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Chapter 7: You Look So Precious Now

Ron Stoppable awoke with a jerk, his eyes widening and his chest heaving as he strained to fill his lungs with air. He gasped, coughing and heaving as his stomach convulsed. He curled into a fetal ball, barely noticing the rough texture of the blanket lying beneath his cheek. When his breathing slowed, and approached a semblance of normality, his muscles relaxed, and he slumped flat onto his back, panting as he stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

"Where am I?" Ron wondered, blinking in surprise. Above him was a featureless grey slab with a recessed light fixture that could only be described as institutional - and secure.

Ron allowed his head to slump to the side, resting his cheek on the coarse blanket beneath him. "Lovely," he noted, seeing the blank wall a few inches away from his eyes.

With a muffled groan as his head throbbed dully with pain, Ron tilted his head to the other side. "I'm in jail?" Ron thought in wonder, too surprised by the discovery to imbue much emotion into the realization.

Trying not to move his head much, he lowered his eyes, looking down the length of his body. His feet were elevated, and as a result, he had a good view of the high visibility orange jumpsuit he was wearing. A sudden squirm made him realize it was all he was wearing. A brief moment of panic arose as he thought, "I can't go commando - when I lose my pants, I'll..." but it quickly faded with the realization that there were no pants to lose; it was all one piece.

He turned his head, resting his cheek on the blanket again and tried to examine his surroundings without irritating his headache. The cell was plain - bare concrete and steel, painted a grimly monotonous shade of grey on walls, roof, and floor. Three of the walls were featureless concrete, with the wall above his head as he lay on the cot a crosshatching arrangement of thick steel bars. It smelled vaguely of old urine and bleach, particularly from the direction of the lidless, seatless, stainless steel toilet that graced one corner. The small room was clean, but still had as a general atmosphere a sickly miasmic conglomeration he could only describe as "depression" that lingered as a legacy of the many previous tenants. The cot he lay on boasted recently laundered sheets, but the blanket he could see from the corner of his eye as he gazed across the narrow expanse of his room was fading and grey - barely darker than the walls of the cell.

"Great. Well, at least I'm not manacled to the wall," he noted, trying to look on the bright side. "It's not like being a prisoner is a new thing..." When that thought failed to cheer him, he tried to remember what he was doing here - or how he'd gotten here, or... Well, much of anything else; his mind was sort of hazy, and details were sparse, but an occasional mental image rose before his mind's eye as he sought enlightenment for his current condition.

"We swam to the base..." he remembered, closing his eyes to help him focus and ease his head. "Gemini hit the self-destruct..." Red light. "Yes... I remember those..." Blank wall. "We were blocked..." Pod. One. K.P. "She's safe... and so is Rufus... Good..." He found that thought comforting. And then... "Running..."

Ron winced, as a throbbing pain lanced from his temples through his head like a pair of icepicks. A faint, barely audible whimper escaped through his clenched teeth. "Maybe I'll think about that... later."

Foregoing his mental excursion, Ron simply lay on the bed, inverted from the normal position, (with his head turned closest to his cell door, and his feet resting atop the cot's pillow) and stared down his orange-clad body at the undecorated wall above his feet, trying to read meaning in the tiny random patterns of convexities and concavities in the surface of the hardened cement. It was an exercise in mind-numbing futility - which he found soothing to his aching head.

The sound of rusting hinges squealing as metal was drawn across metal scraped at Ron's ears as the door to his cell swung open. He winced, but the assault on his hearing was mercifully brief, and his instinctive move to shield his ears halted before his arms had done more than twitch.

Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, Ron rose unsteadily to his feet, wincing at the stab of pain emanating from the back of his skull as the cool cement underfoot leached heat from his toes. He turned to face the door to his cell while scratching at an itch on the back of his neck, directly above the point of the greatest pain, trying to ready himself to confront whoever had imprisoned him, despite his poor condition. "Drakken? Maybe Dementor? Gemini's most likely," he realized.

"RON!"

Ron blinked, but before he could think or move, he was engulfed by a redhead. He staggered back a pace as she encircled his ribs with a hug that seemed powerful enough to shatter them if she exerted even the slightest additional pressure. His breath exploded from his lungs with a sound that has half a grunt, and half a wheeze. "K.P." he panted. "She is safe," he thought with a moment of climactic relief. "It worked."

If anything, Kim's grip only tightened on him at his breathy exhalation of her initials. She tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek on his shoulder as she held him crushingly tight in her embrace; refusing to let go, or to loosen her hold upon him.

Surprised by her vehemence, Ron's arms slowly rose, seemingly of their own volition, and wrapped themselves around her. Kim made a happy little noise, and whispered something, far too quietly for him to hear, but he realized the actual words she spoke didn't matter; her meaning and intent were clear enough that he didn't need to hear them. He knew her so well that he could practically read her mind, even when she was acting strangely - like she was right now.

