It had been three days since Shego had been defeated and captured. And it had been that long since Kim Possible had spoken to Ron Stoppable. It wasn't for lack of trying on her part; Ron had turned off the Kimmunicator, and he wasn't answering calls from either her or Wade. Considering how they'd parted, she hadn't quite dared simply come over, but the time had come.
The last thing she'd said to him had been "oh." Not good enough.
No one had answered the front door, despite her knocking and bell-ringing. Ron's parents weren't home – of course they weren't; it was the middle of the day and bank officers and actuaries didn't get summer vacation – but thanks to Wade, Kim knew that Ron was. So now she was coming up the front stairs, despite her well-mannered instincts, approaching a door that she'd never been nervous to approach before.
Now she was, and she hated it. Her stomach was in knots, and that was wrong. Ron had always been the one person in the world that she could be completely relaxed and comfortable – completely herself – around.
But now – stomach knots? Wrong. Sick and wrong. No, worse – wrongsick.
And that was why this had gone on long enough. She couldn't leave things as they were any longer. Nervous or not, it was time to at least try to set things right. She took a deep breath and knocked.
"Ron?"
No answer.
She tried again. "Hey, Ron," She called, trying to sound cheerful. "You decent?"
Still no answer.
"Ron, please. We need to talk."
Nothing.
Okay, that was enough. "Ron, I know you're in there, and I'm not leaving. I'm only knocking to give you a chance to stop whatever it is you're doing in there and put some pants on."
There. He could tell her to go away if he wanted, but he couldn't just ignore her and hope she'd go away.
There was an unhappy grunt from inside the room, but then the door swung open. "Ron, I – "
No one was there. Not at Ron's eye-level, anyway. She looked down.
Standing in the doorway, looking up at her, was a worried-looking Rufus. She knelt and scooped him up into her cupped hands, leaning in to whisper confidentially.
"Is it that bad?" She asked.
He nodded. "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
"Okay. Why don't you give us some time, and I'll see what I can do."
Rufus nodded again, hopped out of her hands, and scampered out the door. She stood up and closed it behind him, then turned to face Ron.
He lay on his bed in a pair of shorts, staring determinedly at the ceiling,very deliberately Not Looking At Her. It wasn't something she was used to, and despite her bold words outside the door and to Rufus, she had no idea how to deal with it.
He must hate me.
She would go home and cry her eyes out later, when that was confirmed. Right now, she had to try something.
"I, uh, came to, uh…you know, we never did exchange the hostages."
He made a noise that she chose to interpret as asking her what she was talking about.
"You know," she said, digging into her backpack. "You've still got the Kimmunicator, and I've still got – " She held up the Ronnunicator and hit the button to make it play "The Naked Mole Rap".
Without looking away from the ceiling, he pointed at his desk, where the Kimmunicator sat, its battery removed and set beside it.
With a sigh, Kim crossed to the desk, put down the Ronnunicator, and stuffed the Kimmunicator and its battery into her backpack.
Well. That was one icebreaker that hit a 'berg and sank. Time to be a bit more direct. She crossed the room again and sat down beside him on the bed. He flinched away from her. He might as well have hit her again, but she held on.
"Ron, I meant what I said. We do need to talk. I'm worried about you. Wade is worried about you. Even Rufus is worried about you."
He looked away from the ceiling…but he also looked away from her.
"Look, I know you're mad at me, but – "
He finally turned to look at her, his eyes wide with what looked like…disbelief?
"Mad at you?" He asked. "You think I'm mad at you?"
"Well…yeah. I made you help me help Shego, and now you won't talk to me. What am I supposed to think?"
He sat up, staring at her wildly. As he did so, Kim realized that he wasn't staring at her eyes, as he usually did, or her hair, as he often did, or even her breasts, as he sometimes did. He was staring at her cheek. Where the mark he'd left was only now starting to turn yellow and purple instead of the near-black it had been.
She knew what he was going to say an instant before he said it.
"You think I'm – Kim, I hit you!"
She'd known it was coming, but she still didn't know quite how to deal with it. It was too sudden, too opposite from what she'd expected. Ron's not furious with me? Ron's this upset over something I'd pretty much written off as just another accidental, Ron-related mission-bruise?
System overload. Reboot.
She blinked. Paused. Blinked again.
