Where Did the Time Go? : Part XXXVIII

Kim crouched in the shadows of the warehouse. Almost without thinking about it she checked her gear. She was wearing her super-suit and, like Ron, she was wearing her new more snug fitting mission gear pants over the top of them. That was sort of a compromise with him since it still showed of her figure, though nowhere near as revealingly as the suit itself. She also had her thermal imaging glasses on so they wouldn't have to rely on the lights.

Ron was nearby and even though she couldn't see him it was as if she could feel his presence. That made her smile inwardly as well as giving her a sort of comfort she never wanted to be without. That feeling of presence had been there for a long time but it had only been recognized for what it was in the last almost ten months.

Had it actually been that long? It seemed like it was only minutes ago she pulled him along, away from the television cameras and the police mopping up after they defeated Drakken. Instead it had been nine and a half months and despite all that had happened to her, to them in that time she still counted them as the happiest days of her life.

This particular Wednesday could not be counted among the happiest of them, however. Monique arrived at Kim's house before Ron could even get there. Wade may have been plugged into the information superhighway but Monique's connections went even deeper.

"Off the yearbook staff and the paper?" Kim asked as she stood in front of her closet in her underwear, trying to decide what to wear. This was so much easier when I wore that green top all the time!

"Believe it, girlfriend. Even before she got into that screaming match with Danika Foster over at Burger Prince last night, folks were already passing the word along. What's funny is nobody seems to know why."

Kim slipped on her cream and yellow peasant shirt and lightly snugged up the laces on the collar. "That's ferociously weird since I chair the yearbook committee. If she was doing something wrong I would have thought somebody would bring it to me first." Kim held up a pair of jeans and a white tier skirt for her friend to consider.

"Too cold for the skirt but if you wear those freaky purple shoes with that outfit, I don't know you." She nodded as Kim pulled out her usual white sneakers. The fashion maven had spoken. "That means whatever she did was either way serious…" She paused, waiting for Kim to finish putting on the pants and meet her eyes.

"Or?" Kim prompted, sitting down to put her shoes on.

"…or it's got something to do with you." She finished. "You and Ron did get called to the office yesterday."

"How did you know about…" She stopped as Monique gave her the hairy eyeball. "Oh."

"So, did you and dude-boy get called on the carpet or was that just more congratulations for Friday night?"

"Principal Director reamed us for kissing at school. It was no big, she just gave us warning and a short detention."

"I knew the two of you were going to get caught eventually. Can't keep your hands off him, can you?" Monique leaned back on the bed, grinning at her friend like the cat that caught the canary.

"Mon, we've been good all this time about it. Director's just too much of a hard case, especially if she's going to come down on us for that."

"Uh huh, and you mean to tell me you've been such a good girl the two of you haven' snuck behind the bleachers or into the janitor's closet or something for a kiss?"

Kim smiled. "We've snuck a couple quick ones. We thought we were okay for that one, but somebody…took…our…picture…" Her mouth hung open as she put two and two together…

…and came up with Bonnie.

"That conniving little…she…grrrrrrrr…Urrrrgh!" She balled up her fists, shaking bodily for a moment. "I'm going to take that camera of hers and…"

"Kim!" Monique warned before collapsing backwards laughing.

"I've got a good mind to march right up to Director and demand to know where she got that picture! There are rules about that kind of thing, even if almost all the photogs ignore it. Isn't that right Rufus?" She turned, gazing at the little pink Rodent who was trying to get to the bag of corn chips in her backpack.

She raised an eyebrow. If Rufus was there already, that meant Ron was there and since they were planning to stop at Scottish Mac's for breakfast (two sausage biscuits for two dollars was hard to pass up) there wasn't anything downstairs to occupy his seemingly bottomless stomach.

"Ron?"

A mop of corn colored hair rose from the hatch. "Is it safe?" He asked with a wary grin.

Kim blew the strand of hair that was always hanging down her nose upwards. "For you, yeah, for Bonnie Rockwaller…if I run into her off-campus…heck, if I run into her today before my morning coffee takes hold I swear I'm gonna stuff her into a locker and you know what, I bet that's going to feel spankin!" She grinned through clenched teeth.

"Kim, Kim, Kim. Just ignore her. She's just still upset about…" His eyes suddenly went to Monique.

She held up her hands and shook her head. "Hey, I can pick from any one of fifty things Bonnie complains about, so don't worry about me."

Kim got up and gave Ron his usual good-morning kiss. Well, a little more than usual until she remembered her other guest. "Mmmm, you do that so good a little bit of trouble is worth it." She glanced over at her bed, where Monique had sat up, grinning ear to ear. "No, Mon, I still don't share."

"That's okay, cause here comes my man right now." She nodded toward the window. A large passenger van was pulling up at the curb, right behind Ron's car.

