Life got in the way of delivering this chapter on time, in the form of lots going on at work. Let's see how Kim and Ron deal with theirs...
Chapter 14 - A View to a Kill
For the second day in a row, Ron woke up far too early, way earlier than the 'early start' he'd wanted. For the second day in a row, he found Kim close enough to him that he might do something stupid.
Like getting a bit too into it when your friend kissed you to distract those goons…
It wasn't like he had feelings for Kim like that, it was just the hormones or something. What guy would be unaffected by a gorgeous babe throwing herself at him?
Hold it, Stoppable, that's no way of describing your best friend, don't disrespect her like that! What are you, Motor Ed?
It was a shame she was already so busy, with a performance like the one she'd given the day before, she'd kill at the drama club. Ron would have believed that the 'fireworks', to borrow her words, were real, if he didn't know better.
Figuring that sleep would not come again easily, Ron carefully moved Kim's arm so that he could get up. After a trip to the bathroom, he sat on the chair by the window, hoping for some sort of clarity. As the minutes passed, he was no closer to what he'd hoped to find. He was interrupted by moving lights outside, his eyes needed a moment to refocus on what was happening on the other side of the window.
He had a good view of the main road that led both to the chemical plant and the airport, which still managed to have little traffic so early in the morning. At least until a substantial police convoy made its way down the road, in the direction of the plant. Patrol cars, riot control vans, armored vehicles that put some military equipment to shame – something big was going down. Too big to be a coincidence. Too big to not wake Kim.
"KP, wake up," he said as he nudged her. However, instead of waking up, she grabbed his arm and pulled him towards her, dragging him onto the bed – and on top of her. "Ahh, KP, I know you want to sleep, but we may have a problem," he said as he made his way out of his embarrassing position.
Kim was slowly waking up, "What? What time is it?"
Luckily, Ron had managed to get into a much less awkward position. "It's… Uh… Early. But that's not the point, I just saw two dozen police vehicles drive by and they were not rehearsing a parade."
"Wait, are you saying…"
"The chemical plant!" They both said simultaneously.
"Jinx, you owe me a soda!" Kim immediately announced.
"Aww, man," Ron groaned, "not even when you're half asleep…"
Kim reached for her nightstand to grab the Kimmunicator and placed a call, which was answered by Crash Cranston.
"Hey, you guys are up early, what's up?"
"Ron just spotted a large police operation headed in the direction of the chemical plant," Kim answered.
"You sure? We haven't exactly called the cops… Not yet, anyway.
"Yeah, they drove by not five minutes ago," Ron confirmed. "Ten vans, about as many patrol cars, a few armored vehicles… They weren't fooling around, and they were headed in the direction of the plant."
"It would be far too coincidental for them to be going anywhere else," Kim added. "Maybe Dementor called the cops, he didn't exactly sound happy, yesterday."
"Not sure he's really a 'call the cops' kind of guy," Ron said, "I mean, he's gotta be wanted by someone, right?"
"Well, I'll see what we can figure out. In the meantime, Wade got some interesting info about your mystery man. His contact's contacts identified him as Dmitry Utkin."
"Never heard of him," Ron quickly answered. Kim's silence signaled her agreement.
"He's nominally russian military, which doesn't tell us much. But there's a guy in Vienna who can get us his file – the catch is that you'll have to pick it up yourselves. GJ really wants to have a look at it."
"So we're going to Vienna?" Kim asked.
"And then on to Strasbourg. Wade's been mining GECC's network for anything that might interest us, and he found a few scans of shipping manifests for synthogoo in some guy's home directory, which had additional pages that didn't make it onto the 'official' records and just so happened to show that a few barrels had been shipped via a foam factory near Strasbourg."
"Foam factory?" Ron inquired skeptically.
"You know, car seats, pillows, mattresses, that sort of thing," Crash answered.
"Perfect for disguising a synthogoo production line…" Kim noted.
"So was the last chemical plant, but that turned out to be a big pile of trouble for very little gain," Ron pointed out.
"Well, they've gotta be making it somewhere… Tickets and hotel all as usual?"
"Yeah, your flight leaves at noon. Since you're just picking up the file, we've also booked the flight out of Vienna, that's at 23:05, which should leave you plenty of time to kill in the meantime."
"Sounds good, Crash. We'll be in touch later," Kim said to end the call. She looked around the room and towards the window. "What time is it?"
Ron picked up his watch, "Uhh, 05:33 AM."
"Seriously, Ron, since when do you wake up so early? The sun's not even close to being up yet."
