Notes: Gotta love reviews... I'll consolidate the ones I've received to date in a couple points of clarification.
I know the first part is dry - pedantic even. I warned about that in the author's notes. Part of the reason for it is for the purpose of the one line kicker at the end (for the dramatic tension and the shock of the shift), and the other reason is for the backdrop for the rest of the story - both why the students react as they do, and as the baseline for starting the events. It's one of the reasons why I named it a prologue, and not chapter 1.
This story is basically about consequences - both those that are intended, and those that are unintended. Put Chaos Theory, Kafka, koans, and Walt's cryogenic vault in a blender and hit purée... The butterfly flaps its wings and a hurricane is spawned in the Gulf of Mexico... Monkey Fist tries to become the monkey master, and makes Ron fulfil the Monkey Prophecy of the Mystical Monkey Monk... For wont of a nail, the war was lost... Expect nothing (or almost nothing) in this to be quite as simple as it might appear at first glance - twists, conventions, and expectations can (and will) be stood on their heads. Things are rarely cut and dried in the real world, and motivations (not to mention cause and effect) are often the murkiest of all.
A simple revenge-fic was the starting point - Ron shows up at school despite being beat to hell and gets revenge for Kim - but those have been done before (not for this reason though, to the best of my knowledge - but I have seen ones for rape, pregnancy, death, paralysis, crippling injury, etc)... From that starting point is where things developed.
After it all plays out, depending upon how long this goes (and again, many works in progress, limited writing time), there will be a complex chain of events, actions, changes, decisions, etc. all traceable back to one fateful decision. Which again, goes back to the dry tone of the first part: the real world is where the freak-fighting takes place and the danger lives, but the school is safe... or so it is thought.
Hopefully this will clarify some of my thinking without spoiling the specifics of the plot too much... I tried to do it in the initial author's notes, but perhaps I was too sparse since I was trying not to give too many spoilers - and here I was afraid I'd given away a big plot twist or two in there...
Anyway, I'm glad so many folks took my advice and kept reading past the prologue and I hope you continue to read and enjoy this story... And don't worry, Kim will indeed show up.
Enjoy, and keep R&R!
"Ron," Josh replied quietly in turn. "You ok?" he asked, unable to tear his eyes away from the blood on the teen's face.
Ms. Whisp, finally realizing something was amiss, turned from the chalkboard. Startled, she gaped at Ron's appearance. "Ronald?" she demanded.
Ignoring the teacher, Ron simply asked Josh, "What were you doing Friday?"
Josh blinked in confusion. "What?"
Ron leaned down and rested his palms on the front corners of Josh's desk, his fingers curling around the lip to grip the desktop tightly. Without changing his expression or tone of voice, he asked again, "What were you doing Friday?"
The rest of the students slowly edged away from the confrontation, the muted scraping of chairs and desks a bizarre counterpoint to the tension as they filtered through the obstacles, putting space and barriers between themselves and the tense situation. Only Josh, Tara - who was seated directly behind Josh, and Monique - who had joined the teacher in approaching the stand-off - remained near Ron.
"What happened, Ronald?" Ms. Whisp asked quietly as she neared him, her voice cautiously nonconfrontational. After the fiasco of his supposed mathematical genius (which ultimately turned out to really be Rufus') Ronald was hardly her favorite student, but even she could see that he was in bad shape.
"Drakken. Rain forest. Evil lair. Death ray. No big." Ron enunciated carefully, his voice remaining emotionless as his eyes remained locked to Josh's.
Monique ducked around to move in front of her teacher and demanded, "What's wrong with you?" as she grabbed Ron by his left forearm.
Ron's emotionless expression briefly cracked as one corner of Josh's desk broke off in his bare hand. An unsteady irregular breath hissed from between his suddenly clenched teeth as his knees appeared to buckle, but somehow Ron managed to remain silent and on his feet.
Flinching, Monique looked down at her hand as she released Ron's arm. In the harsh light of the fluorescents overhead, the palm of her hand glittered with moisture. Carefully, watching Ron's reaction as he visibly struggled to regain his composure as she did, she cautiously pulled his sleeve up his arm.
