CHAPTER 11 - Bad Vibrations
Drakken's Lair – The next morning
Doctor Drakken finished reading Shego's report and lay back in his chair. Shego obviously thought that the break-up between Possible and the buffoon was of great significance, but he was of the opinion that it was such an unlikely hook-up that the fact that it had ended so quickly was scarcely worth noting. Much more interesting was the observation that Possible had been badly thrown by the whole Moodulator thing.
"Emotions", he thought. "She's susceptible to emotions."
All this time we've been trying to find a chink in her armor we've been looking in the wrong places!
Take her skills. We've never found a weakness there. She's just too smart and athletic. Not to mention her fighting ability. All those darned kung fu moves. Even Shego can't keep up with her.
Not to mention her back-up. That annoying kid who managed somehow to hack into the entire world, disabling his lair defenses remotely and providing Possible with ridiculously advanced tech. They had tried several times to spike his system but he was too well-protected. No weakness there either.
What about the idiot sidekick? He had always seemed surplus to requirements, Possible dragging him along for no obvious reason. Oh it so irritated him that she considered Drakken and Shego's threat level so low that she would bring a bystander along for the ride!
Or maybe not? Now he had had time to think about it, he began to realize that Shego may have had something when she talked about the buffoon. Though Drakken could not for the life of him see how Stonkable or whatever his name was contributed anything to Possible's success – after all, the boy had none of her skills and he regularly tripped up – nevertheless Drakken had to admit that the sidekick did seem to have an uncanny knack of blowing up his lair just when he was about to launch his latest world domination device.
And his annoying chatter did seem to encourage the hero.
Could it be that Possible would be put off her game by the absence of her sidekick?
Just like Dementor described when he stole the EMA!
Maybe I'm on to something here?
Finally there's her resourcefulness. She out-thinks us regularly, and is able to break into the most impregnable lairs. And always escapes when we capture her.
Of course he had to be able to do his villainous gloating. And the time-honored rant where he spilt the beans to the captured hero about his "unbeatable" plan. Which, unsurprisingly, Possible used to foil him after her escape.
Not to mention breaking out of our so-called death-traps.
Drakken gave a shiver. Until he had experienced the Phoebus effect, he had not given too much thought to his death-traps. He was after all a villain, and that's what villains do – they put the heroes into death-traps. The more elaborate the better to brag about.
But the Phoebus had changed all this. Now he was appreciating that being a "cartoon" villain had been getting him nowhere, certainly not world domination.
He thought of the time that he had Possible chained inside a steel box that was sunk in a bottomless pit filled with water (he recalled Shego's snarky comment "If the pit is bottomless, how can you fill it with water?"), with a girl-eating shark and squid and six feet of solid ice on the top.
"Why didn't you just shoot her?" Shego had said after they picked themselves up off the floor following her escape.
He didn't know then how to answer. But now he realized. The complicated death-traps themselves had been the whole point! But they weren't meant to actually kill. Villains defeated heroes, they captured and unmasked them, they humiliated them, they taunted them, if they were really evil they threatened their loved ones, they even drove them to despair, perhaps enough to make them abandon the hero life for good.
But they didn't kill them.
He, Doctor Drakken, would take over the world. But he was not a cold-blooded murderer!
And now he realized that Shego understood this all the time. Her plasma was capable of melting steel and burning her way into secure vaults. Yet she never used more than a tiny percentage of her power when fighting Possible.
Because Shego wasn't a murderer either!
So no more time-wasting and energy-draining elaborate death-traps. No killing at all. After all, he wanted to rule over people not corpses.
No. Together, Shego and he would take Kim Possible down. But she would live to see his victory. And spend the rest of her life reliving the despair of failure.
And the weapon he would use to defeat her would be her own emotions!
But in order to do that he needed more information. He quickly composed a message to "Miss Goh", coded to protect her anonymity. Shego would be making a detour on her way home.
Middleton High. Gym
The babble of gossip was abruptly halted as the cheer captain walked through the door of the gym, an awkward smile fixed on her face. Word had spread quickly that the unlikely pairing that had revealed itself earlier in the week was already over and the cheer-leading squad had been furiously speculating what had gone wrong so quickly. The faces that stared at Kim as she joined the group were a mixture of sympathy and need-an-explanation confusion. Except for one brown-haired girl, who was unable to suppress a look of "I told you so" as she grinned maliciously at the red-head.
"So, K. No mascot today?" Bonnie was not going to let an opportunity like this pass unremarked. "Was he too embarrassed to show his face?"
Kim narrowed her eyes and stared at her tormentor.
"You know perfectly well that today's practice is for cheerleaders only," she replied icily.
Bonnie was not to be deflected.
