Chapter 17 - Flashing Back - Part V

"And there I was that day. I had stood up to that brunette bully for nearly hitting Ron with her lunchbox. Yet, in the back of my head, she was like this nagging little pest that wanted to create a doubt in my head." the present-day Kim said.

The Global Justice custom-made 18-wheeler stopped at the hotel where Sentinel and CajunBear were staying at.

Officer Law knocked on the door to their hotel room.

"Open up, purty please!" he said behind the door, "This is Officer Johnny Law! I'm th' escortin' police guy for th' Global Justice people, hyar."

"I'll be right there, Officer!" CajunBear exclaimed thru the door, "Me and Sent woke up late and we're trying to get ready!"

"Okay, I'll be in mah patrol car. Just send me a signal thang fer when you two git ready!" the officer replied.

_

(10 minutes later)

Both CajunBear and Sentinel were now dressed and ready. Sentinel had the traditional Scottish dress, including the kilt while CajunBear was in a button-down shirt and slacks.

"You should've set your alarm on time on your cell phone!" Sent suggested as the pair went down the stairs. "Instead, you set yours 45 minutes later than mine."

"Maybe if we would've set our alarms at the same time, then it wouldn't be an issue!" Cajunbear complained.

Sent took out his cell phone for the text message from the officer "The officer said that the Global Justice 18-wheeler should be over...yonder? What the heck does even yonder mean?"

"It's a Southern saying, Sent." Cajunbear replied, "I sometimes use it!"

The two exited the door of the hotel as the GJ 18-wheeler was pulling up.

"Ah, right on schedule!" Cajunbear said before the 18-wheeler came to a complete stop.

Betty Director turned off the ignition to the truck.

"So you must be the two extra passengers intended for this meeting!" Betty said to the pair.

Sentinel removed his hat and replied, "Why thanks, Madam! May we enter into the truck?"

"Yes, Mr. Sentinel, but we are tight on space." Betty responded.

"Don't worry, Miss Director. We'll make do with what we have!" Cajunbear said assuredly.

Betty then pressed a button to open the door.

"So this is the famed Sentinel103 and his partner-in-crime CajunBear73!" Kim said, her emerald eyes fixated on the two.

"That we are, Miss Po..." Sent said before Cajunbear elbowed him on the shoulder.

"Ow...what was that for?" he complained while rubbing his shoulder.

Cajunbear whispered in his ear and said, "Excuse me, but didn't you forget that she's married to Ron?"

"My apologies...Mrs. Stoppable." Sentinel corrected himself, "Of course, you know that we are the Fannie Committee members invited by Miss Rockwaller herself for the new host of this year's award show."

"I've heard...so much...about you!" the redhead added with sarcasm, focusing on Sent.

"That's because I've been working extremely hard on The Hun..." Sentinel began before Cajunbear covered his mouth. Kim was giving the death glare and a snarl to him about mentioning his story.

"What he meant was that he was working on...The Hundred Ways of Success...where you...fight against bad guys...and you kiss your husband in the end!"

Kim subsided her anger and said, "Ohhh! I can't wait to read that!"

"Yeah! Yeah, that'll work!" Cajunbear said, preventing any unnecessary injury to his friend.

"We have about 50 minutes from here till we get to..." Kim said before shuddering, "...Bonnie's mansion."

"AKA the Gilded Prison!" Ron chimed in.

"So let's not waste any time." Slam agreed, "You two Eathlings can make yourselves comfortable in the truck."

_

(10 more minute later)

Cajunbear and Sentinel were squeezed in together in the rear of the truck.

"This is not exactly what I had in mind!" Cajunbear complained.

"I can't even feel my legs!" Sent moaned, trying to move in the confined space with the other GJ agents on the team.

"You complain all the time when those robots chased us from a few Fannie awards shows back!" Cajunbear countered.

"Can we please cut down on the complaining?" Electronique interrupted them.

"We still have 40 minutes of boredom to kill." Agent Trepid pouted, "I wish if I had a tennis ball and banged it against the wall. It improves hand-to-eye coordination."