The silence was stretching out and Ron wasn't looking at her anymore. At least now she knew why. It wasn't because he didn't want to see her face, it was because he was unable to face her. Not much better, but maybe easier to fix. Not that she had the slightest idea how she could so, but she had to start trying. "But…Ron, that's no big…"
"Wrong, KP," He interrupted. "There's nothing bigger. No decent man does that. Ever. I may not have learned much from my Dad, but he taught me that."
"And as a general rule, he's right," She agreed. "But we've been sparring for weeks."
He shook his head, still not looking toward her. "That's different, KP. This is real. I hit you and I hurt you for real."
Enough of that. No more wallowing – time to remind him that she wasn't a victim, and he wasn't a villain. "I've hit you before, for real. And hurt you for real. Picked you up and threw you into a concession stand, if I remember."
"I think it might've been a hotdog cart. Besides – "
"I'm a girl? I'm the one who knows fourteen forms of Kung Fu, Ron, so unless you're all charged up on Mystical Monkey Power, I'm the one who has the most tools to use for abusive."
"It's pretty much gone again right now, but that's not the point. What I was going to say was that you were moodulated."
Perfect. Walked right into it. "Exactly," she agreed. She reached out and gently turned his face to her. "It's the same thing, Ron." He tried to shake his head, but she wouldn't let him. "Ah! What you did wasn't on purpose, either. It's not like you saw me, got mad that I was taking Shego's side against yours, and then hit me – although, under the circumstances, I'd have forgiven even that." Her face hardened for an instant – "Once." – and then softened again. "You thought I was Drakken joining the fight. It was an accident. You'd never hurt me on purpose."
"Are you sure, KP? I let you get trapped in that cage, and that wasn't an accident."
She hesitated. That was true. And she was tweaked about that. Later, they'd need to have a long talk about that. A very important and very hard talk, about letting her live her own life even if he wanted to protect her; about supporting without smothering; about not taking her choices away because he thought she was making the wrong ones. She didn't think it would take more than one such talk – supporting, protecting, and nurturing were in his nature, not smothering or controlling. He never would have made such a stumble if he hadn't been so badly hurt.
But that wasn't the talk that they were having right now, and now wasn't a time for nuance.
She let go of his face, reached down and took a hand out of his lap, and raised it to her throat. He tried to pull the hand away, but she held it in place. She knew what image his hand at a woman's throat was probably bringing to his mind, and she wanted him to understand that she felt perfectly safe giving him the power to do that to her.
"I'm sure," she said. "You were trying to protect me. You would never hurt me on purpose, Ron – I trust you."
She pressed his hand one last time. Then let him go.
He withdrew his hand slowly, staring at her in wonder and disbelief. Then he looked away. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Maybe I wouldn't. But I seem to keep hurting you just by being around."
Alarms went off in her mind as a lot of things suddenly fell into place. "This…this isn't just about that hit, is it? Or anything that happened in that lair."
He didn't answer. And he didn't look at her. That was answer enough.
"Oh, Ron, I thought you already had this conversation with my parents."
"What conversation?"
He knew damn well which. "The one where they told you that what happened to me wasn't your fault?"
Even though he still didn't turn to face her, she could see him getting ready to tell her a lie, to say anything to end this torturous, dangerous conversation quickly. Then he sighed, and his shoulders drooped.
"They told me that they didn't blame me," he said. "It's not the same thing."
Oh, Ron…oh, my poor Ron…what have you done to yourself? What have you been doing to yourself all this time?
"I thought they also told you not to punish yourself."
He turned back toward her, his face indignant. "And I haven't been!" He protested.
"Ron…that's exactly what you've been doing."
"No, I haven't! I've been trying to make up for it, make sure it never happens again! There's a difference!"
"Not if you're destroying yourself in the process!"
They stayed that way for a moment, green eyes locked to brown…and then he looked away again.
"You're right," he said. "And it was all for nothing in the end. Not only did I fail to protect you – like I always fail at everything – but I actually hurt you."
"Ron – "
He waved her off. "You should go, Kim. You really should. I'm five hundred miles of bad road."
