Tales of The Awkward: Surveillance! The Final Insult
10:32:52 PM
Ah, the movies! What was it about the local movie theatre that made teenagers and young adults alike want to totally lose what little self-control that they had? Why lose all hormone control in a dark, dank, sticky and grungy multiplex? The answer is not certain, but it probably had something to do with the venue being dark, dank, sticky, and grungy, though. Either way, there were Ron and Tara, comfortably watching their movie, which was about twenty minutes in. They weren't doing anything that would be classified as lewd, thank goodness. That wouldn't have been good for anyone, especially for that other duo who was seated in the balcony.
"Are you sure they're in here?" Kim asked Monique, who shook her head.
"Yes, for the seventh time," Monique admonished. "And yes, I'm sure! This is a romantic comedy flick. All the other movies in the cinema are either kiddie movies or R-rated. If I'm not right about this…"
"You never know with Ron," the redhead replied, crossing her arms. "He could be… oh, wait… there he is."
"Is that a fact?" Monique asked snidely. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure," Kim answered.
"Good, then I believe you've got something to say to me."
The teen heroine looked a bit sheepish. "Yeah, Mo… good eye."
Good… eye?
The girl went right back to spying on the couple with her extra special dark-vision goggles.
'OK,' Monique thought, resentment creeping in. 'I'm just going to count to ten… and then, POW!'
"Hmm… who does Tara think she is, doing her hair like that?" Kim asked, not even stopping to look at her.
One,
Two,
Three…
Romantic Comedy? Dramatic Romance? Psssh, it was all the same to Ron Stoppable. Weren't like, the terms Romantic Comedy, Thriller Romance, Tragic Humor all a freaking oxymoron? He simply didn't get the intricacies that were romantic comedy flicks. They all followed the same storylines as far as he was concerned;
Boy finds himself attracted to girl. Boy is usually not good enough for the girl. Boy goes through strenuous measures to get himself in good with girl. Usually there's a more handsome, richer, or somehow better boy that's going against Boy. Boy goes through thorough period of total embarrassment, and finally, through self-improvement, lessons learned, and montages like you wouldn't believe, Boy, at long last, wins the heart of the girl, and everybody's happy.
And then, of course, Hillary Duff sings while they roll the credits.
He shuddered violently at the thought.
Ron wouldn't wish a romantic comedy scenario on his worst enemy. Well, maybe Monkey Fist. He made a face of disgust as he watched the next scene play out. All these kinds of flicks were pretentious, hokey, foolish, and... who in the blue heck would like this kind of drivel?
"Ooh... that is sooo romantic, isn't it, Ron?" His date, Tara cooed.
Now Ron would have known what was so romantic had be been paying attention. But, hold the phone... was he paying attention or wasn't he?
The Over-Under probability on him paying attention was 12:1. Feeling lucky?
But, really, though... what self-respecting teenage boy or young man would subject himself to this kind of...
"Hmmm," Tara swooned as she leaned onto his shoulder, staring intently at the projection above them.
…punishment?
OK... now that Ron was this close to his date, he knew that whatever perfume she had on smelled better than the combination of bubble gum and peppermint... and her hair was about six times as more intoxicating. The closeness made him actually want to see what was so romantic about this mindless nonsense.
After further review, if a girl was going to snuggle up to him that close, and smell that good, then Ron Stoppable could certainly accept and learn to love this romantic comedy junk, just like any man on the face of the planet... theoretically.
(Now if it was one of those Bollywood movies, he would be better off injecting lethal toxins into his body while jumping off a ledge while watching the New York Knicks try to make the playoffs.)
As he watched more and more of the movie, he began to take in more of the plot. The leading man's object of affection was a friend of his way back when they were young. They grew older with their feelings growing stronger for one another by the passing year. The childhood friends never bothered to tell one another due to fear and thinking that it was just a passing phase. The years went by and gradually, they drifted further apart throughout high school until they totally broke off their friendship when the girl found herself a boyfriend.
He shook his head... Kim and he would never end up like that in the case of drifting apart. As for developing feelings... that was totally out of the question. Kim was his best friend, his closest friend, and... Why not Kim and him?
Eh? Where did that come from?!
The first time he had noticed her that way in the winter. What had happened before Spring Break at Flagg's place? The Fourth of July, where Kim came back from her date with that Vince to see him, the way she got overemotional and never left his side when he was moderately injured a couple weeks back at the hands of Shego. That training incident days back...
Maybe that's where it came from.
"This movie is totally unrealistic... how could he go from Oregon to Michigan in just six hours without riding a plane?" Kim asked.
Monique rolled her eyes. If she was going to be saddled with her far-gone friend, couldn't she just enjoy the darn movie without all the disturbances?
"It shows the symbolism on what this Aaron guy would go through to get to Carmella. Now be quiet!" She commanded.
