Author's note: Am going to take this chance to thank both CajunBear73, Sentinel103 and the one anonymous guest for their reviews thus far and also to everyone else who's been following and reading this little story of mine. And the answer to the question asked is Chemistry, why? Though seriously, it's not like I've been hiding that fact now have I?
"Kim, were you seriously considering what the dean was telling you?" Ron asked in disbelief as they sat in a corner booth in the Go City's Mucho Grande Bueno Nacho outlet. Ron had two sets of nacos in front of him, although he was only eating one at the moment, whereas Kim was slowly picking at a bowl of salad.
"Ron, of course not," Kim said in protest and she stabbed into her salad with her fork. "But he went all grand-daddy face on me, like he really cares. How could I say no to him?"
"So you got puppy-dogged by an old man?"
"Well, when you put it that way..."
"Of course he could just be the villain of the hour and he's trying to stop you from doing the hero business," Ron suggested innocently, as he took a huge mouthful of his naco.
"Normally I'd say paranoid much, but yeah...he could be that Antropy guy," she mused aloud.
"So, why not just go and pound him until he confesses?"
"And if he's not? I could lose the scholarship, Ron. None of the other universities offered me a full one and I don't want to risk losing this deal. At least, not until we get something solid," she explained to him.
Something popped out of Ron's pocket and did a little high pitched yawn before scrambling up onto the table. "Rufus, glad to see you're finally awake," Ron grinned at his pet naked mole rat before handing him the untouched set of naco.
"Hello!" Rufus chirped at Ron and Kim before he dove into his naco, tearing through it like a lawn mower in an overgrown field.
Kim gave the little guy an affectionate smile and reached down to stroke his head before she looked up at her boyfriend again. "Besides, I don't think we'll have to worry about me quitting this business; I've got to do a lot of things that no one else can do, I've seen the world a thousand times over plus the boys I meet are a lot cuter," she grinned.
He grinned back. "And the girls are way better too, don't forget that," he said. "Glad to see that you're not going to be quitting any time soon, KP."
"Good, now that all this quitting business is dealt with, there's still the bug issue that Go City has right now," Kim said, her face quickly switching to business mode.
"Yeah, you really think you don't want to face your giant bug issue? I mean you might want to tackle it head on sooner or later especially if another bad guy comes along and decides to use the exact same schtick as this one," Ron started to say.
"I mean, do we have any idea what it is this guy is after," Kim said with a snippy undertone in her voice, trying to divert the attention away to what she felt was the more pressing issue.
"It's a take over the world thing. You said he wanted to show people the untapped potential of a lot of bugs, right?"
"Long term yeah. But what about short term, as in what does he want to do with this thing called a QBFG?" she said and tapped her Kimmunicator to contact Wade. "Wade, did you find out what a QBFG is?" Kim asked when her friend showed up on screen.
"Quantum Blockade Field Generator," he said with a slight grin. "Extremely high end theoretical stuff and apparently a work in progress at the Go City Technological Center. I'll save you the techno-babble and just say that in theory, this device is suppose to be able to shield people from any kind of cosmic irradiation whenever they go into space and with an extremely small energy source too since it collects the energy that it needs from the molecular movements of electrons that orbit around an atom and..."
"Not saving us from the techno-babble, Wade," Kim said wryly.
"Oh sorry, guys," he said sheepishly. "So yeah, there you have it. A shield generator device that's supposed to be used only in space," he concluded.
"Then why would this Antropy guy want to use this Quantum Blockade Field Generator? How would cosmic shielding be applicable to his schtick?" Kim asked.
"Good question, but no idea yet Kim. I'll continue digging into this and will let you know as soon as I come up with some ideas about it. Oh and Kim, did you ask someone else to dig up stuff about the QBFG and Antropy?" Wade gave her a good long stare.
"Er...yeah...why?" she asked, looking guiltily at him.
"I hope you're not trying to replace me as your tech guy. This other person is pretty good actually. No where near as good as I am though of course. Doesn't have much experience in the being sneaky part but there's a little potential there. " he broke out in a smile. "Whoever it is should be contacting you in 3,2,1..."
Beep, beep be beep. Wade's image was replaced with a new e-mail message. Kim grinned at him. "Thanks for the heads up Wade. I'll check the info and compare notes then. Catch you later, Wade."
"Bye, Kim." The screen went blank and she looked back at Ron and Rufus, both of whom were looking at expectantly. "New sidekick to replace your old one?" Ron asked with a smirk.
