Chapter 4: Behold the Muertadora
Kim regains consciousness. She struggles to survey her surroundings but realizes she is strapped to a table. She hears water stirring and rippling beneath her but she sees no trace of Ron. As she slowly regains her faculties Kim calls out for Ron.
As Ron slowly awakens, his eyes quickly focus on the water pooled directly above him. "Wha? Water? Directly above me?", he unknowing says aloud, "That doesn't make any sense!" Ron comes to the realization that he is strapped to the underside of a cold steel table and there is a large pool of water below him when he hears his name being called.
"Kim? You OK? Where are you?"
"I'm up here. I think we're strapped on opposite sides of this table. Ron, can you see anything of significance from where you are?"
"There's no floor. It's a large pool with what looks like fish in there!"
A sliding paneled door opens. Señor Senior Sr. and Señor Senior Jr. saunter along an elevated walkway towards the two teenaged captives. Señor Senior Sr. admires his handiwork as he surveys the scene; his arch-nemesis and her sidekick are strapped to opposite sides of a table and virtually helpless. The table is suspended on both ends by a 35' long titanium beam attached to either wall. The whole table/beam apparatus is suspended 20' above an indoor pond. Even the walkway on which the Seniors stand is still 15' away from the captured pair. Señor Senior Sr. is confident the two have no chance of escaping this time.
"Ahhh, not just any fish", Señor Senior Sr. adds, "the shapes you see moving below you are a special DNAmy project for which I paid quite a large sum of money. She has combined that mindless savagery of the Caribe Azul Piranha with the dexterity and intelligence of Panama's most aggressive land animal – the black spider monkey."
Ron reacts, "Spider Monkeys? Why do they do this to me! Genetically mutated crosses of piranha and ANY kind of monkey is sick…and wrong! It's sick and wrong! And to house them in an indoor mere as some sort of torture advice – THAT is sick and wrong, too!"
"A mere indoor what?", asks Junior. "This is no mere indoor pool, it is quite a remarkable – "
Ron corrects Junior, "No, not 'mere'…'mere'! You know a plashe? Natatorium? January 9th. Hello!"
Señor Senior Sr. asks, "I do not understand. What is the significance of January 9th?"
Kim let's out an exasperated, "Don't ask."
Says Junior, "Why are we not allowed to ask? He has piqued my curiosity."
"Ron is geeked about his Word-A-Day calendar. In fact, he's even reading ahead.
"April 11th", Ron yells.
Junior's face contorts expressing his disbelief. "Who reads ahead on a Word-A-Day calendar? That is not the correct procedure."
"That's what we've been telling him and whenever he uses a word from the calendar he also tells us the date the word appears on the calendar."
"That is…peculiar, but of no consequence." Senior Sr. turns his attention back to Kim, Ron, and the DNAmy experiment. "Instead of boring you with the details, allow me a quick demonstration." Señor Senior Sr. removes a banana from the inner pocket of his jacket. He peels the banana and dangles it over the railing above the indoor pond.
"I have been careful to feed them only minimally in order to ensure their vicious demeanor should a feeding opportunity present itself." Señor Senior Sr. drops the banana into the pond. Suddenly, swarms and swarms of furry piranhas fight over the small morsel of food in a frenzy of flying fish.
Sheepishly Señor Senior Sr. tells them, "DNAmy calls them her little….Furryfins." Senior is embarrassed of the name but proudly tells them his own name for the horrific abominations circling directly below Ron, "But I simply call them 'Nature's most efficient killing machine".
Kim chimes in, "Excuse me, Señor Senior Sr.? Spider monkey pirahnas don't actually exist in nature .How can they be 'nature's most efficient killing machine' if they don't occur in nature?"
Señor Senior Sr. quickly dismisses Kim's argument, "You are simply arguing semantics. I stand beside my earlier statement."
Kim thinks back to the reason her and Ron traveled to Panama. "You'll never get away with this. Siphoning water from the Panama Canal in order to start your own shipping route will never work."
Junior interjects, "Aha! That's where you are wrong, Kim Possible. We are building the world's largest wave pool. I will practice my extreme surfing skills for the next couple of weeks and become a world famous surfer. I will then parlay my fame into becoming a teen pop sensation. I can't wait."
