Precisely five seconds after the phrases were out Ron realized just how stupid he had been. He could already feel Monique beating him about it, tone shrill in the logical explanation of why you did not break such things to people in such a manner. He felt his face grow warm and something sprang up to block his throat. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

And yet how exactly was he supposed to release the news? Because it was certainly news to Kim even if everyone else in Middleton knew about it… He gritted his teeth and fought the urge to shut his eyes.

Kim stopped short. Her green eyes locked with his. They were the same eyes he remembered. She had aged well. If someone could age well in six short years. It was difficult to read her expression. "What?"

Good. She hadn't heard. No, of course she heard, she just did not understand. He stopped as well. The locked eyes were good. You could mean something when you looked at someone. He wouldn't be a coward, that would only hurt her all the more. "A little over four months ago I proposed to Monique. I proposed marriage. We're getting married." There. It couldn't get any more simple than that. He braced himself.

Kim's expression did not change. He wished it would. He hated crying girls, but he hated the silence even more. "I don't understand." Her voice was flat. Not hateful, not pained, just questioning.

He had been in love with Kim back then. Darn it, he hadn't expected it to hurt this much. And why the hell was he feeling so apologetic about this? "KP, Monique and I are getting married in three months."

She continued to stare at him, breeze catching in her hair.

He sighed and shook his head. "Kim, can you please say something?"

She shoved away the loose strand of red the wind had shoved over her eyes. Her lips were pursed. "Why?"

Why? What kind of question was that? "Because I love her, that's why." Ugh. Sounded a little more testy than he had intended.

Kim broke the eye contact with the faintest of whimpers. "Oh."

This was so not going the way he had imagined. Imagined? What had he planned for this? Picking up his best friend who had spent the last six years dead, taking her on a walk, telling her he was getting married… there really wasn't a guidebook for the situation. But he cared about Kim. He took a deep breath. Couldn't freak, couldn't freak. There was nothing about which to freak. "Is that all your going to say?"

She shook her head and resumed the walk, pace faster. "I… Ron, I wasn't dead."

He followed after her. "I thought you were. In my defense there wasn't a whole lot saying you were alive."

"Monique." She said the name with fascination. "I like Monique." Another shake of the head. The wind was picking up and more clouds were rolling in. How dramatically appropriate. "How long were you dating?"

Monique would probably know the exact answer. "About two years."

"I don't remember what I was doing two years ago."

This was so awkward. "Did you have amnesia or something weird like that?"

"No," she replied softly. "I just don't really remember." She bent down to pick up a leaf. "Didn't you miss me?"

How dare she ask that question. "Kim, of course I missed you. I missed you like crazy! Do you have any idea what I went through when you… when the clone… died? In my arms?"

She stared again. Her eyes were red and moist. Crap. "I died in your arms?"

He nodded. The worst moment of his life. "I don't like to think about it. But I was trying to save you. Or what I thought was you."

"And you're marrying Monique?"

It was practically an interruption. "Yes. I already told you that."

She crumpled the leaf and tossed it to the ground. "I can't believe this. Why are you marrying her?"

"I believe I answered that question as well."

Her hand flew to her eyes. She was clearly crying now. "I don't understand."

But he had already explained it! "Kim, it's been six years."

"And that's supposed to make a difference?" She all but shouted that. "Ron, we've been best friends since Pre-K. And then we started dating… Ron, six years doesn't change that."

He tried to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away. "KP, please—"

She hiccupped and wiped her eyes again. "I just spent six years in hell."

Probably worse than being dead. He felt his heart twist. "I know that."

"Ron, all I could think about was you."

Like he hadn't missed her. Like he hadn't wanted to die as well. "Kim, I know this is hard for you…" Yikes. Tacky thing to say.

"Of course it's hard for me! Everything has been hard for me! I thought… oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't be acting this way. I didn't…"

It was amazing to watch. And suddenly and oddly distant, like a movie he was watching. She had been dead and now she was alive. He didn't understand it. She was here, in front of them, pacing the sidewalk, crying. It was Kim and he didn't know what else to think or feel. "Kim, do you want me to take you home?"

"I wanted to go for a walk." Then she threw her arms around him in an almost crushing hug. He hugged back. It was wonderful to feel her again. Then, just as quickly, she was off in a run.


The hotel room was quiet, but Shego was too lazy to turn on the television. That just might annoy the neighbors, and then she would have hotel management on her butt. She didn't need that right now. The kid at the front desk had no memory of her. He shouldn't. She had not been seen in Middleton for over five years. Were there any outstanding warrants around here? She had definitely served her time, but she didn't want to piss off the wrong people. Not people around here, anyway.

There were plenty of other idiots out there to piss off.

She moved her papers around the desk—loose-leaf and over-sized index cards—and tried for the zillionth time to make some sort of connection. Like the heroine of those Sue Grafton novels. She was good at this sort of thing. She should have broke out someone like that. Kinsey Milhone, hadn't that been the name? Eh, she was fictional and certainly not as valuable as Kim Possible.

Boy, she hoped Kimmie would prove her cost.

One of the papers came clear. A list of staff at the University of Upperton. Irritating professors thinking they were so smart. At least one of them had pretended to be. Maybe she should give him more credit than that.

There was his name, his face, looking more or less the way she remembered it.

Professor Jackson Sharp, Department of Mechanical Engineering. E-mail, phone, and fax.

She wondered if she should call him.

