ron-sama: I don't plan for Ron to be left in the dust. Just be patient :).
Jokerisdaking: Presumably Ron told Kim about Yamanouchi 'off-screen'.
Anghammarad: Your wish is partly granted.
DaemonCross: Thanks for the review and comments. I try to avoid clichés and overused plot devices, out of pure, pig-headed contrariness if nothing else!
Thanks to: captainkodak1, campy, MatthewC, mattb3671, Cold-Chaos, GargoyleSama, Salimoo, lady-of-tormentdeath, Triaxx2, daywalkr82, Visigoth29527, Spyke the Hedgehog and Wanderer3.
Wap!
"Ow!"
Wap!
"Arrgh! Stand still, Squeeb!" the freakishly mutated Gill half rasped, half gurgled.
Ron declined to obey. He had a strong hunch that if he stopped moving for even a moment he'd end up like Kim, Mr. Barkin and the rest of the cheer squad: glued to trees and/or walls by the viscous, snot-like goo Gil (or Gill, as the freak preferred) was capable of spitting in apparently endless amounts.
Ron dashed away from his foe, jumped against and kicked off from the trunk of a tree, and sailed over Gill's head, twisting as he did so, landing behind the mutant. The broomstick Ron had armed himself with hissed through the air.
Wap!
"Quit it!" Gill howled, clutching at his backside.
"Surrender," Ron commanded, letting the mystical monkey power infuse his words.
Gill snarled, his rage and hate overpowering Ron's attempt to end the fight.
"Never!"
Ron could hardly believe the situation he was in: fighting not only for his own life, but Kim's as well. Gill, who blamed Ron for his horrific new appearance, had gone to elaborate lengths to avenge himself, luring the Middleton Mad Dogs Cheer Squad to an abandoned camp on the shores of Lake Middleton. It was something right out of a cheesy horror movie. The only difference was that this villain, gross and creepy as he was, was still only flesh and blood.
Gill should have been a cakewalk. When he'd made his presence known, Kim had strode forward with complete confidence to put Gill in his place.
She'd never made it. The first hint Ron had that anything was wrong came when Kim stumbled over her own feet when she was still fifty feet away. The stumble was followed by a drunken stagger, a groan, and Kim collapsing to her knees. Gill had crossed to her, gloating.
"So you're the great Kim Possible, the girl who can do anything, huh? You don't look so tough to me," he'd cackled, before cracking Kim across the face with a scaly hand and covering her in muck. "Must come from hanging out with the Squeeb."
"I don't get it, Gill," Ron said conversationally. "How can I possibly be responsible for you mutating into a slimy freak?"
"It was the double swim time, like I said before, Squeeb!" Gill snapped back. "The more I swam, the more I wanted to swim. If you hadn't given me your swim time, I'd still be normal!"
"Doubt that," Ron muttered, spinning to avoid a streamer of sticky goo Gill launched his way.
Aloud, Ron said, "Yeah, right. So how come, of all the people that ever went swimming in the lake, you're the only one who turned into a fish guy?"
Wap!
"Rraarrgghh! 'Cause I found the stone on your swim time, Squeeb!" Gill howled.
"What stone?" Ron probed, dancing away from Gill. The man-fish's fingers pushed aside the flaps of skin around his neck, revealing a crudely made necklace sporting a large green crystal that almost seemed to glow with an inner light.
"I found this in the lake," Gill said. "At first I thought it was just a weird rock, but as time went by, I realized that it was changing me."
"So why didn't you get rid of it?" Ron asked as the two of them circled warily.
"No!" Gill cried. "I mean...NO! You can't take it from me! It's mine!"
"You don't call it 'My precious' do you, Gill?" Ron mocked.
With a roar of rage Gill charged toward Ron, who sidestepped easily and brought his broomstick around.
Wap!
"I'll kill you!" Gill screamed as he stumbled forward, fighting to keep his balance.
"Rufus!" Ron commanded, even as he pulled the naked mole rat from his pocket. "Necklace!"
Rufus crouched in Ron's hand, muscles tensing even as the hand shot forward.
"Hnk-hah!" Rufus exclaimed gleefully.
Ron's arm reached full extension. Rufus sprang at the same instant and went flying across the gulf between Ron and Gill. He landed unnoticed on Gill's shoulder and scampered to his neck. Finding the chain of the necklace, Rufus' sharp incisors, optimized by evolution for tunneling through the hard soils of east Africa, sliced through the soft metal with little effort. The Rufus was down and away, running off with Gill's necklace dragging behind him.
Gill forgot about Ron instantly.
"Nooo! Bring that back! I need it!" he begged, starting after Rufus. In doing so Gill gave Ron a clear shot at the back of his head.