Senior holds his head in his hand and shakes his head back and forth. "Junior, I told you. All this surfing foolishness is unbecoming the evil genius of a Senior. There shall be no wave pool."
"No wave pool?", Junior asks. "No shooting the curl?"
Junior is saddened by the news that he lost his beloved wave pool.
"Junior, I told you, wave pools and surfing are not a fitting outlet for our evilness. Now, come this way, I have a surprise for you." Senior and Junior walk over to a control panel.
"Father? There is a button on here with Kim Possible's picture on it."
"Yes Junior. That is the button for the Muertadora."
Both Junior and Ron ask in unison, "Muertadora"?
Señor Senior Sr. and Kim respond simultaneously, "Machine of death."
Ron chimes in, "That doesn't sound good." Glumly he says, "No me gusta."
"Junior, you may push the button."
A series of trembling, pulsating whirrs and crunches resonate in the room. Articulating arms with rotating saw blades, large boring bits, and high voltage probes extend from the walls, slowing and agonizingly advancing towards Kim and Ron.
Señor Senior Sr. leaves Kim and Ron with a parting boast, ''That, my teenaged foes, is my greatest invention yet. The Muertadora is inescapable, unrelenting, and...unsurvivable."
Ron corrects Senior Sr., "Do you mean fatal? Lethal? How about lethiferous? I don't think 'unsurvivable' is a word. Maybe it's after April 11...but I doubt it."
''I think you're about to find out", Senior counters. He turns to Junior, "Junior, come with me. There is still much work to be done."
"But Father, should we not stay behind and make sure that everything works as it's supposed to?''
Senior reminds him of the supervillian "code". "Junior, it's simply not done that way. We will leave them alone and assume everything has gone according to plan."
"But Father -''
"Junior! The code, Junior. We must remember the code. Without it, we are merely villains…not supervillians.''
Senior walks out of the room shaking his head. Junior reluctantly follows him looking back a couple of times.
Kim and Ron hear the menacing sounds of the Muertadora bearing down on them.
"K.P.! What's the plan? You have a plan, right? Tell me you have a plan!"
"No plan, Ron", Kim answers. "Worse, do you realize that, even if we somehow manage to cut through these ropes, you'll plunge into the pool of monkey-pirahnas!'' Kim asks as she struggles against the restraints, not entirely sure of a plan to free her and Ron; however, she knows by the approaching sound of Señor Senior Sr.'s Muertadora she needs to act fast!
Ron responds, "But if we don't get out of these ropes, we're goners anyway. I'll take my chances with the monstrosities below. Just find a way to emancipate us from these ligatures…post haste! March 10th, January 22nd, and January 16th!"
"Ron! That's not helping! Remind me to buy you a more subdued gift next year!" As soon as she gets the words out, Kim remembers….
"Ron, that's it! The gift! My compact from Wade - with the miniature circular saw!"
Hope renewed, Kim instantly reaches into her right pants pocket but her hopes are dashed as the rope around her upper leg blocks her hand from reaching Wade's invention.
"Ron, I can't reach it. The rope holding you up is digging into my legs. Can you try to maneuver around and try to give me just a little more slack?"
"Sure, KP." Ron squirms and shuffles. In a matter of seconds, he has positioned himself so that the rope that was around his upper thighs is now positioned around the small of his waste. "Try it now."
Kim reaches for the compact again. She can barely touch the compact but is unable to obtain any controlling grasp. The gloves she wears were especially designed by Wade to help strengthen her grip when climbing and repelling. The gloves, unfortunately, don't help with grasping the compact stuck so deep in her pants pocket. Kim writhes and twists, first, to free herself of her glove and, second, to allow her hand enough access to grip the compact.
In the midst of Kim's attempts to fight the restricting ropes, each twist and squirm applies upward pressure on Ron and slams him into the underside of the table to which they are tied. Thud. Thud. Thud. Ron's head and back repeatedly strike the cold steel. Ron is expierencing a painful application of Newton's Third Law of Motion he learned in Mr. Lucas' Physics class! The back of his head can testify that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, indeed.
