Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable, Rufus, Wade Load, Drakken, Shego, Felix Renton, and Monique are characters from the Kim Possible show, created by Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, owned and copyright © by the Walt Disney Company. The story takes place during Spring vacation of Kim and Ron’s sophomore year of college, nearly three years after “So the Drama,” and very shortly after my earlier story, “Hotel Tropica.” This story © 2006 by cloudmonet.
A pale-skinned, very pregnant black haired woman reclined on a padded lounge chair by the resort hotel’s swimming pool. Her one piece bathing suit was green and black. She dangled her right arm near the ground, offering a small slice of mango to the four foot long green iguana hesitantly approaching from the garden. She waved at the red-haired woman in a turquoise bikini walking toward the pool. The iguana took the piece of fruit and shuffled back under the foliage.
The red-haired woman climbed the diving board, jumped off the end, did a complicated jackknife and tumble on the way down, and splashed into the water as smoothly as a dolphin. After swimming a couple of laps, she got out and plopped down on the lounge chair next to the first woman.
“Hey, Kim,” the black-haired woman said.
“Hey, Sheila,” Kim replied.
“Hubby still mired in his history paper?”
“It was almost finished, too, but we lost Ron’s laptop at the other hotel. We had it backed up to the kimmunicator’s hard drive, but we lost that, too.”
“You got away alive.”
“That was a harsh lesson about being prepared,” said Kim. “I helped Ron recover as much of his paper as I could remember.”
“Not the way you wanted to spend your honeymoon, chillin’ by the pool with Sheila.”
“I don’t mind. The shopping trip was fun. And don’t worry, I’m getting plenty of honey. How’s the baby today?”
“Alicia’s being mellow,” Sheila said, resting her hands on her swollen belly.
“And she’s due— June?”
“We figure about June 15th. You will come visit, won’t you?”
“I hope.”
“Oh, look, Lizzie’s coming back.” Sheila dangled another piece of fruit and smiled at the approaching iguana. “Isn’t she so pretty, all green and black?”
The iguana bumped Sheila’s hand and caught the piece before it hit the ground.
“You’re so pale,” said Kim. “What kind of sunscreen you use, number forty?”
“When I lie in the sun, I bleach,” Sheila said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. I go from pale green to alabaster white. You tan pretty well for a redhead.”
“Guess I’ve got my mom’s hair but my dad’s skin. Isn’t that a male iguana? It’s so big.”
“Jack says Lizzie’s a ‘beautiful little sheila,’ just like me, and Jack’s the reptile guy. He should know.”
“Does Jack know anything about your past?”
“He still thinks Drake and I are retired secret agents, and doesn’t ask questions,” Sheila said, taking a sip of iced tea. “Better to keep it that way.”
“Yeah.”
“I got plans, though, after Alicia’s born. I’m gonna do the hero thing again.”
“Really?”
“The action in the Hindu Kush inspired me. Wish I could’ve fought better, but Alicia was kicking and fussing inside. She hurt me more than the terrorists. But more than that, you inspire me.”
“Me?”
“Seriously, Kim, you’re my hero,” Sheila said, dropping her voice, though no one else was nearby. “When I was sick, pregnant, and helpless, you not only brought me a doctor, but found one who wouldn’t turn me over to the authorities. Remember what you said to me that day? ‘One way or another, your evil career is over.’ You changed my life. I knew, no matter where I went in the world, no matter what I tried, you’d find me, and if you didn’t like what I was doing, you’d stop me, and I’d be back in the Shego cell, and never get out again.”
“So they really can keep you prisoner.”
“Remember when you used to grab something shiny like a hubcap to bounce my plasma back at me? That’s how the Shego cell works. It’s got stainless steel walls, floor, ceiling, all polished like mirrors. My plasma blasts bounced back at me. You know what really freaked me out? Everywhere I looked, I saw reflections of myself all disheveled and haggard. The worst part was watching myself use the toilet. This was so not my teenage Goth girl dream of glamorous evil. And then they gave us another trial. We were already sentenced to 167 years. What did they want? It was stupid. We could bust out of a courthouse.”
