Shocked

Disclaimer: I am informed by my legal department, that I the first party, am required to inform you readers the second party, that the first party does not own anything in this story that is copyrighted by the several other parties involved, the second party may consider themselves informed.

Chapter Four: Aftermath

Ron's POV

Ron Stoppable strolled through Middleton High school feeling about as good as he ever had, not only had last nights mission gone off without a hitch even though it was Bonnie's first, but he had managed to take Shego one on one and not sustain any serious injury, Kim was going to flip when she heard this.

That managed to stop the still upbeat, but no longer jubilant young man in his tracks, right the whole reason that Bonnie had come along last night after cajoling him into letting her join up. Kim wouldn't even hear his shouts of joy to be proud of them, she and Monkey were still blissfully unaware of anything beyond each other.

"Hey Ron," a voice startled him out of his thoughts and he turned to see Monique behind him, "Hey Monique," he said back.

They started walking towards the cafeteria to try their luck with whatever the cafeteria lady had 'made' for today's lunch, about halfway there Monique apparently decided to start interrogating Ron about his latest mission.

"So Ron," she said, "I heard you took Bonnie on your last mission, now if that kind of crazy talk is true what's wrong with you to take Kim's biggest rival at this school on one of your and Kim's missions?"

Ron sighed, he had been expecting this from Kim's best girlfriend, so much so that he had spent his time last night at Bueno Nacho following the mission thinking about why he had taken Bonnie with him.

"Well…" he started before trailing off and looking at Monique's very interrogating glare, "Look," he decided to try another route, "I wasn't going to take her along at first, but Bonnie had a point when she said that I need someone to go with me on these things, you just can't do a mission like that alone. And I sure as heck wasn't going to take someone on their first mission against Drakken and Shego so that left Bonnie and Mr. Barkin for choices…"

"And you couldn't have taken Barkin why?" Monique asked, her desire to defend what she saw as Kim's domain outweighing her common sense for awhile longer.

Ron stared at her for a little while before he came up with an answer, "Monique this is Barkin we're talking about first off he wouldn't even have left during school no matter what kind of mission it was. And really can you imagine taking orders from Barkin on one of these things, once was enough of that thank you very much."

Monique fixed him with one last glare before finally relenting and saying, "Alright Ron you're off the hook for now, but don't think this is over. When Kim gets her head out of wonderland or wherever it is she's gone off to you're gonna pay because she is not going to be happy about this."

"Probably," Ron admitted, "but at least I'll still be around for Kim to get mad at me, there's no way I could have gotten past Shego and all of Drakken's henchmen on my own, and I hate to admit it but Bonnie's not half bad at this stuff."

Monique looked at him in disbelief that Ron could believe rather easily, but the truth was the truth.

"I'm serious Monique," he said, "Bonnie got past all of Drakken's henchmen on her own, and she did it going right through them."

"You know why you're no fun?" Monique interrupted, at Ron's blank look she provided her own answer, "When Kim gets me going like this I can break in with the latest sale at Club Banana and change the topic, I've got nothing like that on you."

Ron was about to reply, but they had finally made it to the cafeteria and he pushed open the doors to a completely full room.

"Awww man," Ron moaned, "why did everyone have to chose today of all days to eat in?"

"Um because there's a different lunch lady?" Monique said as she pointed towards the counter where there was indeed a new person serving out what looked to be fare not much better than what the normal lunch lady served.

"Well come on," Monique spoke up again, "we'd better get something to eat so we can take seats somewhere, otherwise we'll be stuck with the freshmen."

Ron decided that Monique had a very good point wanting to avoid having to eat with the freshmen, this years crop were so tiny you had to look down to avoid stepping on them it felt like.

The two quickly grabbed trays and made their way through the ever increasing line till they had the daily slop dished out onto their plates and started looking for seats. Though it appeared that they might not have been fast enough because it seemed like every table was full to bursting with students who had hoped a new lunch lady might mean real food.

Just as they were about to give up and make for the freshmen occupied tables to force some seats, a voice called out offering them some seats, "Hey Monique, I've got two seats over here!"

Bonnie's POV

Bonnie knew she was taking a major risk inviting someone as low on the food chain as Ron Stoppable to sit with her, but his friend Monique was reasonably high up giving her some cover, and besides, Bonnie had decided that she was going to have to take risks like this if she wanted her plan to succeed.