No, too awkward. Instead she pulled her laptop from its case. Hooray for free wireless internet.

There wasn't much to say about the man, nothing that she didn't already know. Nothing horrible. He had always been a good guy. She couldn't complain. According to his page, though, he was only working with the master students. No matter what they pretended, that usually meant free time. Lots and lots of free time.

And how would Jackson spend that free time?

If she had managed to come up with millions in the multiples, she should be able to figure this out. Maybe sneak into his office. She wasn't that computer-savvy. But no doubt he would be there. Advising his precious students. How admirable.

Later.

Until then, she could play around on the site a little more. She wasn't Kimmie's computer kid of the old days, but she could manage some basic hacking. Or try to guess the password. Now what would a university professor of mechanical engineering in his thirties use as a password? On a lark, she typed in a word she imagined.

It worked.

That shook her. It hadn't been supposed to work. She had only been playing.

She took a deep breath—it sort of slowed her heart—and kept going. Onto the e-mails. Students, students, staff, university-wide junk mail, staff, department…

One e-mail looked interesting. Already been read. The sender address was one of those unprofessional, creative/cutesy things that revealed nothing. She opened it.

Her eyes went wide.

Fascinating. Apparently Kimmie had missed out on a few more things over the six years. Well, one task she had given Miss Possible lay right before her.

She copied down the address. She was going to start a little communication of her own.


The day was slow. Middleton was boring, had been so since its teen hero had supposedly died. Maybe things would perk back up now that she was alive. Though the murder of Tara Archer was plenty exciting.

If only Brick had been allowed to be involved with it. But instead he was here filing paperwork on traffic violations. Oh, joy. Honestly, he didn't mind it, but part of the reason he became a cop in the first place was to have an adventure. Oh, how naïve and stupid he had been.

Well, Brick Flagg had never been known for his brains. He had been told that, never really had bothered him. High school had been a good time.

But, darn it, this was boring. One had to be one of the 'big boys' to have anything to do with the Archer case.

Maybe he was a bastard for looking at that as an adventure. He had known Tara. Shouldn't he feel more emotion that she was dead? He had felt emotion, actually, had felt the shock the rest of the Middleton graduates of that time period had felt. But it was a murder.

Maybe it was because he had known Tara he wanted to be a little more involved. But that was probably against the rules.

It wasn't like he didn't have any connection at all. After all, they had told him multiple times that he was involved, he was helping. He was calling down the Possibles to make them look at bloody pictures.

Copies of which he had in his desk.

No one was watching. He liked being sneaky. He yanked them out in all their macabre glory.

Decapitated. Wow. Who would actually decapitate someone?

Especially someone like Tara. What had Tara done to warrant that? She was a loveable nurse. A blonde, for crying out loud.

It was kind of interesting, though, that this had happened only a few weeks before the return of Kim Possible.

A knock came at his door. Speak of the devil.

"Come in," he said faintly. Wow, it was still weird to see the dead girl alive.

Kim opened the door and tiptoed in. She looked ill.

"Are you all right?" Brick asked. Of course she wasn't. And now she entered an office where a man was looking at pictures of a dead girl.

She shrugged. "I went out for a run."

Oh. "I thought you would be spending time with your fami—"

"I was."

He looked at the pictures again. Wow, they were disgusting. "I guess it's rough re-entering the land of the living." He forced a laugh. What a dumb sound.

Kim didn't bother to smile. "You have no idea. Listen, can I just… hang her a while?"

All he was doing was filing papers and looking at the Tara Archer pictures. "Sure," he replied with a shrug.

She collapsed into the extra chair against the wall. "Thanks. I guess… you were the first person to recognize me, so I guess that's why I came here…" She sighed. "Brick, can I ask you a question?"

He couldn't figure out why exactly Kim Possible would come here; that explanation didn't make much sense, but he didn't dare say anything about that. "Ask away."

"Did you know about Ron and Monique?"

Ron Stoppable. Yeah, she had dated him. He had remembered that. He had always liked Monique. Had taken her on a few dates before he graduated. Nice girl. Hadn't they been best friends? "What about them?"

"Did you know they were getting married?"

Brick stared at her. "Heck, no one tells me anything about anything around here. I had no idea."

"That makes two of us."

She hadn't expected Stoppable to wait for her, had she? "You just found out, didn't you?"

Instead of answering, she burst into tears.

How he hated crying women. There was a box of tissues on his desk. Most of them were probably gone, but he shoved it toward her anyway. "Here."

"Thanks." She pulled a tissue out and blew her nose. "Why are they getting married?"

"Probably because they love each other?" He flinched. Probably the wrong thing to say.

"They don't love each other!" It was amazing she could talk through tears. "They are my best friends. How could they love each other?"

He did have a reply for this, but he wasn't quite sure if he dared to say it. "Do you want me to get you anything?"

"Nothing is going to help." Her crying worsened and she grabbed for more tissues. "Sorry. Am I… am distracting you?"

"Just looking at those pictures." Was it appropriate to bring up a murder at this sort of situation?

She sniffed. "Tara?"

"That's the one."

Silence. For a long, long time. She sniffled her tears and he tried to imagine something about the murder. Evidence. He needed a list of evidence.

"I want to help with it," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"I'm going to talk to the chief. I want to help. I need to help."


Any takers on who was e-mailing Dr. Sharp? Free internet nacos to anyone who gets it right.