Kim stared at his back for a long moment, stunned. Then she started to get mad. "No," she said. "I'm not going anywhere. There's two things I need to tell you first, and you're going to listen: number one: if you think that stopping Shego from burning my face off – and doing it the way I wanted you to, by saving her, too, even though you hate her – counts as failing to save me, then you're crazier than she is. Number two: what I did this spring? That wasn't noble. That wasn't self-sacrificing. That was totally selfish. I didn't do that for you – I did it for me, and I'm sorry that it's hurt you so much. You've always been there for me, and I knew that I couldn't live in a world without you. So you better believe me when I tell you again that I'm not going to lose you."
There. She said it. She waited. And waited. No answer.
----
Ron didn't turn to look at her. If he did, he might start crying, and he couldn't do that. Wanted to. Couldn't. You don't get to cry if it's your fault. He might hug her, and that would be even worse. He might agree to let her stay, and that would be worst of all. If she stayed, he could only hurt her more.
Bad road. Bad road.
He heard a sigh behind him. Kim standing up, taking a few steps away from the bed. Was she leaving? Good. Go, just go. I can't hold out much longer.
"Ron, are you a virgin?"
Huh? He blinked.
"Uh, yeah," He answered before he could think not to. "Why – "
"Good. So am I. And I've been on the Pill since I was fourteen. There. We've talked about it."
There was a light fluff as a piece of cloth hit the carpet.
Ron spun, his eyes wide with shock.
Kim was standing a few feet away, with her shirt on the floor at her feet and her fingers working her belt buckle.
For a moment, Ron was too stunned to react or even think. He just let information flow through his eyes and into his brain.
Kim was wearing a bra. Of course she was wearing a bra. A navy-blue one with a silver floral pattern. He'd seen her wear swimsuits that covered less, but that was different. Swimsuit was clothing, bra was underwear. Small or not, wearing a swimsuit meant that she was fully clothed. If the bra was exposed, then she was getting undressed. He'd seen her in a bra before, more times than he could count, but that was different. When you're changing clothes in the back of a cargo plane, you forget about modesty pretty quickly. He'd heard similar things happened among actors who had to make quick costume changes. He'd seen her without a bra before. Seen and touched, and it had been wonderful. But somehow, he could already tell that this was different.
"Kim," he said weakly. "What are you doing?"
"I'd've thought that was obvious," she said, unbuttoning and unzipping her jeans. "You won't forgive yourself, so you need somebody to do it for you." She kicked off her shoes. "Fine. I forgive you. Not that I, or anybody else, ever thought that you were anything less than a hero." She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her jeans and pushed them down. Ron's mind, still stuck on "receive", noticed that her panties were plain, light-blue cotton that didn't match her satiny bra. She hadn't had a clue that this was going to happen when she came over here. "You don't trust yourself." She stepped back over to the bed and pulled him, too stunned to resist, to his feet. "Well, I trust you."
She pulled him in for a kiss, her tongue sliding into his gaping mouth. Kim's mouth always tasted of sweet things.
Her breasts, soft and still swathed in satin, pressed against his chest Her free hand reached around and cupped his ass, pressing their hips together.
Whoa!
He took her by the shoulders and held her out at arm's length. "Hey, whoa, hold on, Kim! Wait a second!"
She rested her hands on his arms and looked up at him patiently, waiting, just as he'd said.
Ron took a moment to get his breathing under control, then said words he couldn't believe were actually coming out of his mouth: "KP, I don't think we should do this."
She shrugged. "I think we should."
Doesn't she understand? Why won't she understand?
He shook his head. "KP, no. It's not supposed to be like this."
She smiled up at him, too brightly, her eyes glistening. "No, it's not. You're right, Ron." She laughed, and the laughter was sadder than the tears. "You're absolutely right. It's not supposed to be like this at all. We're supposed to spend a lot longer on the explorations and substitutions and not-quites and everything-else-buts. It's supposed to happen on a special day – maybe after the Senior Ball, or maybe the day I turn eighteen, or maybe just before we head off to college. And it's supposed to be romantic, with the dinner and the dancing and the nice hotel room where we won't be disturbed, maybe in a tropical hideaway of some kind. There's supposed to be candlelight and music and it's all supposed to be wonderful and special." She paused, letting that sink in.
She did understand. She'd just said everything he was thinking, better than he probably would have said it. Then why - ?
