Sounding and Proofing Duties by the Team of Sentinel and CajunBear.

Dude's you rock.

Chapter 45 Stressed Out

They watched the final hours of Senor Senior, Senior and Rodrigo, his retainer, his Man at Arms, his friend.

They watched Senior as he confronted his Son. "Whoa, I didn't think Senior had it in him!" Ron was surprised

They watched Senior presented the small box to Junior. "Why does that box look familiar?" from a very puzzled Kaname.

They watched as they directed the Troops on the perimeter. "Considering their tactical limitations, their use of the Troops under their command is superb." Sagara was admiring.

Ron knew enough Spanish to translate the fact that Rodrigo refused to abandon Senior, "That guy's got some guts!" Wade was awed.

And as Rodrigo revealed the identity of Junior and Bonnie's escort, Ron said, "The guy that went with Junior and Bonnie, that's his son. The guy was some kinda Drill Instructor for somebody."

Sousuke caught a familiar phrase and went wide-eyed, asking, The Légion étrangère?

"Uhh, Yeah, who are they?"

"That's the French Foreign Legion."

"Whoa!"

"He's even more devious than Senior." Kim was relieved the man never helped the billionaire with his villainous plots.

They watched as the two men kneeled side by side, defending their home on the steps of the villa. As they covered the retreat of the pinned Fire-team and when they fell back to the foyer. The presence of the two bodies lying on the patio gave the lie that they might escape. Everyone knew what the final outcome would be. The question was how.

When Rodrigo nearly melted the barrel of the M60, Sousuke quietly said, "I knew someone was desperate." Kim didn't berate him like she had when he made his observation about Senior, a few hours before. She could hear both admiration and despondency in his voice. And when Rodrigo covered Senior's retreat then tried to fall back himself, somehow Sagara knew. When Rodrigo started moving, he just said, "Oh no."

While seeing the man flying into his death brought rest of them to tears, Sagara said, "He was a Brave and Honorable man." When Ron saw Senior dragging his friend, he forgot that is was a recording and shouted, "HE'S GONE. LET 'EM GO, SENIOR! GET OUT!" With Senior being hit Kim heard one of the few profanities she had ever heard from her lover, a heart wrenching "Aww Fuck!"

So far everything, while terrible to watch, was no real surprise. Those started as the Feldwebel leapt across the desk to deal the expected coup-de-grace. Hearing German had Sousuke suddenly wracking his brain for the bits of German he'd picked up from Kurz Weber.

"Pause it. I think he said to 'Stand Down' and something about weapons. Load, do you have a translator program?"

"Not one that'll work on the fly. I'll have to load the speech and get a readout later."

"Restart it. Alright, something about the Senor, and does he speak English."

"Dude, Why are they talking in English?"

"English is a common tongue around the world. If you have a Japanese and a German there's a good chance they both might speak English. Believe me, I know."

They watched and listened, continually interrupting until Kaname said, "Wait a minute. Pause it." She hurried out to the main room and rooted through the overturned, battered desk. She returned with several notepads and pens. "Everyone, write your questions down, we'll discuss them later."

"Spankin idea, Kaname."

They watched the rest of the recording in a silence broken only by the scribbling of their pens. Kim was struck by how much it reminded her of classes.

Close to the end Sousuke perked up and started trying to interpret on the fly. "Obersturmführer, that's a First Lieutenant, Sturmbannführer that's a Major." They were shocked when the Officer shot his Lieutenant. Ron's reaction was pretty much all of their's except Sagara's "Holy Crap!"

Sagara continued, "His speech has changed, he's issuing orders now. Orders about Senior and the other man. Now we know where the Flag came from, Honors, dumping that body, preparing to move out, clean everything? Sanitize and destroy. And 'Schnell' , Move!"

Once the recording showed the men dropping thermite on the consoles in the Control Room and vacating it as fast as they could, Wade started skipping forward until they saw themselves enter through the main door preceded by a small cloud of spy bugs.

Ron just stood there clenching his fists. After looking at the screen that showed them leapfrogging into the villa for a moment, then he said, "Wait here. I need to go…Break something."

"Ron, we should stick together."

Still looking at the screen, "You heard that Officer. They all bugged out. He did what he came to do and left." As he was talking, he set the M249 on the floor and removed his pack. " Don't worry, I'm not going far. And I'll be easy to find." He spun on his heel and headed out into the hallway, turning towards the main foyer.

