Chapter 3: It's Better Where It's Wetter

"It's such a pity you chose not join me, Alpha," Gemini sneered, stroking Pepe's head as he loomed over Team Possible from atop the elevated pillar that dominated the control room of his undersea lair. "As a consequence, your ending will be sudden, and brutal." A momentary cheerful note entered his voice as he added, "Still, if it's any consolation, I'll think of it with a smile as I'm lying on the beach in Bimini."

"Sorry, Sheldon," Kim sneered right back at the villain as Rufus chirped his angry agreement from his perch atop Ron's shoulder. "You should know by now that Ron will never join you. And you're not going anywhere except to a Global Justice prison cell."

The chihuahua in the villain's arms erupted into a frenzied series of yapping barks, his tiny teeth bared in hatred as the hated name of Gemini's sister's organization assaulted his ears. Gemini turned away from the teens, hunching over his tiny pet in order to whisper soothing words and reassurances.

While the villain was distracted, Kim glanced around the colossal room, searching for a way to reach him. To her temporary dismay, she found that the retraction of the stairs that had surrounded the central pillar (leaving a smooth, featureless steel expanse, impossible to climb) had left Gemini isolated and secure in his commanding position high above the rest of the room.

"You'll pay for that as well, Kim Possible," Gemini intoned sonorously, once he had soothed his angry pet, "won't she my little sweetums," his voice dropped to inaudibility as he crooned comfortingly to his dog. With a malevolent chuckle and a dramatic motion of one arm culminating in a sweep of one prosthetic finger, he viciously stabbed a button on the control panel beside him.

Kim blinked as nothing happened despite the melodramatic villainous posturing. "Was that supposed to do something?" she wondered aloud, then winced as she realized, "Oh, man... I just totally jinxed us!"

An instant after Kim spoke, red lights flared into life along the walls, accompanied by loud warning klaxons. "Ten minutes to self destruct. Warning. Ten minutes to self destruct," a mechanical sounding voice announced.

"Darn it," Kim commented, looking once more for a route to Gemini - and more importantly, the self-destruct controls he stood next to.

Beside her, Ron had dropped into a combat stance as Gemini's henchmen had leaped into motion, but the few red-and-white-clad goons who even came close to the duo were much more concerned with reaching escape pods and getting away from the self-destructing lair than they were fighting the intruders. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the henchmen had all fled, leaving only Gemini and Team Possible in the control room as the warning echoed ominously, "Nine minutes to self destruct."

"Good bye, Kim Possible," Gemini intoned as he pressed another button. Behind him, a portal irised open into the central support pillar, revealing a hollow within the structural member. "This lair may not be 20,000 leagues under the sea, but I believe you'll find the depth to be more than adequate to finish you off - should the self-destruct fail to do the job, that is. But don't worry - wherever you're going in the next life, rest assured that my sister will shortly be joining you." He laughed evilly as he stepped through the portal, Pepe's wheezing growl adding a bizarre mocking counterpoint.

As the iris was closing, in one fluid move, Kim raised her arm, aimed, and fired her grappling gun. The hook on the end of the rope flew straight and true and seated itself solidly through one arm of Gemini's throne-like chair. As she was hoisted into the air, the powerful motor contained in the mechanism disguised as a hair dryer rapidly lifting her, Ron followed suit, quickly aiming and firing his grappling gun in turn.

As Kim unhooked her grapnel and triggered the retraction mechanism to coil the remainder of the line, she caught a flash of black out of the corner of her eye. Stepping quickly to one side, she watched as Ron's grappling hook flew past her head, trailing a length of rope and, fluttering at the end like a flag, Ron's pants. "Ron," she called down in exasperation. "Quit playing around."

Ron chuckled nervously, pulling the hem of his black turtleneck down to partially hide the large red hearts that adorned his yellow boxer shorts, but didn't respond.

A rumble and a vibration accompanied by a faint glimpse of motion outside the mammoth observation bubble far overhead heralded Gemini's escape. "And there he goes," Ron mumbled.

Scowling, Kim turned away from the escape hatch to examine the control panels as Ron attempted to reload his grappling gun, but before he could restore it to operation, she had dropped down to stand beside him again. "Changes have been locked out of the system. We've got to get out of here." Suiting action to words she grabbed Ron by an arm and ran from the control room, the spinning alarm lights painting their path in vibrant crimson hues.

They ran down the passageway, their feet crashing on the metal grating underfoot. As they barreled down the corridor, Ron was reminded again of how much the entire installation resembled the elaborate structure encircling and winding its way around his bedroom that he'd built and enlarged over time to create a play space for Rufus. He opened his mouth to point out the similarities of construction to Kim, but the sight of the scowl on her face made him decide to save the observation for later.

Hurriedly retracing their steps, and with Ron hard on Kim's heels, they ran for the airlock they'd broken into when they'd infiltrated the Worldwide Evil Empire's base, only to run into a major problem. A sealed hatchway blocked their route, with no control mechanism in sight.

"Six minutes to self destruct."

"Now what, K.P.?" Ron asked, his eyes roving over the bare metal of the door and the surrounding walls, unable to locate any means of removing the obstruction.

"I saw a docking bay back a few turns... Come on," she ordered, drawing him into a run once more.

They charged back the way they had come, and as they neared the bay, they began to see signs of the WEE henchmen's furious flight: abandoned helmets and goggles, weapons, and even some personal possessions, all discarded in the interest of hastening flight. Eventually, they reached the end of the passageway and charged into a large circular room.

Sealed hatchways lined the perimeter, and a red indicator light burned above each, showing that the escape pod that had once lain beyond the doorways had already been jettisoned. They felt a moment of panic as they turned once more to retreat, their escape stymied again, but as they turned, they discovered a single green indicator glowing above the airlock immediately to the left of the archway they'd passed through while entering into the room.