“You were already changing for the better by the time I found you, or I wouldn’t have given you a chance.”
“You know Drake and I got married on Perkins’ advice, right? Not that we’d never, you know, before, sometimes, but we were all cynical and tough about it. Now we were alone in the middle of the rain forest, with nothing to do, and nominally married. We played house. We fell in love. Funny thing about birth-control stuff that’s been in a cave for five years— it doesn’t work too well. But it’s all good. I’m glad I’m a mom.”
The big female iguana butted Sheila’s thigh.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Lizzie,” she said gently, and cut a another slice of mango for her. “I guess I shouldn’t be feeding her, but she’s so adorable. I’m sorry, Kim, I’m so thoughtless. Would you like some mango, too?”
“Sure, thanks.”
A key slipped into the door lock. Ron was sitting on an uncomfortable desk chair, wearing a T-shirt and baggy shorts, staring at the jumble of paragraphs on the small screen of an old computer from the electronics shop in town. Rufus, his pet naked mole rat, was sitting on the desk next to the mouse pad, nibbling on some cheese-covered nachos.
“How’s Genghis Khan coming along?” Kim asked, walking into the room with a small Fed Ex package. “I was thinking about you, and thought I’d check in.”
“I’m hung up on the part where he defeats the friend who betrayed him. I know what it means in the tribal culture, but the way I had it written before— I just remember it being so much better.” Ron turned to look at Kim. “Um—”
“Is my bikini too distracting?” Kim asked with a smile, setting the package on the dresser. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” She walked over to Ron and rubbed his shoulders while they both read the screen.
“This one historian makes it sound like Temujin conquered the world because it was the only way he could protect his family,” Ron said. “But then, he didn’t really trust his family as much as he trusted his friends. I’m not so sympathetic. Lots of people with messed up lives don’t try to take over the world.”
“When you consider his time and culture—” Kim said.
“That doesn’t matter,” Ron said firmly. “You of all people should know this. See, historians admire people who try to conquer the world, up through Napoleon, anyway. They don’t like Hitler. I help you stop people who try to conquer the world, and I think it’s a mistake to admire any of these people. Sure, the end results of conquest, larger countries with well organized democratic governments, may mean freedom and safety for most people most places, but that doesn’t mean we have to admire how it happened.”
“Wow. You should write that down.”
If there was one thing Ron had learned about writing reports and papers, it was if Kim said, “Wow, write that down!” whatever he just said was probably the ticket to at least a B plus. “How’s that?” he asked, after typing.
“Don’t forget to save,” said Kim.
“Good idea,” he said, pressing Command-S. “This thing is really slow. So how’s the pool?”
“Got enough chlorine to make me turn green. I swam a few laps and sat with Sheila. We had a nice talk. She’s tamed this really big female iguana.”
“Yike!” squeaked Rufus, his eyes opening wide with alarm.
“Calm down, buddy, they’re vegetarians,” said Ron.
“This one likes mangos,” said Kim.
“What’s the Fed Ex package?”
“New kimmunicator, I think,” Kim replied, ripping it open and pulling out something wrapped in bubble wrap. “Yeah!” She said, peeling off the wrap and turning it on. “Wade!”
His underground lab with the big screen and server racks appeared on screen. He scooted his chair over to the camera. “Good news about Ron’s laptop,” he said. “It’s not in the hands of evil. It just got ripped off by a hotel maid. I think I persuaded her to return it, but it may be a couple weeks before you actually get it. Meanwhile, I copied all the data from it, including Ron’s term paper, which is now on this Kimmunicator’s hard drive.”
“Sweet!” said Kim.
“Of course I’d already changed all your security settings and passwords to make sure your accounts are safe.”
“You’ve got my paper here?” asked Ron. “Kim, plug it in!”
“Excuse us, Wade,” Kim said, and did just that.
In moments Kim and Ron had the two versions of Ron’s paper side by side and began combining them. A few minutes later, Ron pressed Command-S to save it, and copied the new file back to the kimmunicator.
