking of. It was you, Kim. I kept thinking, I hope I make it through this so I can see Kim Possible's face one more time."
Kim brightened up. "Really?"
"Yeah. There's only one girl who's always been there for me, who makes me feel like I'm more than I ever thought I could be. That I'm more than just the sidekick. And that's OK. The truth is, I love you. I love you so much, Kim."
Kim hesitated before replying. "I can't."
Ron looked shocked. "You can't what?"
She quickly backpedaled, "Tell you everything. I mean, there's so much to tell."
Ron looked gloomily down at his shoes. "Yeah, there's so much to tell."
Kim took a deep breath and continued, "I want you to know that I'll always be there for you, Ron. I promise you that. I'll always be your friend."
"Only a friend, Kim Possible?" He shot her the best imitation of a Puppy-Dog Pout that he could manage.
She winced, but resisted the look. "Sorry, Ron. That's all I have to give."
As Ron dejectedly turned away, she discovered that she indeed had feelings for Ron, but also found that she wasn't willing to allow those feelings to get in the way of her destiny as a world saver. She turned away as well, sadly resigning herself to her lonely fate.
"Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: 'With great power comes great responsibility.' This is my gift, and my curse. Who am I? I'm Kim Possible."
Overcome with with both emotion and fatigue, Kim lapsed into a fitful half-sleep.
As Kim and Ron both lingered in their torpid state, Kim's angel persona suddenly appeared. "Sob … now I'll never get to go to the Junior Prom. I'll never graduate from high school, or go to college, OR get married. Waahh!"
Her devilish counterpart soon followed, but she seemed more frustrated than depressed. "Oh, suck it up, Goody-Two-Shoes. Now I'll never get my hottie, either."
Ron's angel also popped into being, sadly drooping his tiny head as he addressed Ron's restless form. "You should have at least asked Kim to the prom while you had the chance. But it's too late now. I don't think that even my power of imagination can get us out of this mess."
His evil avatar then materialized over his other shoulder. Like Kim's evil personification, he was little affected by the Mahlerinator, but even he realized that time was running out.
The masked devil grimly remarked, "I'm forced to agree with my sniveling counterpart here. But it serves you right for not finding an evil sidekick to help you. Even one that doesn't know her place would be better than nothing!"
At that moment, The Farewell concluded. A medley of the world's saddest pop tunes then began playing, accompanied by scenes from the saddest animations ever filmed.
Bambi was shown crying for his mother after the hunter's shot is heard, accompanied by Karen Carpenter's mournful Goodbye To Love. Snow White lay in her glass coffin as the Seven Dwarves tearfully watched over her, while Evanescence's Amy Lee crooned My Immortal. Simba as the young Lion King futilely tried to arouse the still form of his father, Mufasa, as Alone Again, Naturally softly played in the background.
Kim gasped, "Ron! We've got ... to … resist …" But it was becoming progressively harder to fight back against the beguiling and overwhelming power of the Mahler Effect. But their intense trial had only just begun.
Even Rufus was bawling by now, as they all watched an SPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan bemoaning the fate of abandoned pets, their deep sad eyes staring out at them while Eric Carmen sang his hit song, All By Myself.
Ron now reacted with anger at this intense emotional manipulation. "Oh! Oh! That is just so sick and wrong!"
The finale to Team Possible's musical torment now arrived in the form of Wagner's moving Love Death from his opera Tristan und Isolde. After Tristan's demise, Isolde sings an incredibly sad, and incredibly long farewell to her one, true love. Kim recalled studying this particular aria in Mr. Barkin's Music History class, the one he took over from Mrs. Sangfroid after her unfortunate accident with that falling piano. Isolde wasn't just singing about Tristan's tragic passing, but bewailing that they'd be separated for all eternity as well.
Kim's voice rasped, "Cheerful guy, that Wagner."
As the 300 pound soprano continued her doleful serenade, Kim realized that the aria was drawing to a close. And with it, Team Possible's demise as well.
With hot tears streaming down his face, Ron dismally observed, "Well, as the saying goes, it's not over until the fat lady sings, KP. And when she's done, it's the last roundup for us, too!"
Rufus added his own plaintive moan in agreement.
Kim blubbered, "Oh, Ron! … sob … I don't know how much more of this I can take … choke … When will this sadness end?"
As Kim's despondency continued to increase, she held on to the slim hope that somehow she'd come up with a last-minute way out of their predicament. She continued to resist the overwhelming urge to give in to despair.
"Can't let Maestro win ... musn't give up ..."
She began speaking two sentences over and over to help her focus. "I'm not doing this for me, I'm doing this for the world. I'm the girl who can do anything..."
Gritting her teeth, she continued to repeat her mantra. But with a final flood of tears and one last sob, she finally broke.
"This ... is ... hopeless! And it's all my fault … I'm so sorry, Ron!"
Kim looked up at him with her wide, sorrowful eyes, red-rimmed with her nearly non-stop crying. She began speaking what might very well be her last words on this earth.
"Ron …" she croaked.
With his last bit of strength, he whispered, "Right here, Kim."
Their eyes met and locked together, a world of feeling silently passing between them.
"Ron, I … I'll … always … love …"
But before she could complete her final desperate profession, a gigantic pop was heard, followed by a shower of sparks. The music stopped and the screen went completely blank, as they all were plunged into near total darkness.
