Run down buildings of varying heights and widths line both sides of the deserted, potholed Trump Street as haggard lamp posts pour small pools of light onto it. The sidewalks where pedestrians once walked are now littered with the debris of these buildings as leaves and small shards of paper ride the gentle, cool breeze from the north. On the sturdy roof of a five story, brick building sits a large blue GJ hover jet while repel lines dangle from the edge of the roof like fishing lines from a boat. Down below, several agents in blue body armor and carrying stun weapons huddle around a statuesque Agent Du.
"All right, I want a perimeter set up around that building," orders Agent Du as he points to a dilapidated three story, brick building a block down. "Check for any entrances or exits that might lead to the underground structure below it while I investigate the inside."
"Are you sure that's wise, sir?" asks a red headed female agent. "The Artist has all ready taken three agents."
"He works in the shadows and prefers the non-confrontational approach," Agent Du responds.
"But if this is the right location, then we're on his turf," rebuts a black male agent, "he might be a little more confrontational."
"Hopefully, we can get the jump on him before he suspects anything," says Agent Du. "From our profile, he appears to be overconfident about his abilities to stay hidden and evade us."
"He has good reason to since this is the only time we ever come close to at least have a chance of capturing him," a brown haired white male agent remarks.
"Then let's make it count," Agent Du says. "You have your orders. Go!"
"Yes sir," all the agents reply in unison. They then quickly and quietly fan out, some taking strategic positions around the building in question while a few others survey the surrounding area around it using hand held scanners or advanced night vision goggles with scanning capabilities.
Agent Du quietly makes his way toward the building while wearing a pair of these goggles. He checks for any security devices by scanning the building from top to bottom paying particular attention to its boarded up and broken windows. He reaches its front entrance and quickly scans the wooden doors, which barely hang on to their hinges, for any alarms. Satisfied, Agent Du turns the knob of the right door and quietly pushes against it. It sticks somewhat but eventually opens into a hallway decorated with a sea of dust and cobweb streamers. Beat up, defeated doors line both sides of the hallway. Agent Du scans the hallway with his goggles and again finds no indications for the presence of any security devices. Creeping his way into the hallway, he begins to check the rooms one by one. He carefully scans the door first making sure they are not wired with anything. He then scans the unfurnished rooms for anything odd.
After ten minutes, Agent Du comes to the last room at the end of the hallway and checks the door.
Nothing again.
He opens the door and enters the room, which is in worst condition than the other rooms. Debris lies on the floor in piles with a large one almost in the middle. Looking up, he sees several holes in the ceiling and the room above him. He scans the room, the walls first and then the floor.
Hello.
Scanning the floor, Agent Du sees something underneath the large pile.
It looks like a ladder.
He stoops down and carefully clears the debris and finds a large hatch with a metal handle protruding out of it. He pulls up on the handle and opens the hatch, which gives a metallic moan. He removes his goggles and clips them to his belt and then takes out a small, black flashlight and aims it into the opening. He discovers several metal rungs marching down the wall of a shaft into a gapping abyss.
This looks promising. Better investigate…
"Hey you found it."
Startled, Agent Du quickly stands up and turns around coming face to face with an unexpected person. "Stoppable, how did you… "
"Dude, they're called sneakers," Ron says in a matter of fact tone as he points to his feet.
"For sneaking," Rufus, who stands on Ron's shoulder, says gleefully.
"I know that," Agent Du whispers through gritted teeth. "How did you get in here?"
"Same way you did," Ron says as he points to the door.
Agent Du smacks his forehead with his palm in frustration. How does the amateur put up with this without seriously losing her mind? "How did you get in the building… in the area undetected?"
"Well, I parachuted out of a helicopter and landed onto the roof while you and the others were in your huddle, and then made my way down to this room to get to the entrance to the underground thingy."
"How did you know there was an entrance in this room?" asks Agent Du.
"It seems Wade's scanners are a wee bit better than GJ's ," Ron says.
Agent Du is not amused. "All right, I don't care how you got in here. This is a GJ operation. You have no business being here. I can handle the Artist by myself. I don't need you."
Ron adopts his serious face. "Good because I'm not here to help you or to capture this Artist. I'm here for one reason." He leans in a little and looks right into Agent Du's eyes. "Her name is Kim. Now, I made a promise that I'm not coming back home without her and I'm going to keep it whether or not we help each other. So however you slice it, I'm going down there no matter what."