Kim tried to stop him again, "Ron…."

Sagara held up a hand to stop her, "Let him go." He looked to the doorway, "I've been where he is." A second later they heard a feral scream and a tremendous crash. This was followed by the sounds of breaking statuary. Ronald Stoppable was throwing the mother of all tantrums.

Kim's eyes tried to bore through the structure of the villa to see her lover but the only information she was able to gather came from her ears; until both the smell and sight of rock dust began to percolate into the Control Room. She stepped to the doorway and peered out.

The eight foot high, five foot wide refrigerator that had taken six men to place there was gone, as was a goodly portion of the statues that had been piled up as a barricade. When she heard an almost berserk yell and saw another statue crash into the foundation of the marble staircase, Kim ducked back into the Control Room.

Shaking her head, she reentered Senior's office just in time to hear a clench fisted, white knuckled Wade growl, "Well, Ron's pissed. Anybody else?" The screen now showed Senior's form, the Flag gently ruffling in the breeze of off the Mediterranean.

Sousuke said, "We're all angry, Specialist.

"Oh, I believe we are well beyond angry, Sagara-kun. I think that 'angry' would be a very gross understatement." For Kim, the voice and manner of speech of her friend had shifted. Her English over the last few months had relaxed…a lot. Almost to the point that she sounded like she was a native speaker with some regional accent rather than a native of Japan with English as a second language. Now she sounded very formal, very precise. Each syllable and word carefully enunciated and precisely pronounced.

Kaname's voice had taken on a quality Sagara had never heard. He would have believed that he had seen her in nearly every kind of mood she was susceptible to. He had seen her gloriously happy, heartbreakingly distraught, outraged, embarrassed, frustrated, mad, angry and upset. He now had a new addition to his list: Enraged! Not that he was far behind himself.

He looked at Kim and noted the same fury the rest of them were experiencing. The difference with her was her worry for Stoppable and the rest of them overlay and overpowered her rage. It apparently wasn't affecting her as badly as it was the rest of them. Sagara made a decision.

"Load, how long until GJ reinforcements arrive."

"Those Losers? Who cares?" The pure venom in Wade tone surprised them all.

Kim asked, "Wade?"

"Kim, had she scrambled some of their assets in Spain and France, they might have been here in time."

"Wade, you know why they can't work that way."

"'Cause they're a buncha God Dammed 'Crats! That's why!"

"WADE! Look, if they start acting without authority, they'll get shut down. And you know it! Now how long till they get here?"

The teen wasn't mollified, but he checked his database, "An hour, maybe less."

"Sagara?"

"Possible-san, I think we can agree that this is no longer a Combat Mission?"

"Yeah."

"Then from here on, you're in Command. This is now an information and recon mission and you're more experienced in that then I am. What are your orders?"

Kim wasn't surprised, but she was humbled by the trust and confidence of this Veteran Soldier. Just as he had done those months ago when he'd passed Command to Ron because the blonde knew Senior better, he had done so again because it was in the best interest of the Mission.

"Wade, can you input the conversations in German and still take part in the discussion?" The teen didn't answer, he just looked at her. "Right, dumb question."

Kim watched out of the doorway to the Control Room still hearing the sounds of her berserk boyfriend breaking things in the foyer. The sounds had slowed down in the last fifteen minutes, but she still saw the occasional statue crash into the wall.

She had almost gone out there half an hour ago, but Sagara forestalled her saying, "I know what he's going through. All you can do if you go out there too soon is make him more upset. Let his emotions burn out first, then he will be ready for comforting."

So here she waited. Wade had been in contact with the incoming GJ aircraft they would be arriving anytime and Wade had told them they could land anywhere they needed.

Still looking down the hallway, she finally saw a disheveled Ron walk past the hallway and sat on one of the few large pieces of marble left. He was stoop-shouldered and head-down as he settled down on the debris of his rampage. When he was seated, she walked down the hall, careful to make a bit of noise so he knew someone was coming towards him.

As she got closer, she noticed little things. His mission gloves were so shredded, that his hands, the knuckles in particular, were a bloody mess. His whole body was covered in the marble and granite dust that hung in the air, making him appear to almost be a gray color.

Before she was able to touch him or say anything, he said, "I'm sorry, KP."