"I was, you know, thinking about… Uh, things."
Kim raised an eyebrow, "Things?"
Ron hesitated for a moment, giving Kim an opening to pull out the big guns. From the beginning of her movement, he knew he had no chance of resisting the Puppy Dog Pout that was forming in front of him.
"Okay, fine, you win, KP. I woke up because I'm used to having space to move around in my sleep and you sorta left me with very little left…"
Kim was startled, "Oh, snap, I did it again!?" She was blushing quite visibly.
"Yeah. Like, it's no big, beats the couch any day…" With the awkwardness rising to dangerous levels, Ron felt the need to bring things back down to Earth. "So, breakfast opens at six, right?"
"Breakfast? Oh, yeah, I think so…" Kim answered.
Though Ron would've preferred a few more hours of sleep, an early breakfast would have to do instead. He and Kim were the first guests at breakfast, and only a handful of others showed up, allowing Ron to fully take in the menu on offer and even give Rufus the opportunity of picking his breakfast.
"You know, KP," Ron said after his third trip to the buffet tables, "this whole getting up early thing has its advantages…" He yawned as Rufus emerged from his pocket to devour yet more food. "I could almost do this regularly, not having to queue up for orange juice, not wondering whether anyone's sneezed on the bread, having first pick of the muffins…"
"Emphasis on the 'almost'," she quipped.
"Yeah, well, staying in bed has other advantages…" Realizing the minefield he was setting himself up to enter, Ron quickly changed the subject, "Say, you think the big police convoy would have ended up on the news yet?"
"Won't hurt to check once you guys are done. I finished my breakfast ten minutes ago…"
"Whaddya say Rufus, you ready to go?"
The naked mole rat was lying on his back next to Ron's plate and just raised his hand and made the thumbs up gesture.
"In that case, let's roll," Kim said.
Back in their room, the two teens sat down on the bed and Ron checked the various channels for any relevant news, occasionally stopping for a few seconds, but never seeing anything obviously relevant. He kept going as content looked increasingly less relevant.
"Ron, I think that's it, all the news channels were twenty channels ago and I don't think the infomercial channels are going to do us much good."
"But look at that vacuum, it's holding up a bowling ball! Who knows what other miracle products TV has to offer us?"
He changed to the next channel and the cheesy ads were replaced with a cheesy German porno. Ron froze just long enough for Kim to get annoyed.
"Gimme that," she said as she took over the remote and turned off the TV.
"Uh, sorry about that, KP, I kinda short-circuited there for a moment."
"I noticed," Kim replied.
Fortunately for Ron, the awkward moment was soon swept aside as the preparations for their onward travel took precedence, getting to Vienna was supposed to be easy and uneventful, but a pebble did work its way into the metaphorical shoe.
"It's sick and wrong, KP!"
"Amp down Ron," Kim answered. "It's not like this is going to be our last opportunity for Bueno Nacho before we get home."
They were standing in front of what was supposed to be one of two Bueno Nacho restaurants at Munich airport, which was apparently closed for renovations.
"You don't get it, KP, it's a bad omen! Bad things happen when we don't go to Bueno Nacho."
"Bad things happen when we do go to Bueno Nacho, too, you know."
"Maybe so," Ron said, "but you can't deny –" In theatrically waving his arm around, Ron accidentally hit a man who was walking by, carrying a large cup of coffee. "Oops, sorry about that, you okay?"
The man grumbled incomprehensibly and walked on.
"See what I mean, KP? Bueno Nacho is closed and I almost ruin a guy's shirt by spilling his coffee as he walks by."
"Huh," Kim said, "I think I saw him at our hotel, at breakfast."
"I guess there was a guy with a green shirt at breakfast," Ron answered, "but I can't say I paid much attention."
"Well, let's go see what we're going to do about lunch, we've got at least an hour before they start boarding…"
After surveying the available options, Kim and Ron ended up settling on a sandwich place close to their expected gate as the least stressful option. The flight itself was another boring hour or so, but largely unremarkable. As this time they were sharing their row of three seats with an older woman, they avoided any discussion of more sensitive topics.
After arriving in Vienna, they found a quiet corner to call home, their call was answered by Wade.
"Hey guys."
"Hey Wade," Kim replied. "Didn't expect you to be up so early."
"And miss even more action?" He answered between slurps of his giant drink. "There's news of the raid, apparently the cops had been investigating the biker gang for typical biker gang things – running a protection racket, drug dealing, you name it. Looks like they got more than they'd bargained for in the process."