"I still think it's unrealistic," the redhead chided petulantly. "Why'd we even come to see this movie?"
Why? Why?! Why?!?
Four,
Five,
Six...
"Because you felt that it was necessary to spy on Ron & Tara the entire night and drag me along, that's why!" Monique whispered accusingly.
"Oh, yeah... that's right." Kim said. "And here I was wasting time watching this stupid movie." Once again, she grabbed the binoculars and searched the dark theatre to spot where the couple was sitting... and there, she spotted them almost down below them. What she saw disturbed her... not that it wasn't a natural occurrence this night.
"She's going to... she's going to..."
"She's going to what?" Monique asked.
Kim couldn't finish. "She's going to..."
He was having a good time. She was having a good time. He was into her. She was into him. He was close to her. She was close to him.
'Oh, what the heck… you only live once.'
She leaned toward the unsuspecting boy. To get his attention, she tapped his knee. With lips puckered... she was mere inches away from him.
(Meanwhile, ten seconds earlier...)
You know, this romantic comedy nonsense was exactly nonsense after all. It actually turned out to be quite enjoyable in Ron's book. He wanted to see if Tara was enjoying it as much as he was. He turned in her direction to find that she was like... eight-and-half inches away from him, and getting closer. What was the meaning of all this. He was quickly getting nervous... what was Tara doing?
She had wanted to do this for so long. Ron had turned to face her, a bewildered expression on his face. She was millimeters away, her lips puckered, when...
"I-I'm going to get some more popcorn," he stammered. Quickly, he made his way to the isle and just about ran to the exit.
The blonde cheerleader certainly wasn't happy with the boy running off like that, especially when she was just about to plant one on those quivering lips of his. Tara scratched her head in confusion. Did she scare Ron? Or was he really just getting some popcorn?
One person, at the very least, was happy with Tara's... failed conquest.
Kim sighed in relief. "That was close."
"So you're happy that Tara didn't kiss Ron, huh?" Monique asked.
Happy? No. Ecstatic? Perhaps.
"What? No!" Kim replied defensively. "I'm just... glad that this Aaron guy made it to Carmella on time."
Didn't she just finish saying how pretentious and corny this movie was? From Monique's vantage point, Kim had to be due for an intense round of therapy.
Was she searching his face for fear? Was she checking him for monster zits? What was Tara doing? And why was she so close to...
...then it hit him.
(Why the heck wouldn't it have hit him when it happened? That's the question, ladies and gentlemen.)
Tara had tried to kiss him, and he went for... popcorn.
FREAKING POPCORN KERNELS?!
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
He really wanted to rewind back in time and right his obvious wrong, but there was no way that was going to happen. Thus, the mascot did the only logical thing he could do; Go to the bathroom and bang his head against the nearest urinal until he passed out.
Then again, maybe it was for the best. He did promise to spill to Kim what the results were of this get-together. Ron didn't figure what his best friend's reaction would be if he told her that he was making out in a dark, dank, sticky, and grungy multiplex.
But if the sitch presented itself again, he would take it. He would take it like Ryan Hollweg took that high-stick about the neck.
It was Hockey, what do you expect?
Now that a crisis was averted for the time being, did Kim have anything else to gripe about on this night of disturbances?
Well, she was grumbling when she saw Ron take his place next to Tara. Thus, the law of averages would tell an observer that there's still something wrong. Even though there was no kissing, or holding hands or even heavy petting between the two.
As if her night was ruined by Kim any further, Monique got wind of the heroine's discomfort with whatever the heck she was disconcerted with.
"What now?" She asked.
"It just came to me... Friday nights have our night for years, and not once, not once, has Ron ever taken me to see a romantic comedy..."
"Kim," Monique began, as patiently as she could. "Did you just NOT say that you didn't like these kinds of movies, or were my ears deceiving me again?"
"You don't understand, Mo,"
"Oh, I understand," Monique challenged. "You thought Ron was going to be your faithful steed until the bitter end. Now you think that you like him, you can't stand the fact that you may have missed your opportunity."
Kim tried to intercede, but Monique continued.
"Worst of all, you drag me into this when I was just trying to give you sound advice."
"If your advice was so sound, then how come we're sitting here, huh?"
"I don't know!" Monique exclaimed, raising her voice. "You tell me!"
The audience watching the feature below commanded them to quiet down. Kim & Monique lowered their voices accordingly.
Kim knew that Monique had her dead to rights. That foolish pride in her told her that she would be tarred and feathered before she admitted that.
"You wouldn't understand telling your best friend that..."
"I didn't tell you to go to his doorstep and spill your guts, Kim. I told you to start small."
"Well, doing things small is not my style,"
"Then I guess jealousy and spying on people is then, huh?"
"Who says I'm jealous? I'm not jealous!"
Seven,
Eight,
Nine,
Ten,
Ignition.