She was puzzled. Quietly Kim asked, "For what, Ronnie?"

"For freaking out like I just did."

"Ron it's ok"

Ron's voice was cracking as he said, "No it's not, KP, cause every bit of this is my fault."

Kim was aghast, "Ron, how in the world can you think this is your fault?"

Ron was sarcastic as he said, "Oh I don't know, let's follow the reasoning here. You heard what that Officer said. He planned all this because Senior was gathering information on what they were doing." He was losing the sarcasm and gaining a hitch in his voice, "Senior had his people poking into things to get the information for me. If he'd a left it alone….then this wouldn't've happened. Oh God, it's my fault."

Kim was torn. She had to handle this sitch NOW. But hard or soft. She'd never had to deal with this kind of thing before and as much as she didn't like it, she did the same thing she had heard Ron's Uncle had done sitting in a hospital room just before Ron's birthday.

She stood and calmly pulled Ron to his feet. When he was standing, she reached back and slapped him across the face nearly as hard as she could. Ron was so stunned he just stared at her for a second.

"KP?"

Kim was emphasizing her point words by poking him in the chest. "Are you finished with this fiesta of self-pity? 'Cause from what I know about Senior, he was gonna go digging no matter what anyway. And you weren't the one who set this up. There was NO WAY you could have known this was gonna happen!"

She continued, using the same sarcastic tone Ron use a moment before. "So let's follow the reasoning here. Was Senior gonna leave it alone?"

"But…"

"No buts. Just answer the questions. Was Senior gonna leave this alone."

"No."

"Did you have any clue that this could have happened?"

"I should have…"

"Shut up. Did you have any clue that this could have happened?"

"But…"

"RON! Answer the question."

Sigh, "No."

"Alright, now I know that there's more than just 'Air under the hair' so let's think. If we take those things as fact, how could you have possibly been responsible for this?"

"I can't."

Kim waved a hand around the room, "Then all this was for what?"

Ron sat back down and scrubbed his face with his hands, "A lot of it is 'cause I really wanna hate someone, but I can't."

Now she was confused. Ron was the least likely person she that would actually hold a grudge or hate another person. "Ronnie?"

He looked up at her, "That Officer, the Major. I wanna hate him, I want it so bad I can taste it. But I can't. Senior forgave him. And because Senior forgave him, I have too."

"Come on, Ron. As soon as GJ get's here, we can go home."

It was a signal two days after they arrived home that called them to Senior's Airfield. A flat black unmarked hover-jet screamed to a landing not far from the hangars that Senior Industries had been in the process of refurbishing. He had decided to turn the airbase into a hub for his North American air shipping interests.

The door to the hover-jet opened to reveal the young man that accompanied a bedraggled Junior and Bonnie, both still dressed in the nightclothes they had been in when Senior hustled them into the hidden passage three days ago.

It was a very subdued Junior, still carrying the wooden box, that addressed the Team. "My Father, he is dead, isn't he?"

None of the Team wanted to answer him until Sousuke spoke up. "Senior-san, you have my sympathies. Your Father was killed three days ago by as yet unidentified forces."

In his left hand he gently cradled the box, but his right was clenched into a fist that was so tight, they swore they could hear the popping tendons. Junior's voice surprised Kim, Ron and Wade. There was no wailing, gnashing of the teeth, no tantrums, just tightly controlled anger. "Then may I assume that it is not because of a lack of effort on your parts that they are still 'unidentified'?"

"You may."

"Then on behalf of the 'House of Senior' I thank you for your efforts. Forgive my manners. You met my Bonita, Bonnie Rockwaller, a few months ago. This is my retainer, Alejandro Jose de la Luna."

Alejandro looked at the Team and said, "I know he is gone, but my father….?"

Knowing what the man was asking, again it was Sousuke that answered, "Your Father fell covering the retreat of the Senor. He met his end well."

The man closed his eyes and sighed, "I…thank you."

Junior looked at the two male Team members, "Sousuke Sagara, Ronald Stoppable, I would like to speak to the two of you privately, if I may?"

"Sure."

Junior spoke to his retainer, "Alejandro, would you see to our travel arrangements."

Alejandro nodded and said, "Senor."

Junior gestured to the side and the rest of the males walked a little way into the hangar.

