Where Did the Time Go? Chapter 27: Part XXVII, a kim possible fanfic

Where Did the Time Go? : Part XXVII

Bonnie stood in the middle of Middleton High School's gym, staring at a clock protected by a metal mesh, located just above the scoreboard. Her arms were crossed over her chest, a clear sign she was perturbed since she didn't like hiding what she considered one of her best assets.

"This is so typ. We're supposed to start working on a new routine today and she doesn't even bother showing up." She went back to tapping her foot as the rest of the girls went through some light drills.

"Bonnie, I think they had to leave on a mission or something." Tara offered, picking at the sleeve of her yellow uniform. The slight blonde had been excited when the squad bought the newer outfits with money Bonnie had secured in a fund raiser but she came to associate them with the discomfort she felt during the aforementioned brunette's short-lived tenure as the head cheerleader.

"The she should have had the decency to leave the routine with me or something. It's Valentine's day and I could have been out on a date by now instead of standing here in this smelly gym waiting for her to show up and teach us another routine that went out of fashion when her mother was a cheerleader." Bonnie hissed at her one-time friend.

"I didn't know Dr. Possible was a cheerleader in high school."

"Tara! I don't know either, I'm just saying."

"There's no reason to get snappy about it." Tara sat down on the bottom bleacher, clearly miffed. "So you have a date tonight? You haven't had one in like, forever."

Bonnie almost snarled at her. "I went out on one last week."

Hope sidled up to her. She had arrived with Tara a little later than the younger girls and had been mildly put off that Bonnie ordered that everyone dress out in the yellow outfits instead of their usual purplish blue. "Oh really, then what was his name?"

"Steve, I think. He really wasn't worthy of my remembering his name. That's not important. It was Kim's idea to schedule a new routine today. She doesn't give a naked mole rat's behind that some of us might have lives, that some of us might want to enjoy the day for what it is, that some of us don't take for granted we've got a little puppy dog following us around anywhere."

"Bonnie, Ron is not a puppy dog. He's a really great guy and I wish you could see that." Tara balled her fists in an unusual display of anger. Then her expression softened as she clasped her hands over her heart. "Didn't you hear what he did for Kim over the weekend?"

"Oh, I can imagine." Bonnie's lips curled into a snide smile, though in her imagination she mentally replaced Kim with herself.

"Bet you can't. Ron took Kim all the way to Go City to watch a ballet she'd been dreaming of seeing, then took her to one of the nicest restaurants in the city then the next day brought her a monster box of Valentine's chocolates and you should see the ring he gave her."

"A ring?" Bonnie's voice broke ever so slightly, making her cover her mouth quickly.

"It was so beautiful. I wish Jason would give me one. Or maybe Josh if he wanted to give things another try." Tara dated guys, but was never quite as serious with them as Kim and Ron were with each other.

"The little loser actually proposed?" She felt a little twinge in her chest about calling him that, but there were appearances to be maintained.

"Well what do you know about that?" Danika whispered over her shoulder. "Seems like what you told me this morning is being put to good use after all."

"Shut up Dan." Bonnie growled softly.

Tara was just shaking her head, oblivious to the exchange of the other girls. "No, silly. He gave her an emerald promise ring. It matches those beautiful earrings he gave her for her birthday. Ron's such a romantic. I even heard he brought Kim's Mom flowers!" She sighed, once more wishing one of her potential suitors would take a step like that.

Bonnie stood there fuming. He hands dropped from her chest to her sides as she pictured the two of them, dressed to the nines, partying it up in Go City, then ending the night in each other's arms in some hotel, probably sneaking in a bottle of champagne to celebrate their union. The thought of the two of them together, limbs entwined played over and over again in her minds, to the point she could not longer see her face with Ron, it was all Kim.

Kim Possible. It was always about her. She was the head cheerleader, she was very likely going to be the valedictorian. She was likely going to be named the chairwoman of the Prom Committee the following week and most of all, she had taken the most decent guy on the planet as her lover.

All thoughts that she simply wanted to find another guy just like him disappeared from her mind. There were no other guys like that. When they made Ron Stoppable they broke the mold. It was him she wanted and she wanted to be the one in that hotel room bed, held in his arms. That one brief moment when he had hugged her in Japan took on a whole new meaning. It was no longer the embrace of friendship, it was the embrace of love, a promise of what should be hers.

Snarling so they would not hear any more breaks in her voice she called out to the assembled girls. "Practice is called. We'll pick this up tomorrow when Possible can be bothered to show up." She stalked toward the locker room, hoping the other girls couldn't see the tears welling in her eyes.