"So what happened, Kim? Your lapdog was all over you on Monday!"
No, that's so not true! I was the one who was doing all the chasing. Thanks to that awful bug!
Kim shivered at the memory. She looked at the others.
"He wasn't all over me, B. Actually, I was the one all over him."
She looked defiantly at Bonnie.
"And let's get one thing straight. Ron is not my lapdog. Nor anyone else's, come to that. Ron is a great guy, and I'll not have you putting him down. He's still my best friend." She stared at the squad, daring them to deny what she had said.
"What did happen?" Tara asked tentatively. "If you don't mind telling …" her voice trailed away.
A myriad of emotions had flooded through her when Crystal had told her a few minutes earlier that Kim and Ron were no longer an item. Not having shared a lesson with either Ron or Kim, she had missed the awkwardness between them. She had only just kissed Josh goodbye, risking being Barkined for PDAs before joining the rest of the squad. Learning the news that Ron was no longer spoken for had awakened feelings that she had suppressed since Kim had kissed Ron in the dining hall.
Kim spoke, her voice shaky.
"It wasn't Ron, it was me. I had accidentally picked up some villain gadget that … that made me susceptible to the first boy I saw." The white lie slipped easily off her tongue. "Once the bug came off …"
"I knew it," Bonnie crowed. "I knew you couldn't really be dating that loser! But I'll bet he needed a few cold showers after you played tongue-hockey with him - yuck!"
Tara looked sharply at Bonnie but the brunette was on a roll now. With mock sympathy she continued.
"Now you're free of the freak encumbrance, you can find yourself a real date for the Prom. Oh, but I almost forgot. Too bad for you, Kim, all the hotties are taken!" She waved at the squad behind her.
"Jessica's with Steve Foley, baseball captain. Crystal has Pete Thomas, soccer captain. I've got Brick Flagg. Quarterback, top of the food chain."
She turned back to Kim, who was looking daggers.
"And what about you, K? You couldn't hold Josh Mankey, and now Tara's got him! That leaves precisely zero talent for you doesn't it?" the brunette challenged spitefully. Then a malevolent smile crossed her face, as she continued.
"Cos you're too busy 'saving the world' to find a proper BF!" the girl air-quoted to her rival.
"Bonnie, that's really mean." Tara spoke up for the red-head. "Kim had a freaky day and all you can do is rub it in." She looked sourly at her friend and turned to Kim. "Kim, you don't need to come to the Prom on your own. You can join Josh and me."
Kim smiled weakly at Tara. "Thanks for the offer, Tara, but I wouldn't want to spoil yours and Josh's evening."
Bonnie grinned at the squad. "I'm opening a book on Possible showing up at the Prom with the loser even though they broke up!" Ignoring the looks of disapproval from the other cheerleaders, Bonnie grinned triumphantly at the disconsolate look on Kim's face.
Kim turned away, not wanting her rival to see the tear that was threatening to escape from her right eye. She felt humiliated in front of the entire squad.
A cough drew her attention to Crystal. The girl looked embarrassed, but spoke up. "Maybe this isn't a good night for a practice?" The rest of the squad, with the exception of Bonnie, nodded vigorously.
Kim was grateful for the distraction and smiled appreciatively at the girl. "Okay, let's take a night out." She had regained her equilibrium a little and her face was more animated as she continued. "But no slacking, we'll fit in an extra practice on Thursday – we've got the sessionals to think about."
As the girls trooped out to the changing room, Kim grabbed Bonnie by the arm as she tried to pass. Her eyes were gimlet-like as she stared at the brunette cheerleader. Bonnie's smile faded as she saw the hate in her rival's eyes.
"Watch your back, Bonnie," she warned. "You never know when someone might just accidentally rearrange your face while 'saving the world'." She air-quoted.
Bonnie took a step back at the venom in her rival's voice. She knew that Kim was capable of what she was threatening but she had never before felt intimidated in her presence. She covered her confusion with a show of bravado.
"So Miss Goody Two-Shoes isn't so good after all?" she responded.
"You'd better believe it, Rockwaller. Cos no-one else will." The threat was plain.
Bonnie watched uncomfortably as Kim turned her back and walked out of the gym.
Middleton High. D Hall
"Stop right there, Stoppable!"
Ron looked at the smirking jock who was blocking his path.
"Come on, Mike, give me a break! So not in the mood today."
The jock's face darkened, as Ron steeled himself for a beating. But it seemed the jock was more interested in taunts for the time being.
"So Possible realized what a loser you were, after all? She's actually gone up in my estimation. How many dates did you have with her?" He pretended to think. "One, wasn't it?"
Mike laughed. "You couldn't hold onto a girlfriend for even a day! What a dead-beat!"
"It wasn't like that," Ron muttered.