Kim was a little tweaked at seemingly being snubbed like she had; she huffed, turned to Bonnie and said, "Junior seems to be taking this awfully well."

Bonnie snapped at her former classmate, "Shut up, K! You haven't spent the last three days with him. He figured it out as soon as Alejandro told us it would be two days before we surfaced, 'for our own protection'. He knew then that 'Poppi' was gone. Junior can be selfish, egotistical, self absorbed and self-centered, but he loved his Father."

"And he didn't ask to talk to them alone as a snub to you. He did it because he's gonna have to do something he's gonna hate. Ask for a favor."

When they stepped away from the gathering, Junior said, "Ronald Stoppable, I mean no insult with what I say next. You are someone that has great experience in being unnoticed. Even with all the time you have spent with your Blue Fox, you were able to remain in the background."

"My retainer, Alejandro, has explained that it would be best if I was off the grid, so to speak. There might still be those that would like to send me the way my Father has gone. This in turn could place my Bonita in danger as well. For now both she and I will need to be 'Unnoticeable'. Will you help me?"

"You won't like it, Dude."

"Whether I like it or not does not matter. In order accomplish the vendetta for my Father. I will do whatever I must. For over half a millennium no one who has deserved it has escaped the wrath of the 'House of Senior'. And I have no intention of dishonoring my Father by starting now."

Ron looked at the furious Junior, grinned and said, "Then it looks like we're gonna have to make a stop at….."

In the days since their return from Senior's Island, something had been happening between the members of the Team. More then once they all seemed to be on the knife's edge of violence. Not with each other, but with almost everyone else around them. They seem to have settled into an Us and Them mentality. There was the 'Us', the Team, the ones that you unquestioningly trusted at your back, no matter what they were carrying. Then there was everyone else. In some ways not even family was allowed in the inner circle.

All this came to a head about a week following 'The Mission' as they started calling it. As a part of his Doctorate, Wade had been asked to perform some Student Teaching duties. He had taken on teaching a part of the same Honor's Physics lab that Kaname was taking. No one in the class knew that the two were even acquainted let alone friends and Teammates. On the nights when they had classes, she drove him to the campus and only met up with him when they got ready to get back into the car to go home.

On the night in question, since Ron and Kim had gone to visit the Possible Family and she didn't feel like standing in the kitchen for a half hour or more making dinner, she'd stopped off at the Cow & Chow for some 'snackage' for Wade, Sousuke and herself. Since she hated drive-thru's she parked the car and asked Wade to come in with her to carry everything.

Little did she know she was stepping into a hornet's nest. She had no sooner placed her order and stepped to the side to await it when the next customer in the line pulled a gun out from underneath his jacket. That was surprising. What was shocking was the next two in line did the same thing.

They started pointing the guns at clerks and customers alike. The first ordered the casher to fill a sack with the register's money while the second watched the rest of the customers with the third man grabbing a girl and pulling her to his front, holding her there by the throat. When the first had the sack in hand, two of them started to shake the customers down grabbing wallets and purses.

The trouble really started when the second man saw the diamond and sapphire engagement ring Kaname was wearing and demanded she drop it in the bag as well.

Kaname used her thumb and twisted the ring on her left hand so that the diamond and sapphires were by her palm. She closed her fist and, with the stress of the robbery piled on top of the last week causing her to revert to formal language, quietly said, "You may have my purse, Robber-san, my wallet, identification and credit cards. I might even give you the keys to my car. But if you attempt to take my Engagement Ring, Robber-san, I am quite likely to kill you where you stand."

"Uh oh!" was Wade's only comment. In an action that garnered zero interest from the robbers because it seemed so natural, Wade started sliding to the left away from Kaname. The robbers just thought he wanted to get away from the apparently crazy woman.

These thugs couldn't believe what they had just heard. This slip of a girl, a very well stacked slip of a girl at that, had just threatened to kill them. They stood there looking stunned for a moment, until either bravado or stupidly took over. ((You make the call! LOL!) This was CajunBears comment and it was too funny to leave out :D)

The second robber said, "Girl, I don't know who tha Hell ya think ya are, but if ya don't come up off of da bling, we might just take you, too." He looked her up and down, "You look like you'd probably enjoy it, though."

Wade added an, "Oh No!"

"This ring, Robber-san, was my Mother's engagement ring, given to me by my fiancé after my Father gave it to him to show his approval of our relationship. The only way I will ever give it up is over my dead body."