They followed her out and waited while she took her turn getting her good-morning kiss from her boyfriend.

"Hi Felix." Kim leaned on the open passenger window as Monique snapped her seatbelt.

"Mornin' Kim. What's up?"

She put on her best sales smile. "How would you like a little bit of Team Possible action tonight? You too, Mon."

Felix was about to speak when Monique waved her hands in front of her. "Uh, uh. No way, forget it. I am not getting into any of that Kung Fu stuff and neither is my man."

"Hey, Mon, I can speak for myself you know." He complained, frowning a bit.

None of that slowed Kim down in the least. "There's no fighting involved, at least with what I want. See, I want the two of you to be Ron and me."

Monique and Felix looked at each other, then back to Kim, intrigued by that.

"See, here's what we're planning to do…"

The rest of the school day seemed to go downhill from there. Bonnie didn't end up stuffed into a locker but the two of them did look like a pair of angry lionesses stalking each other every time they got within twenty feet of one another. The only saving grace had been the combination of them not having any classes together and Ron being there to calm Kim down.

The Prom Committee meeting was a complete disaster. With the go-ahead to start making plans for the space at Middleton Motor Lodge, Kim was actively campaigning to simply retool their current 'simple elegance' design. Yet every time she tried to bring it up for a vote, Bonnie would jump in with some other complaint or trivial detail. The whole ordeal boiled down to a staring match between them. The only decision they managed to reach before the adjourned was to go ahead with the fund-raising plans to cover the remaining charge for the hall and pay for all the other usual accoutrements. They even had a hard time bringing the meeting to a close at a reasonable hour since Bonnie kept pushing to extend it until they decided on a final plan.

As it was, Kim and Ron only had time to split an energy bar between them before it was time to set up for their mission. Oh well, they had two good meals earlier that day and Ron could deal with a rumbling stomach for a little while. Work before play, or at least before face-stuffing. Hopefully this could all be resolved early enough they wouldn't have to rely on a fast-food drive-through.

She almost laughed at herself for considering how soon a sitch would be over so they could get some grub.

Reaching into her cargo pocket she checked the Kimmunicator one more time. A topographical map of the area popped up, with a red and a green dot showing exactly where they were supposed to be. For just a hint of a moment she had the wicked notion of pulling up the telemetry on those two dots just to get some idea of what they might actually be up to. It passed quickly since she really didn't want anybody having access to that kind of data when it pertained to her and her partner when they inhabited that particular location.

There was a sharp pop as a small explosive took out the lock at one of the large loading docks. A burly man dressed in loose fitting dark clothing rolled up the door as a medium sized delivery truck with no clear markings backed up. The first man motioned to somebody outside and was joined by two more identically dressed, similarly built men. They quickly made their way to a stack of crates, carrying them one at a time toward the truck.

"Show time." Kim mouthed soundlessly, checking the readouts on her suit one last time.

The "Vigilante Ninja," as the Middleton Examiner had dubbed her, waited in the shelter of a recessed doorway just next door to the target warehouse. She was imminently pleased with herself, finally getting the recognition she wanted for her actions. When the press finally started picking up on the string of spoiled heists they immediately tried to give credit to Kim Possible. It didn't help the first pictures of her made it look like that's precisely who it was stopping the crooks in her blue and black super-suit. It didn't matter they had always shown file photos of her in the older white outfit all the time, they knew who was supposed to have that sort of tech and simply ran with that.

As if they couldn't tell the difference between Kim's chubby boy legs and her slender, shapely gams in the skin-tight power suit.

It didn't take her long to figure out how to change the look of her suit. With its built-in stealth capabilities and morphing fabric, coupled with her skills with high-end electronics, it was easy to change it so it stayed completely black. A quick trip to the plant that manufactured the material it was made of and she had enough material to fashion a new hood for it, something much more distinctive than the face-baring version already built into it. That turned out even easier than she thought. All she had to do was reprogram the default structure of the garment, lay the new material on it and the self-repair system did the rest, joining the bold of fabric and folding it in over itself until is was just another part of it.

Silently she thanked her parents, first for the genetics they had passed along making her a genius level intellect and a gifted athlete, all the while being a serious hottie. Secondly she thanked them for being such blind nitwits. With all she had learned from her father about computers, electronics and security, it was so easy to hack into her mother's personal computer and, through that she was able to learn her mother was not just a run-of-the-mill psychiatrist working in a mundane office downtown. No, she secretly worked for Global Justice, serving the mental health needs of their agents and staff.

That gave her a back door into some very interesting information. She found she couldn't care less about the medical records she found, at least until she happened to run across one in particular. The name seemingly jumped right off her screen at her the moment she saw it.

