Monique decided to head over to Stoppable Enterprises office complex the next morning. Being a Sunday, the office was usually dead, and no one would dream of waking up early to come to work when Monday was just around the corner. She clutched a small flash drive in her hand, checking herself in the vanity mirror of her car. She sighed in exasperation as she realized that makeup could only do so much for her appearance, considering she hadn't slept more than a half hour after leaving Ron's mansion. Getting out of her car, she strode purposefully towards the entrance of Stoppable Enterprises corporate headquarters, nervously glancing over her shoulder just to check if anyone other than the security guards saw her.

She found her way to Ron's office at the top floor of the office complex, and with her own key, let herself in. She walked nervously over to his desk and gingerly set her purse and newspaper down next to the keyboard. With a gulp, she held the flash drive out in front of her eyes before plugging it into Ron's computer terminal.

Instantly, a small program opened the command line, executing various commands below the GUI level and inputting Ron's personal passwords. This allowed access to every single computer in Stoppable Enterprises, from email servers to the research and development supercomputers. Monique gaped at the access she had been given; literally every single file in every single computer in the complex, as well as over ninety-nine percent of the worldwide corporate intranet.

She quickly accessed the sales accounts and started transferring over the huge database of electronic transactions, ACH transfers and bill payments, and most importantly, scanned shipping invoices. While she was sifting through the immense amounts of data, she chanced upon an embedded ghost drive in the R&D department, which was tagged as only accessible from Dr. Lipsky's private terminal. Raising a curious eyebrow, and wondering how Ron's password had allowed access to it, she accessed those files. Blueprints flashed across the screen and her eyes grew wide in horror. With trembling hands, she drew her cell phone out from her purse and hit the speed dial.

"Excuse me, Monique?"

"Oh god!" Monique almost dropped her phone when she heard the voice. She looked up in fear at the speaker, and saw a tall blue-skinned man with a scar across his left eye standing in the doorway. "Oh, Mr. Lipsky..." she gulped, discreetly slipping her phone back in her purse. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I just wasn't expecting anyone to be in the office on Sunday," Drakken explained casually as he walked into the office. "What are you doing in Mr. Stoppable's office this early on a Sunday?"

"I... Ah..." a slight shiver ran down Monique's spine as she glanced at the monitor of Ron's computer out of the corner of her eye. The blueprints were just starting to download to the flash drive,so she had to stall Drakken until the download was complete. "Mr. Stoppable sent me to his office to pick up some things."

"Oh really?" Drakken asked curiously. "I was under the impression that Mr. Stoppable was still on vacation. What would he want with anything in his office?"

"Oh you know Ron," Monique gave him a gracious, long suffering smile. "He's always working, even when he's on vacation. I tell the guy that he should be relaxing on some beach on Cabo, but does he listen to me? No..." She snorted with honest humor, herself having recently tried to get Ron to do just that, and failing miserably, "He pays me to manage his personal life for him, and when I do try to do that, he tells me to butt out..."

"Ah..." Drakken interrupted her as he ambled amiably up to Monique, as his eyes curiously strayed across Ron's desk as though surveying Monique's actions. "That sounds very much like Mr. Stoppable. I hope he's recovering well from his ordeal in Afghanistan."

"Ron's in fine spirits," Monique nervously glanced down at the keyboard, and shifted a newspaper surreptitiously as to cover the incriminating flash drive plugged into the keyboard. "Yeah... He's... Doing fine, working on his pet projects, hopefully inventing something useful..." Monique flashed her best smile hoping to distract Drakken from her actions.

"Ah, I see," Drakken nodded absent-mindedly. "Anyway, what is it exactly that Ron wants? I might be able to..."

As Drakken started to walk around the desk to take a look at the incriminating screen, Monique panicked, but a small part of her crowed triumphantly as the file transfer flashed that it had finished. She quickly dropped a pen, or more accurately threw a pen, at Drakken's feet. "Whoops!" Monique exclaimed in mock surprise. "How clumsy of me!"

"Hmph," Drakken snorted as he bent over to pick up the piece of stationery. During that time, Monique quickly pulled out the flash drive, deposited it in her purse, and hit the screen saver key. "Here," Drakken said as he stood back up and offered the pen out to Monique.

