Disclaimer: I don't own any of the character, situations or locations from the television series Kim Possible. I reap no monetary gains from the use of those things. I write for the sheer enjoyment of the process and to try and fill up the internet. According to the gauge I found on the web, it's now only half full so I got a lot of writing to do. (I think I'm gonna need a little help so come on all you would-be Shakespeares, help me out.)

Author's Note: This story stems solely from the following quote: "Tell me, O Muse, of the ingenious Hero who traveled far and wide..." Homer - The Odyssey.

Xxxxxx

Travel

Chapter 4

Australia

Xxxxxx

Wade was able to direct the Roth SL Coupe and its two human occupants to a department store that wasn't too busy so Kim and Ron could purchase two pillows and a blanket (and some major snackage for Ron and Rufus) before they winged their way to the Land Down Under. The couple was able to curl up in the back seat of the car and managed to get a few hours of sleep on the way so they were fairly refreshed when they arrived.

The landscape was bleak, no more than a forsaken wasteland with only a little scrub brush here and there and a deserted dirt road cutting through it, but Kim knew they were in the right place from the sight of a long black limousine, the half dozen occupants that she could see near the mine entrance and a single small ramshackle cabin.

"Falsetto's limo and henchmen," Ron observed, watching the six huge men all dressed in well-tailored black suits and dark sunglasses milling about the underground mine entrance. Kim had landed the Sloth on an overlooking mesa not far from the mine so they had a good vista of the entire area.

"No duh! What gave them away?" Kim retorted, then immediately regretted her harsh words. She was about to apologize but Ron cut her off.

"Well, they're certainly not locals dressed like that... unless the mining company is throwing a fancy dress ball or something. Hey, maybe somebody's getting married or it's their prom night."

"You're right Ron, their not locals," Kim giggled at Ron's joke but went for the apology anyway. "And I'm sorry for sounding so harsh. We've been constantly on the go for three days now and I'm feeling a little out of sorts, even with sleeping in your arms between missions."

"I understand, Kimala," Ron waved off the apology. "I think I'm starting to smell a little ripe since we haven't been able to change clothes or shower, so I'm getting a little feisty myself."

"You don't show it," Kim observed.

"I've been holding back the barbs so much that my tongue has a dozen teeth marks in it," Ron chuckled, obviously referring to biting his tongue to hold back said barbs. "Maybe we can find a hotel or gym or something nearby and grab a shower."

"That would help," Kim said as she pulled a pair of binoculars out of her utility belt to get a better look at the sitch, "but it's going to have to wait until after the mission. It's head in the game time." Falsetto Jones had just emerged from the mine entrance flanked by two other goons with their hands and jacket pockets overflowing with large glittering crystals.

"Same strategy as Dementor's place?" Ron queried with a gleam in his eye. "I mean except for you sneaking in through the air vents since we're outside and there aren't any air vents out here. I mean there's probably some major ventage going on in the mine but..."

"I know what you're suggesting, Ron, and it sounds like a plan," Kim cut off his rambling as she pocketed the binoculars and moved off in a roundabout route to the mine.

Ron sauntered up to the two largest goons that were guarding one point of the perimeter and in his most pleasant voice said, "Hi. I'm working my way through college selling magazine subscriptions to Villain's Digest. Would you be interested?"

"You're selling magazine subscriptions out here? In the middle of nowhere?" the henchman on the left begged in astonishment.

"Hey, college ain't cheap, you know," Ron replied with a shrug. "A guys gotta cover a lotta territory if he wants to pay his own way."

"Well, we ain't interested kid," the second goon growled. "Move along if you know what's good for ya."

"Yeah, it didn't work the other time either," Ron mumbled to himself before he regains his usual sunny disposition and moved on to another ploy. "Saaay, you look like a coupla of super secret agents or bodyguards or something. How about if I can teach you some Kung Fu moves?"

The blond boy's lightening-fast, horizontal, corkscrewing, scissor kick connected with one minion's temple and the second goon's jaw, sending both of them to the ground out cold.

Of course the commotion brought the other six guards and Falsetto Jones directly to Ron, surrounding him.

"Well, Mr. Stoppable," the professional thief said in his high, squeaky, accidentally heliumized voice. He snidely continued, "Or should I call you Dr. Van Fokker Dumple Ahem-Ahem Stein? Do you still carry your Peruvian Hairless around in your pocket?"

As an answer, Rufus popped up from Ron's cargo pants pocket and growled out of the corner of his mouth at the small man like an angry junkyard dog.

