Our Place in the Food Chain: Part XVIII
Ron stood there for what seemed like an eternity but was only a matter of a few seconds, trying to get his brain around what he was seeing. Not only had Kim forgotten to meet him for lunch, she was sitting in the cafeteria with 'Pretty Boy' Cary. The first thing that registered in his mind was his hand on top of hers at the table. They looked like some kind of still life painting, not moving for a moment, the two of them looking into each other's eyes. Or at least from this angle it looked like Cary was looking into Kim's eyes.
He had seen that expression before. Only that boy had been tanned and a little more muscular, with dark brown hair. Still, it didn't matter this new guy was blonde, fair skinned, brown eyed and freckled, he was still one of those tall handsome young men who existed only to vex plain guys like himself.
These was a sudden, overwhelming urge to find something sharp and see if this…hottie, as Kim would call him, would dissolve into a pile of syntho-goo. He knew there was something too good to be true about this guy. Erik seemed to befriend him that time, though only to get to Kim.
Kim, who could go weak in the knees for any hot guy.
Kim who had almost thrown away twelve years of friendship just because of a hot guy she had known only a few days.
Ron knew the score. He might have been growing, he might have been filling out, but he was still a short, thin small guy with completely ordinary looks. He had to work ten times as hard as these pretty freaks of nature just to prove that he was worthy of love as a whole person. Now he thought he had that love, the kind of love, the kind of belonging he had always craved. It was about having one other person in the world you could call your own and they could call you their own in return.
Yet here she was, with this guy instead of him. On this day, of all days, the day that thirteen years earlier he had done what nobody, not his parents, not his babysitters, not the staff at the Pre-K or even himself would have considered possible. He set aside his overwhelming fear of almost everything to stand up for someone else, someone he instinctively knew even then was the other part of his whole.
This just couldn't be happening again! A burning coal at the center of his heart caught fire, his intense love for Kim turning into a flame of rage. His hands clasped into tight fists, the knuckles turning white tinged with red as his nails dug into his palms. Before he stood helplessly aside. How could he do anything else then, he didn't even have the courage to tell Kim how much he cared for her, how much he was in love with her. Now it was different. He had bared his whole heart and soul to her, allowing his heart free reign, devoting his whole being to the love her shared with her. This time he could not idly stand by and watch as a perceived weakness in her character stole her away from him again.
This would not happen again! He didn't care if Cary was another synthodrone or just a flesh and blood human who looked like he stepped off one of those posters at the overpriced teen clothing stores at the mall. Logic and sense were being pushed aside by animal rage and a sort of possessiveness he never considered himself capable of. Who did this guy think he is, wanting to have the beautiful Kim Possible just because he felt it was his due simply because he was blessed with model looks?
He wasn't even aware the sea of students were parting before him, fearing the burning rage on his face. They saw what was in his eyes and they were frightened, even more so knowing the source of that rage. Few could believe little Ron Stoppable could suddenly look so dangerous, as if he had become ten feet tall.
He stepped past Kim right as she shrugged into her backpack and stood right in front of Cary. Slowly the boy looked up at him, as if he had known he was there the whole time. He looked Ron right in the eyes, wearing a sort of lopsided smirk.
Then he saw it for the first time. Corn colored hair, chocolate brown eyes, faint freckles across his face and nose. It was like somebody had taken all his features and applied them to one of the beautiful people. He even had a t-shirt that was precisely the same color as his jersey with "Go City Central Condors" printed on it. The little bastard was actually trying to be him!
"Hey, Ron, how's it going?" He asked cheerfully, as if he was totally blind to the rage swirling around Ron like a phantom cloud of blue smoke.
"You…stay…away…from…KIM!" he growled through clenched teeth.
"What? Dude, I think you need to chill out or something. You look like you're about to blow a blood vessel."
"I'll show you blood…" Almost without volition his hand drew back to wipe that vile smirk off of him.
A hand like iron clamped around his wrist, spinning him around to see crystal green eyes that mirrored his own anger.