"Thanks, Mr. Lipsky," Monique trembled slightly as she took the pen from him.

"It's no problem... Now about what Ron..."

"It's alright!" Monique exclaimed, as she stepped away from the desk, clutching her purse and newspaper tightly to her chest. "It was just his old day planner, which I guess he didn't' leave here, so... Anyway, I have to get Ron his daily Naco... It was nice seeing you, as always, Mr. Lipsky. See you around!"

"Oh?" Drakken looked in confusion at the woman who was walking briskly towards the elevator. "Wait, Monique!"

Monique could feel his piercing stare at the nape of her neck. Trembling as she turned around to face the blue-skinned man, she asked, "Yes?"

"Is that today's paper?" Drakken asked, indicating the periodical almost crushed in Monique's hands.

"Y... Yeah..." Monique stammered, half wondering if she should make a run for it.

"Can I have it?"

Monique blinked twice before she allowed herself a small sigh of relief. "Sure, Mr. Lipsky," she smiled as she walked up to him and left the paper on the desk. Before he could speak another word, she was already halfway out of there, and desperately mashing at the button for the elevator.

Drakken raised an eyebrow at the normally calm and collected woman. He stepped over to the computer terminal and hit a key which instantly called up the password input box. With a few guesses, he keyed in I-L-O-V-E-N-A-C-O-S. Instantly the screensaver vanished and his eyes bulged as he realized what was on the desktop. Cursing under his breath, he looked up to see if Monique was still there, but there wasn't even a glimmer of a shadow.

Marching quickly out of the office towards his lab, he reached into his coat pocket and picked up his cell phone and dialed.

Ron was knee-deep that morning in his workshop.

It was just his way of handling things.

Kim had walked out, never looked back and refused to return all his calls. Somehow, deep down inside, he knew he blew it with Kim a long time ago, and he admitted harshly, it was long before Kim had to lay down her 'tough love', as Monique had called it.

But he didn't want to think about it because the more he thought about it the more hopeless he admitted it to be. Maybe he could blame this all on Monique. Didn't she tell him to be honest?

Ron shrugged the emotions from his mind, and instead tinkered with the finer adjustments of his suit's gyroscopic sensors. It was just that at higher speeds above Mach 3, sometimes there would be a distracting tremor; while it was more of an annoyance than a critical failure, it could be bad news in an emergency, so he felt it best to fix it as a bit of preventative maintenance. But the suit was in almost pristine condition again, after all his major scuffle with Kim's F-37s.

Kim.

He sighed in annoyance as he struggled to push yesterday out of his mind. If only… He shook his head as he tried to fill his mind with calculations. Now the repulsors should provide the most of the power, with the mini-repulsors maintaining stability through feedback from the main gyroscopic unit, and it should compensate immediately for the minor shocks and air turbulence…

He quickly looked up from his work when the phone rang. Taking a leap over his chair, he grabbed the phone receiver sitting by his computer in a haphazard way, almost falling over and hitting his head against the edge of the table. "Hello, Kim?" he spoke into the phone a little too hastily.

"Ron, Monique here," a familiar but unwelcomed feminine voice sounded. "Were you expecting a call from Kim?"

"Oh, not at all," Ron tried to hide the disappointment in his voice. "So, 'Nique, what's up?"

"You know about the thing that you asked me to do?" Monique's voice trembled a little. "The thing with the shipping invoices?"

"Yeah?" Ron bit back a little more harshly than he intended.

"I got that and a lot more..." Monique gulped as she lowered her voice. "I was looking through Drew's files and I found a new project called 'Iron Monger', a video of the terrorists that captured you and some other stuff... He created it only a week ago. It's called the Iron Monger Project..."

Um... I haven't heard anything about that," Ron's eyes narrowed. "What is it?"

"You know your suit?" Monique asked quietly. "Yeah, it seems that Drew has the blueprints of your super-power suit… I don't quite understand what I'm looking at here, it looks like scans of some pencil drawn blueprints on old looking paper, and it had a bunch of writing on it… It's your handwriting, definitely…"

"I never gave Drew anything of the sort!" Ron raised his voice in an outrage. "Where did he get those blueprints?"

