Kim had barely come through the doors of the Middleton Space Center when she was pulled into a smothering hug by her father. "Kimmie!" he whispered relievedly, twirling her into the air.
"Daddy!" Kim protested as she was set back on her feet, but she felt warmed by the embrace nonetheless.
"Thank goodness, you're alright," Dr. Possible breathed as he led her by the hand out of the flow of traffic as police and federal agents entered the building.
"I'm fine, too," Monique piped up as she followed behind the pair.
Dr. Possible surprised her by clasping and gripping her hand tightly, before squeezing once more in an attempt at reassuring her. "And you too, Monique. Thank you so much for helping my Kimmie-cub again."
Monique blushed, and fell back on one of her friend's phrases. "It was no big, Dr. Possible."
"You girls sit right here, and let the paramedics check you out," he instructed.
"I'm fine, dad... he just caught me by surprise, that's all," Kim demurred.
Despite her protests, her father was insistent. "No arguments, Kimmie-cub. There's no telling what that monkey boy might have been carrying. The authorities can handle this one while you get checked out - and that goes for you too, Monique."
A trifle indignantly, but resignedly, the two friends sat on the back of the ambulance that had come along with the small flotilla of official vehicles and submitted themselves to the medical personnel's examination. It was quick, and painless, and mostly involved topical antiseptic - since the wounds were, after all, fairly minor, as well as a suggestion to ice the bruised areas, to which both girls nodded their agreement.
While they were still being looked over by the paramedics, a bearded man in a white lab coat that Kim vaguely remembered as working at the space center drew her father to one side. Kim watched curiously, but they were too far away to overhear the conversation.
"Miss?"
Kim turned away from the distant conversation as the medical technician sought her attention. "Yes? Sorry, I was distracted."
"It's no problem, miss, but I need you to remove your charm," he replied. "It's covering part of the bite."
"Charm?" Kim asked curiously.
Monique nodded. "Didn't you notice?" she gestured to the side of Kim's neck.
Kim reached up and ran her fingers down the side of her neck, until she felt a small metallic object dangling by her neck. Blinking in surprise, she pulled it free, wincing as it brought some hairs along with it. "Ouch," she muttered, holding it in her palm.
As the technician worked on her neck, painting the rest of the bite wound with antiseptic with a cotton swab, she examined the item. It was small and rectangular, about an inch long on the longer side, pierced in the middle of one side, with a broken metal ring threaded through the opening. Caught in the ring were the hairs she'd accidentally pulled free, and that revealed how it had been hung. She rubbed her thumb across the polished metal surface, then flipped it over to view the other side. Embossed in the center of the rectangle in large block letters were the letters "BOBO" with a logo that was too small to make out details, but looked roughly circular, flanking the name on each side.
Monique looked at it curiously, before glancing up at Kim's surprised expression. "You seriously didn't know?"
Kim's lips twisted in discomfort. "No! Is that what you meant when you were talking about the 'gift'?"
"Yes. Sorry, I thought you knew."
"I totally didn't," Kim denied, staring down at the name etched into the metal. "Two guesses where it came from."
"No bet," Monique answered, her lips quirking into a smile.
Kim was distracted from her contemplation of the metallic tab as a bespectacled scientist joined her father in the huddle with the other scientist. "Are you sure?" Mr. Possible demanded, loud enough for Kim to hear.
She absentmindedly put the tag in her pocket and, finally dismissed by the med techs, Kim and Monique wandered over to the gathering of scientists and caught the tail end of the conversation. "... have you heard anything from Frederick?"
"No, but he should be rendezvousing with the station shortly. We can try to make contact with him then."
"Dad? What it is?" Kim asked.
"It's Frederick's rocket; Wade is bringing the space center's computers back under control, and when he did, we started receiving some strange images coming from the Spider-Cam in the science lab," Mr. Dr. Possible explained. "It's almost like... No, I don't want to speculate without more information."
"Shall we?" the bespectacled, balding scientist prompted, pointing with one hand to the door of the space center.
"Yes, lets," Dr. Possible agreed. "Kimmie, you stay here," he instructed, before hurrying along with the other scientists, squeezing between the returning flood of agents and police as they exited the building.
Kim would have followed, despite her father's instructions, but an officer from the Middleton Police stopped beside her. "Excuse me, Miss Possible."
"Yes, Officer Hobble?"
"I'm afraid that the perpetrators have escaped."