Ron took it.
"You okay, K.P.?" Ron asked anxiously, pulling at the stringy goo that held Kim fast to the tree. Kim's face was still pale, but she nodded.
"I'm better, anyway," she said, "and as long as Rufus keeps that rock away from me I think I'll be fine."
Ron gave her a puzzled look, then glanced over to where Rufus sat, necklace in hand. Gill was nearby, bound hand and foot. He'd been almost hysterical until Rufus had brought his green stone close to him. It seemed to have a calming effect on the mutant teenager.
"What does the rock have to do with you getting sick?" Ron asked.
"I don't know," Kim admitted. "All I can say is that when Rufus took it away, I started feeling better."
"Better enough to get yourself out of this stuff?" Ron whispered. "I can't break it."
"I'll try," Kim said. She flexed her shoulders and arms. The strands that had been holding her parted like cooked spaghetti.
"I guess so," Ron grinned, his usual cheerfulness having reasserted itself after the danger Gill presented had passed.
While Kim freed the others, Ron found and disabled the communications jamming gear Gill had used to cut them off from the rest of the world. Before long, emergency vehicles were crowding into the center of the long abandoned Camp Wannaweep. Gill was tranquilized and carted off to the Middleton Medical Center for treatment of whatever it was that had mutated him. After some experimentation, Ron put Gill's rock in a small metal box he found. It didn't completely negate whatever it was the rock did to Kim, but with the box at the back of the bus and Kim at the front she was able to make the ride home in relative comfort.
Ron bounced through the front door of the Possible home, an excited look on his face. He headed for the kitchen, where he found Kim's mom baking bread.
"Mmmm, smells good, Mrs. Dr. P.," Ron said by way of greeting, bending down to sniff at a cooling, freshly baked loaf.
"Why thank you, Ron," Patricia smiled. "I thought dinner tonight could use an extra touch, so..."
Ron cast an experienced eye around the kitchen. Ingredients in various stages of preparation offered clues as to what the evening meal was going to be. A look in the refrigerator confirmed his suspicions.
"Yankee Pot Roast," Ron exclaimed, smacking his lips hungrily.
Patricia laughed. "I'll call your parents and tell them you'll be eating here tonight," she smiled.
"Boo-yah!" Ron exalted. Then, "Where's Kim, Mrs. Dr. P?"
"Up at the tree house," Patricia said. "She's waiting for you there."
Ron climbed the crude ladder to the tree house without announcing himself.
"Hey, Ron," Kim greeted him as he stuck his head and shoulders through the trap door. She was staring at moving columns of strange, glowing symbols being projected from an object about a foot in diameter and shaped like a thicker than normal discus. Every so often Kim would reach out an touch keys set around the edges of the disk, altering the display.
"Reading your Dad's diary again?" Ron asked.
"Jor-el's diary, yes," Kim answered.
Ron settled into a cross-legged position on the floor and tried not to grin. Kim could be as stubborn as a mule about some things, and one of those things was how she referred to her biological parents. It wasn't that she didn't want to acknowledge them, but she was still coming to grips with her heritage, and was currently in a phase where her biological parents were 'Jor-el and Lara' instead of 'Dad and Mom'. Of course, Ron reflected, that made a certain amount of sense, since Kim had never known any parents but James and Patricia Possible, and didn't want to slight their place in her life.
"So what's this part about?" Ron inquired. Kim had learned to read, write and speak Kryptonian with the help of a teaching machine Jor-el had included in her ship's equipment. She was in the process of helping her parents learn the language as well, and had offered to teach Ron, but he had politely demurred.
"Your Dad is taking enough of your time in that regard," Ron had explained. It was true. Mr. Dr. Possible was positively giddy at the prospect of unlocking the secrets of Kryptonian science, even though, as he'd put it, it would take years, if not decades, to get to the point where it would be possible to understand even the basic concepts behind most of it.
Kim looked up and smiled. "These are poems Jor-el wrote when he was courting Lara," she answered, a fond smile touching her lips. "I don't understand the subtleties of Kryptonian well enough yet to translate them, so they seem kind of clumsy, but they're very sweet."
There was a brief silence, then Kim blinked as she suddenly remember something.
"Oh, and take a look at this," she invited. She touched more keys, and the flowing text disappeared, to be replaced by a slowly rotating image of what seemed to be an 'S' enclosed in an irregular pentagon, like a diamond seen from the side.
"What is it?"
"The symbol of the House of El," Kim answered.
Ron gave her a skeptical look.