"I don't know..." Monique spoke in a low voice. "Maybe he got them off your computer at home or something... I don't know, Ron. The drawings look like your suit, but it's a completely horrible fashion disaster instead. The arms are too big, and the facemask is all wrong, and it looks like it can't fly at all, and the flamethrowers are so last season…"

"No," Ron insisted firmly. "There's no way he could have gotten anything off my computers here. It's completely isolated from the computers at the office. It's not even plugged into the Internet. There's no way he would be able to get a hold of my blueprints... Wait, did you say flamethrowers?"

"Yeah," Monique replied nervously. "What do you think it means?"

Ron cursed furiously under his breath. "My latest model doesn't have flamethrowers, Monique," he growled angrily. "I've chucked out heavy weaponry like that ever since I got back to the States. The only time I ever had flamethrowers was with that suit I made in Afghanistan... I left my blueprints for my original suit when I escaped… Oh shit, how the hell did Drew get his hands on those?"

"Does this mean that Global Justice or Drew somehow managed to defeat the terrorists and recover all your weapons including your blueprints?" Monique asked hopefully.

"No..." Ron gritted his teeth. "Kim would have told me if Global Justice launched an operation like that. Drew couldn't have hired a private army to take them out, he didn't even know the blueprints were there... Unless..." Ron slammed his fist on the table.

"What?" Monique asked worriedly.

"Unless the terrorists gave it to him!" Ron growled.

"That's not possible!" Monique exclaimed. "Why would the terrorist give something like that to Drew?"

"It all makes sense now," Ron rubbed his temples as he clenched his teeth. "He's the one selling my weapons to the terrorists! That's how they got all my weapons! That bastard's been double-dealing! He's got enough corporate access to hide all the paperwork!"

"Are you sure?" Monique asked cautiously. "That's a really big accusation..."

"It has to be!" Ron half-shouted. "It's the only explanation that makes sense! How else would he have gotten hold of my blueprints without my knowledge? And this Iron Monger project... It's probably some sort of new project to build suits like mine to sell to the military! I won't allow this! This is not a weapon to be sold to the public! It's too dangerous!"

"Calm down, Ron," Monique hissed. "What do we do about it?"

"Call Wade," Ron replied. "You're going to call Wade and inform him about Drew's... Drakken's actions... And then get a hold of Kim. You will need her help to arrest Drakken in his lab."

"Right," Monique agreed. "What about you?"

"I'm going to get my suit ready for action," Ron replied grimly. "Drakken might already have a working prototype and it's going to take a lot more than a squad of Global Justice agents to bring him down. I just never thought he'd return to his old ways..."

"Me too, Ron," Monique quietly replied. "Alright, I'll call you back later, okay?"

"Alright," Ron replied, before putting down his phone. Standing there for a moment, he realized that everything had suddenly made sense. Drakken had sold his weapons to the terrorists, and now he was somehow in league with them, and they probably hoped that giving him the blueprints would make him so grateful that he'd make suits for them. That would explain why Drakken was so opposed to him shutting down the weapons division of Stoppable Enterprises.

Shaking his head, he decided to grab a quick bite in the kitchen before resuming work on his suit. It needed to be in the best possible condition if he was going to go up against a potentially improved version of his older prototype.

Wade had gotten a disturbing call from Monique, detailing the whole Drakken sitch and Ron's suspicions. His immediate course of action would be to go and confront Ron. He'd told Monique that Ron's accusations were ludicrous, almost dismissing them and the chocolate skinned woman immediately. However, Monique had been adamant about it and she was going to bring in Global Justice agents. Wade almost seized in panic, pointing out the possible scandal if the news broke out that an employee at Stoppable Enterprises was dealing with the terrorists.

Knowing that Monique only listened directly to her boss, Wade knew exactly where this massive PR problem was coming from.

"Ron," Wade yelled out angrily the moment he stepped into Ron's house. "Where the Hell are you?"

"Over here," Ron called back, as he poked his head out of the kitchen to glance over at Wade. "Yeah?"

"You got some nerve," Wade instantly shot out angrily. "Calling GJ to arrest Drakken like that? You don't have any proof!"

"I got all the proof I need," Ron argued hotly. "How else would Drakken get those blueprints?"