"Or we can continue where I left off on my flashback." Kim suggested. All the occupants but Agent Trepid cheered on the suggestion.

Inspired by this, she continued.

"So, I came home from school, exhaustively tired from Picture Day and defending Ron from getting a knuckle sandwich by Bonnie..."

(back to 16 years earlier on that day, canon timeline, Possible household, 4:30pm)

Kim came into the house, slinging the backpack on her left shoulder with her head hanging down.

Ann asked her, "Hey Kimberly. How was your first day of middle school? Your father should be home in an hour on where to go for dinner this evening."

Kim sighed and gave a simple "Rough...".

"Rough? What happened?" Ann asked with concern.

Kim plopped on the couch and said, "I met a bad girl today!"

Ann raised her eyebrow and inquired, "Were you in a fight with this girl?"

"No, Mom, no." Kim replied. She didn't want to tell her that she was almost forced to pummel Ron with a slap to the cheek to win the 'friendship' of Bonnie.

"She's one of those...high-class snotty girls." Kim said in best describing the brunette.

"Those type where they think they're higher than everyone else?" Ann asked.

"So right about that, Mom. Her name's Bonnie Rockwaller!" Kim replied in giving the name of the cheerleader to her mom.

The thought of the last name struck a familiar tone with Ann.

"Rockwaller...I've heard that name before!"

Kim continued, "She keeps on rambling about how I won't make the cheer squad."

It all came back to the brain surgeon.

"Yeah. That name now definitely rings a bell!"

"It does?" Kim asked.

"Come, I'll show you something upstairs." Ann suggested, heading towards the staircase.

_

In the Possible master bedroom closet, Ann dug through her old memories from high school.

"Ah...here we are!" she said, blowing dust off of her senior yearbook, "The Paw Print, Middleton High, Class of 1982."

Kim took a look at her senior class picture named, "Ann Credible!"

"That was you in high school, Mom?"

"Yep...a year and a half before I met your father at MIST!" Ann smiled.

Ann then turned to the sports section of the yearbook, specifically the cheerleader part. She pointed to the black-and-white photo of the 13 cheerleaders, the one that was on the far left.

"Wow...you were a cheerleader?" Kim asked, amazed. She had never had this information revealed to her before.

Ann recalled "Oh yes, I was a Middleton High cheerleader myself! All four years, I used to cheer on those wonderful autumn Friday nights!"

"Were you captain?" Kim asked the next question about her mom.

"For both my junior and senior years! They were such memorable times." Ann said.

"Spankin'!" Kim grinned, "But there were no bullies, right?"

"There was one Veronica Lamonica that did pick on me for not being...how do you put the word..."

"Stupid...dumb...air-headed?" Kim asked, filling in the blanks.

"Yeah...those words. She eventually mellowed out after college and we became coffee buddies!" Ann said while closing the yearbook.

She also added the whereabouts of Veronica now.

"She works on the school board now, the head disciplinarian of all the Middleton School District. Her husband, Donald Rockwaller, is the chief of police."

"I see." Kim said, noting a correllation, "Now I know which side of the family Bonnie got her delusions of power from!"

Now that she finished recalling her high school days, Ann got to the heart of the problem.

"So what's this about trying out the cheer squad?"

Kim explained her dilema, "The squad needs 18 members to compete in competishes and they have only 17 right now. So Miss Pants is holding an open tryout tomorrow afternoon at the gym. And she's trying to rattle me!"

"Kimberly..." Ann said, coming with a solution off her ingenious mind, "...you can win over that girl!"

"How can I, Mom?" Kim wondered.

"Beat her at her own game!" Ann suggested, "Focus on the routine, not at the Rockwaller!"

Kim gasped, realizing that there was some connection.

"Right then and there..." the present-day Kim narrated, "...it hit me! I didn't know what it was, but the answers to my own questions of what the cheerleaders acted like were found right in front of me all this time."

Kim dug through her backpack in her room.