At first she just closed the file, not wanting to pry into such intimate secrets. The person in that file had been a sort of hero to her and if she had a reason to see a mental health professional, she didn't want to know why. However, that set her off to thinking about other things.

Very quickly she was hacking even deeper into GJ's systems. At first she simply wanted to read about her idol's exploits. They were all there, from seemingly unimportant escapades like a rescue mission in cyberspace to the famous Bueno Nacho Diablo incident.

Along the way she stumbled onto the access frequency for a locator chip.

Thinking it might be fun to know where she was from time to time, she devised a way to track it. That was simpler than she thought. All it took was a fairly simple but very elegant virus program. Then all she needed was a way to get it into the PDA/Communications device she carried with her all the time. Even that came off without a hitch. An invite to a get-together at her house after practice and she had all the time she needed to upload it into the royal blue handheld.

Then a little bit of wickedness kicked in. After being on the cheerleading squad for even just a few weeks she knew there was a ton of bad blood between her and one of the other Seniors. How cool would it be to seize power from both of them? Especially since they would both be graduating and moving on. No harm there, after all.

That part seemed to be working, though not precisely as she had envisioned. Her role model seemed to benefit from every move while her rival seemed to be caught in a sort of downward spiral of petty jealousy and revenge.

Then, suddenly, the super-suit was almost literally dropped into her lap. A new idea formed in her mind. She was smart, athletic, pretty and popular. Just like her idol.

Why couldn't she be the next Kim Possible?

True, she didn't have all the fighting skills Kim possessed, but her superior knowledge of how equipment like the battle-suit worked could even the gap. With a little bit of practice, she was confident she could set out on her own crime-fighting career, only this time it would be using a secret identity. By night she could by the Vigilante Ninja.

By day she could be plain old Danika Bridgette Foster, without all the complications Kim Possible seemed to have juggling her high-school and world-saving careers.

That made her smile. Who in their right mind would suspect a valley-girl ditz cheerleader to be a crime-fighting hero?

She watched as the truck backed up to the loading dock. Her nerves were slightly on edge and it wasn't just the pre-mission jitters she had learned came with the job. It was the same feeling she had before when Possible tried to spring a trap on her.

Frowning under her mask, she checked the tracking screen one more time.

The quartet of teens sat in an isolated booth at the fast food restaurant, killing time and nursing their drinks before they had to head to class that morning.

"So all we have to do is go on a date? That doesn't sound like too much of a mission to me." Felix couldn't quite hide all of his disappointment. He really enjoyed when he could participate in missions with the team. He had even gone out and bought a black turtleneck and tan cargos as if it were an actual, official uniform.

Kim reached in her backpack and pulled out a small vial. "Not quite all. I said the two of you were going to pretend to be us." She inclined her head toward Ron, who was gently kneading the base of her neck. Opening the container, she set two tiny capsules on the table.

"What are those?" Monique eyed the small objects warily. One was green with a white K printed on it, the other red with a black R.

"Those are the famous Wade Load tracking chips. He can use satellites to locate us just about anywhere on Earth. That's the whole deal. We think somebody has been using them to track us on the sly, so it's up to you two to make them think you're us."

"And we're going to do that how?" Felix prompted.

Ron cut in. "Just take my car up to Logging Camp Road just after dark and…act naturally."

"Me like." Monique trilled, rubbing her boyfriend's shoulder.

Kim grinned at her girlfriend. "Don't like it too much. That's Ron's car, you know."

"Our car." He corrected, letting his hand drift lower.

"Kim, that is SNHITC." She glanced around at the other three. "What, I don't need to translate?"

"So Not Happening in That Car." Kim grinned. "or at least that better be what it means."

"We're all fluent in Monique-Speak now." Ron said as Kim extracted his now too low hand. "Besides, while those things are active they relay biometric telemetry to the receiver."

"In Ron-Speak that means peeps can know what the two of your are doing." Ron said, moving on to Kim's thigh.

"So the two of you wouldn't want to do anything the two of us wouldn't do." Kim took Ron's hand, holding it so it would behave itself.

"We're back to me-like." Monique smiled warmly at Felix again. "So, what do we do? Just stick these in our pockets or something?"

Kim shook her head. "You swallow them."

"Whoa. I don't know about that. How do we get them back out, or should I even ask?" Monique curled up her nose slightly, staring once again at the capsule.

"Don't worry about it, Mon. Once this sitch is over, Wade just hits the kill switch and they shut off permanently. In a couple hours your body just absorbs them."

Felix picked up the 'Ron' chip. "I'm in."

Monique picked up the other as if it were going to bite her. "You know, if I do this the two of you are going to owe me big time?"

Ron chirped up. "How about we double date Friday and I'll cook?"