"Girl, are ya fucking stupid or something?"

"Iye."

"Huh?"

"It means 'No', Robber-san!"

Wade confused the issue a bit by saying, "Awww guy's, ya made her go all formal and Japanese again."

Had anyone from Jin-Dai High School seen her then, they would have been shocked. Chidori Kaname, the school firebrand, the girl willing to wade into a near riot of rugby players, not instantly pulling out her trademark halisen and laying waste to these men? It would have actually frightened them.

This wasn't her former usual fiery rage that could blaze up in an instant. This was a cold rational fury that was looking at 'targets', not people. She even had already labeled them in her mind as Ichi, Ni and San, or Japanese for One, Two and Three.

As her hooded eyes just flicked between the trio of 'men', her right foot slid back a bit, balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, "I have informed you of the possible consequences of your actions. Take what you have, let her go and leave."

"She's still all formal, guys! This is bad!"

Thinking to make an example of this dumbass female, the thug she had labeled 'Ni' stepped just a little too close to her, evidently intending to cow her by stuffing his gun in her face. When his gun hand came about a foot away from her, Kaname lashed out like a striking snake. Her right hand came across, parrying the gun to her left, as it did her left came up to intercept it out of line with her body, the right hand following the gunman's wrist. Once she had both hands on his wrist, she forced the trapped hand up in an arc around her head while she pivoted clockwise on her left foot, forcing an elbow lock. She kept torquing the wrist and pulling the arm, forcing the man to slam to the floor on his face.

As he fell, she stripped the gun from his hand. With the same twirl, she brought the gun around 180 degrees to bear on 'San' or Three. It was only a conscious effort on her part that stopped her reflexes from triple tapping him. She brought her aim around low and the instant her sights lined up, she pulled the trigger twice and blew out both of his knees. Keeping her momentum, she came back around to 270 degrees and fired twice more; kneecapping the prone 'Ni' she had stripped the gun from. Strafing left, she opened some distance between her and 'Ni' as he screamed on the floor.

The last gunman, 'Ichi', couldn't believe what just happened. He was even more disbelieving when Kaname discarded the gun she'd stripped from the second man behind her, only to pull an automatic from somewhere and point it directly at him as he was holding the terrified girl in front of him by the throat.

Time from when 'Ni' stepped up to Kaname until two of three men were screaming on the ground and she had a weapon pointed at the last? Three seconds. Three heartbeats. Babump, babump, babump. That fast, and the equation changed.

All this surprised 'Ichi'. What truly frightened him was Wade now had his 10mm hand cannon out, pointed at the thug and quietly saying, "I told ya that her going all formal was bad. Now, let the girl go."

"Not gonna happen, man! Ya gonna let me go, ya hear me?"

Wade very calmly said, "Now that's not gonna happen. The only way you're leaving here is in custody. Either in handcuffs or a body bag, but you're gonna be in official custody. No matter what else happens, you're not leaving here a free man."

"I'll blow her head off, Muther Fucker!"

Kaname voice was just as calm as Wade's, but far colder. "That just means the ONLY way you're going to leave here is in a bag, because if you pull that trigger, we will pull ours. You had your chance. Now, the only way for you to live, is to let her go, turn around and lay face down on the ground." The BDA never wavered. Her eyes glittering with suppressed fury, the screaming of the two wounded men only punctuated the coldness of her voice.

"Aggg, she's still all formal! Man, she is pissed! Ya guys really shouldn't a tried to take her ring. Look, you do what she says she may not kill ya…. Maybe? I do know that she can punch a hole through a quarter at 30 feet with that .380 of hers. So she can drop ya where ya stand, even if ya do try to hide behind that girl. "

"You two are Fuckin crazy, man."

"Well that is true, we're both having some PTSD issues right now. And she's gotten in the habit of getten real upset, real fast, lately." Wade figured he would stir the pot some more. "The last time she got this mad at someone, it wasn't pretty. It took weeks to get all the blood cleaned up. Uuuuuuu!" Wade shuddered. He glanced slightly in Kaname's direction for a second and asked, "Did ya have to use the shotgun, though?"

Kaname caught what Wade was doing. Good Cop, Bad Cop. And since she'd already shot the other two men, that made her the automatic Bad Cop. Her fury at these thugs merely enhanced it. Nonchalantly she shrugged, "It seemed like the thing to do at the time."