"But the way things are supposed to be got blown through a cinderblock wall in June," She went on. "And this is the way things need to be. You need to understand that I love you, and I'm not going to leave no matter how hard you try to make me. And since words don't seem to be making that much of an impression…"
"But they could, I think, if – "
She put the tips of her fingers to his lips. "Ron, please. I need this, too. I need to be beautiful again, if only just for a little while."
And that was enough. He couldn't, wouldn't let Kim's First Time be some sort of…sacrifice, just because he'd gone a little crazy because he couldn't deal. As hard as it had been, as much of a revolt against both his heart and his teenage hormones to turn down the woman he loved when she just offered herself up on a silver platter like that, he could've done it. He could've stood firm against the Puppy Dog Pout itself.
But if they both needed it, because maybe words weren't quite enough for either of them?
There were worse reasons.
He relaxed his arms and drew her back in.
----
Kim had known that would be the right thing to say. Not that every word wasn't true. Now, now that she'd broken through his hard shell of "shoulds" and "can'ts", he pulled her into an embrace that started out gentle and became fierce as he was finally carried away by his need.
Need. Yes. She'd been right about that. Need. Real need, not "baby-I-need-you" pop-song "need", which was really "baby I want you". This wasn't want, this wasn't horny – she would've been willing and able to help him with Horny, but that wouldn't have required such a drastic step – this wasn't even love. This was Need, need like hunger, like thirst, like exhaustion; need that made you sick and weak if you tried to deny it: the terrible heart-sickness of a boy – of a man – who'd spent months providing comfort to everyone around him while refusing to accept any comfort for himself.
He was shaking. But then, so was she. She couldn't believe that she was doing this – every word she'd said about how things were supposed to be had been true, and all of it would be gone after this. Everything would change.
But then, everything had changed before, so many times that the thought of anything staying the same was a joke. It had changed at "out there…in here…"; it had changed when they'd walked in the gym door at the prom, hand-in-hand; it had changed at the kiss. It had really changed during their heated explorations and experimentations in the tree house, on missions, wherever they could grab a rare moment's privacy. When she'd had her "just a friend's" hands on her breasts and his fingers inside her; when she'd asked her "just a friend" to drop his pants on purpose so she could see and touch what they held…that was when the whole concept of "just a friend" was gone forever. And if this was the last close-your-eyes-and-leap toward something else, well, everything had changed again when Shego had gone critical on Middleton High School –
And every word she'd said about how things needed to be had been true, too.
Need.
There was need in his shaking hands as they roamed across her body. He wasn't stroking or caressing – not just – he was making sure she was there, that she was real, touching because he needed the skin on skin.
Need.
She tried not to think of what her skin must feel like under his hands – the hard ridges of the glass-cuts, the too-smooth of the burns – and forced her mind to lose itself in what his hands felt like on her as they ran over her back, her neck, up through her hair, down her shoulders, over her hips, down her legs, then back up to her ass, squeezing and pressing their bodies together. Her own hands roamed a similar circuit, finding lean muscle where none had ever been before.
Need.
As always, she was surprised how good his mouth tasted, considering the culinary horrors he shoveled into it. But it did, and she didn't want to break off their kiss, even to take a breath, but he was already kissing her face, her jaw, biting gently at her neck – but these weren't just kisses, any more than his touches had been caresses, this was the wolf putting his mouth on his mate's neck.
Need.
She helped him take off her bra (of course she helped him take off her bra, the first time a makeout session had gone that far he'd asked if it was locked, sometime soon they so needed to spend a whole afternoon in the treehouse just doing bra-unfastening drills), and he started kissingsuckinglickingstroking and she couldn't hold in a moan.
He didn't need any help getting her panties off as he lay her down on the bed and kissed further down her torso. Sternum, belly, navel, waist –
Pause. Deep breath. Another. What was he doing?
A familiar smell reached her – a rich, earthy, musk. The smell should be familiar – it was her own, and Ron seemed to like it, savoring it like a gourmet just before –
Oh.
Oh, God.
Lips. Tongue. Even teeth. Ron making sounds like he's really enjoying his meal. A naco with extra cheese, maybe.
She wanted to laugh. She howled instead.
Oh, God.
Building. Tightening in her womb. Rising, building
OhgodOhGodOHGOD!
She howled out and went limp, and then Ron was above her, poised, tip to lips, panting, flushed.
"Are you sure about this, KP? Sure?"
