Seven

Confrontational Much?

A Kim Possible Fiction


Author's Notes: Well, as crushed as my dozen fans are going to be by this, the production schedule for Seven is getting the axe. Not only did I just get my new computer, along with Home World 2, and Baldur's Gate, but Conflict Calgary is in a month and a half, and I've got seven hundred dollars worth of Space Marine Scouts to put together and paint. Needless to say, I'm thinking eight to ten days per update minimum is going to be the order of the day for the next little while. I'm sorry, but when the child of the Lord of Murder and the Wraithguard chapter call, what's a guy to do? And, as for this particular chapter, this week has been insane... I've been running around trying to nail down a job offer, so I haven't had all that much time to devote to writing.

Anyway, this chapter moves the plot along a bit more, and finally gets me set up for finishing off of the first day (I know, Finally, right?). Also, you might have noticed that I've been writing almost exclusively about Ron. There is a reason for that beyond an implied crazed and vaguely disturbing obsession. Ron's going to end up with a backseat role for the last half of this story, so I'm putting him in the forefront to sort of balance out the equation. Well, that, and I really do like writing about Stoppable – he's just a great character. Cheers, and I hope you enjoy Seven: Confrontational Much?


One day in the life of a teenaged superhero, now with twice the Barkin at no extra cost! Ron winced and shook his head, his ears still stinging from the verbal lashing the substitute had bombarded him with when he slipped back into class to grab his notebook. "That guy seriously needs to get out more... Enjoys making us kids suffer just a liiitle too much" Rufus looked up at him from his niche in the cargo pants and nodded his head vigorously.

He rounded the corner of the now-empty hall, headed back to math class, a look of resigned acceptance written across his face. He opened the door and turned around to close it, quietly – class had started five minutes ago, after all. He turned back to go to his seat only to find the cold hazel eyes of one Mrs. Whisp glaring at him from up at the chalkboard. "Since you've deemed it unnecessary to be punctual, Mister Stoppable, I think I've deemed it unnecessary to suffer your interruption of my class." A hand shot up, holding a ruler and pointing right back out the portal he'd just entered through. "Perhaps next time you'll take enough interest to be on time to actually appreciate the lesson. But, not this time, I think." Ron opened his mouth to protest, and then clamped it shut again. He'd just end up with another day's worth of detention, and he wasn't all that partial to math class anyway. He sighed, turned, pulled open the door and left, but not before his shoelace caught on the door hinge and sent him sprawling out into the hall, much to the snickering amusement of the class.

Could this day get any worse?


Fifty minutes. Just fifty minutes left and I can get out of here. It's only fifty minutes... Most of an hour, almost a quarter of my day. Four days ago I fought an insane genetic monkey freak on a crumbling pillar in the middle of a collapsing temple under a mountain in some tiny country buried in the jungles of the Pacific Rim whose name I couldn't even spell, much less pronounce. I handled that, I can handle fifty more minutes of this... Kim ground her teeth together and the knuckles of her hand clenched white around her pencil. She quashed the urge to impale the snarky, arrogant brunette who was sitting three feet behind her with the writing implement for the eighth time in the last fifteen minutes. She took a deep, calming breath and once more tried to block out the whispered torrent of insults and curses directed at her from Bonnie's razored tongue. The bitch had specifically, deliberately chosen the spot right behind her, knowing full well Mr. Fentley, the history teacher, wouldn't be able to hear her over the background noise the heating system produced. It didn't help matters that two of Bonnie's litter had followed to the class and sat to her left and right, giggling and sniggering obscenely at every syllable that oozed from Bon-Bon's mouth. Kim just chewed on her molars some more and tried to copy down the notes Fentley was leaving on the blackboard. Forty-two minutes. Forty-two minutes is no problem. I fought Shego nine days ago for almost three solid hours; I can deal with forty-two minutes. Just... Need to breathe. Concentrate on breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I am Kim Possible and this is no big. In. Out. In. Out.

Kim absently scratched at her neck, no longer even trying to look like she was paying attention to the lesson. Her fingers lingered, tracing the smooth lines of her flawless physical perfection. She imagined her fingers on Bonnie's neck, sliding up and down, caressing the delicate flesh. How easy it would be, too... Just a slight shift of pressure, a flick of the wrist, and then nothing but the sweet, sweet crunch of tearing cartilage and snapping vertebrae. She'd be changing her tune real quick after that. A savage grin split Kim's face as she toyed with the idea, and a plethora of subsequent variations, all of which involved much physical discomfort and bodily harm on Rockwaller's part.

Her eyes fixed on the page of her notebook as she ruthlessly ground the graphite tip of her pencil back into its subsequent molecules. An eternity seemed to pass as she concentrated solely on the muted scraping sensations that transferred up the length of the pencil and into the nerve endings in her fingers. She was dimly aware of the class drawing silent around her, but too caught up in her fantasies and her determination not to give into Bonnie's transparent attempts to get her to cause a scene. A moment passed, then two. Caught at the edges of her awareness, someone cleared his throat expectantly, but she wasn't distracted. Can't let Bonnie get a rise out of me... There was only the grinding of the now-mashed pencil tip into the paper. The mystery figure cleared his throat again, louder, closer, more insistent. Kim sensed a presence, a mightily annoyed presence, standing just in front of her. She blinked twice, then once more and looked up into the disapproving frown of Mr. Fentley. "Well, Miss Possible?" His voice carried a heavy note of challenge in it.

Kim's eyes widened slightly as she scrambled to think up an answer to his un-heard question. "I... Ah, that is, I mean, ah..." The three jackals all burst out laughing, glorifying in her distress. Kim flushed slightly and clenched her teeth all the more, grinding chips between her molars.

Bonnie leered at the back of Kim's head. "Maybe you should leave all the hard questions to the smart people. I think little Kimmy here needs to go back to naming the states and presidents." Kim trembled in her seat, anger washing through her. The pencil in her right hand exploded into fragments, the sharp report echoing back from the closed space. Bonnie and her brown-nosers exploded into another fit of giggles as Mr. Fentley shook his head and turned back to the blackboard.

"I would suggest, Miss Possible, that you pay a little more attention to reality. Now, can anyone else tell me who preceded Chairman Mao? How about you, Jerry?"

Yeah, smooth moves, Possible. Way to not make a scene. Kim buried her face in her arm and groaned softly.

It was going to be a long thirty-five minutes until lunch.


There, there it was. An angel's cry foretelling a divine respite from the arduous labors of the day. Fifty minutes of bona fide "Me Time" – the lunch bell. To Kim it brought an end to her long, silent suffering. To Ron it brought the prospect of another hour with his best friend, the only positive prospect for the rest of this dismal morning. The pair of them were up and gone before the ringing had even faded from the halls. Ron, who had been wandering the halls like a waif, didn't have far to go to hit his locker, and so he beat out most of the crowds and sat back to wait. Kim on the other hand got to experience the joys of slogging through the veritable sea of young bodies, fighting the ebb and flow of the human tide. A few minutes of effort and she was thrown from the current at her destination, only slightly the worse for wear. Ron smiled as she leaned wearily against her locker. "Hey there, gorgeous."

She raised a questioning eyebrow and favored him with a smirk. "Reduced to using cheesy pick-up lines, Ron? Morning was that bad, huh?"

He shuddered. "KP, you have no idea." He scowled at the floor for a second, thinking back on the events of the morning. After a second, he realized that he was still standing in the hallway, with Kim waiting on him. He looked up and flashed her a quick grin. "I'll be telling my grandkids stories of this morning to keep them in line." She laughed and shoved him playfully.

"Come on gramps, let's go grab some lunch and see if we can't build ourselves a happy interlude to this horror story." She tossed her bag into her locker, slammed the door shut, and walked off down the hall towards the cafeteria beside him.

Kim and Ron, the prospect of food – even cafeteria food – weighing heavily on their minds, slipped through the halls, nodding and waving as they passed by assorted friends and acquaintances. They made it to within thirty feet of their goal before Murphy decided to pay another social call, and he was lugging an entire sack full of laws with him. Ron had slid almost all the way around a congregation of seniors occupying half the hallway when a thick, heavily muscled arm snaked its way out of the throng and spun him around in place. He staggered a bit before regaining his balance and looked up – way up – into the stormy visage of one Edison Mitcham Walker. Oh, great. Item number five on Grandpa Stoppable's morning from hell. Ed was a forward tackle for the Middleton Mad Dogs football team, six feet and two-hundred and ten pounds of face-busting, loser-mashing Megajock. And, judging by the way Rockwaller clung to his left arm, her latest beau. Now, Brick Flagg Ron could deal with – they had an understanding, but Walker was a totally new variable. A huge, scary, cruel-looking variable. You did have to give them credit though; Ed and Bonnie's sneers were almost perfectly identical. "I heard you were hassling my girl, Stoppable. I don't like that." His voice was a menacing growl from low in his chest.

Ron backed up a step and put up his hands, palms out, desperate to avoid the confrontation they all knew was inevitable. "Whoa, whoa, first of all dude, Bonnie was harshing us way before I said anything, and secondly, it's not like we don't do this every single day. Why don't, y'know, we just be gentlemen about this... No need for violence, right? Right?" He looked back and between Ed and Kim. "See? No big, no hard feelings, we're all good here..." He was cut off as he turned back to Ed only to chew on the five pounds of knuckles and bone that connected with his face. To Ed, Ron's head made a satisfying thunk as it impacted with the locker across the hallway from where he'd stumbled back from the blow.

Ron put a finger to his mouth and wiped away crimson on his pants. "Seriously dude, ow." Kim jumped between them as Ed started forward. Rufus was up on Ron's shoulder, jumping up and down and chattering with rage. She fixed the jock with a cold stare, and he reluctantly stopped in his tracks. The stare down lasted a few long moments, but eventually it was Walker who looked away. Nobody, not even the Mad Dog's tackle, messed with Kim Possible. It was a quick ticket to the hospital, if even a tiny fraction of what they'd all seen on T.V. was accurate.

"Back off, Walker. Leave Ron alone... Go play flavor of the week with Bon-Bon somewhere else." He seemed reluctant, but Bonnie pulled back on his arm a bit.

"Come on Eddie, beating on losers gets old fast. We can do this again tomorrow or something." She flashed the two teen heroes a toxic smile, and pulled her boy-toy off down the hall.

Kim scowled after the pair, her face clouded with anger and disgust. "Come on Ron... Let's go get you some lunch." With that she latched onto his arm and tugged him into the cafeteria.

It was only a matter of a few minutes of effort before they stood at the end of the line, trays filled with that the Middleton Board of Education deemed a nutritious, government provided meal. You could probably find more edible substances pooling in the center of Love Canal. Ron scanned the room for a moment before spying out the waving forms of Monique and Felix who had claimed a table near the back of the hall. He nodded his head in their direction and followed Kim as she headed over.

"Hey there girlfriend." Kim smiled at Monique's greeting as she slid into a chair beside her. "How's it hangin'?" She looked over at the black visage of Ron as he dropped heavily into his seat beside Kim. "Jeez Ron, who'd you have to fight for breakfast today?" She arched a questioning eyebrow at him and grinned. He just scowled deeper and looked down at his tray.

Kim just shook her head. "Let's just say that Ron hasn't been having the best of mornings. Hopefully things will lighten up after lunch." She looked over at Felix. "Hey Felix, how's it going?"

Felix smiled and shrugged. "Oh, you know, same old same old." A cybernetic tentacle snaked out from the back of the boy's wheelchair, reaching across the table to scratch Rufus on the top of his head. "Hey Rufus, what's new buddy?" The mole rat just jumped up and down and chattered something that sounded remarkably like "lunch". He chuckled and turned back to his own lunch as Rufus devoured Ron's. Monique looked appraisingly at her two friends and saw how they were both tense and agitated.

"Hey Kim, everything all right? No problems or anything?"

Kim looked down at her tray and stabbed her fork through a slab of mystery meat, so hard that a pair of the plastic tines snapped off. A single, guttural word escaped past lips pulled back in a fearsome snarl. "Bonnie." Monique winced, mentally cataloguing the dozens, perhaps hundred of vicious fights she'd witnessed between the pair of them. "She's just, so... So... Argh!" Kim vented her frustrations on her innocent entrée, shredding it into unrecognizable mush. She so totally engrossed in destroying her meal that she failed to notice the tall bleached blonde that strolled over.

Josh chuckled as he watched Kim going postal all over her lunch. Her head snapped up instantly and the plastic utensils fell from her hands with muted clatters back onto her tray. "J... Hey Josh!" He grinned at her.

"Hey Kim. Just wanted to say hey, y'know." She smiled at him, her eyes quickly glazing over with that painful mix of hormones that Ron knew so well. He chuckled again and brushed a strand of auburn hair from in front of her face. "Anyway, like I said, just came by to say hello – Heading over to work on a project. Later Kim, guys." He nodded to the others. As he turned and walked away, Ron looked between Kim and Josh and snorted in derision.

Josh was out of earshot, but Kim's head snapped around and she spitted Ron with a blistering glare, her already Bonnie-frayed nerves flaring at this new irritation. "What is your problem, Ron?" She dumped more venom in the words than she'd meant to, but it was too late to change that now.

His eyes narrowed, his own patience, even for the likes of Kim Possible, stretched to the breaking point by his hellish morning. "Get a grip, Kim. You're melting in your chair because some pretty-boy artist said two dozen words to you." She bristled visibly and Monique opened her mouth to intervene, but a harsh glare from the both of them stopped her mid-syllable. "I'm tired of hearing about Mankey this and Mankey that. He's got cool hair, big deal. Get over it." He hadn't meant for his words to sound so bitingly critical, but hindsight is twenty twenty after the fact.

Kim's eyes widened slightly, and her mouth clamped shut in an angry line. She slammed her hands down on the table, stood up, and stormed out of the cafeteria without another word or so much as a backward glance. Ron was half-way out of his seat when he felt Felix's arm on his wrist. "Let her go, dude. You two are way too wound up right now; you'll just make it worse. Go talk to her later, after you've both had a chance to cool off." Ron looked at him and opened his mouth to protest, but instead he just sighed and sat back down, staring into his tray dejectedly.

Aww man.