"I know," she said defensively, "But seriously, it's just a coincidence that it looks like what you and I call the letter 'S'." She punched some more keys. "Look, I found other house crests that look sort of like letters from Earth alphabets." More glowing images appeared in the air.
"Okay, okay, you sold me," Ron grinned, and Kim chuckled as well.
"So," she said, "What brings you over today? Besides Mom's pot roast, that is?"
Ron blinked. "How did you...? Kim! Were you listening again...?" Ron sputtered.
"Ron," Kim said severely. "You know I promised not to do that."
"Then how...?"
"Uh, let's see: A) You and I have known for a week Mom was making pot roast for dinner tonight, and B) You love my Mom's pot roast."
Ron turned pink. "Damn my predictability," he fumed, but his eyes were twinkling, and Kim giggled.
"Actually," Ron said, trying (but not too hard) to salve his dignity, "I do have some news." Reaching into a pocket he pulled out a rolled up piece of parchment. At Kim's quizzical look Ron elaborated. "Well, it's almost the end of the school year, and Sensei invited me back to Yamanouchi for six weeks to work on my mad fu skills." He said the last lightly, but Kim heard the catch in his voice.
"And see your mysterious girlfriend?" Kim teased.
"She's not my girlfriend!" Ron yelped. Kim quirked an eyebrow at Ron as he blushed again.
"Seriously, K.P., Yori is great and all, but she's totally dedicated to the school. Besides," he added hesitantly, "I have my eye on someone closer to home."
"Oh really?" Kim asked. "Who is it?"
Ron got a conspiratorial look in his eye. Leaning toward Kim he whispered in her ear, "Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure," she replied earnestly.
Ron cast a furtive glance about. Satisfied the coast was clear he said, "So can I."
Kim gaped at him while Ron began to laugh. "Gotcha!" he crowed. Kim tried to scowl, but broke down in laughter herself.
"Fine, don't tell me. Just understand, I'm going to be watching you like a hawk for any clue who this new crush of yours is," Kim warned, her eyes sparkling.
"You're going to have a hard time doing that if I'm in Japan for a month and a half," Ron pointed out, and Kim's face fell. Ron felt a pang of sympathy. The only other significant amount of time he and Kim had spent apart was the summer his parents had sent him to the summer camp from hell.
"Good point," Kim mumbled.
"So why don't you come with me?" Ron suggested.
"Huh?" Kim asked, looking up.
"Come with me," Ron repeated. "I'm sure Sensei won't mind, and I'd enjoy the company. You'll like it, too. The school's in a great location, and Tokyo isn't far away, so we could go sightseeing on the weekends."
"Maybe shopping, too?" Kim asked eagerly.
"Shopping too," Ron smiled. "So you're coming?"
"If my folks say yes, why not?" Kim asked.
James helped himself to another slice of pot roast, then looked at his daughter.
"Kimmie, you'll be interested to know we finished analyzing that stone you and Ron took from that Gill fellow."
Kim's fork froze halfway to her mouth. "What did you find out?" she asked breathlessly, eager to learn why the stone affected her the way it did.
Around the table Ron, Jim and Tim, and Patricia stopped eating and looked on expectantly.
"It's a new mineral, James explained. "Mostly ordinary elements like silicon, oxygen and carbon, but the key element is one we've never seen before. It's atomic number is one hundred-thirteen, which means it's a trans-uranic, and so should be extremely unstable. This stuff is radioactive, but it seems to have a fairly long half-life." James gave Kim a serious look. "It also seems to be of extraterrestrial origin."
"Extraterrestrial as in..." Jim broke in.
"...from Krypton?" Tim finished.
"It seems so," James nodded.
"But how is that possible?" Kim demanded.
"Well, Kimmie," James shrugged. "As near as I can figure, your ship used gravity induction drive. When Krypton exploded, some of the debris must have got caught up in the ship's drive field and pulled into hyperspace with you."
"That would explain the meteor shower that came along with you, Kim," Patricia added.
"Cool!" the Tweebs exclaimed.
"Not cool!" Kim said, glaring at her brothers.
"Aw, come on, Sis," they groused in unison. "You have to have some weakness. It wouldn't be fair otherwise."
Kim grinned in spite of herself. Jim and Tim might be little monsters most of the time, but they'd taken the news that their big sister was both adopted, and an alien, in stride. In fact, they'd expressed a certain disappointment that she wasn't all slimy and gross, like a proper alien should be.
"Anyway," James went on. "The team at the Science Center accepted my proposal to call the new element Kryptonium, though of course, I didn't tell them why I chose that name."
"And what are you going to call the new mineral?" Patricia inquired.
"Oh, I think Kryptonite has a nice ring to it, don't you?" James said.