Monique had enough. She didn't care who in the theatre was going to tell her to shut up. The cashier had a finely-tuned detector of when people were giving her the okey-doke. She had let Kim slide with it for three-and-a-half consecutive hours, and now she had about all she could take. And, by golly, she couldn't take no more!
"Yes, you are! You're jealous of the fact that maybe someone else likes Ron other than you. You're envious of Tara because she has his undivided attention for one single freaking night! And, just to reiterate, YOU... ARE... JEALOUS! Deal with it or get over it!"
The crowd cheered and applauded down below. Some kind of coincidence, wasn't it?
Down below, on the mezzanine level...
"Who is that up there? They sound familiar," Ron said, looking above to no avail.
"Oh, it's probably nothing," Tara replied, her eyes glued to the projector ahead of them.
"Yeah, you're probably right."
Meanwhile, up above the Middleton Blondes:
"Wait, where do you think you're going?" Kim asked testily
"I'm out of here. For one thing, there's no reasoning with you, and number two, I am not going to be your accomplice. So, I'm gone," Monique answered calmly.
Just like that, Monique packed up and left the auditorium. If Kim & Ron weren't meant to be, then maybe it was for the best. She had seen a completely different side of Kim this night, and to put it mildly, she didn't like it. Whatever they were going to do in the future was up to them with no outside interference... and especially not from her.
"Hey, you can't leave. Get back here!" Kim yelled after her. Seeing that Mo wasn't about to change her mind, Kim maintained herself.
"Fine! I don't need you anyway!" She said, turning around toward the movie. Moments later, a figure tapped at her shoulder.
"Hm, I knew you'd come to your senses..."
She turned around to see not Monique, but a man in a red jacket and grey slacks. An Usher!
"There have been complaints about noise coming up here in the balcony," the usher said evenly. "I'm going to ask you to leave."
"What? No way am I going!" Kim exclaimed. "I paid for."
"But you cannot disturb the rest of the audience when..."
"I can do what I want, I'm..."
"Uh, I'm going to need some assistance," the usher said, speaking into a walkie talkie on his inside breast pocket. In about thirty seconds or so, three or four ushers, in those sharp red jackets and grey slacks came strolling down the isle.
"She's being belligerent. Get her out of here," the first usher commanded. And with that, Kim Possible was forcibly removed from the Middleton Multiplex. However, if she was going to go down, some folks were going down with her.
"Grrr..." She grunted, trying to break free of the ushers grasp. "You can't do this! Do you know who I am!?"
When people asked that, it usually meant that the people didn't. Just saying...
"Aghh! This movie stunk anyway! Everybody knows Aaron and Carmella get together at the end!"
And with the forceful removal of Kim Possible, about eighty moviegoers removed themselves willingly, the movie clearly spoiled for them.
Ah, don't you just love romantic comedy? No matter how predictable it was?
Kim Possible wasn't going to let a thing like being banned for ninety days from Middleton Multiplex from keeping an eye from Ron & Tara. And, speaking of which, the bimbo and Mr. Clueless were there a short distance away across the street.
"Well, I guess this is it," Tara said, her voice suggesting disappointment.
"Oh... I'll walk you home. Is that OK?" Ron offered.
"I-I'd like that." Tara replied coyly.
With that, they were off, and so was Kim.
Using a shortcut which meant going through Middleton Park, Tara & Ron quietly walked through. It was late in the evening, and the park was closed for the most part… how was Kim going to follow behind the duo without being seen?
"Good thing I keep this on me," Kim said to herself, reaching for her patented grappling hook gun. She aimed for a branch on a tree up above. Feeling that the hook's grip on the branch was stable enough, she made her way up to the tree branch. She stealthily kept herself from being seen while going from branch to branch in the park.
At last, a girl who went through trees like Tarzan, and looked like Jane.
Below on the surface, Tara was thinking... which happened only once in a good while. The blonde girl just couldn't let this date end without the happy ending. Well, it would be a happy ending for her if she got a chance to happily snog her date.
"Hey, Ron?"
"Yeah?"
"It's really sweet of you to walk me home like this. But... my dad is probably going to be waiting outside for me... possibly with a shotgun."
Both blondes laughed uneasily.
Ron stopped abruptly. "Wait a sec, is that a threat?"
Tara chuckled. She then looked deeply in his eyes and shook her head. "Seriously speaking, Ron. I wanted to you to know that I had a great time tonight."
"I-I had a great time, too," an increasingly nervous Ron added.
Perched on another branch some twenty feet away, Kim was beginning to panic. She knew why Tara had Ron here. But as long as she was here, keeping 'surveillance', she wasn't going to let that blonde-haired boob take what she didn't get a chance to have. The redhead grabbed a pine cone from a tree, aiming it at her cheerleader counterpart.