She cocked an eyebrow at him and popped it into her mouth, chasing it with her iced latte. "You're on."

"Can't argue with that." Felix said as he downed his as well.

Kim was starting to worry, though the sitch had only been going down for less than a minute. The 'goons' already had two of the crates loaded onto the truck and she was beginning to wonder if their real target was going to pull another no-show.

That was, at least, until one of the GJ agents dressed as a burglar went skidding across the floor as a dark shadow plowed into him.

Launching herself, Kim somersaulted in front of the open door. Ron sprang out as well, hitting the control to lower the door.

"You are so busted." She said, her blue power bands glowing in the darkness.

"Don't think so." The vigilante said in an electronically muffled voice as she sprung straight up into the air, executing a flip before landing on a stack of crates.

Kim followed suit, landing not five feet away from her opponent. Spinning on her foot, she threw a kick that should have swept her feet out from under her.

The hooded girl simply back flipped away as if she was anticipating the move. "Maybe you haven't noticed, Kim Possible, but I'm one of the good guys."

Launching herself toward her she faked with her right then brought her left arm around. This time she caught her in the midsection. She let her weight carry the attack through, intending to carry them both to a lower level in the stack.

That never happened. Blue light surged around her and she found herself flying backwards. Instinct and years of training saved her from being thrown clear to the floor, though she still managed to land on her backside.

What just happened?

By the time she was back on her feet the vigilante was halfway across the small building, headed toward an upper level window, jumping from crate to crate as if she were a cat.

She almost made it when she was tackled by Ron. That's when Kim realized what the surge of blue light was. A crackling sphere of light formed around their opponent, sending him flying backwards, landing in a heap almost twenty feet away from her.

The girl was using the suit's defensive screens as a weapon!

Her mind in full mission-mode, Kim quickly took stock of the sitch. She had apparently been practicing with the suit, learning to utilize its capabilities. The fantastic leaps were obviously the result of using the speed enhancing features in concert with the small strength boost it afforded its wearer. She was using the suit at full-power.

Two could play that game.

"Good guys don't steal my super-suits." Kim growled as she executed her own fantastic leap, covering the distance between them.

"Some of us don't have the luxury of the kind of back-up you get." She said as she ignited the force-screen again. This time, with only the box beneath her feet to push against, it sent her sailing through the air, over Kim's head.

That's a new one, Kim thought as she tried to emulate the move. Unfortunately, her footing wasn't as good. It sent her into the air, but also sent the box crashing to the floor, bursting open in a shower of packing peanuts.

"Love to stay and cha…" She got out before a beam of energy hit her. The two conscious GJ agents finally got their wits about them and got a bead on her with their stun weapons.

Kim growled to herself. Apparently they weren't fully briefed on the features of the suits. The only effect the beam has on her was a distraction, though that was enough. Pointing her fist, Kim fired one of the two grappler cables built into the wrists.

The line wrapped around the vigilante, pinning her arms to her sides.

"Nice try." She growled as the energy field flared once more. The cables weren't connected to the energy absorption system, shredding instantly from the amped up sphere. Spinning around she fired her own cable into the metal rafters.

Kim jumped, trying to reach her in time but was just slightly too slow. There was a shower of glass as she hit one of the upper windows, forcing her to ignite her own screens to keep the blast of razor sharp shards from hitting her.

Using her remaining grappler, she reached the smashed window only seconds later but it was to no avail.

"Phooey." She cursed, looking out into the empty night. Below her she heard another grappler fire. Ron was quickly at her side, though without the grace of the two female combatants.

"I think we need more training with these things." He commented as his cable reeled back in.

"Doy." Kim replied testily.

Danika tried to slow her breathing as she hid between a pair of HVAC towers on a nearby roof. How in the world had Kim gotten there from the make-out point on Logging Camp Road that quickly? Even if she had one of those flying backpacks it would have taken longer than the fight itself had taken to cover that kind of distance. It was like she was in too places at once.

Silently cursing herself she checked her tracking screen. The blip was still in the same place it had been before. Lightly pounding the back of her head on the metal structure she flipped the screen off and pulled the hood off her head, letting her shoulder length blonde hair spill out.

Kim had figured out the tracking chip. That was the only explanation. The one she was reading was obviously a decoy and this whole thing had been yet another sting, one she had very nearly been caught in. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

She sat there for almost an hour, trying to calm down. She was a good-guy, wasn't she? Why couldn't Possible see that? She had another suit now, that much was clear, why did she want this one back so badly? It wasn't as if she was using it to commit crimes or to enrich herself by turning it over to an unscrupulous buyer.

One thing was certain. The Vigilante Ninja was going to have to lie low for a while. After a couple more traps, maybe her one-time hero would give up the chase.

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