"Seeing that my old one got a promotion to actual partnership in more ways than one, I'd figured the sidekick position needed some fulfilling," she smirked back before she leaned in to kiss him.
PB
Two hours later, the pair had finished their meal and meeting and had bid each other a fond farewell. Sadly for the two of them, Ron had to go back to Middleton: he had to finish up packing his stuff but otherwise he would be in Go City in another two days so it wasn't too much longer before they were re-united once more.
On the other side of news, Darnia's e-mail was nothing more than just a repeat of Wade's report received earlier, although there was a whole lot of links for Kim to click on in case she wanted to do some further reading on Antropy and the QBFG. She gave up after a few minutes of reading though; too much to read and a lot of having to research terms and meanings.
And then there was the dean matter. While she did appreciate that he was looking out for her best interests, being the second person that she knew who tried to look out for her safety and all (the first being Ron, in a weirdly romantic way), it was also a bit annoying. She was going to need to figure a way to sneak out without getting caught by him.
As she drove back to her campus in her car (a present from her twin brothers last year), she thought about the problem for a while before she got an idea and hit a button on her dashboard, which revealed a screen that had Wade's face on it. "Need another favor from you, Wade," she said to him, grinning at him deviously.
"What kind of favor?" he asked, sounding a little interested.
"You think you could hack into GCU's security system and install a sort of program so that I'd never be caught whenever I have to go on missions?"
"Kim, I'm shocked that you would ask me to even attempt such an unethical thing? We're supposed to be the good guys here, not criminals! This is the sort of thing that...okay, you're good to go. Now you're practically invisible to GCU cameras," he said with a grin.
"Spankin'. You're the man, Wade," Kim said before she hung up on him. Good, that takes care of that one problem. Now she'll need to deal with Antropy when the time comes.
PB
She arrived back at her dorm within half an hour and entered her room to find Darnia sitting on her own bed, looking at her intently. "Well?" she asked. "Did I do good?"
Kim gave her a friendly smile. "You did great. Wade said you had some potential," she replied.
"Wade said...I was being graded?" She squealed in excitement before she got up and started bouncing on the bed. "And I passed too!"
It took another ten minutes for Kim to get Darnia to stop bouncing on the bed.
PB
Later that night, the familiar four tone beep sounded on Kim's watch. Fortunately for her, she had taken a good long nap before then and she was feeling rather bouncy at the moment, ready to take on Antropy if he dared to stick his head out of whatever anthill he lived in.
"What's the sitch, Wade?" she asked.
"I've managed to triangulate a possible hideout for Antropy based on his previous hits and tremor readings in Go City. It is probably located underneath this hill in Go City Park," Wade said as his face zoomed out so that he could show her a map of said park. A red blinking light indicated which hill he was referring to.
"Great. Did you call Ron?" she asked as she jumped out of her bed and quickly went to change into her mission clothes. Luckily for her, Darnia was already fast asleep so she didn't have to worry about how to handle her room-mate's inquiries.
"Before I called you. I hooked him up with a much faster flight, so he should be there by the time you reach the park."
"What kind of flight if you don't mind me asking?" Kim asked curiously.
"Suborbital flight."
"Right...hope his stomach can handle the G's," she said as she fastened her belt around her waist.
"Oh Kim...there's something you should know about this Antropy guy."
"What is it?"
"On a hunch, I made a quick check on Professor Acari's Roflax and it's still with him. So that means..."
"Either Antropy made his own version of the Roflax or he's using something else to make his giant ick-ies," Kim made a face as she said it. "So that puts him on Dementor's level at least?"
"Yes. I'd send you the battle-suit if I can but I'm still ironing one or two kinks in it and you don't want to be wearing it right now."
"How bad?"
"Explosions every twenty seconds bad."
"And the matter just blew up in my face. Anything you can do to give me an edge against Antropy?" she asked.
"I'm uploading a sonic pulse dis-charger application into your Kimmunicator. Much more potent than the hyper-sonic emission that we've installed previously and you can even focus it in a tight wave for a more solid punch. Only problem with it is that it need about three seconds to cool-down after each use but I'm also leaving the hyper-sonic emission application in so that you can have something for any situation."
She smiled broadly at his words. "Alright...I'm ready to exterminate some giant bugs then." It's just so much easier to deal with your fears when you can blast them away, after all.