Monique ran out of her classroom and into the hallway, and was startled to find that Ron had already vanished from sight. "Not good," she murmured, before running down the hall towards the administration wing.
Before she had even made it to the end of the hallway, let alone left the wing, a gruff but welcome voice barked out, "No running in the halls!"
"Mr. Barkin," Monique gasped in a sudden exhalation of surprise as she skidded to a stop. "Thank goodness! We've got a situation here, and..."
He interrupted her before she could explain. "Is it Stoppable?"
Monique nodded gratefully.
"I've already heard," he growled, briefly glancing up and down the hallway as though looking for the teen in question.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Monique felt like a weight had fallen from her shoulders. "I'm glad; Ron looks bad, Mr. Barkin, and he said something about Kim, and he was threatening Josh, well, not really threatening, he just looked really, really scary... Which is hard to believe I know because it's Ron after all, and... and..."
"Breathe," Barkin instructed, only half in jest. "I know about Possible, too. She's fine; she'll be back in a week or so. I spoke to her mother when she called her daughter in sick."
Monique felt another upwelling of relief, and with her burdens released and the fear she'd felt of him gone, she felt her concern and fear for Ron reasserting itself. "About Ron?" she began cautiously.
"Yes?" Barkin asked.
"I think he's looking for Erik - the new boy. He was looking for Josh, but Tara mentioned something about a party, and..."
"Understood. Sullivan should be in gym this period, if I remember right. I'll take care of it." When Monique looked like she was going to protest, he repeated, with more heat, "I said, I'll take care of it! Now get back to class."
Scowling, Monique retreated, muttering something under her breath about "everybody ordering me around today," that Mr. Barkin chose to ignore.
Scowling just as ferociously as Monique, Steve Barkin turned and entered a service doorway that was restricted to staff use. The door swung shut behind him, and now that he was out of sight of any students, he was free to hurry in an attempt to head off the problematic teen without risking being seen as anything less than cool, calm, and composed by his other charges.
As he quickly strode down the bare concrete corridor, ducking occasionally to avoid the metal conduits and loops of exposed wiring that sporadically obstructed his path, Mr. Barkin's stride naturally fell into a brisk military marching pace that ate up the distance rapidly. His feet began to kick up some dust as he went, and his scowl deepened. He made a mental note to talk to the new janitor (for some reason, Middleton High had an extremely difficult time retaining its custodial employees - once in a single week they'd gone through Joe, Ludwig, and Max, before hiring Jim, who had lasted almost a month) about taking care of the service areas as well as the publicly accessible ones. "The quality of work's certainly gone down since Joe quit," he noted irritably to himself, but he didn't let himself become distracted from his primary goal.
Mr. Barkin emerged from the serviceway and was pleased to find himself ahead of Ron - though it was a near thing. "Stoppable!" he barked, moving into the center of the hallway to block his path. "What is your malfunction?" he demanded.
Ron staggered to an unsteady halt, and something flickered in his eyes. He may have been out of it enough to ignore a teacher, he may have been out of it enough to smack down the thugs that he usually didn't fight back against, and he may have been out of it enough to order his social "betters" around, but he wasn't nearly incoherent enough to try to order Steve Barkin around. "Mr. B," he muttered, unsteadily straightening himself to something approaching his normal posture.
"You look terrible, Stoppable. Let's go to the nurse's office and get you taken care of." Despite his gruff nature, Barkin's tone wasn't nearly as harsh as Ron had expected, which was a small blessing for his aching head.
"Can't," Ron shook his head, then winced as the injudicious movement caused a twinge from some of his injuries. "I have to take care of something first."
"It can wait," Barkin ordered, stepping forward, closing the distance between them. "The mission's over. Stand down."
Ron looked blankly at him for a moment, then clawed at the straps on his chest that held the remains of the jetpack to his body. After fumbling for a second, the latches gave way and the twisted jetpack crashed to the floor with a metallic crunch as the still-extended wing crumpled. His helmet, which was connected to the jetpack by a telescoping metal armature, was yanked from his head as it went.