“I still need to go over it one more time, and do the bibliography and all that good stuff, but what do you think?”
“I think it’s party time,” said Kim, clicking shut down on Ron’s computer menu and turning off the kimmunicator.
Kim sat in front of the mirror, wearing her bathrobe. She put a bit of foundation on her cheeks to mask the freckles that only Ron knew she still had. Then, a touch of purple on her eyelids, a bit of darkening to the eyebrows and eyelashes. Would eyeliner be overkill? she wondered. Maybe a thin line. Finally, the raspberry lip gloss.
Now to get dressed. She went to the closet, slipped off the robe, and pulled on her new little black dress, with the V-neck and spaghetti straps. She carefully pulled on her new Spanish lace pantyhose and slipped into her black Chinese shoes. Now it was down to either the pearls, or the abalone necklace Ron had given her for her birthday. As if everything she’d worn Wednesday night had become bad luck, she chose the abalone.
Dot dot dadot! Kim picked up her new kimmunicator.
“Hey, princess,” said Sheila. “Wow, you’re beautiful.”
“Thanks for talking me into buying this. You look nice, too.”
Sheila was wearing a new off-the shoulder green peasant blouse with darker green embroidery. “Are you kidding? I’m huge.”
“You’re expecting, you’re happy—”
“Course I’m happy. That’s why I called. Drake’s coming back from the field station. He should be here in about an hour. We can all go out together, if you’d like.”
“I guess so, sure.” She looked over at Ron, still dozed out on the bed.
“We’re going on a double date with Drakken and Shego,” Ron said as Kim straightened the knot on his tie. “That’s ironic, or weird, or something. Would you have ever thought this would happen someday?”
“Oh no,” Rufus seemed to say, pacing back and forth on the dressing table.
“Ron, please don’t use those names.” Kim said quietly. “Yeah, they’re probably safe here, and I don’t think anyone’s listening to us, but it’s just a good habit to always use Drake and Sheila, okay?”
“Sorry.”
“You’re right, though! It’s weird, but wonderful.”
Sheila knocked on the door. “Yo! Lovebirds! You ready to party down?” Ron opened the door. Sheila was wearing a full black skirt with her peasant blouse, and an emerald heart on a gold chain. Drake was wearing a black T-shirt with bluejeans.
“Did you ever think we’d be double dating with Miss All That and her buffoon?” he asked with a wink. “You do know I’m kidding, right?”
“That’s Mrs. Buffoon to you, Dr. Jones,” Kim replied, with a smile and her own wink. “So how’re the crocs?”
“I think we’re doing a show about black caimans and green iguanas,” said Drake. “There just aren’t any crocs on this part of the river. The iguanas are something else. Jack and I filmed one that had to be at least seven feet long. That’s not as big as it sounds, cause about half of him was tail, but still pretty big, and Kelly saw one that might have been even bigger, but it slipped into the foliage before we could film it.”
“Did Sheila tell you about Lizzie?” asked Kim.
“Oh, yeah, I already taped some clips of Sheila and Lizzie that are really cute.”
“Is Jack really using those on the show?” Sheila asked.
“He definitely wants them, especially now that we’re making iguanas a bigger part of the shoot.”
“Do you think I look okay? Seriously, I’m seven months pregnant, wearing a bathing suit, and sweet talking a big green lizard into taking pineapple slices.”
“If Drake did the filming, you’ll look great,” said Kim.
“Why’s that?”
“Cause you love him. The best pictures of me are the ones Ron took, or the ones when I’m right beside him.”
“So where we goin’?” asked Ron.
Drake parked his Range Rover in the gravel parking lot of Club Maria, from which they could hear a woman singing in Spanish over a hot rhythm section of acoustic guitars and percussion. The night was warm, with silvery clouds gleaming in the moonlight.
“Do we take the bag inside or leave it here?” Ron asked.
“Leave it here. I got the spray in my purse,” said Kim.
“Good girl.”
“Spray?” asked Drake.
“Antiexplosive foam,” Shego explained. “They had a really bad day and want to be prepared. Not that there’s ever much trouble in this town.”