She was. Oh, she was. And even if she'd had a last moment's twinge of fear, all she had to do was look up into his eyes and see the
Need!
But he would back off, on the instant, if she showed any doubt. It might break his heart, that last tap of rejection, but he would. He was her good man, and she was absolutely safe in his hands.
But then, she wasn't the one who needed proof of that.
She wrapped one arm around his shoulders and cupped a buttcheek with her free hand and drew him down. And in.
Flinch. Freeze.
"Did I – "
"It's okay, keep going, it feels good now."
He did. And it did. She'd expected more pain. No big, obviously – everyone was different. Maybe it was because Ron had gotten her so ready. Or maybe it was because her idea of pain was completely different from that of the girls who'd told her how much it might hurt.
Ron didn't last long. She hadn't expected him to. She'd heard other stories – complaints, really – about other teenage boys out for their First, and she knew that he'd already acquitted himself with honor. But she looked up into his face and saw the tight-jawed strain there as he tried to hold back, and she knew that he couldn't last much longer and the last thing she wanted to hear was an apology, so
"It's okay, Ron, go ahead, I've had mine, take it, take it – "
And then it was his turn to howl. Roar, really – she'd never imagined that such a deep, lionish sound could come from Ronald Stoppable's narrow chest.
Then he collapsed. She'd heard stories about that, too. That was okay. Some other time, she might want to talk after, but this time, the whole point had been to give him some peace.
Peace. Yes. She lay like a lioness with her mate in the afternoon heat (but lions and lionesses…never mind); stroking his back, slick with summer-sweat; and let her own mind drift in the peace.
She understood now why her father had tried to keep her away from this.
Part of it was that he was afraid for her, of course. As well he should be. The fact that she was with someone she loved and trusted, and the fact that she was protected against pregnancy didn't make an act this powerful "safe" – just right. She didn't want to think what this could have been like if anything about it had been wrong.
That was the largest part – he probably thought it was the only part, or at least he told himself so. But there was more to it than that.
There had always been two men in her life, two representatives of the other half of the human race, two examples of MALE. Her father and Ron. Jim and Tim had come along too late to fill such a role – besides, as her younger siblings and prepubescent to boot, they were sexless as far as she was concerned.
She knew that she was lucky that both of her men were so thoroughly behind her, so supportive – that they believed in her so. She knew that there weren't many women who had that blessing.
Her father was…well, her father. He protected. He overprotected. He nurtured. He disciplined. He loved.
Ron…Ron was her first friend. Her best friend. Always there for her, annoying, helping, hindering, needing – almost more of a brother than her brothers. Then, things had changed. Pre-K through the Prom. Friendship to love.
And now, he was her mate. Other words would come later, but for now, there was only the fierce protectiveness, the feeling of peace, the feeling of belonging. Mate.
He knew her taste now, for God's sake.
Her father must have known that when this day came, he would be supplanted. Leave mother and father and become one flesh, that was one of the oldest truths.
She couldn't blame him for being jealous of that, for wanting to keep her for a little while longer.
Ron started to shift above her, and she came out of her peaceful near-doze and was suddenly alert. Something was still unfinished, she somehow realized. There was something that she still needed to do.
Ron raised himself up on his arms, and looked down at her, and his eyes were as soft and open and vulnerable as she was – as she had somehow known he would be, known with a knowing that was older than she was, older than her mother or grandmothers, as old as the first days of women and their mates.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she spoke first. And just as she had in Drakken's lair, she said the one right, true thing she could say, the thing he needed most to hear:
"There. Now nothing can take me away from you."
He froze with his mouth hanging open, staring down at her. Then his eyes slowly filled with tears. His mouth started to work as he tried to say something, and he blinked hard.
It didn't work. A tear dripped on her face. He reached out and wiped it away, but it was quickly replaced by another.
Then, the terrible, long drought of that summer ended as the rains finally came, and Ron collapsed back into her arms.
He cried like a hurt little boy, his body heaved and convulsed by great, wracking sobs; the poisonous, festering infection in his heart finally lanced, breaking open and flowing.
It hurt. Oh, it hurt, but at last, at last…
Kim held him tight and stroked and patted his back and made comforting noises like she might do someday for a hurt little boy of her own:
"It's alright…it's alright, baby…shhh…I'm here…I'm here…"
Her mate was wounded, but she would tend him back to health, just as he had done for her. Another of the oldest truths.