"I thought you only went after pre-cut diamonds, Falsetto?" Ron casually asked, folding his arms defiantly across his chest.

"Normally yes," Falsetto Jones answered, "but backlash from the Lowardian invasion increased security around all of the diamonds I had intended to steal so I decided to branch out and go to the source. Now, where is Miss Possible? My electric eels still need to send a shocking reminder that people can't steal from me that, which I stole in the first place."

"And the stupid puns keep coming," Kim said as she joined the party, landing a flying, two legged kick to the back of one of the guards sending him to La-La Land. She immediately attacked another nattily dressed henchman while Ron tore into the closest one to him with another monkey kung fu move.

"Yes, well I could make more biting remarks if I kept guard sharks instead of guard eels," Falsetto squeaked before he spun around and started to run toward his limousine that was a few dozen yards away.

"Ron! He's getting away!" Kim yelled as she went after the last two goons standing.

"On it KP," Ron hollered as he zip tied the henchmen he'd just taken down before he gave chase. He pulled his little buddy from his pocket, yelled, "Rufus, Llama bite," and hurled the naked mole rat toward the limo like a football.

The mighty mole rat deftly landed in the sand next to the front tire of the limousine and promptly buried his large buck teeth into the sidewall, deflating the tire.

"Rats!" Falsetto dejectedly harrumphed with a snap of his fingers, knowing that the the jig was up when he saw what happened to his vehicle.

"No, just one rat," Ron chimed as he ran up to the thief and apprehended the felon, "and he's naked."

"Uh-huh uh-huh! Naked!" Rufus cheered, raising his paws in triumph.

"Good job, boys," Kim enthused as she came out of the adit flanked by four miners who were rubbing their wrists. Kim had found them just inside the mine entrance tied up and had freed them by cutting their rope bonds.

Kim clicked on her wrist Kimmunicator and, when she saw her tech guru on the screen, said, "Hi Wade, we're finished here. Who's coming to pick up Falsetto and his gang?"

"Hey Kim," Wade said as he looked over at a computer screen to the side of him. "Global Justice is on the way and they should be arriving..." He was cut off as the high whine of jet engines suddenly approached Kim's position and a sleek black VTOL jet appeared directly over her head.

"Right about now!" Kim yelled over the noise, trying to shield her eyes from the sand being kicked up by the VTOL's engine thrust as it landed. "Thanks Wade!" She turned off the Kimmunicator and pivoted to face the jet as the engines started to spool down. Kim watched as the same lead GJ agent that'd been at Dementor's castle disembark, clipboard in hand, followed by a dozen other blue clad agents.

"Good evening, Miss Possible. I see we have..." the agent silently counted off the felons, "nine ready for pickup."

"You can take them away just as soon as the miners retrieve the raw diamonds," Kim said, indicating for the four local men to move in and get the stones from the two goons and Falsetto Jones. The miners made short work in retrieving the stolen crystals.

"That's fine with me," the GJ agent nonchalantly agreed with a shrug. "Normally they would be held as evidence but we'll take witness statements from the miners and a few photos. That'll suffice. That way GJ can also get an estimate of the value of the diamonds. Do you need a lift anywhere?"

"No thank you," Kim said, pointing to the Roth SL Coupe as Ron drove it up to their location. "But we could use directions to the nearest place to clean up. Ron and I have been on the go since before you picked up Professor Dementor and his henchmen."

"You can clean up in our headquarters," one of the miners said, pointing to the one room cabin next to the mine entrance that looked to be around two hundred years old. The dilapidated building was so run-down that it looked like it would collapse if someone even breathed hard on it. "It's not much but it does have running water." He then pointed to the large water tank on stilts standing beside the shack.

"I... don't think so," Kim nervously laughed. The tank was extremely rusty on the outside so she didn't think the water in the tank would be very clean. "Ron and I were thinking about finding a hotel or something on the way back to Middleton."

"Well, there's a small river with a waterfall about fifty miles due east of here," the miner said, pointing off in that direction. "But the dirt road's been washed out for years now so it's kinda hard to get to. It's so far off the beaten path that nobody ever goes there 'cept the odd walkabout or the occasional bushranger."

"Walkabout?" Ron queried as he joined Kim after parking and getting out of the Sloth. "Bushranger?"

"A walkabout's an informal leave of absence taken by an Aborigine to wander the bush, visit their relatives or return to his native life," the man explained. "And I reckon a bushranger is someone you'd call a highwayman or outlaw."