They were in the middle of eating dinner when news of trouble came in the door, a panicked looking man talking excitedly in Spanish to some other men sitting at the bar.
“Can you understand what he’s saying?” Kim asked Sheila.
“Iguana mucho grande, cinco metres— very big iguana, five meters, in my garden, I shot it. The others think he’s had too much to drink.”
“Gonzales!” Kim said, and explained who he was to Drake and Sheila. “He made giant gila monsters with juiced-up lizard growth hormones. I’d better check this out.” She pulled Sheila over toward the agitated man.
“Pardon, señor,” Kim said. “Can you tell him I believe him, I’ve seen big lizards like this before?”
“Oy,” said Sheila. “That’s so not in the phrase book.”
“No problemo, señora,” said the man. “I speeg leetle beet Engless.”
“Yo soy Kim Possible. Can you show me el iguana mucho grande?”
“Soy José,” he replied, tapping his chest. “I show you heem.”
Drake drove his Range Rover on the bumpy dirt road, following the flickering tail lights of José’s rusted pickup truck, rattling through cattle ranches, fruit plantations, and stretches of jungle. “It’s my night off, and we’re heading back toward the research station,” he said.
“That’s interesting,” said Kim, pushing buttons on her kimmunicator. She and Ron had changed into their mission clothes. “Wade, status on Gonzales?”
“Gonzales?” asked Wade, typing at a keyboard in his bedroom. “He’s in prison awaiting trial, as far as I can tell. Immigration’s building a fairly complex case against him.”
“Has he ever been in Venezuela, at the Orinoco Wildlife Research Station?”
“Their records aren’t online,” said Wade. “It’s Friday night. I’m guessing I can’t reach them by phone till Monday. I’ll have to pull up all of Gonzales’ scholarly papers. This could take awhile. What’s the concern?”
“This man we’re following, José, thinks he shot a sixteen foot green iguana.”
“Sounds like Gonzales’ work. Was the iguana aggressive? They’re vegetarians, right?” Wade pulled up an encyclopedia page about green iguanas. “Yeah, vegetarians, and not very aggressive, beyond male/male rivalry for mates. If it was aggressive—”
“I don’t know about aggressive. I’ll ask José about this when we get there.”
“He’s turning into a drive,” said Drake.
The drive was an even bumpier side road about half a mile long. A hysterical woman with a shotgun came running out of the house toward José’s truck, shouting Spanish expletives.
“I, uh, think she’s complaining that we’re not the police,” said Sheila.
The four of them got out of the range rover and walked toward the arguing couple.
“He’s saying if he went to the police they’d arrest him for being drunk,” said Sheila.
“Yo soy Kim Possible. Where’s the big iguana?”
“I work for Crocodile Jack,” said Drake.
“Really?” asked José. “My family, we watch Crocodile Jack. You Drake? You mus’ be Drake! You look jus’ like heem.”
“Si. Es Drake,” said Sheila.
“Eunicia,” José said, erupting whole paragraphs of Spanish to his wife, including frequent mentions of “Crocodile Jack” and “Drake.”
“Ah, José, bueno, bueno,” she said with a big smile, and kissed him on the cheek, before offering her hand to Drake, and calling out her children to meet him.
“She feels better. Obviously people who work with Crocodile Jack know how to deal with stuff like this,” Sheila explained.
“Actually, calling in Jack is a good idea,” said Kim. “These people don’t believe shooting one giant iguana solved the problem.”
“They’re probably like bears rampaging through garbage,” said Ron. “They’re so big, they destroy stuff just by trying to get something to eat.”
“Come, come, Drake, Kim, I show you heem,” said José, carrying a big flashlight and leading them down a well-trodden trail.
A large animal growled at their approach. José raised his gun.
“Don’t shoot!” Kim exclaimed, crowding in front of José to see a full-grown female jaguar who’d been feeding on the giant lizard carcass.
A sizzle of green light struck the jaguar on the nose, and she yipped and leaped into the dark vegetation and continued running.