----
Sensei returned to his body with a sigh of relief and weariness. Using his abilities to keep watch over the wielder of the Lotus Blade in a time of crisis was altogether necessary and proper. To continue watching now would be crass voyeurism.
The old man did not immediately rise from the lotus position in which he sat. Like all things of this world, he was mortal. Even the mountain beneath Yamanouchi would be worn down by time and wind, and his flesh was far less than mountain stone. His strength had been worn away to a whisper of the shout it had once been, and he could no longer do such things as Stoppable-san did without paying a heavy price.
That price, in this case, was a bone-deep, arthritic fatique that left him unable to rise to his feet without aid . He would summon Yori in a few minutes, but until then, he contemplated all he had seen in recent months.
The rest of the world tended to dismiss Stoppable-san as merely Possible-san's "sidekick", of no consequence in his own right. Unimportant and incapable of great deeds. Even now that Possible-san was actively campaigning on his behalf, spreading the truth across the media, the world's attention remained focused on the glorious heroine.
Sensei admitted to himself that he had perhaps made the opposite mistake. It was only natural that he'd done so – Stoppable-san wielded the Lotus Blade and the magic that Sensei's own order practiced. His greatness was visible in a form that Sensei had expected to see. That made it easy to assume that Stoppable-san was the true Chosen One, and that Possible-san, however great and heroic a warrior she might be, was merely another one of his teachers.
Only natural. But a mistake nonetheless.
Both of them had been grievously wounded in their greatest strengths. And yet, they had overcome. When Possible-san's body had been shattered, Stoppable-san had become her, and battled their physical foes. When Stoppable-san's heart had been scarred to hardness, Possible-san had become him, and set him on the path of healing.
Clearly, their destinies were intertwined: each necessary; neither greater than the other; their oppositions causing not conflict, but balance, and creating a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts.
He had missed this.
The Unshaper had not.
Had it simply recognized that they were the closest thing this world might offer in terms of a threat and tried to destroy them with sudden, overwhelming force? Of course it had done that, but was that all? If it had killed one or both of them in the battle in June, its purpose would have been accomplished. The battle to come would have ended before it had begun. But did that mean that the attack had simply failed? Or had their survival been part of a deeper plan?
As a warrior, Sensei could not help but be concerned by their mercy. To pass up the single moment of vulnerability in an opponent of such power; to leave her with the ability to counterattack in the future – it seemed decidedly imprudent. And yet prudence was not always wisdom: as the great sage Gandalf said in that remarkable Western story, "Not even the very wise can see all ends." Sensei allowed himself the conceit of considering himself one of the very wise, but the only end he could see clearly was the disaster that would have befallen if Stoppable-san's rage had been allowed to fester and grow.
Earlier, he had thought how he could no longer do such things as Stoppable-san did without paying a price. The truth was more extreme: to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever done such things – ever used the Mystic Monkey Power – as Stoppable-san had. He wouldn't have believed it possible to survive such a thing. He was truly the Chosen One, but even so, the depth of his rage must have been terrifying. For that rage to corrupt that power would also accomplish the Unshaper's purpose. The battle to come would have ended before it began.
Had that been the Unshaper's plan? Had it purposefully allowed its servant to grow weak, hoping that Stoppable-san would kill her in her vulnerability? Was it willing to sacrifice its Queen to ensure Checkmate?
Did it even think in such ways? Was it a creature of diabolical cunning or simple, primal destruction?
And surely, it was not the only force that had watched them and acted over the course of this terrible summer. Human choices and will had played their role, as they always did – Drakken healing his worst enemy, the hero Shego had once been asserting herself. Still, he couldn't help but wonder if there had been more at work. The gods testing and preparing their champions, perhaps, tempering them for what was to come?
No doubt, the champions in question would hate the idea of being manipulated so.
He rang the bell to summon Yori. There was much to be done, but he needed some rest before he attempted to do it. He was at least wise enough to realize that.
In the moments before Yori arrived, he pondered just a little further.
So many questions. So few of which would ever be answered. Such was the fate of mortals. Whatever the truth, everything had worked out exactly as it had to so that hope, however faint it might be, remained.
They had a chance. Thank all the gods and bodhisattvas, they had a chance.