"I don't know! But the evidence that he's dealing with the terrorists is purely circumstantial!" Wade replied angrily. "That is some bold claim that you are making..." Ron opened his mouth to interrupt, but Wade continued hotly, "You have been doing things like this on your own for far too long! Do you know what you are costing this company, Ron? You're supposed to be on vacation, and this is the kind of bullshit you are pulling? It's no wonder that the board is filing an injunction against you..."

"Injunction?" Ron's eyes opened wide. "What injunction?"

"They are claiming that you are unfit to make decisions," Wade replied sternly. "And I agree with them!"

"What? Just because I decided to make the moral decision? It's my company, I'm the majority shareholder, I do what I want with it!" Ron shouted out.

"Ron! They have the right to do so! They have minority shareholder rights!" Wade argued. "Besides, your actions ever since you've been back have only been costing the company money!"

"We've been through this before, Wade," Ron sighed loudly. "I don't want to make weapons anymore!"

"Ron! Listen to me!" Wade argued back. "If we don't do it, someone else will! So while we're in that position, we can do a lot of good in the world! Look at our initiatives to combat world poverty, which have reduced violence significantly! Or our advanced technologies to provide clean water to ten percent of the world's population! Or our medical diagnostic machines that can be carried out on the field to diagnose a variety of diseases from cholera to diphtheria! We are doing good with this, you can't let it go to waste!"

"But at what cost, Wade?" Ron shouted. "Human lives! We aren't solving conflicts by making weapons, we're only worsening them. We aren't ending any problems; instead we are arming soldiers so that they become more efficient killers. That's where the money comes from: it's blood money, Wade! Don't you think that we have enough blood on our hands already?"

"We're not the one firing the weapons, Ron!" Wade reminded him tersely. "Guns aren't what kill people! People kill people! There will always be weapons, Ron! Don't be naïve!"

"Then we've got to stop making weapons for people to fire! This is turning into another arms race. Do you want another Cold War to blow up in our faces?" Ron replied angrily.

"If that's the case, shouldn't we be in this business?" Wade raised his voice. "Look, Ron, time out for a moment here. Drew's not a problem. We should question where he got those blueprints at our own discretion, not sic Global Justice on him."

"He's dangerous!" Ron pointed out hotly. "He's got my blueprints, and for all we know he is making tons of those things right now and selling them to the highest bidder! That man is out of control."

"No, Ron," Wade shook his head sadly. "The one who is out of control here is you. I can't reason with you anymore."

"What? No, Wade, look, this is an unapproved project and we should..." Ron's voice failed as he felt a strange tingling across his body. His joints started to lock up and he began to fall backwards to the floor. His back hit the edge of the couch and his body instantly folded as he slumped there at the foot of the couch. Wincing in pain was the most he could do. His body was no longer responding to his brain. He looked furtively at Wade, as though pleading for help with his eyes.

"Ron, Ron..." Wade shook his head with a sad smile as he reached up to his ears and pulled out two very tiny earplugs. "It's remarkable what you have invented so far in your life. The auditory incapacitator was a brilliant invention, albeit lacking in its non-directional area of effect." He smiled wryly as he tapped his ears. "To think, you were the first person in literally decades of research to make a high frequency device that disrupts the neural pathways in the conscious, gross motor control centers of the brain..."

Ron's eyes widened as he looked up helplessly at Wade. His eyes seemed to scream "Why?" as he tried to futilely force his limbs to obey him.

"Don't worry, Ron," Wade chuckled. "You'll regain full body function in an hour. But I'm sorry to say that you won't even last that long." He bent over and tore Ron's shirt apart, leaving the arc reactor embedded in Ron's chest exposed for the world to see.

"Ahh..." Wade smiled as he gazed at the glowing blue device. "Such beauty... Ron, do you know what was lacking in your blueprints? The designs for this! Drew needed a working model to finish his version of the arc reactor... Raza, you remember him, don't you? Your captor couldn't find anything about the arc reactor, and so he has outlived his usefulness. Sure, we have a large arc reactor right in our factory complex, but this... Miniaturization on this scale is simply beyond Drakken. He was unable to replicate one of these, which is why Project Iron Monger has run into some difficulties and is facing some really nasty overruns."

Wade reached down and gingerly unscrewed the device from Ron's chest. As his deft fingers worked, Wade continued amiably, "It's a shame Raza didn't kill you in Afghanistan. I had hoped he would... Especially after the details of your convoy were leaked to him... He was supposed to make sure you wouldn't come home..."

