Nearly a minute had gone by. The phone rang and rang, but no one picked up.
"Aaarrrgghhh, pick UP your PHONE, BRICK!" Bonnie screeched.
Bonnie Rockwaller stared out the front window of her living room into the misty gloom outside, still pressing her phone to her ear while wearing a sour facial expression that suggested she had just smelled dirty diapers or something even worse. After getting off the phone with Tara (who had informed her of the interesting weather they were having), she had once again attempted to contact Brick Flagg and give him a brutal tongue-lashing over her previously mentioned "bagel crisis", but just like her previous call to the young man, it went frustratingly unanswered.
With a snarl, she mashed the 'END CALL' button on her phone and then marched urgently into the kitchen, looking for her older sister Lonnie's car keys on the wooden family 'key rack' that hung near the pantry door.
"Screw calling that idiot!" she snapped out loud, as she quickly located the keyring to Lonnie's car and snatched it up. "I'll just drop in for a quick chat...and maybe a BEATING, too!" she barked as she pounded her fist into her palm.
True, her sister would likely kill her for borrowing her car without asking, but then again, Lonnie was on vacation with her wealthy boyfriend's family in the Hamptons, so what sis didn't know, wouldn't hurt her.
Bonnie flung the front door open and felt a shock as a cold wind buffeted past her, blowing her perfectly blow-dried and styled hair into messy sheafs as her eyes watered from the now nearly painful (at least to her) frigid temperatures.
"Like, what the hell?" she shouted into the darkness as she tightly wrapped her arms around herself, clad in only a skimpy pair of short shorts and a tube top - typical Summer attire - as she shivered and chattered her teeth.
"It's freaking JUNE for God's sake!" she shouted in exasperation. "Is this, like, that 'El Nino' crap or something? Ugggghhhhh!"
Surely, she would find some way to blame this wacky weather on Brick as well.
Making her way through the haze down to the sidewalk where Lonnie's small yellow car was parked, she unlocked the door, sat herself down and then buckled herself in, the (fake) leather car seat feeling as cold as ice as she started the car and then pulled out into the lane.
"It's so COLD, I can't even feel my ASS!" she barked, grasping the steering wheel in a furious grip of iron as she stopped at a red light, now barely visible through the thick fog.
"Damn you, Brick! This is all YOUR fault!...SOMEHOW!" she exploded as the light turned green and she sped forward, not bothering to exercise even the least amount of additional caution during the evening's inclement weather.
Normally, it took Bonnie about fifteen minutes to reach Brick Flagg's house from her own. Tonight, in spite of the low visibility and dangerous conditions, it would barely take her five...
"UUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!" she roared as she mashed the pedal to the floor.
It was now VERY quiet in the usually lively Possible household, now that the cat was out of the bag. Kim slowly turned her head backwards to face her brothers, a very strange smile now playing across her frazzled face.
"You...two...did...what?" she asked very slowly as her brothers just stared wide-eyed at the floor with their hands in their pockets, their faces reddening with shame.
"Please don't be cross with them, Miss Possible" said Kali, smirking devilishly. "I'm quite sure they didn't MEAN to invite me into your pleasant, perfect, safe little lives..."
"EEEP!" yelped Ron, as he stood flat against the wall, now wishing that he could just disappear into it.
Kali - whomever this particular being was - had somehow gained unrestricted access to their home. And apparently, in some fashion, it was all Tim and Jim's fault. Inside of her head, Kim was quickly putting two and two together, and she REALLY didn't like the answer she was getting. Ron had already gotten the same answer, and he wasn't terribly enthused by it, either.
"I said it before...and I'm going to say it again...this is SO not happening..." she thought.
Kim rested her chin in her right hand while placing her left hand on her hip, assuming a scholarly pose of deep thought. "I've seen some...weird things around the world ever since I became a crime-fighter" she in a deeply serious tone. "But this just might be the weirdest..."
"Even weirder than when you and I switched bodies, KP?" asked Ron, as Kali let out a sharp, hissing laugh in reply. Ron cringed and sucked in his breath in response.
"Yeah, Ron" answered Kim, solemnly. "Even WEIRDER..."
But suddenly, Kim's face took on an expression of shocked realization as a sharp jolt ran through her whole body;
She was right. This was NOT happening. It was absolutely impossible.
"Okay, stop. Just STOP!" she thought to herself. "What on EARTH am I even thinking?"
Kim then turned to face Kali, who stood with her slender, shapely arms crossed, her head cocked slightly to the side with a look of droll amusement on her pallid face.
Kim spied the oddly prominent teeth protruding over Kali's ruby lips, and then with a humorous smile, Kim let out a snort. And then a sigh. And then she began to laugh wildly.
"Kiiiiiiiiiim, what's so funny?" protested Ron, worried that his girlfriend had finally cracked after all of the night's outlandishness.
"I DO believe that our dear Miss Possible has gone quite mad!" said Kali as she grimaced like a shark. "How very tragic..."
"Oh, this is just TOO MUCH!" laughed Kim with a dismissive wave of her hand, as Tim and Jim stood on, looking horrified. "Ha ha haaaa, seriously, I CANNOT believe I almost fell for this!" she cried. "Nice fangs, KUH-LEEEEEE! You must shop at the same Halloween store as my dad, because he also wears a pair of those things when he dresses up like Dracula for the haunted house fundraiser!"
"Do tell..." whispered Kali.
"KP, I, uh..." wailed Ron as he broke out in a cold sweat, "I...think that this nice lady is the, ummmmm...real deal..."