Kim slowing works the compact closer to her hand and – Success! – she grabs it and removes it from her pocket. As Wade taught her, Kim pushes the button once to open the compact then pushes the button once again. The circular blade comes to life as she starts to cut through the rope around her arms.
As the blade slices completely through the first rope, it slides away and falls into the water below. However, the removal of the rope causes Ron's upper body weight to be supported by solely by the rope around his waist. As Ron's upper body exerts more force, Kim is the unlucky recipient of even more downward pressure on her midsection, too.
Simultaneously, they both let out an "oof" as the rope adjusts to the increased load and chokes off the next few breaths. Kim, focused on getting out of this situation before the Meurtadora reaches them, does not fully think through the consequences of her next action. Ron, on the other hand, is fully aware of his fate. He hears and feels the rope around his waist start to weaken. Unfortunately, his breath has not returned. As he yells for Kim only an inaudible wisp of air manages to escape his mouth. As the rope completely gives way, the air returns from his lungs, "No! Kim! Don't cut the –", but it's too late.
Hearing Ron's cries Kim instinctively grabs hold of the rope before it falls away. Kim cannot see Ron but she hears him scream as his body falls forward only for his feet to catch on the last remaining rope. Ron dangles perilously above the monkey-pirahna infested waters for what seems to be an eternity but, actually, it's only a fraction of a second. Ron's shoes overcome the friction of the rope and his body surrenders to gravity and he falls into water with a violent "KER-SPLASHHH".
"Ron!", Kim shrieks. Realizing what just happened she calls out for her sidekick but there is no time to dwell. Not only can she hear the din of the Muertadora approaching but she believes she can actually smell the rotating metal and electricity. Kim loops an end of the rope in her hand under and through the rope at her feet She carefully balances herself out onto the round steel beam supporting on end of the table allowing for sufficient slack in the rope that used to bind her lower legs. She sizes up the distance of the space between her and the platform with the Muertadora's control panel.
She takes a deep breath. Holding onto the rope in her hands she dives off the far side of the beam and contorts into a tuck position. Normally she would have tucked if only to increase her angular velocity before her dismount attempt, but this time she needed to tuck in order to prevent losing her legs to the Muertadora's articulating blades!
Kim accelerates through the perigee of her flip around the underside of the steel beam and releases after swinging another 45 degrees from the bottom. Her feet are pointing at the railing on the target platform so she executes a back 180 flip in order to orient herself hands-first, giving her a chance to grasp the railing. As she flies toward the railing she's thinking ahead to getting to the control panel, stopping the Muertadora, then rescuing Ron from the monkey-piranhas. Mere microseconds pass as she analyzes, discards, and reworks her plan to save Ron. She then scolds herself for not focusing on the immediate task at hand – reaching the platform railing. Her heart sinks as she realizes she dismounted a little too late. The distance to the platform precluded any attempt to actually land on the platform. Optimally, she would land doubled over the top of the railing. Sure, it would hurt a little, but it offered the best chance at staying on the platform without falling.
Her alternate plan (and she always has a backup plan) would be to grab hold of the top railing, slowing her fall enough so that she could hold onto the second or bottom rail.
But Plan A and Plan B are out the window. Because she dismounted to late, her velocity took her higher instead of further-out laterally. If (and it will be a big "if) she is lucky, she will get one attempt at grabbing the platform's floor. There is only one chance at this, otherwise she's into the water, too. She extends her hands and feels the platform's edge strike her palms. She closes her fingers and holds on for dear life but her velocity and momentum won't allow her to steady herself and her left hand slips free of the platform.
Kim dangles from the platform's edge trying to assess her situation. She cries out to Ron but gets no answer. The Muertadora is chewing through the table to which she and Ron were tied just minutes before. Shards of steel are flying all around her, smacking into her, or striking the water below.
As Kim hangs from the platform by only her right hand, she realizes that the hand keeping her from falling just happens to be the hand from which she discarded her glove. As that thought slips from her mind, so does her hand slip from the platform. She focuses on the water below. Interestingly, Kim's first thought as she hits the water is how refreshing the water feels after all that work she did freeing herself from being tied to the now-obliterated table. But her mind quickly focuses on the DNAmy abominations dwelling in the water and the nipping at her ankle she already feels.