"I was afraid of that," Kim sighed. "Monty Fiske and his monkey ninjas are just too sneaky. At least the children and Frederick got away safely, and Monkey Fist's plot was foiled."
"Monkey... ninjas?" the policeman asked curiously.
"Yes; they're probably long gone by now, despite the cordon you put up," Kim said sadly. "Thank you for the help, Officer. It was close there, for a while."
Officer Hobble shook his head in amazement, "Just when you think you've seen it all... You take care now, Miss Possible, ma'am. Global Justice is claiming jurisdiction and taking over the investigation, so be sure to cooperate if they ask for assistance." With a tip of his helmet to Kim and Monique, the policeman headed off.
"Thanks again, officer," Kim called after him, then turned to Monique. "Check on my dad?"
"Sounds good." Together the pair headed into the space center.
Kim and Monique passed a wide berth around the crime scene evidence collection team as they worked in the concourse that had so lately been the scene of the confrontation. Despite the necessary detour that evasion entailed, the pair soon reached the control room.
"... There it goes again! Did you see that?" one of the scientists excitedly called as they walked in, pointing at a monitor. "Definite movement, and definitely not from one of the spiders!"
"What's going on?" Monique wondered aloud.
"There's movement on the Spider-Cam," one of the white-coated scientists explained. "It's a camera set up to monitor the spider habitat in the lab module."
"And that means...?" she prompted.
"It means there might be an unintended 'guest' along on Frederick's mission," Dr. Possible explained grimly.
Kim immediately reached for her Kimmunicator, but her hand slapped against an empty pocket. She growled in frustration, then noticed Wade's smiling face beaming at her from a nearby monitor inset into the wall. "Wade!"
"Hi, Kim," the boy waved cheerily.
"I lost the Kimmunicator," she said contritely. "Sorry about that."
"No big," Wade answered easily. "Stuff happens when you save the world. A replacement should be waiting when you get home."
"You so rock, Wade."
"Thanks - but that's not why I called. Dr. Possible?" Wade asked.
Kim's father turned and addressed the monitor, "Yes? And by the way, thanks for the help getting through that villain's lock on the computer systems."
"Not a problem; it was just a quantum-encrypted heuristically programmed algorithmic lock," Wade grinned, then added, as his expression grew less jovial, "If you're seeing movement on the Spider-Cam? I think you should know, the missing Kimmunicator is presently in orbit, approaching the space station."
"What?" Kim demanded. "How...? Bobo!" she realized. "Bobo took my Kimmunicator, which means Bobo's on the rocket!"
"Bobo?" Dr. Possible asked.
"Monkey Fist's son," Wade explained.
"That's definitely not good," Monique said quietly, rubbing the side of her jaw ruefully. "Is Fiske aboard too?"
"I checked the security footage when I made copies for GJ. If the time stamps are accurate on the security cameras, Fiske and the monkey ninjas were definitely still in the concourse when the rocket took off," Wade answered. "But Bobo ran away after he lost a fight to Fiske before that; I wasn't able to trace where he went, but if he was in the science lab, that would make sense - since it was intended to be sent to the space station, it wasn't directly tied into the Space Center security system."
"There's something else that's bugging me, too," Kim interjected. "What's up with monkey boy? First the thing with the hair, then the fight with Fiske, now this? If Monkey Fist is trying to confuse us, it's definitely working."
"Whatever's happening, we need to tell Frederick as soon as he docks," Dr. Possible said worriedly. "He's all alone up there with that... creature, and we won't have another launch vehicle ready for weeks." Taking a deep breath, he concluded, "You should go on home where it's safe, Kimmie-cub. There's nothing else you can do here; let your mother know I might be running late, though. I need to keep an eye on things here until we know more."
Despite her tension, Kim reluctantly went along with her father's instructions, knowing Frederick and his rocket were well out of reach. Without a launch vehicle, there was nothing she could do about the situation
Monique muttered under her breath, "I can definitely use a shower."
Kim agreed with the sentiment wholeheartedly. "I smell like monkeys, too," she whispered back. She wanted to stay to find out what the sitch was, but the need to wash the figurative and literal stink of monkeys from her body definitely took priority.
Frederick triggered the door to the science lab, and hit a switch. The overhead lights softly illuminated the cluttered science lab, while spotlights around the perimeter brought a number of testing stations into stark highlight. The room appeared to be deserted.
The simian astronaut entered the room slowly, all his senses peeled for signs of the intruder. He slowly crossed the room, but despite his attention, there wasn't a single indication that he wasn't alone.