"Shh," he whispered. "It's okay," he soothed her even as his head throbbed in sympathetic resonance to his heartbeat. One of his arms curved behind her shoulders, letting her know it was there without exerting any real pressure, supporting her as she leaned against him, even as his other hand dipped lower. Splaying his fingers, he rested his hand against the concave warmth of her bare lower back.

Kim seemed to freeze as she felt the touch of his skin against hers. She fell silent, and held herself completely still - but she neither drew back from him, nor made the slightest hint of protest.

Ron made small, comforting circles with his hand across her back, amazed at both his lack of awkwardness, and how natural it felt to hold her in his arms, to touch her like this. "How can I be doing this? I thought it would be so awkweird," he marvelled, even as his fingertips gloried in the softness of her skin, tracing gentle arcs across the flowing curve of her spine beneath the hem of her mission shirt. "That feels... nice. She's so soft..."

He lowered his face until his nose was buried in the flowing mane of her hair. She had obviously come straight to the prison from the scene of the WEE base's destruction, without even a detour to clean up after the mission, but despite this, Ron realized she still smelled wonderful - earthy and natural, with just a hint of the herbal shampoo that she used, overlain with the scent of the salt air of the ocean. Kim rarely used cosmetics or colognes at all - and almost never on a mission - so her scent was simply that of a young, healthy woman glowing with vibrancy and life, while the salt tang clinging to her hair stirred emotions and thoughts in him that he didn't understand.

A sigh of contentment escaped from between Kim's lips. She turned her face, so that instead of facing away from Ron, her face was nestled in the juncture of his shoulder and neck. Her breath tickled as it blew across the skin of his throat, above the collar of his hideous jumpsuit, and he felt a heat rising to suffuse his face.

Licking his lips, Ron felt his heart pound in his chest. He was sure she could feel it as it pulsed, so closely was she pressed against him. It felt oddly familiar, and very natural to have her body against his, though this was completely different than any other embrace they had shared. This was not a simple hug between friends; this was deeper, and more meaningful, and he felt in his bones that this was the start of something that would last a lifetime.

Ron's eyes widened as a moment of clarity trumpeted alarm at what he was doing, and despite the way he was feeling - and what he was feeling - he began to feel a twinge of concern sprouting from somewhere deep inside himself. He was embracing his best friend. He was holding her. His hand was touching her bare back. He was smelling her. And she was doing the same in return, squeezing him and nuzzling his neck. "What's wrong with me?" he thought frantically, his hands stilling on her back as his confusion and panic began to rise, overshadowing the contentment that had been blooming within. "What's wrong with her? This isn't normal!"

He shifted his hold, raising his hands to Kim's shoulders. As Kim blinked in surprise, he gently pushed her away from him. She was loathe to release him, but her grip on his ribs did slacken, and as he continued to push on her shoulders, she eventually stepped back a pace, her hands sliding along his ribs as she drew back until her arms fell entirely away from his body to lie limply at her sides. "Ron?" she asked curiously.

He looked deeply into her eyes, losing himself in the verdant pools that glimmered with a limpid light as they reflected the harsh glare of the institutional light fixture overhead, transmuting it into a glow that he could only describe as "love." He smiled, and she slowly did the same, her face gaining a transcendent gleam as her emotions shone forth. Ron cradled her face in his hands, his fingers spreading across her cheeks in an embrace more intimate than the one their bodies had shared mere moments before. His concerns evaporated as he drank in the depth and breadth of their connection with every breath he took, and every little sound she made.

Kim sighed happily, and she tilted her head so that one of Ron's palms was cupping her cheek. A contented grin crossed her face - one Ron hadn't seen in years. She was fully and completely happy... and she felt that way in his embrace... and she wasn't afraid to show it. "Kim..."

With gentle pressure from his fingertips, Ron drew Kim's beaming face to meet his. He pressed his lips to her forehead, and kissed her gently between her eyebrows - squarely where the first sign of her eventual transformation into a monkey had sprouted. Oddly, the thought didn't disturb him. And for a moment, that realization disturbed him. But then her fluttering eyelashes brushed against his chin like the flickering touch of a butterfly's wings as a faint giggle erupted to dance across Ron's throat, and the discomfort faded as quickly as it had arisen.

Ron's face slowly lifted from hers, and he smiled. Gazing deeply into her eyes, he whispered lovingly, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah-nagl fhtaga..." Ron smiled as Kim listened without understanding; she simply pulled him back into her embrace.

From over Kim's shoulder, Ron realized the woman he knew as M.P. sat perched on his cell's toilet, her posture and assurance that of a queen seated on a far different sort of throne. "M.P." his eyes widened, and the girl in his arms instantly faded to utter irrelevance.

She smiled from atop her unusual perch, the expression on her face an exact match to K.P.'s own look of pleasure, and she rose from her seat with a grace and ease that Ron both envied and adored. Her naked skin looked pale and sickly against the grim monochrome backdrop of his cell, but he knew it to be the cool green of the ocean's depths, in a shade reflective of the fecundity of spring, and it both excited and pleased him even as he felt Kim's body shifting against his. It was the cell's color that was sick and wrong; M.P.'s skin was perfect, and he realized that he eagerly awaited the day his own would be a match for hers. "It will come in time," he reassured himself, even as he hugged Kim to his chest.

