"Kim?"
"Yes, Ron?" she asked as she tied her hair into a ponytail and slipped on a helmet. They were on the roof of a building overlooking the Myrmidon Tower; this particular building was about 1570 feet versus the Tower which stood at 1250 feet. "Second thoughts?"
"Oh you know...just wondering why in the world do we have to do the whole base jumping thing? Can't we just...oh I don't know...sneak into the building and run up the stairs?"
"Really? You're telling me that you want to do things the quiet way? That's really no fun at all. Besides, what are we supposed to do while running up a hundred flight of stairs? Talk to each other about our hopes and dreams?"
"Well..."
"I do hope that we will be able to do this more often, Possible-san. This saving the world business that you and Stoppable-san do is giving me a lot of much needed experience in the battlefield," Yori said helpfully. She had already changed into a gray and silver ninja outfit, complete with a crimson sash around her waist.
"Really? What do you think Ron?" Kim turned to him. He was dressed in his usual black mission shirt and cargo pants, complete with a helmet and he was stretching his legs, warming up for the big run.
"That would actually be pretty cool," he said. "Although, come to think of it, did you set the whole transfer thing up at GCU just so that you can do this? Sneak into the team?"
"I am ready to infiltrate the tower now, Possible-san," Yori said, pulling on her mask, seemingly evading the question. Kim grinned a little and nodded. "Ready, Ron?"
"Wait, she didn't answer my..." he stopped as the two girls started running in unison. He groaned and ran after them. "Next time I'm getting Wade to make me a girl to English translator," he grumbled.
The two girls jumped off the building before Ron did and pulled their parachutes after a hundred foot fall, steering themselves over to the Myrmidon Tower. Above them, they heard Ron shout something before he steered himself into their view and gave them a sheepish thumbs-up, his secondary parachute deployed.
The rooftop of the Myrmidon Tower quickly grew larger as they drew closer to it. It was, as Kim had gathered earlier, a penthouse suite, complete with a rooftop garden and a swimming pool that gleamed in the sunlight.
Aiming quickly, Kim fired her grappling hook at one of the trees in the garden and it connected with a satisfying crunch. At that moment, Yori lashed out with two chains, one at Kim and the other at Ron, both of them grabbing one chain each before all three of them released their parachutes and plummeted towards the side of the tower, the hook holding their combined weight well.
They landed on the tower, with a loud crack coming from the window that they landed on. A sharp burst of power erupted from Ron and he started to run up the side of the tower, grabbing Yori and Kim in his arms, as he made his way up the tower in defiance of gravity, leaving cracks of his footprints behind with each step that he made.
When he was almost at the edge of the roof, he jumped, tossing Kim and Yori upwards. The two girls grabbed the roof and vaulted over it nimbly, spinning around and tossing Yori's chains towards him so that he could grab it and slingshot himself onto the roof, where he landed two seconds later with a loud thump and a small crater forming where he hit the roof.
Quickly, the three of them dove for cover, hiding from anything that might have seen them landing on the roof. The coast was clear and they darted from cover to cover, making their way to the penthouse.
Once they were at the penthouse, Kim held up a hand and signaled to the others to hide, which they did so, blending in amongst the shadows almost flawlessly. Grinning, she peered into the suite through the window, her eyes widening when she saw what was inside.
There was definitely people living here; she could see the signs of habitation: family pictures, a few stuffed animals lying here and there, a bowl for the family dog and all was completely covered with ants that had crawled over them, mostly obscuring them from sight. She gritted her teeth and scanned the area quickly; other than the ants, there were no other living beings that she could see.
She signaled to the others and they approached her quietly. "Oh...that is not a very pretty picture," Ron shuddered when he saw the ants. "Why is this villain a bug villain?"
"At least these are the flick-able ones," Kim whispered back. "And I have the two of you to deal with the big ones when they show up."
"Still don't want to deal with your fear of giant bugs, huh?" he asked snidely.
"As much as you don't want to deal with your fear of the little ones," she retorted.
Yori rolled her eyes and placed a finger on each of their lips. "Possible-san, is your watch able to detect the source of the energy signature?" she asked. Kim nodded and turned her watch on. According to the watch, they were very close to the signature, about twenty feet above them actually.
"Okay. Stealth approach, Ron," she whispered.
"Why me?" he protested.
"Because Yori already meant into stealth mode," she said lightly. He glanced over to see that she had already vanished.
"Great...you know, the idea of being in a team is so that we can communicate with each other," he grumbled, following in Kim's lead as she entered the suite quietly.
Once the two of them had entered, the ants stopped immediately in their tracks and as one, they turned to look at Kim and Ron, their antennae twitching in the air. There was a strange sensation running up and down Kim's spine, as though as she was being watched...and judged.
Yori reappeared next to them in a flash. "I believe they know we are here," she said, sounding rather nervous.
"Great...he's already got the drop on us...well c'mon then...let's just get this over with, okay?" Kim said, as the ants started to shift themselves, forming a pathway to guide them to the stairs.
"Like a train on a railroad," Ron said nervously. Kim nodded her head slightly as she followed the path upstairs, heading to where the ants were guiding them.