"Ron, what is your damage?" Kim almost snarled at him, still holding his wrist fast.
"I could ask you the same thing. I wait forever for you then I find you sitting in here holding hands with pretty boy here. What am I supposed to think?"
She growled back at him through clenched teeth. "Outside, now!" She pulled his arm with such force it almost twisted out of its socket, dragging him out the door into the front lawn of the school. Once outside she let him go and again locked her eyes into his.
"What the hell is your problem, Ron? You think just because he touches my hand I'm going to go all ga-ga over him and run off with him? You think all it takes for me to throw you over is some pretty face? Do you think that little of me after all we've been through together?"
"I…no…he…"
"Do you know what you looked like back there? I'll tell you what you looked like. You weren't Ron Stoppable, the man I love, you were something else, some kind of animal out to protect his mate from the other males. You were like a big rutting ape out to protect his harem. Am I just a possession that you have to prove to everyone is yours?"
"No, but you were holding hands. You forgot our lunch…our anniversary."
Kim just looked at him in disbelief. "How can you be that stupid? Do I have to run around telling the whole school that it's you I love every single minute of the day? Are you so insecure in our relationship that I can't even sit with somebody and talk? Ron, I love you for all the world, but you're not the only person in my life and I need other friends too. I thought we got beyond all this with Monique and Felix. You should be glad we're making other friends. You're my boyfriend but that doesn't mean you're my only friend, it doesn't mean we have to exclude everyone else from our lives.
"Do you even know what Cary and I were talking about?"
"I don't know…all I saw…"
"That's right. All you saw was him putting his hand on mine. We weren't holding hands, that was just a gesture of his when he apologized."
"Apologized? What for?"
"Duh, Friday? He's as upset as we are about what happened. He was apologizing and he even invited my family and you to dinner some time when he's off restriction."
"Restriction?"
"Yeah, cause everyone trashed his house. He only invited a few friends and a whole lot more showed up and it got out of his control. He's grounded, just like the two of us get sometimes. Now how do you feel about almost trying to deck him?"
"I…wow…I mean I didn't think I was."
"Ron, you were so angry if you'd have swung on him you probably would have actually hurt him. You've got a lot to learn about fighting skills, but face it, honey, in reality you're a match for a whole lot of these kids now. You've learned skills that can put an untrained fighter in the hospital if you're not careful."
"But I wouldn't have…I..."
"Ron, you were about to deck him and another thing, maybe you haven't heard yet, but the new Principal is here. She took me aside this morning and read me the riot act. No more missions during school, no more Wade gadgets being delivered to us. She actually threatened to have me expelled for the stuff we have that could be used as a weapon." Kim's anger was starting to turn to tears. "She also told me she knows about some of the other things that have happened. If we screw up, it's going to come down on us hard and I don't have to tell you what that might mean for you."
"For me. Kim, I don't get it."
"Ron, baby, you're doing so good, better than I even thought you could, but if you get suspended I don't know if you'll be able to catch up. If you slugged him you'd be suspended at least three days if not longer. They've got the rules set up in a way they can come down even harder because we're trained. I don't want to go all comic book on you, but like they say, with great power comes great responsibility. You understand what I'm saying?"
"I think so." All of the energy his rage had given him faded away, like water running out of a broken bowl. He sat down on the ground, spent, tears starting to roll from his eyes as well.
"Good. Listen, Cary has done nothing but try to be a friend. He absolutely respects our relationship and even if he didn't, I'm going to be the one who puts him in the hospital, because I'm never, ever going to let anyone do anything to me that might jeopardize what we have. I love you and only you. At the end of the day you're the one I'm going to kiss. When we're adults, you're the one I'm going to share everything with, you got me?" She crouched down in front of him and wiped her own cheeks before taking both his hands.
She took her right hand and wiped his tears off. "Okay, I admit I was wrong by not meeting you but I didn't forget what today is. I have something really nice planned for tonight so what do you say about going back to our lockers, getting our lunch and seeing if you can gobble all of it down before lunch period's over."