“You okay?” Kim asked Sheila, who hissed in pain and clutched her swollen belly.
“Ewww,” said Ron, looking at the torn-up carcass.
“Ron, hold this at the snout,” said Drake, giving him one end of a tape measure, and stepping over the lizard’s legs toward the tip of the tail. “Let’s call that 4.47 meters, or 14 feet, 8 inches. A bit smaller than José’s estimation.”
“The jaguar licked up most of the blood,” said Kim, cutting off a small bit of meat with a pocket knife and putting it on the kimmunicator’s analysis tray.
“Wade, I’m beaming spectra on a sample of meat. Any hormones or genetic anomalies?”
“In the absence of a sample from a normal iguana for comparison, I’m not sure, but I’m running a comparison to blood samples you took from the giant gila monsters at Desert Reptile World. I’m still trying to access some of Gonzales’ older papers. He has done work with green iguanas, but I can’t tell from the paper titles if his experimental animals came from Venezuela or a pet store. And he’s not the only mad scientist who could have done this.”
“Kim, I’m gonna get my radio tracker out of the Range Rover,” said Drake.
“You think the lizard has a beacon?”
“If it was my big lizard wandering free in the jungle, I’d put a beeper on it.”
“Makes sense,” said Kim. “If so, I think I can pick up the signal with the kimmunicator. Excuse me, Wade.” She aimed the kimmunicator at the lizard carcass, an oscilloscope trace appeared on the screen, and it began beeping. “Bingo.”
“Does our communicator do all that stuff, pick up radio signals, analyze samples?” Drake asked.
Sheila was pushing combinations of buttons, and got a long list of functions onscreen. “I got it, Dr. D,” she said, and now both devices were beeping.
“Wade,” said Kim. “Is this signal strong enough to pick up off a satellite?”
He started typing Unix code on one of his keyboards, and turned to look at one of the screens. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Wait a minute— no, sorry, you’ll have to scan for it from the ground.”
Drake and Sheila dropped Kim and Ron off at the Club Maria in time for the last dance, a long salsa jam way hotter than their current energy level, but they got up and danced, then walked the moonlit streets back to the hotel.
“Missions seem to find us wherever we go,” said Kim, smiling at Ron under a streetlight.
“I married adventure,” he replied. “Before that, I was engaged to adventure, I dated adventure, I was best friends with adventure. It’s not like I’m surprised or anything.”
“Not even by giant iguanas?”
“If you’re gonna do mad science in Venezuela, hey, why not?”
“You’re funny, and I love you,” said Kim, putting her arm around his waist.
Saturday morning, a camera crew followed Crocodile Jack through the Venezuelan rain forest near the Rio Orinoco. He was holding a radio tracker in his hand, attempting to lock on a signal. “The iguanas we’re looking for are tagged with radio beacons,” said Jack. “We’re following the signal through the rain forest. Holy moly! Would you have a look at this really big beauty.”
The camera aimed on a greenish gray lizard with traces of dark stripes on his tail on a big tree branch.
“Doesn’t look so remarkable, you say? Well look at him now!” said Jack, walking over toward the tree to give a sense of scale. “This big bloke’s thirteen feet long, more than twice the size and eight times the weight of what he should be.”
The big iguana watched Jack approach, coughed, and gaped to show the size of his jaws. “Whoa, big fella, calm down, I’m backing off.”
Jack faced one of the cameras, while the others took various closeups and wide shots of the lizard in the tree. “Poor bloke doesn’t really have a place in the world. Iguanas aren’t supposed to be so big they knock down banana plants, trash people’s gardens, and get shot for being grumpy. So why’s he so big? A physiologist did some experiments with growth hormones that he shouldn’t have done. Mad science, Kim calls it, and I think that’s a fair dinkem name for it.”
“Still, he’s a beautiful animal,” Crocodile Kate, Jack’s American wife, narrated. “It would be a shame to let him get shot by a farmer or killed by a jaguar. He wants to climb trees, but he’s too big to get very high. His instincts just don’t match his size. So the crew’s gonna try to capture him alive, but getting him out of the tree is gonna be tricky.”
