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KP, RS and the Gang © Disney; All Original Characters © the Author
Chapter Ex Ex Eye Eye: Friends, Romans, Countrydudes
I.
The Masked Warrior of Mystery was tweaked.
She was the scourge of villains and evil-doers throughout the Roman Empire. And while she still harbored a deep grudge against Rome for what it had done to her people in Britain, including her relative Boudicca, she took to heart her family's motto that anything was possible for a Possibilex.
The Flavians, who were now Caesars, had accorded her, or more accurately her alter ego Kimberlivenda, the status of a foreign princess unlike the cruel, and sometimes crazed, Julio-Claudians, who were responsible for so ruthlessly suppressing the Iceni rebellion and leading her clan into exile as captives from Britannia. Better to be ruled by a sane Vespasian and his son Titus than yet another whack-job.
Unfortunately, it was one of those whack-jobs, Drakkus Maximus, the mad druid wannabe turned would-be Ruler of the Known World, who was the cause of her current predicament.
Fortunately, she mused, she was not alone in dealing with this sitch. Tied to the opposite side of the post to which she'd been secured was none other than her best friend and long-time partner in fighting evil, Aaron of Jerusalem, known in Rome as Ronicus the Gladiator and to her, simply and affectionately, as Ron.
Unfortunately, she also mused, the two now had some issues to work out.
Kimberlivenda sighed. Why did he have to be so big heady? she asked herself before she wondered, Why did I have to be so big heady?
Further, aside from their now difficult personal situation there was the small matter of their being suspended over a huge vat of fermenting garum, the pickled fish paste so beloved by the Romans.
Somehow, though, that problem seemed more manageable.
II.
"So, what do you think we should do, KV?" Aaron asked tentatively. The argument they'd had before they went on this latest mission for Titus, the heir to Vespasian and the Emperor's effective right hand man in ruling the Empire, had been epic. Now that some time had passed, he was feeling bad about things he'd said—and left unsaid.
"Honestly, I do not know," she said, her spirits sagging. Everything was so ferociously complicated. "Ron, I, I have got nothing. Drakkus Maximus was right. I should have stuck to babysitting and now I should just let Father arrange that marriage to Publius Obnoxiouscanus for me." She sighed. "Drakkus Maximus finally won."
"KV, that is quitter talk!" a miffed Aaron said. Even if Kimberlivenda would never see him as romantic material and she had handed him his head over the news from the imperial freedman that Titus wanted to erect an eight-foot-tall statue of Ronicus the Gladiator in the Forum in his honor, the idea of his best friend just giving up and agreeing to life with a man he knew she loathed was too much for him to abide. "There are better guys for you out there!"
"Thanks, but it is not like I have many choices," she lamented. "Eligible future husbands are put off by a Briton round-housing goons and that's without them even knowing about the Masked Warrior. It is a vivid image, you know."
"Well, I am not put off by it. And, and, I think it is kind of a bon-diggitus image."
"Really?"
Ron gulped. "Yeah, you know, you're beautiful when you're fighting evil." He thought about their adventures for a moment and their recent argument. "Geez, am I an idiot."
Kimberlivenda was confused by her friend's sudden change of conversational tack. "What are you talking about?"
"I really should have told Titus to put up a Masked Warrior statue, too. You deserve one, a big one. You do all the hard work."
"That is so not true. I could not save the Empire without you. You deserve this honor." Kim thought about their time together – and their fight. "I should not have harshed on you just because Titus recognized you had stepped up. I can only imagine what the attention might have meant to you after all you have been through."
"'Sha," Ron said. "The only attention that's ever really mattered to me is from you. Not that I'm not down with the Emperor giving me my laurels. After everything the Romans have done to my people they owe us big time. But he still should have given you your laurels, too. Sorry, KV. I guess I am really not a very good friend."
"That is so not true," Kimberlivenda protested, wishing Ron could see her smiling. "You are a great friend, indeed the best. And let us be honest: Romans putting up a statue of an armed Celtic warrior woman in the Forum? As if!"
"Yeah, I guess so. But if they could do one for a Judean …"
"So not the same," she disagreed.
"What do you mean? No disrespect to you Britons, but we can kick Roman booty with the best of them."
"That is not the ish."
"Then what is?"
"You are a man and I am not."
"Well, duh," Aaron said without thinking.
"Excuse me?" an incensed Kimberlivenda blurted out. "I can do anything you can do!"
"No! No! I did not mean it like that! I mean, look at you, you are like the hottest woman in Rome and oh, man, just send me to the lions in the Colosseum now …"
"I so do not think so," said a blushing Kimberlivenda. "Um, are you saying you like me like me?"