"Emptying it, yeah, sure. But did ya have to reload it? I mean the guy was already shot."

"It seemed…like the thing…to do…at the time, Load-san."

"Uggg, now she's even formal with me. Dude, you have really pissed her off. Look, just surrender, let her get our grub and go home before she goes completely off because Sagara's the only one I know that can defuse a K-bomb when she get's like this. Unfortunately for you he ain't here."

"…On second thought, maybe it's a good thing fer you he isn't. He would've absolutely killed ya already. 'Cause if you think his girlfriend there is crazy, he's completely 'Badeep, badeep, badeep, That's all folks', loony-tunes. He's already killed a few dozen people that just threatened her. And unless you're in jail, he'll hunt you down from here to Istanbul if he has to, just to get the chance to add to the numbers."

Ichi looked from Wade to Kaname and back a few times. As far as he could tell this crazy bitch was dead serious about killing him. She looked like she wanted nothing worse then to put a bullet in his brain. He'd never seen anything like it in his life. Faint tremors of fury caused her head to nearly vibrate. Strangely those tremors didn't transfer themselves to the gun being held in her hands. It was rock steady. And it was pointed directly at his right eye, the one further away from the girl he was trying to use as a shield.

Settling his eye behind the sights of the Glock even further, Wade continued quietly talking, "So, if ya wanna live, carefully let her go, slowly turn around and lay face down on the ground."

Ichi saw the eyes of the obviously insane bitch narrow a slight bit more and he suddenly knew she was about to shoot him. "ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! Ya got it, man. Just keep that Crazy Bitch away from me!"

When he let the terrified girl go and raised his hands, with his left hand, Wade pulled the girl out of the line of fire and behind himself, the whole time covering 'Ichi'. 'Ichi' then slowly turned and kneeled to the floor.

When his hands touched the floor, he set the gun to the side and Wade kicked it away while 'Ichi' laid the rest of the way on to the floor as his fellow criminals screamed for a doctor. The whole time Wade kept his small frame and his hand cannon between 'Ichi' and the girl.

The store was a swarm of Police and EMT's inside with the press outside. Nearly a dozen press vans from various broadcast media as well as more than a few print reporters were outside waiting for something, anything to happen. So far all they had gotten was a preliminary statement that there had been a foiled armed robbery with at least two of the suspected robbers being taken to the hospital for gunshot wounds.

The bad part was the longer the initial investigation went on, the more reporters that were showing up. It was only the fact that none of them realized the connection between her and Team Possible that had kept the less 'reputable' media like the notorious Celebrity: In Depth from descending on the Cow & Chow like a flock of vultures. So far.

After calling the Police and EMT's and before they had arrived the Wade had called in the Cavalry. Kim and Ron hurried to the apartment, picked up Sousuke and bolted to the Cow & Chow to support their Teammates. Sousuke wasn't likely to garner much of a response, but several of the reporters had seen Ron and, more importantly, Kim enter the same place. That was sure to raise suspicions.

In the back of the fast food place, Kim and Ron sat with Wade at a table gently talking him through what happened while Sousuke sat beside his fiancée in a booth as she held her face in her hands, elbows on the table.

"Are ya sure you're OK there, Wadester? I know them asking ya the same questions twenty different ways is a pain in the patootie."

"Yea, there was a while there, right after Kaname grabbed that guy's pistol I was scared outta my mind." He grinned, "Of course, after they tried to snatch Kaname's ring, I knew the 'fecal waste matter was about to impact the rotary atmospheric oscillator' so I was sorta ready for it."

Ron's eyes went wide as he parsed the sentence while Kim looked puzzled "Huh? Wade, Monique-speak is bad enough, but geek-speak is pushing it."

Ron looked at his girlfriend, "Uhh, KP, that wasn't geek-speak. I bet he learned that one from Sagara."

"Then what's it mean?"

"Actually, no Ron. It was your Uncle Roger. And it's a polite way of saying that I knew the shit was about to hit the fan, Kim."

"WADE!"

The teen grinned, "What? You asked. Beside's, I'm fine, a little shook up, but I'm fine. I gotta tell ya though, there was a while there I really thought she was gonna blast that guy."

Insert Break

They were using English instead of Japanese to prevent any suspicion of collusion.