Upstairs, waiting for them in the middle of what looks to be a dance hall, Antropy was sitting on a throne of ants, formed from millions of ants acting together to take on the shape of one. He glared at them as soon as they had entered, obviously extremely upset about something, standing up and pointing at Ron angrily. "You! What did you do to the device?" he said.
"Me? What did I do this time?" Ron protested, looking rather confused.
"The device! It isn't supposed to work this way! The city was supposed to have been wiped clean! Everything should have been destroyed! But now...now we are trapped in the city, within this barrier and we cannot move out of it! The only thing changed was the power source...and therefore you are the one to be blamed!" he shouted, raving angrily. As he spoke, Kim could swear that the echo in his voice intensified subtly, even though there was no reason for there to be an echo right now.
"Okay, Antropy," Kim said lightly, stepping forward. "You messed up big time and your evil scheme didn't work. I'd suggest that you just give up the QBFG so that we don't beat you up...or well, Ron here doesn't have to beat you up."
"Or we could fight all of you again, with the colony by my side, capture your boyfriend and then we shall take our time finding out the right configuration of his blood so that the device will work properly while we snack on his brains which we have yet to have a chance to taste yet," he said, standing up as a horde of giant ants emerged, surrounding them in an instant.
"Oh c'mon...don't you just hate it when the bad guys get to surround you instantly without you even noticing them?" Ron complained loudly.
"Not at all. We quite enjoy it actually," Antropy said with a smirk, his voice still having the weird echo quality to it as the ants close in on them.
Kim backed away into the other two slowly. Though her fear was slowly getting the better of her, her mind was still racing. Where was the device being kept? Locate the device first, get it away from Antropy, deactivate it. Best option to follow at the moment. "Ron, big guy. Yori, army," she said softly to them, pulling out the remaining six capsules from her pouch and handing them to Yori, who took them silently.
As she did so, she felt something light land on her arm and ran down her body into her pocket. She glanced down and Rufus gave her a thumbs up and a wink of reassurance and she smiled at both him and Ron.
"Ready?" she said, preparing to run away. "Go!" Yori tossed one of the capsules onto the ground, created a cloud of smoke that seemed to envelope the hall that they were in as Ron charged forward at Antropy, rushing past the ants and smashing those who tried to intercept him with a single blow to their heads. On her part, Kim launched a grappling hook at the ceiling and pulled herself out of the cloud, swinging towards the exit that was behind Antropy.
"Stop her!" she heard him yell. "Do not let her escape!" Acid spits began to fill the air and she twist and turn, releasing the line and launching another immediately to arrest her fall. Down below, she could see Ron engaging Antropy in a one on one fight. As for Yori herself, she couldn't see but she could see her handiwork: several defeated ants with shurikens embedded in their bodies. Ahead of her, there was a staircase leading upstairs. Maybe that's where the...
A blast of acid whizzed past her and she nearly lost her grip. Need to focus, she scolded herself as she let go of the second line, landing in front of the second stairs with a soft grunt. She sprang up to her feet and raced up the stairs as fast as she can.
Two giant ants crawled down the stairs to challenge her; she froze in her steps but only for a moment as one stepped forward to take a bite out of her. Instincts made her jump in the air and she fired a sonic pulse at the one that tried to bite her, neatly exploding its head and she landed on the other ant's thorax. She jumped up again, landing behind it and she resumed running up before the second ant could turn around.
She found herself in a narrow hallway, with four doors on either side of the room and one door at the end of the hallway. She turned on her Kimmunicator to see if it was able to track the energy signature; she let out a sigh of relief when she could see that it could do so. The signal appeared to be coming out of the door at the end of the hallway. Of course, she thought and stepped forward.
Giant ants burst out of the other doors, snapping their mandibles violently and crowding up the hallway. Of course, she sighed. That was just as predictable, wasn't it? She turned on the hypersonic emitter again and smiled to herself as the ants began to writhe in agony from the high pitched whine being released from her watch. They didn't retreat away from her though, blocking up the entire hallway still. At least they weren't going to take a bite out of her.
She started to dance, humming a tune to herself as she waltzed her way past the ants. Much easier than dodging lasers, she thought, gracefully avoiding an ant's trashing mandible as she made her way to the door. Upon reaching the door, she gave it a spinning kick, knocking it open and stunning an ant that was writhing behind the door.
Inside, she could see the device, possibly the original version, with lights blinking as it shook and hummed.
"Okay...now what?" she murmured as she slammed the door shut behind her before she turned and pointed her watch at the ant. Its head burst into a pulp and the high-pitched whine stopped. "Wait...I can't have both on at the same time? Cr..." she threw herself forward as the door burst open again and the other ants swarmed into the room.
What to do, what to do...she thought in a panic and mashed her watch as hard as she could. Nothing happened; she looked down at it and saw that the screen on her watch had frozen. "Stupid bug," she said and glanced at the other ants. She took a step back and they followed her, until she was touching the device. They stopped in their tracks as soon as she had done so, their antennas twitching.
This is so not good...