Welcome back everyone! The undercover mission starts next week, but first Kim and Ron need to prepare. Big thanks again to everyone who's following along, reading and reviewing.
Chapter 6 - More Than a Feeling
"Newlyweds!?" Kim almost dropped the stack of clothes she was putting away in response to Ron's statement.
"Don't blame me for this one, KP, I'm just relaying the cover story."
Ron had a few choice words for whoever at Global Justice had set up their fake identities and decided that a couple doing a European trip as a honeymoon was the perfect story. The documents and other materials had been sent to Wade, and, in hindsight, his evasive answers and insistence on having Ron receive them all before Kim did made more sense – and put a few holes in the "you need time to prepare makeup and stuff" version of the story. In any case, Ron was the one left holding the hot potato after hand-delivering it to Kim's room. It did at least help that he knew that Kim's anger wasn't directed at him.
"And I take it that it's way too late to change any of it?" She asked with deep frustration.
"Already asked Wade, he said it was out of his hands. But he did point out that the cover identities are solid!"
Kim let out a resigned sigh, "If this was the good news, what's the bad news? I'm so not seeing how it gets worse."
Ron hesitated, trying to choose his words carefully. "Well, we're kinda going to have to share a room…" Kim's eyes widened as she became consciously aware of some of the cover story's implications. "Newlyweds don't typically book separate rooms."
Kim sat on her bed and exhaled theatrically, then said, "So not the drama. It's inconvenient, but we'll manage. It's not like we haven't done that before."
Kim's reaction surprised him. Though she was right, he'd counted on a stronger negative reaction, in light of recent events.
"Well, uh… Anyway, I think this might be my fault…"
"Really…" Kim narrowed her eyes and stared at Ron, "And just what did you do to make you think that?"
"Remember when I asked Betty about credit cards for our hotel rooms – plural – and the rent-a-car? I think she got cold feet about how deep we'd be able to dig into her slush fund."
"But they waste millions on useless tube networks! What's another hotel room in the grand scheme of things?"
"Kim, Kim, Kim… That's construction work, there's a contract, there's a thing at the end they can wave in front of the tax man. We don't have that luxury, we're basically spies, they can't acknowledge our expenses. And even if they could, they would lead straight back to GJ and blow our cover! No, I'm afraid our lines of credit need to be carefully set up to look as normal as one would expect from a couple of 20-somethings. I have Rufus doing research on what, exactly, 20-somethings spend their money on."
Rufus gave his equivalent of a thumbs up from behind a copy of The Examiner that he had propped up against a pile of books on Kim's desk.
"I'm not entirely convinced his line of research is going to bear fruit," Ron whispered to Kim.
Kim gave him a funny look. She'd raised her eyebrow, but she was smirking.
"Something wrong, KP?"
"I was just wondering… When did you get good with money?"
"Yeah, losing 99 million bucks will do that to you. Would not recommend, zero out of ten points for that experience," he answered.
"How did you lose all the money? You couldn't have been carrying it all, it would weigh a ton."
"Almost a metric ton, yeah, 990 kilograms or whatever that was in pounds. The answer is bearer bonds," he answered with a tinge of regret in his voice.
"Woah, bearer bonds? Did you never watch Die Hard? The bad guys try to steal millions in bearer bonds because they're untraceable!"
"Nope. Remember, no cable until recently. Besides, Christmas is already packed with Snowman Hank, there's no room in my life for another Christmas movie…" Ron paused, the memory of Snowman Hank's cancellation surfaced and soured his mood. "Or I guess there is now, since they cancelled it…"
Kim motioned for Ron to sit down next to her. "Still no luck finding the DVD?" She asked after he did so.
"I did find a scalper who wanted 60 bucks for one. Rufus practically fainted when I put it in terms of how many Nacos we could buy for that much cash."
The naked mole rat poked his head out from behind the newspaper again and nodded and chittered something like "too many".
"Maybe with the demand for Snowman Hank now clear for the suits to see, I can try starting a petition. Think they'll let me get Drakken's signature in jail?"
"We can always try," Kim replied.
"I guess I need to start working on plan B in case it stays cancelled."
"Don't worry about it, Ron. A certain someone once said about Christmas, 'It's a warm and fuzzy feeling'…"
"…'that begins with you and me,'" Ron concluded. "Thanks, KP. As always, Snowman Hank is right." In more ways than one…
Kim looked a bit nervous, which Ron attributed to the upcoming mission. He'd gotten sidetracked and forgotten his stated reason for visiting, but she soon reminded him.
"You said you had our disguises ready?"
"Sure do, KP, and we can start with yours. Here's your ID…"
"Kim Parker?"
"There was no way I was going to be able to avoid calling you 'KP' for several days straight, so I asked Wade to choose something that started with a 'P'."
"So I take it you're Ron Parker?" Before Ron could answer, Kim interrupted herself, "Oh. My. God. I look like Shego in this picture!"
Between Wade and whoever produced cover identities at Global Justice, the decision had been made that Kim Parker should have jet black hair. Not that Ron could argue with the need to change the look of Kim's hair, the last thing the mission needed was a glorious red beacon that practically shouted 'hey, isn't that Kim Possible?'
"Hey, could be a lot worse. At least Shego's not entirely without merit…" In response to Kim's skeptical look, he added, "Hey, it's not like I'm going to say that to her face, I don't feel like dying."