"What happened? Did your loser stink make her nauseous?" The words were spoken by a second jock who had joined Mike. The two bullies sneered at their victim.
"You shouldn't have dated Possible in the first place, you piece of shit. You know the rules - only jocks date cheer-leaders. And now you're going to pay for trying to get above your bottom-feeder status."
Seemed the taunting was over and the hurting would begin.
Ron watched as the two jocks approached him, fists raised. He thought about the last few days. How he'd thought he had a chance first with Tara and then with Kim and now he had nothing. Actually, less than nothing. His best friend was keeping her distance. The temporary math teacher picked on him at every opportunity. And now the D Hall bullies were back.
To almost everyone in Middleton, Ron Stoppable lived up to his reputation as a loser. Even his advocates – Kim, Monique, Felix and his family – could not deny that Ron was at best socially inept. Few thought that he would amount to much without a great deal of pushing.
But Ron was bearing a secret, one that was eating away at his soul.
For twelve months he had kept his promise to reveal nothing about his unexpected visit to Yamanouchi, the secret training school in Japan where he had been given his first lessons in the ancient art of ninjitsu. He had been told only that it was something to do with a destiny and connected to his encounter with Monkey Fist's idols. As far as his best friend and class-mates were concerned, he had merely spent a fortnight as an exchange student at a Japanese high school, returning last summer for a refresher.
For twelve months he had been required to conceal his newly-acquired skills from everyone, even from Kim. Especially from Kim, who was the only person who saw him in combat action other than the villains they battled. He was hurting from the continual need to deceive his best friend, and he had come close to giving himself away at the coconut shy that fateful evening. Maybe next visit his Sensei would relent and let him tell her.
For twelve months he had allowed himself to be knocked around by bullies whom he had the beating of, in order to preserve the secret. "A true hero does not allow himself to fight in anger," the school had drummed into him.
But Ron Stoppable was only human. And even the mildest-mannered of men had a breaking point.
The last few days had pushed Ron to that point.
He glanced down to find a baseball ball by his right foot. He bent down and picked it up, rolling it around his hand appraisingly.
Sorry Sensei, I know what Yamanouchi stands for, but non-violence isn't an option with these guys.
As Mike took a swing at him, Ron ducked to one side and let fly with the ball. It struck the bully between the eyes with a loud thump. A look of surprise crossed Mike's face as his eyes closed and he tumbled to the ground. Ron retrieved the ball and stared at the surprised second jock.
"More of the same?" he asked softly.
Benny hesitated, looking at his prostrate partner.
"You've killed him, you creep!" Benny looked back at Ron with hate and fear in his eyes.
"No, just knocked him out. I wasn't really trying that time." Ron's face was blank.
Benny rushed at Ron, trying to catch him unawares, but the blond was expecting this and easily side-stepped the oncoming bully, sticking out a leg that caused Benny to lose his balance and fall, sliding on his front down the corridor. Ron took the opportunity to drop the ball and run for the exit.
As he drew to a halt, panting, he thought he heard his teacher reproaching him.
Stoppable-san, there is no honor in beating on a bully. It merely makes you a bully yourself. Do not squander your birthright on these foolish young men lest it fail you when you truly need it. Remember that you have been entrusted with a secret.
Ron's head dropped as he contemplated the next time he encountered Mike and Benny, and the beating he would have to accept in order to live up to his promise.
Ooooooooo
Anne Possible looked up as the front door opened and her daughter walked in.
"You're early, Kimmie. Is everything alright?"
Her daughter gave her a wan look. "Everything's rubbish, Mum." She slumped down on the sofa.
Concerned, her mother poured a cocoa and handed it to the stricken girl.
As Kim described her day – the reaction of her fellow students to the news that she and Ron were over, and the bitchy comments of her chief tormentor – Anne grew concerned. She knew that her daughter – while popular – was viewed by many of her friends as larger-than-life. Her exploits, and her ability to out-perform physically all of her colleagues seemingly without trying, meant that Kim Possible was respected and admired rather than loved. Kim's love life was nowhere near as satisfactory as her peers. Finding that her first relationship since Josh Mankey was a sham had clearly taken its toll of the young girl. And it sounded as though Bonnie Rockwaller had gotten to Kim in a way that didn't normally happen.
She suspected that Kim wasn't telling her everything about what had happened in the gym. And had Anne understood more about the effects of the Moodulator – that it amplified emotions not created them – she might have been more worried about the emotional state of her daughter.
Middleton High. Gym. Later that evening
The gym was shrouded in darkness as Bonnie Rockwaller closed the door behind her and turned the lock. She was surprised to see a figure in the shadows, watching her.
"Miss Rockwaller," a sweet voice called to her.