Bonnie knew how she was going to fix this. There was a certain little number in black hanging in her closet at home. Ron wanted his Kim, well, she could be ten times what Kim Possible was and she was going to prove it.

"Ron, she has my super-suit, I just know it." Kim sat back in her seat, looking out the small passenger window, not quite willing to meet his eyes.

They spent less than thirty minutes at the manufacturing facility. There just wasn't much to go on. The security cameras had been remotely shut down and somebody had broken into the main production floor, only to steal about two yards square of the material. Even though the thief apparently knew enough to hack into the computer mainframe to disable the security, they hadn't seemed interested in cracking protected files such as Wade's specifications for the material.

Whoever it had been, they were clearly professional. There was no trace of any fingerprints, no epithelial cells left behind to run the DNA. Even Wade's computer trace of the hack turned into a dead end. It had all been accomplished with a simple lap-top computer that had been reported stolen from a cyber-café early Monday. The thief had simply plugged into the mainframe, entered the proper codes and made off with the bolt of high-tech cloth, leaving the unremarkable and unrevealing portable computer behind. Everyone in the facility who had access to the passwords was completely accounted for, so that seemed to eliminate the notion it was an inside job, though they had not discounted the notion those codes had been passed to the sneak by somebody there.

"KP, that just doesn't make sense. I can get her snooping and finding your pills, but stealing the suit? She doesn't even know how to operate it."

"You didn't either the first time you put one on." She countered.

"Yeah, but I had you right there to tell me what I was doing wrong. When you weren't giggling at me."

That brought a half smile to her face. "I was giggling about you turning both power gloves into something that looked like catcher's mitts, not how it looked on you." Her smile broadened just a tad. "I liked how you looked in the white one."

Ron reddened just a bit. "Well, I guess it's okay if you liked that, but I don't like going out in public like that."

She turned back to the window. "It still makes the most sense. Who knows, maybe she doesn't intend to use it. Maybe she just stuffed it somewhere just to spite me."

"Still doesn't sound like Bonnie. She's not dumb, she knows how valuable something like that is."

"Ron, Baby, you didn't even know how much it was worth."

"I still was thinking somewhere in the thousands. I remember how much some of that stuff cost when I bought it with the first Naco money, I know the high-tech thingies get expensive."

"Ron, about the Naco money. How exactly did you afford all of that?" She pulled off her left glove and straightened her promise ring.

"Just like I told you, I convinced my Dad to let me have some of my trust fund money."

Kim turned around and looked straight at him. "Ron, I know your Dad and I know how both your parents were when they won that settlement with BN. You might have gotten a deal on this ring but it still had to cost hundreds, and you bought that on top of getting balcony seats for a sold-out ballet, dinner and a tip at one of the finest restaurants in Go City and managed to get your car fixed to boot? Ron, please tell me you're not sitting on millions again."

He sat there a moment, chewing on his lower lip.

"Ron?"

"KP, it's like this. When I started adding up how much it would cost to do all this stuff, I went to Dad and begged him to let me have just the interest on my money. Up to that point all I knew was that he was putting three hundred dollars a month in my checking account out of that money as an allowance."

"You sure get a better allowance than I do." She grumped.

"He agreed, saying it was going to be a test on how I handled that money."

"So you went and blew it all on me? Ron, I know you love me but you don't have to prove it like that."

"Let me finish, Kim. I was expecting maybe a few hundred, then I looked at my account and there was a whole lot more in it than that, so, since he said it was a test, I took out just what I needed and gave the whole rest of it back to him to put back. That night we had dinner together with them, I finally asked Dad how much I really had in the trust. It's not a real simple answer, since most of it is tied up in investments, but he said the total worth was estimated to be around a million and a half."

Kim cocked an eyebrow at him. "Please, please tell me you're not going to let that go to your head again."

He shrugged. "I can't. I don't get any of it until I turn twenty-five, or until we get married, whichever comes first…after I'm twenty one." He amended after her eyebrows went up.

Kim reached out and took his hand, stripping his glove off so their flesh could touch. "Do you think you passed his test?"

"He wouldn't tell me. Said I'd have to live with the decisions I made with the money and that it was up to me to decide if I passed. He kind of implied that I should have bought a little better car with it instead of giving almost all of it back, but I think I did the right thing." He slumped just a bit. "Somehow I think if I'd kept all of it, I'd still nickel and dime myself to death inside of six months."

She tightened her grip on his hand. "You did the right thing, Honey. I'm proud of you, even if it's just realizing you weren't ready to handle that kind of money yourself just yet." Getting up from her seat, she sat on his lap. "I wouldn't change anything about this past weekend for the world." She followed that with a long, tender kiss.