Kim still seemed unconvinced. "Yeah, nothing like that healthy shade of green to make your skin look good."
She does a pretty convincing fake-jealous look, Ron thought of his friend. "Not to worry, KP, your hair's the only thing changing color. I got you this new hair dye stuff they have at Smarty Mart," he said as he retrieved a box from his backpack, "it's guaranteed not to wash off unless you use their remover gel thingy."
"I'm so not looking forward to explaining this to Mom and Dad." She examined the package Ron had handed her. "No animal testing was used to develop this product, that's more than I expected from Smarty Mart."
"Smarty Mart is all about quality! That's why most of their products carry the Smarty Mart Seal of Quality, Trademark Sign, which certifies that only the finest products are contained in packages that bear it."
"Why did you read the 'Trademark Sign' bit?"
"It's actually part of the name." He pointed at the corner of the rear label, "Someone messed up and designed the logo with the words 'Trademark Sign', and by the time anyone noticed, a million packages had already been printed, so it kinda stuck."
"But what does that say about their quality control?"
"It was checked by tons of people, they all just assumed it wouldn't be printed like that. It's kinda like what happened last semester, when the student council president got conned by his PR guy." Under pressure to publish a mission statement, the president, his vice-president, the school's liaison to student council, the principal and even Barkin all proofread the text and every one of them missed the promise of jousting tournaments at school. "That was still up as of two days ago, by the way."
"Hey, what about you, you're not going to tell me that you're just going to wing it… What kind of fashion disasters does GJ have in store for you?"
"Well, I mostly need to look older – advantages of nobody remembering me, I guess… So I have to let my beard grow for like a week and carefully trim it so that it looks a day or two old."
"Wait a minute, but if we're leaving in three days…" Kim took a closer look at Ron's face and seemed to notice he was indeed trying to grow his beard – with less success than would be ideal. He expected her to comment on it after a few seconds, but instead Kim surprised him by reaching out and running the back of her hand over his face, leaving him momentarily speechless – any words he could come up with would only make things more awkweird. And a not-insignificant part of him did not want the moment to end.
"It's, uh, coming along," Kim said in conclusion to her inspection. "To be honest, I'm really curious now to see how it looks on you."
"Well, I still have a few days, and I guess it's not the end of the world if it's not quite there. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, go dye your hair and we can talk makeup."
"No offense, Ron, but that feels more like Monique's department."
"Monique's great at making you look good, but what we need is for you to look like the picture on your ID."
Kim hesitated for an instant, then said, "And who put you in charge of all this?"
"You did. Quote: 'Next time I need a wig, I'll leave you in charge of it.' End quote."
"I… I did say that, but this is not a wig, you want me to go color my hair!"
"I can get you a wig, but you'd have to wear it basically all day, every day, for several days straight. And it would probably need to be glued down. Doesn't sound fun to me, but it's your call."
"I'll take my chances. I'm not going to show up at school with black hair, Bonnie would have a field day."
"You worry too much about what Bonnie thinks, KP, but again, your choice," Ron said, reaching again for his backpack. He retrieved from it a black wig that was miles ahead of the thing Kim had worn at the Bermuda Triangle. "Go sit on the chair, it's time to fit this thing and see what else we need to fix."
Kim, did as instructed, and said, "Wait, if you already bought the wig, why were you pushing for the hair dye?"
"I wasn't kidding about the wig being a lot trickier to deal with, especially since cutting your hair is out of the question…"
Kim looked back at Ron in the mirror with utter shock at the mere suggestion.
"And, FYI, I made this myself, got everything on sale at Smarty Mart before they cleared aisle 23 to make room for the new location of their prosthetics department, next to the power tools in 25. Saved six bucks twenty over buying one!"
"And how long did you spend on putting this one together?" She asked, as Ron made adjustments.
"Probably twelve man-hours plus six or seven naked-mole-rat-hours."
"You totally could have mowed lawns or something and earned more than that in the twelve hours you wasted."
"Ah, but the results would have been much worse…"
"Have to give you that one, Ron, this is looking pretty realistic."
"…and besides, I wouldn't have this pleasure." He saw Kim raise her eyebrow at his words and raced to find the right words, "Pleasure of a job well done! You know, of making things! With my hands!"
"That's typically how one makes things, yes…"
"Alright, I think I'm done…" Ron was satisfied, and Kim seemed at least reasonably convinced – but a third opinion was necessary. "Hey Rufus, buddy, drop that for a minute and have a look at this."
Rufus popped his head back out from behind the newspaper and seemed to recoil in fear, saying "Shego!"
"So not helping, Rufus," Kim said.
"Don't worry, I'm pretty sure he's just doing that to mess with me. Should we get the 'rents' seal of approval?"
"Fine, but you have to scout ahead and make sure the Tweebs are not lurking, waiting with their cameras at the ready to catch me in my worst moments."
"So not the drama, KP, they're busy with their rocket fuel experiments…"
As I promised when the story kicked off, a few words about Michael Howard's Undercover. There's something of a superficial similarity and I fully acknowledge it - Undercover is what first had me thinking that an extended undercover mission around the time of So The Drama could be interesting. Other than exploring what is going on between Kim and Ron at the end of Season 3, that's pretty much where similarities end.
That's my reading recommendation for this week, by the way. I'm still not sure I really understand what happened towards the end, but I did enjoy reading it.