"Miss Goh? she responded, barely recognizing the voice as belonging to the intimidating teacher who had taken her math class earlier.
"I was hoping to find you before you departed. You see, I need some help."
"Help? From me?" Bonnie was taken aback.
"Yes, from you. You see, I am not all I appear. And I need the assistance of someone I can trust." She looked disarmingly at the girl.
Bonnie blushed. She had warmed to the temporary teacher when Miss Goh had embarrassed Stoppable, and she had cursed under her breath when Justine Flanner had rescued him. Nevertheless she was instinctively wary of this apparent breach of the student-teacher relationship.
"You look concerned. There is no need," Miss Goh said reassuringly. "However, everything I am about to tell you must remain strictly confidential."
The girl nodded, still uncertain.
"I am not really a temporary teacher," Miss Goh acknowledged. "I am in fact an officer of the Colorado Delinquents Authority. I am investigating the behavior of a fellow student of yours. She has been conducting herself recklessly, carrying out vigilante activities and the Authority feels that she may be out of control. Sadly, her parents are apparently conniving in her unfortunate activity. Furthermore she has been putting at risk a young man who she has persuaded to aid her in her highly irregular activities."
Bonnie stared at the woman. There was only one person that Miss Goh could have been referring to.
Miss Goh, certain now that she had the full attention of her companion, continued.
"My bosses believe that they have almost enough evidence to take this child out of circulation and put her away in a delinquents' home. However, to obtain a conviction, we need eyewitness evidence."
She looked at Bonnie.
"This is where you come in. I need you to be my eyes and ears among the student body as I must return to my other duties tomorrow."
Bonnie's eyes were wide.
"Bonnie, I need you to keep me informed about the girl who calls herself Kim Possible. You can help us to convict a dangerous felon. And protect the safety of all MHS students."
Bonnie thought back to the earlier conversation with Kim. The hate and threat in the red-head's face. No wonder, if she was a dangerous delinquent! And she, Bonnie, could play a part in getting the girl out of her life for good!
Would she help Miss Goh?
Payback time, Kim!
"I'll do it," she breathed. The teacher did not miss the gloating look of triumph on her face.
A snarky smile appeared on the face of Miss Goh. When she had learned earlier that day of the deep rivalry between Possible and the girl standing in front of her, it hadn't taken her long to formulate this plan to keep tabs on Kim once she returned to Drakken. She thought that it would be harder to persuade the girl to cooperate and to allay her suspicions. But the depth of Rockwaller's loathing for the hero made her gullible and blinded her to anything other than the thought of prevailing over her nemesis.
Which played right into Shego's hands.
"Excellent, I knew I could rely on you. I could tell you had an honest face the first time I saw you. Now remember, you cannot breathe a word of this to anyone. I will give you an email address to send a report to each day. Once the perpetrator has been taken into custody, I will make sure that your family and teachers are made fully aware of your public-spirited assistance."
Bonnie beamed.
"Now, I would appreciate it if you could join me at my hotel. I am keen to learn everything you can tell me about Miss Possible, especially what has been happening this evening. I noted that she left the gym earlier looking angry."
Forty minutes later, Bonnie was drinking her third cocktail of the evening as she sat opposite Miss Goh in the bar of the hotel. Miss Goh had waved aside her objections when she pointed out that she was underage. "You are with an officer of the court – I have the authority to overrule the licensing laws when appropriate. And you are being so helpful." She neglected to mention the large tip to the waiter to turn a blind eye. A tip well worth the money, as the mildly-inebriated girl poured out her woes and hatred of Kim Possible.
Much of this was of no interest to the villain. But her patience was rewarded when Bonnie suddenly stopped and burst out. "Miss Stuck-Up Possible thinks she's too good for the likes of me. But that bitch doesn't have a date for the Prom. And boy did I rub her nose in it this evening! All the hotties are taken. She'll have to show up with Stoppable, or some geek from the Chess Club. Is she going to hate that!"
Possible has a weakness for hotties? And doesn't have a date for the Prom? That must be something we can use!
Miss Goh hid a smile as Bonnie begged her to arrest Kim on the very night of Junior Prom. Being publicly led away in handcuffs in front of the entire school! The ultimate humiliation of her hated rival.
I must mention that to the Doc. It has a certain poetic justice about it. It's always good to set a deadline, so why not make that night the culmination of whatever plan he has in mind?
"Just keep telling me what I need to know, and I'll see what I can do."
When Bonnie returned home, her mother took one look at her and sniffed her breath. She was sent to bed without supper and with a strong coffee, her father's angry words echoing in her ears. But nothing could remove the glow of a secret she hugged to herself.
Kim Possible, you are so going down! And I will be the one that makes it happen!