He basked in the glow of M.P.'s pleasure and approval as she neared. Ron knew he pleased her, and that fact pleased him as well. The aching in his head, as well as all of his uncertainty, vanished as though it had never existed; they were wiped from his existence when his gaze met hers.

Ron lowered his hands to grip Kim's flanks, curving his hands around her slim frame. His thumbs gently began to move, stroking gently along the underside of her ribcage, and Kim happily nuzzled the underside of his jaw with her nose in return.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" M.P. praised. She smiled at the image of young love Kim and Ron made as they stood snuggled against each other, which made this moment perfect.

Smiling back at the green woman, Ron moved his right hand from Kim's body, while his left hand continued its gentle ministrations. He held his right hand outstretched beseechingly, his palm facing upwards. "Cthulhu fhtagn," he agreed.

Bowing slightly, M.P. placed an ornate dagger crafted of a glittering golden alloy into his open hand, balancing the weight of it across his palm. Stepping back, she straightened her back once more, and beamed proudly at him, her unblinking black eyes alive with an intense hunger.

Ron's hand curved around the hilt of the dagger. "I know what I have to do." Ron's arm tightened around the pallid, inferior mockery of his true love that snuggled against him, ensuring that she couldn't flee.

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Ron's screams echoed through the mostly empty cell block, his wails an eerie banshee shriek of terror, horror, and shame that throbbed with a mad ululation as his throat strained to vent the depths of his emotions. He sat bolt upright on his cot, his scrawny frame vibrating with the force of his cries. His eyes were unseeing despite the retracted eyelids that revealed the sclera surrounding his brown irises, and his pupils mere pinpricks as he gazed into the depths of a personal hell not visible in the grimly depressing cell he inhabited.

A passing guard pounded irritably on the cell door with his nightstick, sending a metallic clank echoing into Ron's cell. "Keep it down in there!" he ordered.

Despite the warning, Ron continued to scream. He stretched one hand into the air, fingers clawing as though blindly grasping for something, but they found nothing. He screamed like a lost soul - horrified by the full and certain knowledge that he was beyond redemption or salvation, and facing the absolute certainty of his own eternal damnation.

But as the guard turned to summon another to intervene with the screamer, the young man fell silent as suddenly and abruptly as though a switch had been flipped and all animation left him. He slumped bonelessly back onto the cot, his outstretched hand still clutching blindly and uselessly at nothing at all as his body shook slowly up and down as the cot reverberated with the motion imparted by his collapse.

Finally, Ron lay unconscious on the cot once more, as still and silent as though he had never made a sound, nor moved a muscle.

"Drunks," the guard shook his head in disgusted dismissal. He returned to his rounds, still shaking his head at the weird behavior.

Despite his casual dismissal of the event as a drunk's nightmares, throughout the remainder of his shift the guard often found himself casting a wary glance back over his shoulder towards the unconscious young man who had screamed so... eerily. Even though he couldn't quite figure out what it was, he felt something was just a little off about the young man - and it wasn't just the smell that clung to him despite the police's several attempts to wash it away.

"Foolishness," he was still telling himself as he clocked out after his shift.

Despite his attempt to ignore the discomfort he felt, as the guard walked out of the precinct, his feet led him along a different route home than usual. Without conscious planning, he made a brief stop along the way home.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he began, staring into the darkened niche of the confessional as he repeated the familiar mantra, seeking the comfort of absolution.

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In the basement of the station house, a harried clerk completed the daily task of entering a stack of fingerprint cards into the computer. The unique identifiers that the cards contained would eventually be entered into the national offender database, where they would be compared to evidence collected at crime scenes around the country, federal employee records, previous submissions from this and other police departments, and cross-checked against warrants, lists maintained by various legal institutions, and several federal agencies.

Despite what was frequently shown on TV, all of this processing did not happen instantaneously. Even the best computers take time to crunch numbers. Despite this inevitable fact, it was still far faster, more efficient, and less prone to errors of interpretation or omission than the old, manual, card-based system that it had replaced. It would also continue functioning around the clock without a single pause to rest tired and aching eyes - and that is precisely what it did.

After verifying that no results had been returned from the fingerprint system since the last time he had checked, the clerk collected his jacket, and gladly headed home after a busy shift, leaving the system to do its work. The computer, obeying its programmed instructions, processed the fingerprints, interfaced with the host computer, and continued with the task of identification and registration without the need for further user intervention.

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In a sterile, isolated, insulated, and thoroughly controlled (climate, access, and humidity were among the dozens of factors restricted to ensure the proper and secure operation of its contents) room a great distance from the clerk's office as the crow flies, yet nearly as close as a thought as the electron or photon flowed (depending on the route's medium), a red banner message flashed across a control console. At the sight of the message, and the information thereby revealed, a blue gloved hand reached out and pressed a white button on a black, rectangular box sitting on the desk beside the monitor.

"Get me Dr. Director, please."

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to be continued...