Ron's eyes bulged out of his head as he tried to gasp words out using his lungs. He blinked twice at his former best friend and long-time partner in Stoppable Enterprises, uncomprehending what was happening. The blatant betrayal by Wade and Drakken, two of his best partners and friends, taking place before his very eyes was almost as painful as Kim walking out the prior night.

"However, you proved to be much more tenacious than anyone expected!" Wade grinned as he pulled the device out of Ron's chest, disconnecting the wires. The pain receptors in Ron's chest were engulfed in fire as his mind screamed out in pain. Slowly, but surely, the thousands of slivers of memory metal in his chest began worming their way deeper into him, searching out the source of the constant, rhythmic thumping that was the heart. The systemic overload the slivers caused quickly spread out over his chest, then radiated out into more of his body, almost making him pass out.

"Imagine my surprise" Wade continued, his tone shocked and almost thankful, "When, during your miraculous escape, you had a chance to breathe new life into Stoppable Enterprises weapons division! All with this latest invention of yours... You are truly the goose that lays the golden eggs, and from your ashes, you deliver to us one final golden egg: the Iron Monger Project! Even though you've been getting out of hand for a while, now..."

Ron blinked in confusion as he shut his eyes to focus on dulling the pain in his body. His muscles felt like they were being ripped and torn from his bones.

"Ron, Ron, Ron," Wade laughed, as he watched the man before him suffer, trapped in his own body. "Thank you for all you have done, I am sure that Stoppable Enterprises will rise higher and further, inspired by the death of its founder. It has been an honor working with you, and I hope you enjoy the afterlife. Now, there's a certain nosey personal assistant and a team of Global Justice agents that'll need taken care off. It's a pity; she grew up to be quite the babe after all these years."

With that, Wade Load hefted the miniaturized arc reactor in his hand, and without a care in the world, and a little bounce in his step, walked away from the cringing, incapacitated man in pain without looking back once. "I hope you don't mind me delivering your final eulogy, Ron. Don't worry, I'll say nice things and I'll make sure Kim gets the best seat at the funeral… I do have quite a lot to thank her for," Wade remarked with a cryptic smile. "After all, none of this would have happened if she hadn't broken up with you!"

Ron could only glare furiously at the back of the man as he made his way out of the house, his raucous laughter slowly dying in the distance. He could not scream for help, he could not move to reach his phone; he was trapped in his own body. The flaring pain in his body was intensifying as he felt his chest being ripped to shreds. His breath became shallower and perspiration dripped from his forehead.

From his own research, he knew that most, if not all of the shards were too small to get sucked into any artery smaller than the femoral artery, so he wasn't worried about a sliver getting into his bloodstream until they reached his heart proper. After that, of course, they'd tear apart any capillary they got into, causing hemorrhaging throughout the body, leading to a quick, and by his personal experience, painful death. That fact aside, about fifteen percent of the slivers would stop when they reached the pericardium or pleura, the linings of the heart and lungs respectively. That would cause inflammation of those sacks, which would lead to certain death for someone too far from a medical center equipped to deal with such disorders, or someone like him, who didn't expect anyone to be by his home in the next several hours.

He was a dead man, one way or the other. Out of options, Ron could do the only thing he had not done since he was a child: he prayed.

Author's Notes

Okay, so I missed my self-imposed deadline for Sunday. That makes me a bad writer. Oh wait, that actually makes me a good writer. After all, don't all good writers procrastinate and always miss their deadlines?

Okay, hang on a minute while I put the ego-monster back where it belongs.

This chapter reads way differently from the previous one. While emotions are running high in the previous one, this one is kinda straightforward and mostly explanations. I guess that's because I left out too many things in previous chapters. But it sort of has that feeling of the proverbial stuff hitting the ceilings?

Maybe this is what chapters are like if I shift gears too fast.

But at least things are going down! Monique's walking in to a trap, Wade and Drakken have betrayed him, and after the previous chapter with Kim, who's left to rescue Ron? Alright, that's a rhetorical question, but anyway, I did hope to illicit some feelings of dread here. Just a couple more bunnies to pull out of my hat, and the story's almost over.