Ron had known what to do. Tara was definitely waiting for him to make his move. He wanted to kiss her, but there was a resistance keeping him from doing it.
The Resistance!
"Come on, kid. Kiss her, Ron! She's totally into you," his impulsive half, a tall, hulking figure commanded.
"Don't kiss her, Ron! What about Kim?" His patient side, a small, pale-skinned young man asked.
"What about Kim? She's your friend, and she's not here. Come on, man… Tara is totally primed."
Ron took a deep breath before he drew closer to the blonde girl
"Ron, what about the sparks between you and her? You can't ignore that."
"Sparks is just sparks, Ron. You can ignore it! Do it!"
"Don't… you'll regret it."
"You won't!"
"You'll end up in a romantic comedy situation if you don't!"
"Whoa, time-out! I will?" Ron asked.
His second side of him nodded solemnly.
Whoa… He couldn't do that! But the young man was too late. His mouth and her mouth were like two decimeters away from each other. He knew he was going to regret this, but while he was regretting it, he may as well enjoy it for what it was worth. However, something stopped him
"Ow!" Ron recoiled in pain. He was hit with something on the right side of his face. The blond searched for the object he was hit with.
A pine cone? It was more than enough to break his concentration on Tara. Maybe it was a sign.
(Or maybe it wasn't.)
"Yes!" Kim rasped, pumping a fist into the clear late evening air. Ron wasn't her intended target, but it did stop him. That was a close one.
But, you know what? Another close one was the fact that the branch underneath her was slowly giving way. And, then...
Snap!
The redhead's green eyes, of jealousy and of actual color, went wide. She could do anything, everyone were all sure. But scrambling out of a tree branch that gave way... Nah.
The girl went plummeting toward the grassy surface, with the thorny bushes above the grass there to break her fall. She let out a yelp before crashing and burning. How was that for karma?
"What was that?" Tara asked, her arm quickly clinging to Ron's. The boy must have been feeling a little too courageous, because usually at this time of night and if there was a rustling in the bushes in a park, he would've taken off like Francisco Liriano.
Well, before he blew out his arm, of course.
"Uh... I'll go find out." Ron answered. He slowly crept to the spot, Tara following closely behind him. It could've been anyone in those bushes. Perhaps a dangerous mugger, or a poor defenseless soul.
Or Kim Possible.
The freckle-faced boy did a double take that would make Johnny Carson envious.
The redhead smiled sheepishly. "Hey, Ron."
"KP? W-wha... what are you doing here?"
"Uh... I was just in the neighborhood, keeping the peace... I mean, it's not like I was spying on you two."
Critical Error 110EX-A: Severe slip of the tongue.
It happens to both sexes... same rules apply.
Ron chuckled nervously. Very nervously. He then looked at how much his best friend was fidgeting to the maximum.
Uh-Oh. Say it ain't so, K.P.!
"No, wait a minute..." Tara said, stepping in front of Ron. "The voices at the movies, the feeling that I was being watched earlier, and..." she narrowed her eyes at the redhead. "Where were you when we were eating, huh, Kim?"
Hanging her head, Kim replied. "The other side of the restaurant."
"I can't believe you, Kim. Why would you spy on us?" Tara asked angrily.
"You don't understand... t-t-this was Monique's idea."
Critical Error 449... Again.
All throughout this exchange Ron had fell silent. This was not good. He honestly didn't know what to think about this revelation.
"Ron, tell her!" Kim commanded. "I wouldn't do anything like that."
He knew when Kim was lying because she had always told the truth to him, no matter how hard the truth was. He couldn't defend her on this one.
"I-I... I have to go," he said, pulling Tara along with him.
"No, wait... Ron, come back! I can explain!" She pleaded. The heroine found it extremely painful to stand on her own two feet and even more to chase after the couple. Momentarily, Ron turned around to face her.
"I spied on you because... because..."
She was quickly freezing up, much like Minnesota in the winter.
"B-because..." She had to tell him now, or risk losing him. What was keeping her from telling him the truth?
"Because... I can't..."
Ron really wanted to wait for the answer, but the blonde girl pulled him away.
"Come on, Ron," Tara said. Reluctantly, he went along with her. Before she left though, the blonde cheerleader turned around and shook her head at the pathetic-looking auburn-haired girl.
The world that Kim had known had been absolutely shaken. For one thing, she had been found out, and worst of all, she couldn't explain to Ron what she was feeling. Why did she freeze the way she did? Ron meant a lot to her, and she just couldn't say the few words that could've saved the entire night. And the only answer she had for that?
She just... couldn't.
End of Chapter 11
Ah! The Drama! The beautiful, carnivorous drama!
Questions? Comments? Feel like giving a radiator for the frozen Kim? Can the Knicks actually make the playoffs without embarrassing themselves in the process? Shocked that S-Chrome actually scraped together two updates within the span of a week?
Review!