"Where is it? Where is it?" she exclaimed before pulling out the videotape labeled "How MJHS Cheerleaders Should Act". This was the videotape that Bonnie gave her earlier at school for her to wait.

"Perfect!" Kim exclaimed in triumph, "Now let's see what your squad is actually made of, Bonnie!"

She put the tape into her VCR and pressed play. The redhead sat on her bed, watching and glaring for any sort of misbehavior...any correlation to what she saw earlier with Ned, Penny, and Linda the blue-sweatered girl.

The screen came on and it showed Bonnie giving direction to Tara, whom was holding the videocamera.

"Am I getting this?" the brunette barked, "You'd better hold that thing correctly, T!"

"You're fine, B!" Tara replied, giving a thumbs up.

"Are we ready?" Bonnie asked.

Hope replied, "You're ready in 3...2...1...

Bonnie got into position and announced, "Welcome, prospective cheerleader, to Middleton Jr. High. Your exciting journey as a Jr. Mad Dog is just right through these doors!"

"First, the basics. You have to groom yourself in a certain way to look perfect!" she continued on the TV while displaying a wide assortment of cosmetics.

"Mascara, lipstick, eyeliner, makeup, pimple cream, and zit cream are all vital to the cheerleader's arsenal." she explained, pointing to the purpose of each one.

"If you don't, you'll look like this freak here!" she said, pointing towards Hope and a girl with a few zits on her face. The camera panned to where Hope and that girl was.

"Ewww...zitface!" Hope taunted the girl.

Kim glared at the screen in anger.

"As a cheerleader..." Bonnie continued as the camera focused on her "...you need to establish yourself as meaner than anyone else. We often travel in packs of three or four girls and have...deep connections...within the school."

The camera panned to Tara spraypainting BR initials on a student's backpack with pink spraypaint and then to Hope and two other jock bullies playing keep-away against another student.

"The most common insults we use to anyone on the low end of the Kingdom are geeks, nerds, freaks, losers, or wannabes." Bonnie continued about the 'way' a cheerleader should 'act' to the other students. "Or the worst people of all...band members!"

"Whatever the case may be, we make certain groups of students' lives a living nightmare and remind them of their place in the Kingdom."

The camera Tara was holding showed Crystal placing a 'Kick Me' sign on the back of a band member and the jocks began kicking the said student in the back, laughing and taunting him. It then panned to Tara stealing a horn from one of the band members and tossing it in the garbage.

Through it all, Kim's jaw dropped at the sheer level of abuse the cheerleaders are exercising on the school. But the worst part of it was yet to come.

"Since cheerleading isn't considered to be a 'sport'..." Bonnie said while using air quotes to describe sport, "...we don't suffer any injuries like what football players do! It would be un-girly for any of us to have a bruised elbow or a broken bone!"

The brunette segued into the next part of the short tape...the grades.

"Now...onto academics. Besically, the school district requires its sports players to maintain a C average to stay on the team. Again, cheerleading isn't listed as an athletic sport. So, I implemented a rule that if any one of my girls gets caught with having a C average or above, they will be kicked out of my squad, no questions asked. What I favor more are D's on the report card."

"The other part of 'academics'..." Bonnie said, again using the air quotes to describe academics, "...that I like to stress is the dumbness and air-headedness of my other cheerleaders. The jocks dig that!"

Bonnie then came up to Jessica and asked her, "Say, Jess, what's the capital of Louisiana?"

Jess replied, trying to think, "I dunno, New Orleans or whatever!"

"Perfect!" Bonnie grinned, "You're going to get the cool guy of your dreams! I would like to see you as a waitress at Peepers in your future, serving hot wings with extra blue cheese!"

"But what about you, Bonnie?" Jess asked,

"Little Ol' Me? I'm going to be a supermodel and make millions through my own personal line of beauty products while doing nothing at all! I'll also be married to a hot dim billionaire and having my own TV show..."

"I've seen enough!" Kim growled, ejecting the videotape out of the VCR.

She was about to throw it into the trash can when she got an idea in her head.

"Miss Tans-A-Lot is going to have her Kingdom come crumbing down on her!"