As the sleeve moved, and more of his forearm was revealed, it uncovered a burn - one with several popped blisters where she'd incautiously grabbed him. She winced as the fabric of his shirt clung to the wound, some of the fibers appearing to have melted into his skin, but Ron simply ignored her as he visibly regathered his frayed composure.
Josh stared at the broken corner of his desk that Ron clutched in his hand. The material of the desks - some space-age composite material designed to resist wear and tear, vandalism, and everything else that rambunctious teenagers could possibly do to it (intentionally or not) - had snapped like a twig in Ron's grasp. "Shouldn't you be at the nurse's office?" he cautiously suggested. "Or maybe the hospital?" Josh forced his eyes away from the broken fragment of his desktop only to find his eyes drawn to a long crease in the side of Ron's helmet where the blue green paint was missing, revealing the grey-black of the carbon fiber weave it was constructed from. "Is that from a bullet?" he wondered, his eyes widening still more.
Monique released Ron's shirt and surreptitiously wiped the serum from her hand onto the edge of a desk. "Ewww..." she thought, then flinched at how unthinkingly she'd reacted to Ron. A sharp crackle coming from Ron's back made her step back a pace.
Wisps of white vapor emanated from one of the pair of blackened and partially enclosed exhaust nozzles secreted in the base of the jetpack - but only from one of them. A series of small holes in the body of the pack (on the right side - the one that still had the wing extended) in a rough diagonal up the side of the mechanism offered a glimpse into the interior - and emitted an occasional crackle as sparks and intermittent electrical discharges erupted from inside the machine. The back of Ron's pants on that side were stained dark, and the faint tang of aviation fuel was gradually became more noticeable.
Ms. Whisp edged closer, partially stymied in her attempt by the extended jetpack wing and the displaced chair, as she said, "That's a very good idea, Ronald. Why don't we take you to..." she fell silent as Ron dropped the broken piece of the desk, the clatter shockingly loud in the silence of the classroom as it bounced off the remaining part of the desktop before falling to the tiled floor.
"Have to take care of something first," Ron muttered, not turning away from Josh. He leaned forward, looming threateningly over the still seated artist.
Josh blinked, and he opened his mouth to answer, but was suddenly struck mute as something else seized his attention. Around Ron's head, a shimmering halo of distortion like a heat mirage was barely visible. In the midst of this flickering aura, which Josh thought was probably created by leakage of some kind from the damaged jetpack, a pair of spectral, faintly luminous will o' the wisps danced in the air above Ron's shoulders. They appeared to glow very, very faintly green and moved against the waves of distortion - which confused him even more, since he would have thought they were caused by the same thing. "I..." he began, then stopped, his throat seizing as the glowing spheres pulsed momentarily brighter.
"Friday was Bonnie's party," Tara abruptly interjected into the ominous silence that stretched far too long for comfort. "Josh was there with Amber, and I was there with..." she flinched as Ron's eyes met hers. She seemed to shrink into herself, hiding behind Josh even as he sank lower into his own seat.
Ron's expression shifted, confusion flickering across his face as his eyes shifted between Josh and Tara. He stood infinitesimally straighter, his posture becoming a meager bit less threatening as he tried to make sense of what he'd heard. "But Kim...?" he whispered, more to himself then to the others.
"Kim? What? Where's Kim?" Monique asked, a moment of panic suddenly seizing her. "She hasn't been in school since..." "Oh, no," she breathed under her breath as panic gripped her, and she began to fear the worst. Her hands clenched into fists as she fought the sudden urge to grab Ron again and shake him until she knew the complete story.
"With her mom," Ron answered offhandedly, not even aware he'd done so as his brow furrowed in confusion. The answer to the question that had haunted him had seemed so simple - and if there was one person's schedule that he knew better than his own or Kim's (thanks to her crush-driven stalking of him, and his own independent collection of information about the artist in an attempt to be a loyal and supportive friend), it was Josh's, which made the resolution even clearer. But the certainty that had been his support and the basis of his resolve was fracturing as what had seemed so simple was revealed to be more complex. "Josh was out with Amber? I thought he was going out with Tara...? I know it had to be someone, though I can't believe... I'd have thought she would have told... But if it was anyone, I would have thought KP would have..."