Either by chance - the fleeing henchmen not noticing the available pod in the same manner as Kim and Ron had almost missed it - or by simple paucity of numbers - WEE never had as many personnel in a single installation as Professor Dementor or some of the other, better bankrolled villains did (plus, with code names restricted by the number of Greek letters - and with "Alpha" reserved, besides - the number of personnel who could man any given base was minimal) - one of the escape pods was still available.

Breathing a sigh of mutual relief, they approached the hatch, but as Kim toggled the door and revealed the escape vehicle located within, their breath caught in their throats. The pod only had room for a single passenger.

"Five minutes to self destruct."

"Don't worry K.P.," Ron smiled, "There's another one over there."

Kim turned to look where he pointed, but saw only the red glow of an empty launch bay. But once she was distracted and looking away, Ron made his move. As Kim yelped in surprise, his sudden push to her upper back sent her flying into the single captain's chair inside the ovoid pod. Before she could protest, Ron grabbed Rufus from his shoulder with a haste that left a tiny series of parallel scratches across the side of his neck where startled claws had scrambled for a hold. "Keep an eye on her, buddy," he said as he tossed the naked mole rat gently through the airlock and into Kim's startled and hastily raised hands.

Before Rufus or Kim could do more than voice a surprised "Hey," at his actions, Ron's fist crashed into the launch control, breaking through the protective cover and hitting the red button it protected, activating the mechanism. Through a small viewport, Ron watched the door of the pod slide closed, hiding the silent movement of her lips as she shouted his name from inside the pod, Kim's voice inaudible through the thick Lexan of the window. With a whoosh of escaping bubbles, the pod was ejected upwards and away from the doomed base. The green indicator light over the door quietly flickered out as a red bulb began to burn in its stead.

Ron looked at the scrapes on his knuckles where his skin had yielded to the fracturing plastic cover, and a small smile creased his lips. "At least she made it," he whispered to himself.

Blinking a tear from his eyes, he hurried back down the passageway they'd so recently come through, running blindly through the maze of tubular accessways, rooms, and crawlspaces, seeking another escape route. As the countdown inevitably ticked away, doors and hatchways seemed to close and seal themselves automatically, restricting Ron's access, and forcing him to backtrack several times, wasting increasingly precious time.

With his options becoming more and more limited, and as he found himself nearing an archway very much like the one into the launch bay he'd just sent K.P. to safety from, he took a chance. Even as the computer announced, "Three minutes to self destruct," Ron rolled under a descending barrier and found himself inside a chamber that appeared to be used as a staging area for scuba access to and from the base.

It was just what Ron needed... if only he still had the scuba gear they'd used to infiltrate the base. From the empty racks lining one wall that previously had held pressurized tanks, it was clear that the WEE henchmen had preceded him here, as well.

Laughter bubbled up in his throat as Ron looked down into the artificial lagoon that lay at the center of the room. He had found his escape route out of the base - and into the depths of the ocean - but he remained as trapped as he had been before, and thanks to the sealed doorway behind him, he was out of other options. He sank to his knees, and bathed in the crimson glow of the warning lights, tried to compose himself in preparation for meeting his maker.

"You seem to be making a habit of doing my work for me," a voice interrupted his thoughts before he could compose an actual prayer. "I think I like that."

Ron's eyes snapped open, and as his head turned to face the source of his voice, he was startled to find himself staring at the woman he'd dreamed of so many months before on the other side of the planet. "You..." he breathed.

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Kim Possible frantically punched commands into the small control panel inset into the curved wall of the escape pod to no effect. The simple computer built into the vehicle had been designed to ferry a single passenger to safety - and to prevent said (probably panicked and likely untrained) passenger from endangering his or her life while doing so. Consequently, it ignored the random and often suicidal commands she punched into its controls as she tried to override the system, and continued to slowly make its way towards the surface.

Losing her patience with the machine, and fighting the urge to smash it, she drew the Kimmunicator out of a pocket in the side of her pants and began hitting the emergency button. The inset display panel hummed to life, and for only the second time that she could recall, she was greeted by a display saying "Searching for signal..." with a series of animated waveforms to represent the machine's search for a connection to Wade's computer. "We must be too deep for the signal to reach," she whispered to herself. Rufus patted her ear comfortingly as he snuggled against her neck, but Kim's vision blurred as her eyes filled with tears. She stared blindly into the unchanging display on the device, her thumb hitting the emergency button again and again to no effect.

A sudden sharp shock jolted the pod, and Kim was thrown back in her chair as an oddly muted rumble shuddered through the pod, the water that surrounded the vehicle transmitting the aftermath of the undersea base's destruction. Rufus grunted as he slid off the top of Kim's shoulder at the sudden impact, landing ignominiously in her lap as the tiny pod was rocked back and forth.

"Ron..." Kim breathed, frantically hitting the emergency button again and again. "This isn't happening... this can't be happening..."

Rufus whimpered, and curled into a ball, hiding his face under his tail.

"Ron..." Kim's tears flowed freely, "Don't worry Rufus, he'll be fine. You'll see..." but her voice cracked, and even as the Kimmunicator caroled another unsuccessful attempt to contact Wade, in the silent darkness of the floating pod, she wept.

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To be continued...

Author's Note: Not to spoil the cliffhanger (Like you couldn't tell that Ron's not really dead... This'd be a pretty lousy story if that was the case), but the pieces are now in place, and the crossover elements are about to kick in. Things will take a darker turn - as a Lovecraft inspired story inevitably will - but will the Disney (TM) magic be able to overcome the Mythos? Tune in to find out... and R&R!

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