"Fine," Agent Du says as he stoops down and starts to climb down the metal rungs. He stops and looks up at Ron. "Just stay out of my way." He then continues climbing down.
"Man, he really needs to work on his people skills," Ron says to Rufus.
"Oh, yeah," replies Rufus before he climbs into Ron's backpack. Ron then stoops down and follows Agent Du down the metal rungs. I'm coming Kim. Just hold on.
After a five minute descent, Agent Du approaches the bottom of the shaft and soon finds himself in a short metallic corridor. He turns on his flashlight and surveys the immediate area. He sees a metal door at its end and slowly moves toward it as Ron finishes climbing down shaft via the imbedded metal rungs. Ron moves toward Agent Du and stands beside him as he stares at the door.
"Yeah, I'm guessing this wasn't part of the original design for this building," Ron says.
"Hold this," Agent Du says as he hands Ron his small flashlight. He then unclips his goggles and puts them on. Through the goggles he scans for any security devices on or near the metal door. He finds none. "The door's clear."
"Actually, it's metallic," Ron says.
Sighing, Agent Du approaches the metal door and ponders how to open it since a knob isn't present.
"Don't worry I got this," says Ron as he reaches into his pocket with his free hand and pulls out a red stick of lipstick from a compartment.
"You carry lipstick with you," says a deadpan Agent Du.
"It's not mine," Ron says defensively. "It's Kim's. Beside her shade so does not go with my complex…" Agent Du raises an eyebrow. "I mean this isn't normal lip stick." He aims the lip stick at the door and removes the cap. Instantly, a red laser beam shoots out of the stick and hits the metal door. Ron begins to cut a generous rectangular opening through the metal door. Within seconds, the large rectangular cutout collapses in front of Ron and Agent Du. He smiles at Agent Du. "After you," Ron says as he extends his arm toward the door. Agent Du says nothing as he snatches his flashlight back from Ron and walks past him entering the newly formed opening. Ron follows right behind him.
"This seems to be a garage," Agent Du says softly to himself.
Ron hears him. "Yeah, what clued you in?"
The two find themselves in the presence of an inconspicuous green delivery truck sitting in a large room containing a work bench, tool cabinets, diagnostic machines, and a car lifter. The two look up and see a large shaft directly above the truck. More importantly, they see another metal door across the room. They both walk toward the door, which has a latch metal handle. Ron stops in front of it but Agent Du continues walking and reaches for the handle.
"Ah, aren't you going to scan for any alarms?" Ron asks Agent Du.
"There hasn't been any before this point and we're all ready in the structure. I don't see why there should be now." He turns the handle and opens the door. Suddenly, alarms start to blast throughout the structure.
"And that should have been a clue," Ron says with arms crossed against his chest as he glares at Agent Du.
What the heck?
In his darken bedroom he violently wakes up from his peaceful slumber and falls out of his bed hitting the floor hard while the blasting of alarms continues filling his room and his ears. He clasps his hands over his ears. "Lights," he yells. The room suddenly becomes illuminated.
Wow that's loud!
He sits up on the floor and then realizes the purpose of the alarms. Wait, that's the intruder alert alarm. I have some uninvited guests.
He gets up and quickly puts on his black pants, shoes, long sleeve red polo shirt, and his black duster. He rushes out of his bedroom and into the room where he observed Kim on his multi-screened computer monitor, which is turned on and showing a split screen image. One shows Kim, who also has awakened from the alarms and the other shows Agent Du and Ron running down a metal staircase.
So the mutant failed. Ron Stoppable is still kicking and now is here to save the love of his life. How romantic. To bad he'll fail.
He moves over to the far wall, which has two red buttons imbedded into it. One is incased in glass, while the other is not. It is this latter button that he presses.
And now he and Agent Du will have to deal with Hench's latest security system, which is thankfully user friendly.
He then strolls to the monitor to see how Ron and Agent Du are dealing with the latest in villain lair security. To his disappointment, he sees the two continuing down the staircase undeterred. Then a grimace of frustration crosses his face as he just realizes a crucial point.
"I forgot to install the security defenses!" he angrily exclaims to himself. "I just had to save a few bucks and install it myself. Oh, I'll get around to it. Nobody's going to find me." He shakes his head as he continues to stare at his monitor. Add to my arrogance the preoccupation with Possible and this is the result: me with intruders and no security defenses! They'll reach this room in a matter of minutes. Only one thing to do.
He makes his way back to the imbedded buttons and stares at the encased red one. In case of emergency, break glass and blow up everything.
"Doesn't this guy have any security measures?" Agent Du asks as he and Ron, with Rufus on his shoulder, continue running down the flight of metal stairs in the long stair well while the wailing of alarms surrounds them.
"Maybe he forgot to install them," responds a gasping Ron.
Agent Du throws a skeptical look over his shoulder. "He's up to something."
"Look a door," Ron exclaims as he and Agent Du approach another metal door.
Agent Du peers over the railing and spots another door below him. He also notices immediately that it's at the bottom of the stair well. "You check this door while I check that one," he tells Ron, who turns around just in time to see Agent Du jump the railing.
Ron rushes over and looks over the railing just as Agent Du lands on his feet, opens the door, and quickly runs into the doorway. "Man's on a mission," Ron says to Rufus, "and so are we."
"Yeah," Rufus exclaims.
With one smooth motion, he back elbows the casing shattering the glass.
With only two rooms to search, they'll find Possible but at least this will make it a little exciting.
He presses the button. Instantly, the images on his monitor disappear and are replaced with a countdown timer reading minutes, seconds, and milliseconds. It immediately begins to countdown from ten minutes.
At least I didn't forget to install this. Time to make myself scarce.
He nonchalantly walks to a specific spot on the floor, a small, circular red marker. Reaching into his duster pocket, he pulls out a small black remote with two, small buttons, a red one and a white one. He presses the white button. Instantly, a hole forms beneath him and he falls through it.
Ron quietly opens the door, and he and Rufus peer inside. They see a grey colored, fairly illuminated hallway with a white wall at its end. Ron slowly enters it letting the door close itself behind him as the alarms continue blasting.
"Okay, this is weird," Ron says to Rufus as he stands in place while looking around at the bare hallway. Suddenly, the kimmunicator beeps and Ron reaches into his pocket, pulls it out, and answers it. "Wade, I'm in a hallway with no door. Well, except the one I entered but I know what's behind it already."
"No other door," Wade says more to himself as he ponders for a moment. "Ron, take out the sunglasses out of your backpack."
"Okay, one, I don't have sunglasses and two if I did I wouldn't wear them here. The lighting in here isn't that bright. It's not great but not too bright."
"Ron, you do have sunglasses and I want you to wear them because they may be able to help you see a hidden room."
"How do you figure there's a hidden room?"
"Isn't it obvious?" asks Wade. "A hallway with no other doors, there's got to be a hidden room."
"You know, maybe I walked into a rather narrow, but spacious soon to be walk in closet."
"Whatever you walked into, there has be something up with it. The sunglasses will definitely help."
"And what makes these sunglasses so special?" asks Ron. "Can they help me see through walls?"
"Yeah," Wade answers nonchalantly.
"Cool," Ron replies gleefully. Suddenly, Rufus, who has just searched Ron's backpack for the sunglasses, pops out of the backpack holding the sunglasses.
"Ha-ha," Rufus gleefully says as he raises the sunglasses triumphantly. He then hands them to Ron.
"Thanks, buddy," says Ron as takes them from Rufus and examines them closely. They appear like ordinary, black rimed sunglasses with polarized, mirror lens except for a small red button protruding from the right rim where it meets the right stem.
"These sunglasses have several modes of vision," informs Wade as Ron puts them on.
"Whoa!" Ron yells quickly taking them off and immediately blanks his eyes rapidly.
"Including night vision," Wade says apologetically. Ron sees bright spots and tries to grab them with his hand before they fade and his vision returns to normal. "Pressing the red button on the right rim should bring up the x-ray vision," Wade says.
Ron presses the button before he again puts the sunglasses back on. What he sees now is a light green background with the visible outline of the structure's metal skeleton as he slowly scans the walls. "There we go. Now let's see." He continues scanning until he comes to the white wall at the hallway's end. "What's this?" Ron sees an outline of an opening in the wall's middle along with the metal supports. He tilts his sunglasses down and looks at the wall and then pushes the sunglasses up and looks at the wall through them.
"What do you see?" asks Wade.
"Well, Wade," Ron says as he walks up to the wall and slowly slides his hand over the hidden door, "looks like today isn't one of those days where you're wrong." He then places the kimmunicator in his pocket and reaches into his pocket pulling out Kim's laser lipstick.