"It sounds like that doesn't happen very often," Kim nodded in understand, thinking about getting clean in an isolate area and also maybe getting some very intimate alone time with her boyfriend, something she had been hoping to do in the very near future. "The waterfall sounds like something I'd like to visit." She turned to the GJ agent and asked, "Why didn't Global Justice handle this mission? It seems like something that'd be right up your alley."

"I can't really say for sure," the agent said as he rechecked his clipboard, clicked his pen closed and climbed aboard the jet to leave. He poked his head out the doorway and said, "My crew and I are with prisoner pickup today. You'll have to take it up with the Director." The rear hatch swiftly closed and the VTOL was in the air and zooming away in seconds.

"You'll have to take it up with the Director," Kim mocked in a whiny voice. She angrily continued to no one in particular, "You better believe I'm gonna take it up with her! The next time I see Dr. Director I'll..."

"KP, amp down," Ron cooed to his girlfriend as he swiftly circled around behind her and started to massage her neck and shoulders. "I'm sure Betty has a perfectly good reason for them not handling the sitch. Maybe he didn't know about all this."

"You're right Ron," Kim sighed from both letting go of her anger with GJ and from Ron's magic fingered massage. "Let's go check out the waterfall before heading back to Middleton."

"Thanks again, Miss Possible," The miner said, grabbing and shaking her hand. "That was a month's worth of digging that them bushrangers were getting away with before you and your feller came by."

"It's no big," Kim waved off the praise as she pulled Ron into her side and wrapped her arms lovingly around him. "Since Ron defeated the Lowardians, missions have been a breeze."

"Lowardians?" the miner queried. "What're you talking about?"

"It happened just three or four days ago," Kim explained. "Ron thwarted an invasion by an alien couple from the planet Lowardia single-handedly. They were nine and ten foot tall respectively."

"I guess we wouldn't know what's happened recently in the world," the miner said, absently scratching his head. "We stay out here for a month or two at a time before we head into town to sell our find. The last international news we got was just after that blue feller tried to take over the world with giant red robots last year. Was it you that stopped them too?"

"The Diablos sitch?" Kim questioned, sure that that was what he was talking about. "Yes, Ron and I foiled Drakken's plan and disabled the Diablo robots."

"Then I gotta thank you for stopping that too," the miner said as he escorted Kim and Ron over to their car. "My house in town was almost smashed by them robots before they shut down. The whole neighborhood was nearly demolished, but my house and a few others was saved."

"Your very welcome, sir," Ron said as he opened the door for Kim and practically pushed her in. "Well, we gotta get cleaned up and back to Middleton. My shift at Smarty Mart starts soon." He ran around to the passenger side and hopped in with a quick good bye to the miners. They all waved back as the Sloth took to the sky.

"Ron," Kim harshed to her boyfriend. "Why did you hustle us out of there so fast? And you don't have to be into work for another three and a half weeks because Martin Smarty gave you a month's paid vacation for handling the Lowardian sitch."

"I... well, um, er," Ron stammered as he edged backed against his door, trying to get as far away from an obviously irate Kim as he could. Resigning himself to his fate, he let out a long breath and set himself for the worst. "It's like this KP. You were about to say no big to him again."

"Yes I was," the redhead said with more than a little tweak in her voice. "The Diablos sitch was a total no big."

"Wrong KP," Ron firmly said as he looked Kim directly in the eye. "It was a big sitch for him. He almost lost his house. Most of his neighbors did lose their houses. A lotta people lost their homes and jobs because of the Diablos... and quite a few people lost their lives."

"Okay, I'll cede that point," Kim said, calming down a little and feeling a bit chagrined for almost blowing off the praise that was sincerely given. After thinking about it for a minute, she wondered how many people had she accidentally offended by being overly humble and blowing off their sincere gratitude.

Xxxxxx

It was easy enough finding the waterfall from the air and Ron visually made sure no one was in the area before the Sloth landed next to the large pool of water at the base of the falls. Kim had also run a scan of the immediate area with the car's equipment and it showed that no one was within a fifty mile radius of the waterfall; the miners being the closest humans around. That eased her mind. Kim had decided that she and her boyfriend would now be able to spend a little naked alone time together for the first time.

From the scans, they'd also discovered that there weren't any fresh water crocodiles in the waters. That sent a huge sigh of relief from Ron's mouth. It was one thing for people to see them stripped down to their skivvies, but facing viscous, man-eating crocs...