Yelping, Ron put one hand on the top of his head and staggered as a fresh seepage of blood began to trickle down his face. The helmet had taken a scab covering a wound on his scalp with it (along with more than a few strands of hair), and the sudden jerk as the helmet was removed had reopened the injury that lay underneath it.
"Have to take care of something," Ron muttered again, briefly looking at the blood on his palm before lowering his hand to his side. "Have to..."
As Mr. Barkin watched and Ron continued to mumble to himself, Ron's body shifted into a pose that looked vaguely like he was going to throw a javelin. Without a further word or sound, Ron simply faded from sight.
Mr. Barkin had seen enough advanced technology in his time (especially around Kim Possible and her happy-go-lucky sidekick-slash-partner) that he was able to stifle the urge to proclaim, "That's impossible!" Instead, he spread his arms and shifted irregularly back and forth in the hallway near his last known location in an attempt to locate the vanished student by touch. "Stoppable!" he barked, but only silence greeted his sally. He scowled, looking carefully about, but Ron simply could not be seen. There was the faintest sound as of someone moving - a creak of leather, a scuff of boots on tile, but Barkin's blind attempts to feel for the invisible teen encountered only failure.
Growing weary of the game of blind man's bluff, Barkin marched to the end of the hall and opened a locker with a passkey he took from his belt. Inside the locker, a computer screen flickered to life as a child's voice asked, "Kim? What are you doing back at...?"
"Wrong guess," Barkin informed Wade, reattaching the keyring to his belt.
"Mr. Barkin?" Wade blinked in surprise, his hands falling idle on the keyboard in front of him as he shifted his mental gears in response to the surprise caller. "What's up?"
"We've got a problem with Stoppable. Get a hold of Possible and if she's up to it, get her here ASAP - and whether she is or not, get her mother here."
"Problem? With Ron?" Wade wondered aloud, even as his fingers began to type again, bringing up the contact information for the hospital where Mrs. Dr. Possible worked, automatically obeying the order. "How is that possible? He's on a GJ transport, and it's not scheduled to land for another hour. And why Kim's mom and not his?"
"He's not on a transport. He's here at school and in a bad way - and he's not obeying orders." Mr. Barkin frowned for an instant as he reconsidered his words, then clarified, "Even more so than usual. And we don't need her because she's Kim's mom - or at least only indirectly; that relationship will certainly help. We need her because she's a doctor; Stoppable needs medical assistance, and I don't think I can talk him down enough to get him help, but she probably can."
"Um... okay," Wade hesitantly agreed, still confused, but accepting his reasoning. "I'm contacting the medical center now. I'm surprised though; according to the report GJ filed this morning from Nueva Gran Colombia, Ron refused medical treatment for what were listed as 'minor injuries,' and was sent home without incident."
Wade looked at one of his other monitors as it displayed the location of the tracking microchip embedded in Ron's neck, and opened another window to display the limited medical information the chip collected. "Well, I'll be," he blinked in surprise. "He is at Middleton High. But if he's hurt, why would he...?" Wade trailed off as a nasty suspicion took root in his head, and he hurriedly began typing again. "I'll tell Mrs. Possible to hurry."
"Good. Tell her to find us at the gym. And Load?"
"Er, yes sir?" Wade asked distractedly, his hands not stilling as he simultaneously updated his message to the hospital, and began backtracking electronically through time to verify or disprove his suspicions.
"Kudos on the gadgets. The invisibility thing is especially effective."
"Thanks," Wade said, still distracted by his search. When what Mr. Barkin had said finally penetrated his thoughts, he called out, "Wait, what...?" but Mr. Barkin had already slammed the locker door, muffling his confused questions.
Mr. Barkin marched back the way he had come. Pausing only long enough to scoop up the discarded and broken jetpack by the loose shoulder straps, he headed once more for the gymnasium.