"I overreacted."

Sousuke pondered his answer a moment and gulped. Kaname heard the sound and looked at him, saying, "You can say it."

"Maybe you did, a bit. I watched the security recordings. But once the first one stepped up to you, they forced your reactions."

"Personally, I think the only thing I would have done differently is…I would have killed the first two. You took a large risk allowing those two to live without being able to cover them. Especially the first one you dropped. He could still reach his weapon. If he hadn't been puling and squealing on the floor like a wounded animal."

"The Investigators are of the opinion so far that you had no choice. They question the fact you refused to surrender the ring." Sousuke gave her one of his rare small grins, "A decision I support completely, by the way."

"Sousuke-kun, arigato."

"Mon dai nai."

Kim had an evil look as she watched her friend while they were waiting for the police investigators to release them. "I do have a question though, Wade."

Wade sighed, "Kim, I've already answered like a gazillion questions from the Police about what happened. I'd rather not talk about it anymore tonight." He completely missed the teasing look she was wearing. Ron caught it though.

"Uh KP, maybe we oughta let him relax for a while."

"Oh, just one more won't hurt him, Ronnie." And with that Ron knew that the Wadester was doomed.

With a viscous grin Kim pulled out a tissue and wiped at the underside of Wade's jaw, "Where'd all this lipstick come from, Wade?"

"Huh?"

"Dude!…Isn't that the color that chick up front had on?" Kim gave Ron a pointed look. "I only noticed cause it was smeared on her face, KP."

"Well, I believe you're right, Ronnie. It does look like the same shade. Wade?"

In later years, Wade doubted he would ever forgive Ron for his betrayal that night, "Ya know I'd kinda like an answer to that one myself, there Wadester."

Kaname was a woman on a mission. Something had occurred to her shortly after Thanksgiving. Not only had he missed out on all the Thanksgivings since he was a child. Not that it really would have mattered in Japan because it wasn't a Japanese holiday.

But Christmas was a different matter. While it didn't have the religious context it did in the Americas or Europe, it was still celebrated by a significant portion of the Japanese people as a secular holiday. And except for the small gifts they had exchanged last year, her man had missed out on every one since the death of his family.

She tried to think of a way to make this Christmas the most special she could. After wandering around the various malls in the area, she was struck by an idea. The problem was she wasn't sure how to go about it. Maybe she could ask Kim's brothers for advice.

But all thoughts of Christmas were put on hold as they got a call requesting the presence of Team Possible in Northern England.

English Countryside
The Manor of Montgomery Fiske
AKA Monkey Fist

They entered the grounds of the same Manor that one Ronald Dean Stoppable had come to with Dr. Wade Load's infamous holo-Kim almost four years ago as a Sophomore in High School to find the place crawling with 'Bobbies'.

"Ms. Possible, Ah, don't know wat gud ye kin du herer. Boot da highers duwn in London figgered ye wuod be sumone that might wanna know aboot wat happened herer."

"What can you tell us, Officer?"

"Well it's pretty grisly. Is seems that one of da locals nuticed a lot uf birds over da Manor. Being a member uf da local birdwatcher society, he pegged 'em as carrion feeders. He was able ta raise enough uf a hullabaloo at da station that day sent a few men up ta investigate. Wat day found wasn't pretty."

"It was two things that made them call ye herer. Da first is this place was Lord Fiske's Manor und from wat we hear, y'all ave had a more than a few run-ins da nutty bugger, the second was who they fund inside. We had to run her DNA ta figger uot who it was. Turns uot it was one uf your villains, a Ms. Amy Hall."

"DNAmy?"

"Dhat's da one. There were a bunch a weird animals all uver da place. Da ting is they were all ded, killed by small arm's fire. We've already cleaned a bit. Taken the deceased to da coroner und such for autopsy."

Kim held up her Kimmunicator and asked, Do you mind if we take a look around inside? We might be able to find out something your guys might have missed."

"It's already ben approved. Ya ave ta wear booties und gloves. Just be careful nut ta disturb da placards und chalk lines. Dere needed fer the investigation."

"Thanks Officer."

After an hour of fruitless searching, Ron made an observation. His eyes narrowed in incipient anger as he was looking around the room where Amy had been found and said, "What a minute! He said DNAmy was here along with a bunch of her living Cuddle-buddies. So if she was here…where's Monty?"