"Sounds good, I…Oh man! The locker!"
"What about the locker?" She said, growing concerned. "If you forgot to lock it back, don't worry, it's got a timer that does it for it. Some of that stuff is pretty expensive."
"No, that's not it. When I figured you were doing something more important than lunch I opened yours to get to the food. That's when I found out somebody trashed your locker."
"Trashed? The computer?"
"It doesn't look like they damaged the computer itself but a lot of the cables have been cut. That's not the worst of it, somebody took down your picture and burned my face out of one of them?"
"WHAT?" She pulled him to his feet and headed back toward Senior Hall, dragging him just like she often did on their way to a mission.
By the time they got back into the building Barkin was already there at the lockers waiting for them. "Possible, I've been trying to find you. I got a call from Load. It seems somebody disconnected the computer and he hasn't been able to restore the link and he's worried something's happened."
She pulled out her Kimmunicator. "Can I?"
"Go ahead." He said, rolling his eyes and turning away from the conversation.
"Kim!" Wade said as he popped up on the tiny screen. "Is everything okay, I lost the uplink to your locker computer this morning."
"We're fine, but Ron says somebody trashed the locker. Did you get anything before the computer went dead?" Kim said, somehow feeling comfortable again talking on her omni-device.
"Nada. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing. The T1 line was cut first, so if anything happened after that, then only the CPU itself would have recorded it."
Ron opened the locker and held his communicator up so Wade could run his scans. A soft beam of light sprang from the device, recording fingerprints and other foreign substances. "Wow, well, as for my end of things it's more cosmetic than anything else, but the cabling will have to be replaced before we can learn anything. I'll send someone right out to repair it. Maybe we'll get lucky and the CPU recorded something before it lost power."
"I don't know about this. I think this is a job for the police." Barkin said, looking over Kim's shoulder at the twelve-year-old tech guru. Ron looked up at him plaintively, wishing it wouldn't come to that.
"If this turns out to be one of Kim's enemies, I think we might be better off trying to run this down on our own." Wade said, raising an eyebrow at the teacher. "The police are likely to just take a report, put it down to student vandalism and go on their way. That's fine for an insurance claim, but we might be dealing with something bigger."
"It's Possible's locker, so it's her call." He said. "I'd feel a lot better if you would call them."
Kim picked up the remains of the prom photo, visibly shaking as her finger explored the burned edges where Ron's face used to be. "Whoever did this has it in for Ron even more than they do for me. I'm with Wade. I think we stand a better chance of figuring this out on our own." She picked up the other photo, noting that Ron had been totally removed from that one as well.
"Yeah, it's about time for Shego to show up again. She's been too quiet this time." Ron said in response.
"Well, so be it. Now if you'll excuse me I have a meeting with Doctor Director."
Ron watched Barkin go with a confused expression on his face. "Why would he be meeting with Global Justice."
"Oh, you haven't heard yet, have you." Kim said. "It's not Betty Director he's meeting with, it's her older sister Wilma.
"She's the new principal and let me tell you, she's got both eyes on us."
"Are you certain he saw you, Nooni-chan?"
"Yes. I could see it in his round eyes. He looked right at me before I could vanish." She pulled the checkered do-rag off and folded it neatly before putting it away.
"His skills are improving then. This is good. Soon will be the time to call him forth once more." The small man with a flowing white beard and mustache said.
"I am afraid we might be too late. Crazy boy almost lost control. His temper is very bad where it comes to the flame-hair girl."
"That is to be expected, if the other is to be believed. Their souls are intertwined. Kim Possible is part of the whole that makes Stoppable-san. If all comes to pass as it has been predicted, then it will take both of them…
"…but he is yet young and full of youthful foolishness. He must make mistakes and learn from them, as well as learn what we can teach him. I think I shall call him as the days grow cold.
"It is almost time for his devotion to his soul-mate to be tested by time and distance."
Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney