A\N HI! UPDATE! Heya! This chapter is a bit on a short side comparing to the previous one, but it's my usual comfort zone per chapter (approx. 2.5k words). This story is a Whole new experience to create. Who knew AU will be that much harder to do? Well, i'm not a quitter, i'm gonna make it… and make it big. Bigger than Private Paradise or A sitch in our lives, in words counting at least. We are 15k words in already, and the story is still on introductory arc! Well, let's see how it goes…

And, as always…

READ AND REVIEW.

Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Possible.

Chapter 4

Way to progress

Bonnie entered the school female bathroom, looking around. After checking every stall, to be sure that there was nobody here, she sat on the toilet cover and pulled a crystal sphere out of her bag. The item perfectly fit her palms. She didn't have much time, since somebody could enter anytime.

"Scan." Bonnie said with echo-like voice, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Pure white smoke appeared in the exact center of the sphere and, with a swirling motion, spread throughout it, filling whole thing from inside. Bonnie's hands started to shake a bit as she saw the reaction. Smoke started to dissipate, and mere seconds later she was holding a perfectly clear sphere again.

'No… no, not this!' she bit her bottom lip from the frustration.

"Scan!"

Bonnie repeated her spell more clearly this time, however the result was the same. With a heavy feeling of defeat, she put the sphere back to her bag pack, and went towards the lunch room. Shadow of depression was crawling around her, as she walked her way through school hallway, not paying any attention to students around.

She perfectly knew her reputation in school. Weirdo, shut-in, lunatic. It wasn't her fault, not fully at very least. Yes, she was antisocial shut-in, she wasn't going to deny it, and it probably was weirding some people down, but not to the degree it is now. With time however, rumors started to spread. Ungrounded, stupid, but still, believable enough for the people in the school. Who knows what a quiet, anti-social girl could do to you if you push a wrong button. And with time all this escalated in the uncomfortable feel that surrounds her presence even now. It became normal for her. She was safer without friends. Less stress, less lies. And once her father recognized how responsible his daughter was, he finally let her do something on her own. A chance to prove her worth, to make him proud. But it didn't go as she wanted.

Ron was chewing a bite of potato, as Bonnie put a tray with food on a table with force. She was clearly upset with something, and it wasn't first time Ron saw her in that way. Frown brows, tightened jaw, heave look. Same as the day he met her in the locker room.

"Ehm…any problems?" Ron asked carefully.

"Gremlin is gone." she answered quietly through her teeth.

"Oh. Isn't that good news?"

She just glared at him intensely, making him feel uneasy. Feeling of dread started to flow in the air.

"It isn't, i g-got it…" Ron gulped loudly.

"I…" Bonnie realized what she has done and sighed. "Sorry… It's just… It was really important for me. First assignment Dad let me do it on my own and i blew it."

"You sure it's gone?"

"Yes. I rechecked just to be sure. There is no presence of it anywhere in school." she growled in aggravation and dropped her head on the table. "This is hopeless."

"Ehm…uhm…" Ron desperately tried to find words in order to cheer her up. "What some jell-o?"

He heard a muffled agreement from her and quickly fetched one from the food counter. Weebly-wobbly substance with artificial flavor wasn't really enough to make Bonnie feel better, however the act of consideration from Ron actually did the thing. She enjoyed his company immensely, even if it was temporary.

"Thanks." she said, finishing the desert.

"No problem." he smiled casually. "I'm partly responsible too anyway."

"Yes, you are." Bonnie pointed a spoon at him. "But i am the one who'll have a talk with my father about it."

"Good." Ron let a sigh of relief out.

"What's so good about it?" her right brow rose.

"I didn't mean it in a wrong way. It's just, i'm still terrified of your father."

"Oh, that." Bonnie rolled her eyes. "Trust me, he won't do anything to you. You have nothing to be afraid."

"How can you be so sure?" he asked her.

"Because if he'll do something like that, i'm going to guilt trip him to the gates of Hell." she smirked confidently.

Ryan was walking back and forth in his office, holding an old book in his hands. It was an old habit of his. It helped him to concentrate better as he looked through the pages, carefully, closely. Almost century old diary of a mail witch, still in pretty good condition for its age. Ryan could barely believe that he was able to get such valuable source of knowledge and history on his hands. Diary told him a story of a man who left his clan to travel around the world. Along his journey witch met a lot of people, and learned many ways magic manifested itself outside his homeland. Oracles, monks, shamans, and the list go on.

"Fascinating" Ryan muttered under his nose.

Time flies when he is focusing so hard on anything. Herbal tea in his cup was cold for at least an hour already. The only person who can snap him from this state nowadays is his daughter. She will always be his priority in life.

"Magic cluster, i think i read about it before somewhere…a-ha!"

Ryan, with almost childish glee, stepped towards a bookshelf and pulled out a thin shabby book. He opened it, holding the diary under his armpit, and found a text he needed.

"Yes, this is the one." he scanned the page with his eyes, put the book on the desk and opened the diary again. "The description here is much more detailed."

Every new page contained something interesting for Ryan, though most of it wasn't particularly useful. Knowledge itself satisfied his curiosity, practicality was just a neat bonus. Even as a young boy, after the revelation of being a witch he wasn't interested in his own powers as much as in learning all about the world of witchcraft and magic as he could. Rockwaller clan recognized a spark of genius in him and took him as an apprentice. They couldn't teach him the spells, since he was an outsider, but instead gave him all information he needed to develop his own skills and spells. During his studies he met a young female witch and fell in love in her. Sometime later he married her and changed his last name to Rockwaller, officially becoming part of a clan. Years past and Ryan's family expanded with three daughters. He had no idea at the time what cruel joke fate was preparing for him. Loss of many dearest people, and, what was the most painful, his wife and two daughters.

Bonnie turned the key and opened the front door, entering her house. It was quiet as always. Before putting her key back to the bag she looked at the keychain and smiled. She really liked this thank you gift. Feeling energized, she quickly changed her clothes and filled the warm water halfway. Bonnie was trying this for weeks, at first it didn't work at all, but with time and perseverance results started to show themselves. Sitting on her knees before bathtub, girl positioned her hand above water, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"Water…"

Water in the tub started to move in spiral motion.

"…sphere."

A big chunk of water rose and stopped mid-air under her palm. It was too hard for her to sustain a sphere form of it, it wiggled in different directions constantly. After several seconds Bonnie released the shape back to the tub and drained all water from it. She felt ready to try the next step. Once bathtub became empty, she put her hand above it again, with her palm facing down.

"Water sphere."

A small sphere of water, no bigger than a bottle cap, appeared under her palm. It had perfect shape, and didn't felt as hard to hold in air as the previous one. She managed to create it from air itself, rather than from the nearest water source. Excited, Bonnie made another deep breath.

"Freeze!"

Instantly sphere became a solid ball of ice and fell into the tub, with a loud thud, cracking in several pieces.

"YES!" Bonnie jumped on the spot from the knees into standing position, holding both hands up, victoriously. "I did it! I finally froze it!"

She ran upstairs to record it in a thin book with her name written beautifully on the cover. Her grimoire, her prove of experience as a witch. It still only had a handful of spells, most of which she create herself, but with each new one added her control over the powers became better and better.

Meanwhile, Ron was at his computer, playing one of the games he bought recently. While he was defending a castle from the army of fantasy creature, a loud sound of explosion came from the room across his, making him fell from the chair, with a mouse still in hand. Moment later he ran out of his room to the hall. Black smoke went under the door to the Twins room. Ron inhaled as much air as his lungs could contain, moved the collar of his jersey on his nose, covering the lower part of a face, and turned the doorknob. As he opened the door he was met by a vail of black smoke.

"TIM! JIM!" he shouted through the jersey.

"We …kha…we are fine…" Jim appeared in smoke and walked to the hallway.

"…khoo… yeah, absolutely…" Tim followed his brother.

Ron went through a wall of smoke towards the window in their room, and opened it widely. Immediately after it he opened another window in the end of the hallway, and the one in his room, leaving doors to both rooms open.

"That will lead the smoke out." he moved jersey collar from his face and turned towards the boys. "Did you breathe any of this stuff?"