Ron groaned. "KV, we are so beyond 'like,' okay? I, uh, I love you."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, I have for a long time. But, you are a warrior princess and I am just some lowly Judean nobody …"
Kimberlivenda's heart beat faster. She'd entertained a hope but had not been sure of how Aaron might have felt about her.
"I do not want to be with some Judean nobody," she said firmly, causing Ron's heart to sink. "I want to be with you, Aaron of Jerusalem."
Aaron was stunned, not sure that he'd really just heard the words he'd so longed to hear. "For real?"
"Mmm hmmm," she said. "Why would I want to be with some self-important patrician pretty-boy who will expect me to stay at home and provide him with heirs while he loafs about in the Forum when I can be with my cute best friend who has always had my back, gone the extra mille passus to help me fight bad guys, and, frankly I cannot imagine living without?"
"I, I do not know what to say."
Kim chuckled. "You did a few moments ago, Cupid."
Now it was Ron's turn to blush. "But what about your father?! He will be like Julius Caesar on the march in Gaul! He will send me to the Black Sea!"
"So not the Greek drama."
"You say that now, KV. You really ready to move to a fifth-floor walk-up in a tenement in the Subura?"
"If I am with you, yes," she said. "And something tells me that once we have some little Stoppabulli running around the domus, Mother will make sure that Father falls in line and everything will be fine."
"So, you think you could marry me someday?"
"Yes …"
"Badicalus!"
"… On two conditions."
"Badicalus denied."
"I do not think so," Kim said regally. "Hear my conditions: first, we have to be honest with and trust in each other, no matter what. We are a team, and we are at our best when we remember that."
"Okay, I can do that. What is the other condition?"
"We ace this place," she said. "Garum is gorchy."
"I am all about leaving and you would think people who could conquer the world would have better taste in food," Aaron observed.
"Caput in the game," Kimberlivenda said.
"Got it, KV," he replied.
Kimberlivenda began to rock and the suspended post started to sway. It wasn't long before they were arcing beyond the edge of bubbling fish paste. "Take my hand and follow me," she said.
"Wha—?"
They swung over the opposite rim, and, having loosened the ropes, Kimberlivenda launched them on their way to freedom. A moment later, they landed on the hard floor. They lay there, catching their breath.
"Gee, you really can do anything," Ron said with a lopsided grin.
"As long as you have got my back, I can," she said with a broad smile of her own.
III.
Kim woke up with a start, her breathing ragged. The dream had been so intense and vivid. "That was so the drama," she whispered. Then her conversation with Ron came to mind and she felt pained. She turned to her desk clock, and saw the time: 3:05 am. She knew needed to talk to him and so didn't care about the hour.
She grimaced when she remembered she wasn't wearing her wrist Kimmunicator, which meant getting out of bed if she wanted to call him. Deepening her frustration was the presence of her sleeping roommate, whom she didn't want to disturb. Kim decided she would just have to get to the desk, retrieve her Kimmunicator, and quietly make it out of the room, down the hallway, and to the common area.
No big! she told herself, even if her coordination had all but abandoned her. After all, she had once learned how to fly a space plane after watching a monkey for all of five minutes, repaired the Hoover Dam with bubble gum and a hair band, swum the English channel, and even somehow managed to have a decent photo taken on picture day her senior year of high school. She was Kim Possible, she told herself, and she could do anything.
Unfortunately, much to her chagrin she quickly discovered that included tripping as she got up, pulling her blanket off the bed, flailing, knocking over a lamp, and crashing to the ground, and in the process, waking up her roommate.
Fern turned on her bedside lamp and looked sympathetically at her roommate.
"Sorry," Kim said, her embarrassment writ on her face.
Fern yawned and then, to her roommate's annoyance, grinned.
"I'm glad someone is finding this amusing," Kim grumped.
"Sorry," she said. "But I remembered the time Bern, Crash, and Dash were hit by some wacky bubble gum ray and were stuck together in a big pink blob for a week. This isn't amusing. That, though, was."
Kim tried to glare but then, imagining Team Impossible immobilized in such an un-action-heroic fashion, began to chuckle.
Fern got out of bed and extended a hand. "Okay, Roomie, What can I do to help?"
Kim explained what she had planned. Fern shook her head. "I'll go to the common area. You stay here."
"Fern—" Kim protested.
"You and your boy need to talk. And that means you need your privacy. Everyone else needs to sleep and you crashing your way down the hall won't help that happen. You just stay here and everyone will be happy."
Kim relented. "Thanks. I owe you."