The door bursts open as Agent Du cautiously enters the well illuminated room. Alert for anything, he scans the room with his eyes and sees an assortment of chemistry glassware on a metal counter, another closed door, and a multi screened monitor sitting on a metal desk. He walks slowly toward the monitor and abruptly stops. His eyes widen in horror at the image on the screens of the monitor as he instantly realizes its meaning.
Oh-no!
He quickly rushes out of the room in search for Ron.
From shear exhaustion Kim had fallen asleep in her white, walled prison. She was dreaming she was back in her bedroom; safe from this mysterious man who holds her captive now. She could hear her mother call her name to come downstairs for breakfast. Still in her pajamas, she threw her blanket off her and headed down the stairs that led to her bedroom. She could smell the bacon and hear it shimmering in its own juices and hear her mother and father conversing about something she could not quite make out. She quickly bounded down the main stairs and was just about to enter the kitchen when the alarms blasted her out her dreams and back into her nightmare.
"What is going on?" Kim asks to herself as she sits up on her bed wide awake while the alarms continue to sing. She holds her hands to her ears trying to lessen the abuse the aggressive tones are inflicting upon her ears.
Is this real or has my host decided to give me another "breather?" Man, I can't believe he used that line. Wait, those sound like intruder alert alarms. I should know because Ron and I have set off more than our fair share… well, Ron has.
Suddenly, sparks fly from the spot where the hidden door lies in the far wall and grab Kim's attention. The sparks continue to move down in a fairly straight line almost to the bottom.
Someone's cutting through that door with a laser!
"Hey, in here!" Kim yells trying to overcome the alarms' wailing but proves futile. She quickly gets off the bed and takes a few steps to the door never taking her eyes off the sparks as they move slowly parallel to the floor for a few feet before turning up toward the ceiling.
Hope builds within her. Come on!
Within a few seconds, the sparks finally reach their spot of origin but not before leaving a small path of melted metal forming a rectangular outline on the door. Within moments, a rectangular section of the door falls at Kim's feet like a dead man as the alarms abruptly stop, which go unnoticed by Kim. She just stares at her liberator and savior. A large smile forms on her face.
"Ron!" Kim shouts with joy.
"Kim!" Ron and Rufus exclaim in unison as Ron rushes over to Kim, but falls face first on the rectangular metal slab he has just cut out of the door. Kim turns away for an instant as grimace of pain flashes on her face. Ron pushes himself off the slab as Rufus hops onto the ground. "What's the point of a belt if it can't keep your pants from falling down?" Ron complains as he looks down at his pants, which hug his ankles. Suddenly, strong, slender, and feminine arms envelope him in a tight, firm hug. He closes his eyes and smiles as he returns the hug.
"Are you real?" Kim asks as she buries her face in his neck hoping that this is not a hallucination as well. "Are you really here?"
He pushes her slightly away in order to see her face, which he cups with one hand. "Of course I'm real." Kim cups his face with both hands and stares into his eyes as a few tears escape hers.
This is real!
Ron gently wipes them away with his hand while continuing to look into her face, locking his eyes with hers. "I'll always be here for you. I love you, Kim." Then, cupping her face with his hands, his lips slowly find hers. Each closes his and her eyes savoring the moment as though this would be the last. All their emotion and being are poured into the moment making it everlasting until they are interrupted by a familiar voice that snaps back to reality.
"Maybe another time would be better for that," says Agent Du as he sports a more serious look than usual while standing in front of the newly formed opening. Kim and Ron pull their lips apart and look up at Agent Du. "This place is going to blow!"
"What an unexpected twist?" Kim sarcastically says as she gets up before helping Ron to his feet.
Ron sees Agent Du giving him an awkward, uncomfortable look before heading down the hallway toward the exit. Ron then realizes his pants still remain wrapped around his ankles. "Ah, yeah, about the pants," Ron calls to Agent Du's back as he quickly pulls them up. "They fell down. I didn't… I mean I would never…"
"Ron, run now, awkward later," Kim says taking Ron's hand and leading him down the hallway as she quickly runs toward Agent Du, who holds the door open while sporting a now anxious, impatient, and concerned look. Rufus quickly runs toward Ron, who just finishes fastening his belt, and climbs up into Ron's pants' pocket as they all attempt to not make this lair their final resting place.