Monique blinked as she thought about Ron's unthinking reply, "She's at the hospital?" she shot back, her eyes widening.
A low susurrus of speculation arose from the watching students, but Ron didn't answer or move, and even Ms. Whisp seemed set aback by Monique's reply. Thoughts and feelings swirled through Ron's mind in a confused maelstrom as he confronted something he hadn't expected and the mix was throwing his rigidly imposed equilibrium into severe imbalance.
"Kim was at the party with some boy I didn't recognize," Tara said slowly, cautiously peering over Josh's shoulder. Her expression was still nervous, but it was also thoughtful as she glanced back and forth between Ron and Monique.
Josh slowly licked his lips in nervousness, the tip of his tongue crinkling as it crossed over a few stray hairs that arose from the bushy thatch of his tiny goatee. Despite a sense of foreboding at providing the information, he clarified Tara's explanation, "It was that new kid - Erik."
Ron's expression slowly froze once more into an emotionless mask, his confusion draining away as resolution filled him once more. "Glad it wasn't you," he finally said, meeting Josh's eyes again as he spoke, his voice quiet and distant. "T-or-T was fun."
Chuckling nervously, Josh slowly nodded, as he swallowed past the lump that seemed to be blocking his throat and fought down the urge to run very, very far away. "It was," he agreed quietly, feeling a sudden strange certainty that he'd just dodged a bullet as that weird flickering haze of distortion swirled around Ron. "That unicorn costume was sweet."
Ron had dismissed Josh entirely from his mind as unimportant once his involvement was disproven, and so didn't hear a word of his reply. For a brief moment, a flicker of uncertainty entered Ron's expression as he looked away from Josh as confusion once more arose in his mind. Ron knew Josh's schedule, but he certainly didn't know everyone's in the school - let alone someone new to the school who he only vaguely knew existed. "I didn't even know Kim was seeing him..." he frowned as he tried to marshall his thoughts about the new information.
Lost in thought and wholly unthinking of his actions, Ron tilted his head back and closed his eyes. He sniffed the air, the movement of his head on his neck and the expression that briefly appeared and then vanished from his face as rapidly as it had arrived looking distinctly... feral. Wild. Animal. A barely audible basso growl, more felt than heard, emanated from low in Ron's chest as a faint expression of satisfaction crossed his countenance.
"There he is," the triumphant thought flashed with an intensity like a bonfire or a signal beacon in his mind. His lips drew back in what might have been a smile, or possibly a snarl, before the look melted once more into an unreadable emotionless mask. He didn't think about where the knowledge had come from or question his newfound certainty, he simply knew it for truth.
"Ron?" Ms. Whisp asked as she stepped cautiously closer, trying once more to regain control of the situation.
Ron ignored her as he turned to face the door, the tip of his jetpack's extended wing swinging over Josh's head and barely missing the bleached ends of his hair. He was brought up short as he came face to face with Monique. "Move," he ordered her, his voice emotionless.
Monique scowled, and although her expression showed her displeasure, she finally stepped aside, scraping a chair across the tiled floor as she cleared the narrow aisle. "I'll get the answers from him later," she decided.
"Ron, where are you going?" Ms. Whisp asked, her voice filled with uncertainty. "This is not how Ron Stoppable behaves... ever," she thought with confusion. None of her training or her experience as a teacher had prepared her for a moment like this, and the feeling that she'd somehow lost control was very distressing.
Ron showed no reaction to either the quiet hum of speculation in the background, or the teacher's questions, he simply walked back out of the classroom at the same measured, slightly unsteady pace as he'd entered.
As the door swung shut behind him, Monique turned to the teacher and half-raised one hand. "Permission to get Mr. Barkin?"
Ms. Whisp eagerly nodded, grateful for the suggestion. "Yes, yes, go!" she ordered. The veteran could be a trial at times as he imposed military standards and disciplines on the educational institution, but at this moment, she was very, very grateful for his forceful and determined presence at the school.
"I'm gone," Monique agreed, and rushed out the door, leaving her books and purse behind in her haste.