Kim and Ron slowly began to recover from their emotional stupor. As if awakening from a terrible dream, Ron asked, "KP, what happened? Is … is that it? Is it finally over? Are we ..."
Kim also began to bounce back from her Mahlerinator-altered state of mind. She looked up above her, where a single light shone down, reflecting upon the pool of water that had collected on the floor beneath them. As the water continued seeping into the Mahlerinator, small sparks from the short-circuit flickered back at them like tiny fireflies.
Continuing to recover, Kim responded, "Yes, Ron, it's over. And no, we're not dead. It looks like Dr. Maestro failed to insulate his equipment from water … the water from our tears. It leaked under his protective coating and shorted it out."
She noticed that all the electronic equipment glistened with dampness as well.
"And all of the moisture from our sweat and breathing seems to have collected on the control panel, too, which seems to have helped as well."
Ron took in a deep breath and happily began to sing, "It Was Con-den-saaa-tion I Know …"
Rufus happily giggled, "Oh, brother …"
Ron sniggered back, "Well, that's what Dr. Maestro gets for sealing us in here like hermits!"
Kim smiled back, "That's hermetically sealed, Caruso, but close enough."
She thankfully realized that she actually could smile again, especially after their harrowing sitch. But they were still tightly bound and unable to escape.
"Now we have to figure out a way to get down from here. But how?"
A thought popped into her mind, providing her with a glimmer of hope.
"The alarm disabler! It's still in my back pocket. But will it work on the release mechanism that's holding us up?"
She continued to wriggle, but was still too tightly wound in the speaker wire to work a hand free and activate the device.
Ron shrugged as he also tried again to struggle, now beginning to swing gently back and forth. "Dunno, Kim. But right now anything's worth a try."
Kim brightened up at a possible solution. "Ron, your swinging just gave me an idea."
She began by bending at her waist, slowly at first, then progressively faster. As she did so, she began to swing ever so slightly. Continuing her gentle rhythm, she swung back and forth in a progressively wider arc. The room was small enough that she would soon hit the wall behind her, and hopefully with just enough force to activate the alarm disabler.
"Almost there …"
With one final sway, she hit the wall behind her with her back pocket. The alarm disabler activated, instantly scanning for any electronic frequency in the immediate vicinity, and dampening it.
With a satisfying click, the control mechanism for their bindings switched off, dropping them all to the floor. In another few moments, they had finally extricated themselves.
Kim breathed a small sigh of relief. "Okay, now to find a way out of here."
She looked for the handle to the door, but found none. She gave the door a powerful kick, but got nothing for her efforts except a twisted foot.
"Oww! That hurt."
Ron volunteered, "Uh, Kim, didn't Maestro say he sealed the room in something unbreakable?"
Kim grimaced, "Yeah, but where there's a will, there's a way. We just have to keep trying."
Ron's face broke out in an all-knowing grin, as the perfect solution popped into his mind. "Yeah, KP. The room may be unbreakable, but nothing in the world can resist the power of..."
He whipped a tiny foil packet out of his pocket. "Bueno Nacho Extra Hot Five-Alarm Sauce! I've been saving this for a special occasion, and I think this is it, KP."
He ripped off the end of the packet and squeezed a tiny drop of the powerful hot sauce into the door lock. With a tiny wisp of smoke, the lock dissolved and the door gently swung open.
"And Viola! We're free!"
"That's Voilà, Ron, but thanks."
Kim grabbed her Kimmunicator from the floor and plugged its USB plug into the alarm disabler's battery port. "Now to find out exactly where we are. Hey Wade, what's the sitch?"
Wade quickly answered, worry etched on his face. "Kim! Are you okay? Where have you been? When I couldn't reach you guys, I feared the worst."
Kim assured him, "We're fine, Wade. Just ferociously depressed thanks to Dr. Maestro's Mahlerinator."
Wade looked very perplexed. "His what-inator?"
"Never mind, Wade, we'll explain later. Can you get a fix on us and tell us where we are?"
"No problem, Kim. But for some reason, I wasn't able to get a GPS lock on you guys until just now. I couldn't even get a fix on Ron's chip."
Kim quickly made a furious slashing motion to keep Wade from spilling about Ron's secret embedded microchip he used for tracking Ron.
Ron gave Kim a curious look. "Chip? What chip?"
Thinking fast, Wade babbled, "Yeah! Bueno Nacho's salsa and chips are so strong, I can track them on you even from several miles away!"
Ron nodded in understanding. "Yeah, that sauce is pretty wicked stuff. It just helped us burn our way out of Dr. Maestro's Gloom Room of Doom."
Wade breathed a small sigh of relief that his little subterfuge had worked. "That's great, Ron. Okay, you guys are only five blocks from Zany Ziggy's Used Car Lot. And since it's almost noon, you guys better get over to the Middleton High sports field, pronto. The competition is just about to begin, and none of the schools have been able to come up with Dr. Maestro's ransom yet. I think they're all counting on you to stop him, Kim."
Kim growled, "We're planning on it, Wade. Maestro's just tried to make us dance to his tune, but now it's our turn to make him sing the blues!"
Ron wholeheartedly agreed. "Right with you, KP!"
Rufus chimed in as well with an eager "Uh-huh! Uh-huh! Let's do it!"
They rushed into the light of day, their trial of woe now behind them. Kim huffed, "I just hope we're not too late."
Stay tuned for next week's episode, And The Band Played On!
TBC ...