On the far side of the room from where he entered, Frederick wrapped his tail securely around a support stanchion and pressed a large red button on the wall. ( Artificial. Gravity. Off. ) he announced, using the control unit on his arm.
From near the ceiling came a hint of panic. A subdued squeal, hastily masked, arose from the solar system model suspended from the roof of the lab complex.
Frederick had trained for the possibility of zero gravity conditions - and Bobo had not. As Frederick watched, Bobo's incautious movements sent him spiraling awkwardly up (in as much as "up" existed at this moment) towards the roof.
Bobo tried to land on the roof, but the move, which in a zone with normal gravity would have allowed him to alight without mishap, simply sent him spiraling awkwardly back the way he had come. He reached desperately for the rings of Saturn as he crossed the ecliptic plane of the model, but his frantically clutching fingers missed their plasticine target, and he spun closer and closer to what had been the ground before the artificial gravity control was cancelled.
Frederick, still anchored by his tail, delicately pushed off from the ground with a trained jump. He rose into the air, and his vector intersected with that of Bobo. He pressed some buttons on his wrist control, and even as the speaker announced ( Hold. My. Hands. ) he reached out for the flailing intruder.
His teeth gritted, but as he flailed uselessly in midair, Bobo reluctantly complied. One grasping hand caught Frederick's outstretched wrist, and as the simian astronaut shifted his weight, Bobo's orientation shifted so that he could catch the other.
Flexing his tail, Frederick drew them both down to the floor of the lab. Coming to a careful halt near the floor of the lab, Frederick pressed the red button once more and, as he released Bobo, typed to announce, ( Artificial. Gravity. On. )
Bobo stared at the small monkey. Frederick smiled, and Bobo's brow creased in confusion.
Frederick pressed some buttons on his wrist, and as Bobo confusedly watched, he announced, ( Frederick. Friend. )
( Come. ) Frederick instructed, then led the way out of the science lab, beckoning the golden-furred creature to follow.
Bobo scratched his head briefly, then shrugged to himself and followed the astronaut out of the science lab.
At mission control in the Middleton Space Center, Dr. Possible watched on the monitors as Frederick ministered to the boggled Bobo. After first clearing the blood from the scratch wounds on his arms with disposable patches of gauze, the astronaut then sprayed the wounds with an antiseptic mist.
The spray must have stung, for Bobo attempted to yank his arm away, but Frederick held firm. ( No. Must. Heal. )
To Dr. Possible's surprise, Bobo relaxed and let Frederick continue to work. "Are you seeing this?" he wondered aloud.
"I see it, but I don't believe it," Dr. Waters, his colleague at the Center, and the only one who had remained to help monitor the situation. "What is that thing?"
"Apparently he's the adopted son of one of my daughter's foes. If you check the security footage of our 'uninvited guests' at the Little Rocket Booster open house, you can certainly see the resemblance; it's little wonder he was so interested."
"Is it - he - human?" Waters wondered aloud in turn. "Some kind of missing link?"
"Hmm... Kimmie told me Monkey Fist caught him living wild in Tennessee. I guess I just don't really know," Dr. Possible explained.
"Frederick certainly seems to be able to control him easily enough," Waters noted, as he watched the astronaut finish bandaging his arms.
"And a good thing too," Dr. Possible agreed. "Even if we hurry, it will be weeks before we can mount a rescue mission. I'm just glad the military accepted the clearances Frederick broadcast even though the launch was so premature. They've gotten so touchy lately about unscheduled lift-offs," he chuckled embarrassedly.
"Do you think it's Frederick himself who it - he - likes, or could it be any monkey?" Waters wondered curiously.
"Well, with a 'father' like Monkey Fist - not to mention all those darned monkey ninjas, I suppose it's not really surprising that he's used to following a monkey's orders," Dr. Possible admitted.
( Sleep. Rest. Heal. ) Frederick instructed, patting an empty bunk and smiling at his surprise guest.
Bobo reluctantly climbed into the bunk. His eyes remained open as he watched Frederick move around the sleeping quarters, adjusting things, moving things, and doing other even less comprehensible things. As he watched, Bobo was blinking often, his eyes seeming to want to remain shut.
( Sleep. ) Frederick repeated, rubbing Bobo's head gently, ruffling the soft mane of fur than covered it. He spread a light blanket atop Bobo's body, then turned out the light.
Soothed, Bobo's eyes closed and he quickly fell asleep, tired and confused by everything that had happened, but comforted by the small sounds Frederick made as he went about his duties.