"Just a bit…" Tim answered, breathing normally again.

"We stayed low, so we're fine. It isn't our first ka-boom you know." Jim added. "We probably miscalculated combustion rate of the fuel."

"Or it must be mechanism malfunction." Tim nodded.

"Oh, man." Jim looked back to their room. "Mom is going to kill us."

"Or at least ground us for eternity."

Smoke faded enough to see the damage. From the look of it there was more smoke than actual damage. A big are of the room was covered in soot, and also there was a scorch mark in the center of it, with different pieces of machinery lying around and on top of it.

"You know." Ron said with a smile. "If we hurry, we might clean it and cover this up as a light mishap instead of big boom of dirt."

Both pre-teens looked at him with wide eyes, not believing their ears.

"We? As, you are going to help us?" Jim asked, barely believing it.

"Yeah." Ron nodded.

"Why?" Tim was as confused as his brother.

"I kinda made your folks worry enough already, with e living here and other stuff, if i can give one less thing for them to worry, i would like to do it." Ron just shrugged off. "So, from the looks of it we need brooms, some rags, and a lot of cleaning soapy stuff."

For boys this explanation was enough. Jim collected pieces of the failed experiment, as Tim was cleaning the soot from walls and shelves. Ron was running up and down the stairs, changing the dirty water in plastic basins and cleaning the rags. In the end all three of them managed to clean the place in about an hour. After they cleaned themselves up, Ron and Twins, tired, dropped their backsides on the couch in living room, and turned up the wrestling channel.

"I can't believe we manage to fix all this before Mom, Dad, or Kim came home." Jim breathed.

"Seriously, we are awesome." Tim smirked.

"Let's not do this often, ok?" Ron stretched his back. "Extreme cleaning is too extreme for me."

"No promises." Twins answered in unison.

Mystery and detective books were Bonnie's favorite things in the world. Especially a series about a novel writer who works with police woman on different intriguing cases and gets his inspiration from it. Even now she's laying on the bad with one of those books in her hands. However her reading was interrupted by the sound of the car, parking in their garage. Her father came home, and she needed to act. Bonnie bookmarked a page and ran downstairs, turning the electric kettle on. Front door opened, and Ryan Rockwaller stepped in his house.

"Pumpkin! I'm home!" he announced as usual.

"Ok!" Bonnie answered from the kitchen.

As soon as water got heated, she brewed some herbal tea and put it on a tray with couple salted crackers. Since Bonnie knew her father too well, she immediately went to his study with this tray. Door was open as he sat at the desk, looking through some old book she didn't recognized.

"Here you go." she put tray on the desk.

"Thanks sweetie." Ryan made a small sip and noticed crackers. "Hm, you even brought a snack. How considerate of you."

"Of course Daddy, aren't i always?" she the sweetest smile she could.

"Yes, but you don't usually looking like a guilty puppy in process." he made another sip, smirking slightly.

"Is it this obvious?" her smile fell.

"I'm your father, pumpkin. I can read you like a book." he said with a kind tone. "Just tell me what is bothering you."

"Well..." Bonnie sighed. "Gremlin disappeared from school area."

"Are you sure?"

"I scanned it, twice."

"I see."

"I know, i failed it." Bonnie sat on the comfy chair, with her head lowered. "Please let me try again! Give me new mission, i won't fail again, i promise."

"There is no shame in failing." Ryan put a small smile. "I only hope you will be able to found your lesson in there. As for new mission, i'm afraid i don't have anything suitable for a moment. But i promise to tell you if anything will come up."

"Ok." Bonnie felt a little better. "Oh, i also finished a new spell! Look!"

She walked to the desk and put her hand above the mug with tea.

"Freeze!"

Tea instantly became a solid mass of ice.

"Amazing." Ryan looked inside a mug. "You create it all on your own?"

"Yes, i wanted to do it myself, without a help. To know that i'm able to."

"I never doubted you have it in yourself. You know what? Let's celebrate it. With pizza. Order whatever you like."

"YAY! Thanks Dad!" Bonnie hugged him and ran in glee towards the phone.

Ryan meanwhile looked back at the mug, biting of a piece of cracker, smiling with pride.