After Fern had helped her back into bed, given her the Kimmunicator, and left, Kim reached to call Ron. She was taken by surprise when the device buzzed and she was confronted with the image of her boyfriend, his eyes bloodshot, his hair a mess, and his face scratchy. "Ron?"
"Zorry to wake you, KB, but, uh, I wanted to zay I wuz zorry."
"Sorry? For what?"
"I wuz all about being Ron Inzecurity when we talked an' you needed me to be all about bein' Ron Supportable. I may be-Ah-choo!-feeling crummy but you'b got a real prob'em."
Kim smiled warmly at Ron; his words meant the world to her. "Thanks," she said softly. "But you so don't have to apologize. I know you just wanted to have my back and I pushed you away without even thinking. That was wrong. Forgive me?"
"Don' know whad for bud 'zha, of course," he said.
The two looked at each other for a long moment before Kim broke the silence. "I was actually about to call you."
"Really?"
"Mmm-hmm," she said. "I also felt bad about our convo. And then there was the dream I had."
Ron suddenly seemed much more awake. "Waid a minute. I had a dream, too, bud I tought id wuz the cough medizin talkin'. Were we in ancient Rome?"
Kim's eyes opened wide. "Yes! I was the Masked Warrior and you called me KV and …"
"I wuz Ronnicuz or Aaron or wuz it Ron?"
"All three," she said. "And we were suspended over a vat of greechy fish paste."
"Yeah, but at least it wazn't meatcakez!"
Kim smirked. "Random much?"
"I am what I iz," Ron said jauntily before his expression turned pensive. "They seemed to have zome shtuff to work through."
"They did, but they handled it. And we do and we will, too," Kim said. Seeing the pained look on Ron's face, she surprised him with a confident smile. "It's so not the drama, Ron. We're not kids anymore, we're growing up, and things are changing."
"Ch-changing?" Ron stammered.
"Mmm-hmmm. And what Kimberlivenda said is true for us, just like it was for them: we need to remember to talk and to trust each other and remember that we're a pretty spankin' team. It was true before we were dating and it's even more so now that we're a couple."
Ron was about to say something but instead offered up a grande-sized sneeze.
"Bless you," Kim said before she bit her lip. "I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I don't always like admitting I need help or that I can't do something."
"So that'z juzt one more thing the girl who can do anything can do," Ron said with a sympathetic grin.
"Being serious here, Ron," she said. "Right now I'm so beyond needing help and I, I'm freakin'. All of a sudden I've turned into Kim Klutzible and I've got nuthin'."
"Not true, KB. You gob me," Ron said. "And Wade. And Rubus. And Bern, uh, your roommate, not the Team Impozzible guy, dough I bed they'd help. And your 'rents and the Tweebs and most important you ztill have that badical Pozzible brainage to figure thingz out. You're ztill a bon-diggity leader. You tell uz what to do and we'll do it. You know more about beading bad guyz than anyone! Oh, an' you'b acdually godden preddy good about ledding us help you."
Ron's expression of confidence hit Kim with unexpected force. She was surprised when she began to cry. "I love you so much," she said.
"Yeah, I know," Ron said gently. "I'm zorry I'm not dere. You zhure you don' wan' me to come?"
Kim dabbed at her tears. "I so hate asking you to come. You've been doing so much to make us and the missions work and you've been so ferociously amazing about the college sitch …"
"Zmall prize to pay to date my dream girl, KB. I'll go to clazz in deh morning, get someone to take my zhift, then head out your way. Or do you need me zooner?"
"No, later tomorrow should be good. I'll ask Wade to arrange a ride for you."
"Yeah, about dat," Ron said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I think I'm zet."
"Oh?" Kim cocked an eyebrow. Sensing something was up, she issued a one-word demand: "Spill."
Ron told her about the Kiminator.
"And you didn't tell me about this before why?" she said. "And please don't tell me that this is your way of telling me."
Ron held up his hands in a placatory gesture. "I just found out last night. You gotta beliebe me!"
Kim looked at her boyfriend's panicked expression and a smile broke out on her face. "I believe you. But you need to have someone with you. You're are most def not well enough to travel on your own."
"Otay, fair 'nuff, KB," he said before he sneezed and yawned. "I think I zhould be getting zome zzzz'z …"
Kim watched as he fell asleep in mid-sentence. "Sweet dreams, Ron." She blew him a kiss, turned off the device and soon, she too was asleep, and unlike earlier in the evening, she slept much more peacefully.
IV.
About an hour later the first pictures began to circulate on the Internet.
To Be Continued …