After Kim told Ron about her desires and what they needed to do to get totally clean, the two teens shyly stripped out of their clothes. This was the first time either of them had seen the other sans apparel since they had been four years old and had taken a bath together. They rinsed out their mission wear in the pool under the falls and spread the clothes out to dry on some large rocks before slipping into the water.

Being so close to the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, the water was comfortably warm and pleasant to bathe in. After a few minutes of splashing and swimming, the two teens settled down and drew closer to each other.

"I suppose now would be a good time to talk about... sex," Ron tentatively said as he took a few hesitant steps toward his redheaded girlfriend.

"Yes," Kim answered, anxiety rising in her about the sitch they were in. "I suppose it would be a good idea to talk about... it." She stopped in her tracks, crouched down with the water level at her chin and queried, "Do you want to... do it?"

"I'm a guy KP," Ron nervously chuckled, his arms lazily swirling back and forth at his side to keep his body steady as they crouched in about four feet of water. "We're always in the mood. I'm only askin' because I think you should be in charge of that kinda stuff." This was true in all parts of their relationship. Kim had taken the lead in all of their sexual dalliances. They had only gone as far as groping each other with their clothes still on while making out after the Yono sitch, but Kim had initiated it and they'd only gone as far as she was comfortable.

Now they were entering virgin territory.

And enter it they did.

Eventually.

They took their time, talking about their love for one another and where they thought their relationship was headed. Ron told the love of his life that he only wanted Kim to be happy and to have her back until they both died of old age. Kim told her boyfriend of just over one year that she couldn't picture her future life without him in it, and that she truly loved him. She thought that they should get married in a few years, toward the end of college, and that she was ready to show how much she truly loved him. Ron told Kim that that was fine with him and that he would start taking a small portion of his paycheck and put it aside for a ring.

Ron was just about to breech the gates of heaven... to consummate their love when...

Beep Beep Be Beep

Kim growled in frustration, held the Kimmunicator watch, which was on her right wrist, over her right shoulder and activated it.

"Kim? Are you there?" Wade's voice came from the device. "All I can see is the Sloth in the background and a waterfall."

"That's because I'm bathing, Wade," Kim harshed to her tech-man with a little more venom in her voice then usual. "We've been on the road for over three days now and we haven't had time to clean up at all."

"So now's a bad time?" Wade begged, clueless to what had almost happened between the teenage couple just before the call.

"Ferociously." Kim sighed, resigning herself that the mood had now been broken before she asked, "What's the sitch?"

"Well," Wade started, glad that Kim was settling down and didn't appear to be mad at him anymore, "I just called to tell you that Dr. Director left a message on the website. She wants you and Ron to come in immediately for a talk." Curiosity got the better of him so he had to ask, "By the way. If you're bathing right now, where's Ron?"

"Right here in front of me," Kim answered as she brought the Kimmunicator back over her shoulder to point at her boyfriend, making sure that the pickup camera only saw the sky before she aimed it at her almost lover.

"Hey Wade," Ron waved as he stood up, demonstrating that he wasn't wearing a shirt. Ron didn't fully expose himself but Wade could see enough of the blond boy's body that he could tell that Ron wasn't wearing his boxers either.

Kim quickly brought the Kimmunicator back around, being careful not to expose herself, so that all Wade could see was the car and waterfall again.

"I-I-I-I'll, aaaaaah," Wade stammered. "I'll tell Dr. Director that you're on you way back from Australia and that you may be a while." Acting purely on instinct, he absently picked up his ever present soda cup and tried to take a sip. The straw missed his mouth by a mile as he stared wide-eyed at the monitor, trying to imagine exactly what his friends were doing in Australia.

Wade was a genius after all, and he knew all about human sexuality. But he only knew the textbook version of it. He had never watched two people actually doing it. Sure, Wade could easily override the parental lock on his computer system but he put it there himself, at his mother's request, and he would never violate her trust in him to keep it in place.

"You do that Wade," Kim said with a growing smile. She could just imagine the shocked look on the thirteen year old's face when he realized that she was also probably in the buff. "Tell her we'll be on our way in ten minutes."

"Better make that sixty minutes, KP," Ron chipped in with a lecherous smile. "Our clothes won't be dry for at least another hour."

"Riiiight," Kim slyly laughed as she turned off the Kimmunicator and moved back over to her boyfriend who was about to get another title or two added to the litany of things she called him in private...

Those new titles being Lover and Stud-Muffin.