When their lips parted she picked up his chin. "I'm sorry I harshed on you about Bonnie. She brings out the worst in me sometimes, but if she does have my suit, we're going to have to deal properly with her about it."

"I know, KP, and I'm sorry about what I said about needing more than just us. I just meant I'd like more people to call friends."

"Don't apologize for that, Ronnie. I knew what you meant, I didn't take it the wrong way."

"What I can't figure is how, if she took it, she knew how to take the trans-locator thingy out of it."

"That's bothering me too, Ron. Hold on, that gives me an idea." She hopped off his lap and pulled out her Kimmunicator. It came right to life but she frowned deeply when she noted the battery meter. This was the same unit that died on her in the blizzard the month before, though Wade checked it out and said nothing was wrong with it. He even replaced the batteries just to be sure.

"Hi, Kim. Didn't expect to hear from you until you got back."

"Just had a thought. Oh, and by the way, the batteries on this thing are way low again."

"Hmmm. Check Ron's."

He pulled his out and checked the meter. "Full charge."

"I must have missed something. I'll take another look at it when you get back. What's your idea?"

"Is there any way you can scan for the missing battle suit if you have a smaller search area?"

"I dunno. It's worth a try. What did you have in mind?"

"Try 334 Matheson Avenue." She pursed her lips.

"Here in Middleton?" He was already typing away at one of his auxiliary stations. Kim nodded furiously in acknowledgement. "Wait, that's the Rockwallers. Kim, do you think Bonnie Rockwaller has your suit?"

"She might. I found out that she might have been going through my things while we were at Wannaweep."

"How did you do that?" he cocked his head at the webcam.

"Personal stuff, just leave it at that, okay?" She responded a little more testily than she intended.

"Okay, chill, Kim." He shook his head. "I'm not getting anything, but that doesn't mean much since the suit is designed to be virtually undetectable. Now if she was actually wearing it and I had a detection grid that small, maybe I could pick it up."

Kim slumped down in her seat. "Thanks for trying Wade. I'll call when we get back."

"Okay, Wade out." The screen winked back to the new 'TP' logo her tech guru recently came up with. Even her website had been redesigned to include much more about Ron and Rufus and that a call to her was a call for the team.

"What's our next move, KP?"

She crossed her arms and leaned back in the acceleration lounge. "I'm going to have to talk to Dr. Director. We don't have enough evidence to confront her directly but at least it should be enough for them to put her under surveillance. Darn it, I fell like my hands are tied dealing with GJ this close." She glanced over at her boyfriend. "You know, afterwards, I'm going to be kind of hungry. Maybe my quasi-millionaire boyfriend could scratch up enough to take me to dinner. It is Valentine's day, you know."

"I think he can manage. Anything you have in mind?"

She got up and sat on his lap again, playing with the hair on the back of his head. "You still need a haircut." She commented. "I'm thinking steak. No fancy linens, no snooty waiters, but some place we can sit down and have a big slab of grilled meat and we can get them to bring our cokes out in those big old beer mugs so we can pretend we're drinking something other than pop."

"I think I know the place, but you better get Wade to whip you up a high-tech boomerang."

"Spankin." She put the thoughts of Bonnie and her missing suit in their proper compartment and shoved them to the back of her mind, focusing instead on the love of her life.

Bonnie was glad the house was empty as she got home. Her parents were still at work and her sisters she couldn't care less where they were, as long as they weren't there. Still, she locked her door before taking the clothes bag out of her closet. She quickly opened it and laid the black garment out on her bed. Steeling herself, she started stripping out of her tight sweater and slacks. She knew she wasn't Kim, but she was going to pull this off…

…or her name wasn't Bonnie Rockwaller.

Upperton Colorado, Downtown.

An old fashioned bell type alarm blared in the early evening. The sun was completely down and the moon was not up yet, so it was quite dark.

Three large men dressed entirely in black hurriedly stuffed their booty into the sacks they brought along just for that purpose. Their lookout was so intent on the ragged hole they had torn in the wall he didn't see a shadow attach itself from the dark interior of the high-end home entertainment store.

All three turned to look when the figure was suddenly wreathed in a bright blue glow. One of them pulled a gun but by the time he brought it to bear, there was nobody standing there.

Moments later the gun was sailing away from him, kicked from his hand by the fast moving figure. A few moments after that, all three of them were unconscious.

The slender, feminine figure dusted off her hands as the blue power bands faded to a dull glow before dying out completely.

She melted once again into the shadows as the Upperton Police arrived.