Chapter 2: District Policy

"Stoppable! Front and center!"

Startled from his daydream, Ron leaped to his feet and hurried (although Mr. Barkin would have described his pace as lackadaisical) over to the administrator at the entrance to the classroom. Shaking his head in rueful disgust, Barkin turned away from the shameful display and ordered, "Possible! You too. And bring your kit."

Her brow furrowing in surprise, Kim collected her books and as she passed Ron's seat, collected his abandoned books as well. She handed Ron his stuff, and watched him force his books inside - unconsciously wincing at the sound of crumpling papers that resulted from his haphazard packing and casual movements - before slinging his bag over one shoulder.

"The rest of you, carry on. Possible, Stoppable, come with me," Barkin turned and led the two curious students out of their English class. The rest of the class, used to the odd happenings and interruptions that seemed to surround the duo, simply returned to their schoolwork as the group left.

"Is there a mission, Mr. B?" Ron asked curiously. "I didn't hear the Kimmunicator going off."

"Negatory," Mr. Barkin denied, waving the two to precede him into the teachers' lounge.

Eyes widening briefly in surprise at the response, the teens entered the forbidden room, and were surprised to see their Latin teacher sitting next to an older man in a tweed jacket.

"Good, you're both here," Mr. Barkin addressed the adults, before turning his attention back to the teens. "Possible, sit. Stoppable, give her your rodent, then go with Professor Johnson. He'll explain everything."

Reluctantly, Ron reached into his cargo pants and brought out his snoozing naked mole rat. "Hey!" a tiny voice protested, but under Barkin's unwavering glare, reluctantly climbed into Kim's outstretched hand.

"Ron?" the man Barkin had identified as Professor Johnson asked, gesturing to the door.

Even more reluctantly, Ron slowly walked out of the room. He paused in the doorway to wave goodbye to his friends, and then he was gone. The door swung closed behind him with an ominous clank as it automatically sealed.

"What's going on, Mr. Barkin?" Kim asked as she set Rufus on the table, then sat beside her Latin teacher.

"New district policy," he explained curtly.

"Mr. Barkin, I know Ron lost his textbook, but it was on a mission in Africa, so it wasn't really his fault. We had to stop..." Kim began, but he continued before she could protest further.

"It's not about the missing book, Possible. Frankly, he's lost so many by this point it's a wonder he still has any. At least he reimburses the district for the lost matériel... No, this is something different. There were some irregularities on Stoppable's Latin test, and after the fiasco of 'his' sudden math genius, the district set some strict guidelines to follow whenever anything the least bit... irregular happens around Stoppable's schoolwork. It's supposed to prevent future embarrassments to the Board of Education."

"Professor Johnson is the Latin teacher at Middleton Community College," Mrs. Lopez interrupted the explanation. "He's going to be administering Ronald's retest."

"And while he's doing it, Possible, you're in charge of ensuring his pet rodent isn't giving him any answers," Mr. Barkin concluded the explanation, crossing his arms over his barrel chest and looking grim.

Rufus sulked at the situation, but was mollified when he found a cache of saltines near the salt shaker. His tiny claws made short work of the cellophane wrapper, and he was soon munching away on crackers that were nearly as large as he was.

Kim blinked in surprise at the revelation. "You know, Heg... I mean, the manager of Go City's Bueno Nacho once told me that the corporation did something similar - set down strict policies for a manager to follow if Ron ever shows up at their restaurant."

Mrs. Lopez smiled in amusement, but Mr. Barkin mumbled something under his breath. Although Kim couldn't hear it clearly, it sounded something like, "disaster waiting to happen."

They fell into an uncomfortable silence, waiting for Ron and the professor to return and counting the seconds as they ticked past. The mood even affected Rufus, and after finishing only four packages of the crackers, he curled up by Kim's hands and dropped back to sleep on the tabletop.

Time dragged as they waited for Ron to return. Nerves and anticipation kept Kim too keyed up to work on her homework, so like the faculty who were monitoring her (although it was unspoken, it was the only reason she could think of for being isolated and monitored during Ron's retest) and Rufus for potential interference with Ron's testing, she simply watched the clock and occasionally petted the slumbering naked mole rat.

Although it seemed an eternity, it was only about 45 minutes later when the staff room door opened once more. Ron returned, and to Kim's amazement, he was chatting amiably with Professor Johnson.

In Latin.

Fluently.

"Well?" Barkin raised an eyebrow when they finally fell silent, refusing to look directly at Ron until he had received an answer.

Johnson simply shrugged. "It's all him. Fascinating, really. He's become an expert in conversational Latin - sermo cotidianus, I suspect. Amazingly adept too - there's probably no more than a dozen or so in the world that I can think of who are as good as or better at it than he is."

"What do you mean by 'conversational' Latin, Professor?" Kim asked.

"Just what it sounds like - he speaks it like a native speaker, not like someone who's studied the purified and relatively static modern book or church Latin. He's fascinating to talk to. I recognized loan words from a dozen other languages including Persian, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic - all chronologically accurate, and some of the idiomatic usages he uses are simply delightful. But I digress...

"Simply put, he speaks Latin like a native from the time of the Roman Empire would have. If you'll pardon the expression, he's practically a paleolinguist."

"A boo-yah!" Ron cheered, raising one triumphant fist into the air.

"Thank you for your time, Professor," Mr. Barkin said while shaking the man's hand. "The check from the district should arrive in 7 to 10 working days."

"It was my pleasure. Let me know if I can be of any further help," Professor Johnson smiled, traded a quick goodbye in Latin with Ron, then departed, leaving Ron alone with Kim and the teachers.

"Alright, Stoppable," Barkin demanded. "What weird ray were you zapped by this time?" His mouth twisted in disgust, possibly as he remembered his own experience with one of Kim's adventures at Lake Wannaweep. "Or was it more mutagenic ooze? Or maybe some evil brain sucking device you got yourself into?"

"There was nothing like that, Mr. B," Ron began in Latin.

"Speak English, Stoppable!" Barkin barked.

"Sorry," Ron repeated himself in English, then added, "it was nothing like that - just this weird power thingy. The henchmen didn't even have ray guns - just shock sticks." He rolled up one sleeve of the black turtleneck he wore beneath his red jersey and pointed to a mostly healed burn on his forearm for emphasis.

"He's right," Kim confirmed. "And Ron never even went close to the reactor, just the control console."

"Hmm," Barkin frowned in distaste at the mystery. "Knock it off, Stoppable!" he finally ordered, as Ron squirmed uncomfortably, rubbing at his neck. "Your squirming is giving me a headache." Kim was sure that Barkin's shudder and quick touching of the sides of his own neck was definitely a flashback to Wannaweep - an unconscious verification that he wasn't sprouting gills again.

"I can't help it, Mr. B," Ron complained. "My neck hurts. When that woman kissed me, she was holding on really tightly." His eyes suddenly widened as he realized what he had said. He began to blush ferociously and wouldn't meet anyone's eyes.

Mrs. Lopez looked amused, but Kim rolled her eyes. "Enough with the dream woman, Ron! She was never there, she didn't kiss you, and she didn't steal your Latin book!"

"I keep telling you, she wasn't a dream! She looked sort of like you, but older and..." he blushed, and said only, "bigger, and I thought her skin was sort of green like Shego's but it was just a trick of the light... She said something about me being a hero, and deserving a reward, then she kissed me, but..."

"Gah!" Kim closed her eyes and reached down to cover Rufus' ears with one hand. "Enough! Enough, already! Way too much information, Ron!"

"Stoppable," Mr. Barkin began, then stopped and closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten in an effort to lower his blood pressure. "As a fellow member of the male gender, and in particular as the teacher who had to give you certain health lectures, I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty... You don't talk about such things in front of the ladies! In other words, keep your twisted fantasies to yourself, Stoppable!"

"But she wasn't a dream," Ron whispered to himself.

"Leave the poor boy alone," Mrs. Lopez chuckled as she left. She was old enough to be amused rather than offended by the foibles of youth, and she often found Ron's antics entertaining - when taken in moderation. "It just means he's maturing. Kind of."

Kim hurried after her, thoroughly disquieted - although whether the true source of her discomfort lay in learning that Ron's dream woman looked like herself, or that she was a mix of herself and Shego, she couldn't answer.

"I can't believe I have to add something like this to the lectures," Mr. Barkin muttered to himself as he left, leaving Ron alone in the lounge with his pet. "Who'd have thought even Stoppable would need to be told not to...?"

"You believe me Rufus, don't you, buddy?" Ron asked, stroking his pet gently.

Rufus, who had been at the vet's office and consequently missed the entire encounter, simply yawned, rolled over, and went back to sleep without answering.

"She was real," he whispered to the empty lounge. His fingers briefly touching the sides of his neck and his lips as though to recapture the feeling of her touch from the lingering soreness. But as was usual following an intense mission, he had enough bumps, bruises, cuts, and scrapes on his body that even Ron had to admit to himself that residual tenderness from the strength of her hold was hardly concrete proof of her existence. "She was...?" he insisted aloud, but Ron could hear the doubt in his own voice.

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Since not even Ron could explain where his sudden linguistic mastery had come from - and whether she had truly been there or not, he couldn't think of any way the woman could possibly have been the source of it in any case. Eventually he, like everyone else, simply dismissed it as just another weird side effect of spending time in villainous lairs - sort of like being under the influence of a truth ray or becoming a muscle bound hulk overnight. Odd things like that just seemed to happen to Ron, even if this one was more persistent than most.

To confuse matters further, since the version of Latin that he had mysteriously learned differed from the language he was being tested on in class - dramatically in some ways, he found his knowledge of the classical language to be a decidedly mixed blessing. At times Ron actually found himself more confused, not less, by Latin class, despite his sudden inexplicable mastery.

Time passed, and as Kim's certainty of the illusory nature of the woman he had met by the ocean remained unshaken, Ron's conviction of her existence gradually wore away like a pebble in the surf. Still, no matter how fragile his belief in her became, he could never quite shake the image of her face closing to meet his, her eyes alight with an infernal reflection amid the smooth, pale green of her complexion...

That image continued to haunt his dreams, and nothing he did, nor anything Kim could say or do, ever changed that fact.

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