"Oh come on, Ron!" laughed Kim, now discarding her earlier fears and firmly believing that they were only dealing with some mutated, laboratory-engineered amazon woman with bizarre, unusual features. For all SHE knew, Kali could have been a (successful) project of DNAmy's that had gone rogue, but still, only the product of mad science - NOT the supernatural. "You honestly expect me to believe that this she-hulk with skin like Drakken, eyes like Gill, and chompers like a barracuda, is an honest-to-goodness, real-life vamp-...w-wait...what the hell?!"
To her shock, Kim found that she was now, unbelievably, hovering several inches from the floor, and rising higher into the air. And so was Ron. And so were Tim and Jim.
"AHHHHHHHHH!" cried the twins as they thrashed their arms and legs about helplessly in midair, getting nowhere fast. "KIIIIIIM, HEEEEEELLLP UUUUUUUUUSSSS!" screamed Ron as he comically hovered upside-down, rising higher and higher towards the ceiling. The four of them looked like frantic astronauts on a space station with zero gravity to keep their bodies stable and grounded.
Kali's cold, cruel laughter echoed up and down the hall as the foursome struggled wildly, looking (to her) like bugs impaled on pins.
"Am I mistaken...or is something wrong?" she teased.
"Okay, okay, everyone just CALM DOWN!" shouted Kim, though she herself was just as afraid as she flailed and struggled powerlessly. "I'm...I'm SURE that there's a logical explanation for all of this...at least there'd BETTER be...wha-what?...AHHHHHH!"
Now, as if the four of them were caught hopelessly in some kind of a powerful, mystical tractor beam, they were all slowly being drawn in closer towards the grinning Kali, who was motioning a beckoning gesture with her claw-like fingers until they were all helplessly hovering (and shouting hysterically) in a semicircle before the strange woman, her sinister peals of laughter chilling their blood into glacial rivulets.
"What a pretty little game this is!" laughed Kali, as Ron looked just about ready to wet his pants with terror. Kim had seen that look on Ron's face before, and she knew what was coming.
"Ron, pretty please, just HOLD IT IN!" Kim shouted. "You promised that it would NEVER happen again!"
"H-HEY!" cried Ron, now turning angry and embarrassed as his face blushed bright red. "KP, you PROMISED that we would never speak of...that...again!"
"Speak of what?" yelled Tim, looking as though he was treading water in empty space.
"Did you make lemonade in your pants or something?" asked Jim, having floated so high he was nearly touching the ceiling.
"Hey, I bought you guys dinner, and this is how you repay me?!?" shouted Ron, his face now nearly purple with humiliation. "I only had a little accident that one time at the Middleton Zoo's primate exhibit...JUST THAT ONE TIIIIIIIIIME!-"
Without warning, Kali's eyes flashed like a blood-red strobe light and her levitation spell ceased, dropping the four of them to the floor in a chorus of shrill cries as their bodies loudly thumped against the thickly carpeted walkway.
Kim, Ron, Tim and Jim winced and groaned in a tangled heap on the floor as Kali towered menacingly over them, her face absolutely alight with vile pleasure.
"I...I don't believe this!..." muttered Kim, face-down in the carpet, her logical faculties beginning to weaken. "I...just...can't believe it..."
"Well, Miss Possible" spoke Kali in a silky-smooth register, "do you believe it now?"
"Ready or not, here I come, you IDIOT!" snapped Bonnie as she just roared into Brick Flagg's driveway with Lonnie's car, the tires screeching to a halt as she came just inches from crashing through his garage door.
She killed the car, yanked the keys from the ignition and jumped from the vehicle, not even bothering to shut the door as she stalked her way up the mist-shrouded concrete path to the house's front porch. She abruptly turned the corner of the brick pillar emblazoned with the gold brass digits of the house's address and marched towards the front door, suddenly noticing, with a jolt of surprise, that it had been left wide open.
She stopped cold in her tracks, an unexpected, frosty wave of fear washing over her and leaving her numb.
The heavy wooden door was gently swinging back and forth in the foggy air with ominous, wailing creaks, like the opening scene from a cheesy 'haunted house' movie, only now, in real-life, there was honestly nothing cheesy about it. Even though she had been to Brick's house many times before, she now suddenly had absolutely NO desire to enter inside, getting the impression that something...terrible...had just taken place here.
She now wished that she had never left home. Especially on a night as weird as this one.
"Fuh-REAK SHOW!" she sputtered, still snarky in spite of her alarm and unease as she tottered backwards, suddenly feeling some strange object crinkling beneath her sandaled left foot.
"Huh?" she asked to no one particular, hesitantly looking downwards and slowly moving her foot to the side, scared to see what exactly she had just stepped on.
It was only a blank, wrinkled scrap of paper.
Reaching down with a sour expression and gingerly picking it up (as if it might suddenly grow teeth and bite), she carefully turned it over and noticed writing on the opposite side, scrawled messily with a black marker and heavily smeared from all of the moisture in the air:
BRICK DANGER TONIGHT
"Brick...danger...tonight...?" she repeated out loud, staring blankly at the three forbidding words.
Out of nowhere, she felt very cold. And not just from the weather.
"Like...what...is...happening?"
She felt an impending sense of danger and doom crowding in on all sides as she staggered another two steps backwards. *CREAK*...*CREAK*...*CREAK*... went the front door, still slowly swinging back and forth, as if it were somehow gleefully gesturing her to come inside.
And die.
"I am so out of here..." she snapped, breathlessly, as she scrambled back to the car, her driver's side door also swinging ominously in the night wind.