Ron walked down the hall with a gait that was an ungainly cross between an unsteady mosey and a staggering march. He wore his mission clothes; a now almost retro-chic Kim-style look - black turtleneck and olive grey cargo pants - but stains and scratches marred the material, he was missing a glove, and his combat boots were coated to the ankles with a layer of crusted and congealed mud that was flaking off as he moved.
A jetpack rode on his shoulders. One wing of the device was retracted into the body of the pack and laid flush against his scapula. The other blue-green wing remained fully extended, the odd camber in the air foil and the several rough holes piercing the body of it explaining why it had failed to mirror the behavior of its twin.
The blue-green metal of the pack was echoed in the protective helmet on his head, the design more reminiscent of a brimless batting helmet than a pilot's or skydiver's. Rough clumps of blonde hair poked out in all directions around the edges of the headgear, but his hair was short enough and the helmet covered enough that it simply appeared to be an odd fringe, rather than truly appearing messy.
Despite the damage to his flying rig, all of this was relatively normal - for Ron, anyway. It was the other elements of his appearance that caused his fellow students to fall silent and flee.
Few made it through the entire catalogue of injuries he sported before fleeing. Most noted only one or two before choosing not to linger.
The left leg of Ron's pants was torn. As his leg moved beneath the cloth, a sharp slash of red flickered in and out of visibility through the gaping hole in the fabric against the pale backdrop of his flesh.
His shirt, which when he'd bought off the rack at Smarty Mart (aisle 10, next to the emergency pants) could be tucked into his cargo pants, now resembled Kim's midriff baring style in the front. And in the area revealed by the missing cloth, four parallel slashes in the center of a pale red burn crossed the soft flesh of his stomach, one line roughly bisecting the small indentation of his navel.
A small slash ran from the middle of Ron's nose to just beneath the swollen outer edge of his left eye, following the curve of his cheekbone. The eyelid of that blackened and bruised eye randomly twitched, and from the odd movement it was clear that the function was impaired such that it wouldn't properly close. Whether it was from the cut, or from some injury hidden under his helmet, that side of his windburned face from forehead to jawline was clotted with a ghastly profusion of dried and drying blood.
Ron looked neither right nor left as moved down the middle of the hallway, and seemed to take no notice of the mad, silent scramble to get out of his path - and away from him. He simply moved ever onward down the rapidly emptying corridor.
Kim Possible was a young heroine - smart, pretty, popular, and just about every other superlative that teens could think of - almost to the point of approaching perfection. Ron... Well to put it simply, was not, and did not.
Kim Possible saved the world, defeated villains, and usually did so without breaking a nail, bailing on cheerleading practice (often) or getting hurt (much). Ron on the other hand, was much more common, and whether they would admit it or not, the other students knew subconsciously that their own condition would be much closer to Ron's usual than Kim's if they were to go along on one of Team Possible's missions.
Ron, bloodstained and battered as he walked down the hallway, was a vision of their own mortality, a glimpse of how unforgiving and brutal the real world outside the protected enclave of Middleton High could be. Was it any wonder the other students fled? Or that they chose to pretend he didn't exist?
Word of his passage seemed to have spread - or at the very least, the time between classes neared expiration, and the hallways he traversed became empty. As Ron neared the math wing, he had to pass through the infamous D-Hall - site of many an incident of hazing, humiliation, extortion and the infliction of pain. As the bell signalling the start of the next period rang, he continued on, his gaze riveted straight ahead, and his expression as empty and emotionless as his cold, brown eyes.
Ron had nearly reached the end of the passage, when a pair of young men stepped into his path. "Does widdle Ronnie have a boo- boo?" the smaller of the two - smaller even then Ron himself, though his companion more than made up for the difference in sizes - taunted, before chuckling evilly enough to satisfy even Señor Senior, Senior.
For the first time, Ron stopped, and his eyes flickered briefly from one to the other before returning to contemplating the end of the hallway, looking through the obstructions in his path as though they were beneath notice. "Move," he commented, neither concern nor anger coloring his voice. "Now."
As the small thug chortled, the larger cracked his knuckles and grinned. Ron was a popular target since he never fought back and was outside all the usual protections - when he wasn't with Kim, anyway - but she was nowhere in sight. "This is gonna be sweet," the little one gloated, his eyes alight with malicious glee as his friend stepped forward.
Ron didn't seem to move, but suddenly the large thug was lying prone on the ground, unmoving and unresponsive. "Move," Ron repeated, his voice as emotionless as before.
Eyes widening, the small thug looked back and forth between his friend and their usual victim, their roles completely reversed. "How...?" he stammered. "Wha...?" he began, then quickly jumped aside to flatten himself against the row of lockers lining the hall as Ron took a step forward.
As Ron trod uncaringly on the fallen body of one of the thugs who had terrorized him since elementary school, his expression remained empty. He neither tried to avoid stepping on the prone body, nor did he make an attempt to press down harder than necessary or grind his feet into his flesh, he merely crossed over the obstacle and continued on his way, ignoring both the conscious and unconscious hooligan once they no longer blocked his progress.
Down the empty hallway he walked, hearing snippets from the lectures taking place in the classrooms he passed, but he didn't pause in his slow progress. When at last he reached his destination, Ron opened the door and stepped inside.
"Now, since the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection..."
Ron ignored Ms. Whisp's lecture as he walked through the roughly parallel rows and columns of desks. As the class sank into a stunned silence, staring at the bloody vision that had intruded into the mundane world of Geometry, Ron moved an empty chair and stepped into the space he created directly in front of one of the students' desk.
For a moment, the student didn't seem to notice Ron's arrival as he continued to write down what the math teacher was saying, but eventually he noticed the odd feeling in the room, and the presence in front of him. He looked up and up the length of Ron's body, the variance in their postures exaggerating the height difference, and his eyes widened with each injury his glance crossed on its way. Finally, he was staring with eyes agape directly into Ron's.
"Mankey." Ron's voice was quiet and emotionless, but his posture was anything but.