"Good thing they never managed to ID us, I really would not want to have a target painted on my back," Ron commented.
"What about your contact, Wade?" Kim queried, "What's the sitch?"
"He'll meet you at a café, I've sent you the address. He says he'll be the guy reading a newspaper."
"That's all?" Kim asked skeptically.
"That's all. But don't worry, he's a pro, real reliable."
"I guess we'll have to take your word for it," Ron said.
Kim continued, "What can you tell us about our next flight?"
"I've arranged for you to drop off your bags early so that you don't have to carry them around, just tell the check-in person you're on the flight to Basel."
"Uh, Wade," Ron interjected, "I might have barely scraped by in Geography class, but isn't that in a different country?"
"Yes and no," Wade answered. "Basel is in Switzerland, but Basel airport is in France. Just be sure to exit through the door on the French side of the airport."
"Why don't we just fly to Strasbourg?" Ron insisted, feeling that Wade was making things more complicated for the sake of flexing his travel agent skills.
"There are actually very few flights to Strasbourg, this is the best I could do commercially. Of course, if you weren't undercover, we could probably cash in a favor to get you there directly."
"Fair enough, Wade. We'll let you know once we have the file," Kim said to close out the call.
The two teens dropped off their luggage and took a cab to the address Wade had provided. From the outside, it looked like a normal café, like a dozen others they'd seen on this mission as well as previous visits to Europe. They walked into the establishment and were immediately assaulted by the cigarette smoke that permeated the room. They looked around and saw what looked like relatively normal clientele, among them a single man reading a newspaper, in the corner of the room.
"I guess the odds were higher than we expected," Kim commented. Obviously, Wade's contact had set things up to be easily identifiable. They slowly walked between the tables and towards the corner. "Mind if we take a seat?" Kim asked.
"Please do," the man said. Immediately after they sat down, he continued, "Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable…"
Kim and Ron looked at each other, their cover was completely blown.
"Not the kind of people who typically come to me looking for information. I have to admit that I'm rather curious to learn how exactly you crossed paths with scum like Uktin. He's a small-time operative who thinks of himself as a brilliant strategist, last I heard they had him going around stirring up trouble in places like Moldova and Ukraine."
"How did you know who we are?" Kim asked.
"You don't survive long in my line of work by not knowing whom you're dealing with. Don't worry, you did a decent job, your cover will probably hold up to casual scrutiny. So, tell me, where did you run into this guy?"
Ron could not place the man's accent. His English was fluent, no doubt about it, but it sounded odd. Some words sounded British, others American, and once or twice he sounded eastern European.
"Munich," Kim replied hesitantly.
"Typical, that arrogant son of a bitch is going to find himself on the receiving end of an artillery barrage one of these days – if he doesn't 'accidentally' fall out of a window or die in a 'mysterious' plane crash first. Let me guess, riling up the local neo-nazis?"
"Sort of, he seemed to be dealing through a biker gang, and he was selling – or trying to sell experimental robotics components."
The man lowered his newspaper for the first time, revealing that his face looked younger than the grey hair suggested. "Robotics?" He asked.
"Soft-skinned, fluid-filled autonomous drones. Synthodrones, we call them," Kim answered.
"That idea? There was a soviet lab researching it in the 80s, the whole thing went nowhere because the concept just didn't work in practice, any damage was fatal, so why bother? The alternative was to armor the skin, which rendered them nearly immobile, so the concept was shelved sometime before the GDR collapsed in '89."
"Well, as it turns out, with the skillset of a university drop-out who's been working on robotics for the better part of two decades, you can almost make them convincingly human," Ron said.
Kim added, "Doctor Drakken bought a bunch of the stuff and using it as part of his latest ferociously whack plan for world domination."
"And I take it that Betty's the one who's been keeping it quiet," the man suggested.
Kim and Ron again looked at each other before he continued.
"Your association with Global Justice is hardly a secret, Miss Possible. Give her my regards when you see her." He took a pair of CD sleeves out of his jacket's pocket, put them on the table, slid them over, and again raised his newspaper. "By the way, if I know you're here, others might as well. Watch your backs."
I try to avoid recommending unfinished stories that have been abandoned for years. Well, today I'm going to open an exception, because out of the blue yvj reappeared to update A Lot Like Love, an AU story where both Kim and Ron carry substantial emotional baggage and first meet in college (technically on their way to college, but they're not properly introduced at that time and will meet again a year or two later). Don't call it a comeback it, but that's no reason to miss out on it.