That mission, while it had been actually rather enjoyable, particularly her bit of acting at the end, had been a wake-up call for Bonnie. When Kim heard about this and Bonnie suspected that this would make it through her Mankey induced haze, Kim was going to come storming back to reclaim her spot on the team and Bonnie had no doubt she'd be shoved out.

That being true, she needed to get Stoppable on her side as fast as she could so when little Ms. Perfect did come to get her sidekick back, she'd run into the wall that was Bonnie and Ron as real partners, and Bonnie Rockwaller could not wait to see the look on Kim's face when that happened.

In the meantime she thought as she watched Stoppable and Monique make their way over to her table and sit down, she'd have to walk a fine line of opening up to Stoppable on the missions she'd have, and of keeping her reputation at school. After all it would do her no good to get Stoppable into her camp if it meant being as low on the food chain as him.

Deciding that her first step should be getting people at her level used to seeing Stoppable among them and then she could move on getting him into the conversation, Bonnie decided to engage Monique in a conversation she knew Stoppable wouldn't dare get involved in.

"Monique," she said, "is that sale still on at Club Banana, there's this pair of jeans I want so bad but I got back way late from that mission."

No matter how much disdain Monique may have held for her vis á vis her loyalties to Kim, Bonnie knew that she had an in with clothes, the girl was so fashion mad as to make her look as backwards as Stoppable in comparison.

"Girl," Monique barely kept her squeal in check, "you're good through Sunday…"

But before Monique could get into her stride, she was interrupted by Tara's sharp gasp as she broke in with, "Bonnie, you never did say how that mission went. Are you and Ron alright, did you get hurt, were you scared, did you see that Gill creep, was it as weird as that time you were stuck to Kim, were there any robots, did you have to fight anyone, are you going to go on any more missions?"

At that point Tara had to stop for a lack of breath, Bonnie looked over to see Ron looking right back, this was the point of no return for Bonnie's plan, if she said the mission had been terrible she could duck out right now, but if she told Tara the truth, that she had actually enjoyed it then she was committed to going on missions for the foreseeable future, whether the plan worked or not.

The question really was moot point, Bonnie never would have gone on the first mission or even approached Stoppable if she hadn't planned on seeing this through to the end so her response left no room for argument.

"To answer your questions Tara, we're fine, no, it was actually pretty fun, ick no, and there was a blue skinned guy and some lady with green skin, so it was weirder, no robots, not really, and yeah I think I am."

Tara was apparently having one of her rare blonde moments, because the blonde was staring back at Bonnie with an almost blank look on her face.

"Sooo… you're both alright then?" Tara asked after almost a whole minute of silence.

Bonnie bit back what promised to be an acerbic remark, but before she could give her toned down answer, Stoppable decided to exercise some sort of death wish by speaking up at Bonnie's table.

" Tara," he said slowly to make sure he had her attention, "if Bonnie and I weren't fine, we wouldn't be here. And we were dealing with Drakken and Shego, Gill doesn't hang around with them…"

Somehow where she had failed, Stoppable got through to Tara, it was probably some sort of blonde thing. What Bonnie found odd though, was that at the popular table, no one was trying to put Ron Stoppable back in his place for talking to one of their own when not spoken to, instead they were all listening to him as he elaborated on her own concise answers.

"So," Ron finished up, "if Bonnie wants to keep coming on these things I can't see a reason why not to let her."

"Well of course I'm going to keep going," Bonnie bit out, "if you got killed I'd have to start going on these things alone and I'm not letting that happen."

Bonnie looked as everyone digested her and Stoppable's exchange, they had paid him as much attention as they did her, perhaps her fellow popular students held Stoppable in higher regard than she had thought, oh this was good, this might well take a whole hunk of her plan away right now, and that would just make things so much easier.

Ye olde AN: First off, a long overdue thanks, I must thank Zaratan for writing the whole 'Bonnie's Curse' series, which gave me the inspiration to write a realistic Ron/Bon, not necessarily the pairing I'm staying totally silent on that matter, but them as a team. Second, I now realize that my decision before posting this story to not more fully explain Kim's whole flakiness was actually a mistake but this chapter was too far along to fix that, so Ch5. will deal a bit with that. All that said, I had fun writing this chapter with my thousand monkey writing crew and we hope you enjoy reading it and wait for Ch5 next Monday.