The camera focused on Kim, wearing her black mission shirt, clicking her grappling hook gun to bring out the first hook.
She fired the grappling hook high into the tree above the big iguana and swung and winched herself up to a position between the trunk and his long tail.
“He’s resting on the massive branch, facing away from the center of the tree,” Kate narrated. “Getting him down safely means getting him turned around.”
Holding onto the grappling hook gun with her right hand, and a mango with her left, Kim nudged the massive tail with her foot, then again, harder, then finally gave the tail a good kick. She tried to winch herself up out of the way of the tail lash, but got whacked on the side of her hip and dropped the mango. Now dangling midway between the branch and the ground, Kim released the line and dropped.
“I’m okay!” she said. “But that was like kicking a log and being hit like a baseball.”
Meanwhile, Ron was swinging up into the tree, parallel to the lizard’s branch. He swung back and forth, holding his mango not far from the lizard’s snout at one end of the swing. The problem was Ron started spinning, and trying to throw the mango at the iguana’s gaping mouth only made matters worse. Ron winched himself higher into the tree, out of reach, and managed to steady himself by grabbing at some small branches and leaves before grasping onto a bigger one.
The lizard looked nervous or irritated now, moving his shovel-sized head back and forth to look at his human tormentors.
Kim fired another grappling hook into the tree and this time winched herself onto the branch about a body length in front of the lizard. Though the branch was more than big enough to support the lizard’s weight, it wasn’t big enough to run on.
Ron, meanwhile, was behind the iguana, with his grappling hook line fastened to an overhead branch, ready to swing over and rescue Kim should this be necessary.
Kim released her own line and inched closer to the iguana, holding a bunch of bananas. “Come on, big fella,” she told him. “You know you want this. Mmm, nummy!” Kim got as close as she dared, left the banana bunch about eight feet from the lizard’s snout, and backed away.
The lizard hesitated, then lunged forward, sniffed the bananas, and snapped and tongued them into his mouth. Then, thinking Kim might have some more, he carefully crept even farther out the branch, which began bouncing.
At this point Ron swung over toward Kim, she jumped and clung to him. and they swung back to land on the branch behind the lizard. Crocodile Jack, on the ground below, was waving another bunch of bananas. “Kim! Ron!” he called out, and tossed the bunch toward Kim.
The lizard turned his shovel-sized head sideways to look back, then, unable to turn around where he was, began backing up toward the trunk. Then abruptly he did turn around, his head suddenly only five feet away from Kim. She put the bananas at her feet, backed into Ron’s arms, and found herself dangling below the branch like a spider.
“Up or down?” Ron asked.
“He’s hungry. Down!”
Kim looked up from the base of the tree at the iguana’s tail as he backed down the angled trunk. Crocodile Jack tossed Kim another bunch of bananas, then moved over to Drake, Kate, and Kelly, who were waiting with a net of twelve millimeter rope.
The hungry lizard was much quicker on the ground than on the branch. Kim tossed him the new bunch of bananas and ran for it, toward the crew with the net. The iguana followed, then panicked and tried to turn around when all the people ran toward him and got caught in the middle of his U-turn.
“The big iguana’s legs were nearly twice as long as those of a salt-water croc of comparable size,” Crocodile Kate narrated, “and we weren’t sure Jack’s ‘people power’ method of tackling the animal with every available human body would work, but the lizard’s long fingers got caught in the netting, which helped, and also it was less able to support its own weight than a croc. We managed to get him inside one of Jack’s croc boxes, but it wasn’t easy moving him to the nearest road and loading him on a truck.”
They found one other big iguana Saturday afternoon from tracking signals. This one, a female, was eleven and a half feet long. Once they had her distracted with offers of fruit, Jack was able to sneak up and jump on her back, followed almost immediately by Kate, Kelly, Drake, Kim, and Ron.
“But most of the day we spent setting the heavy net traps Jack usually uses to catch crocs, and baiting them with fruit,” Kate narrated.
“And, so, weary from her day’s exertions with the giant iguanas, mighty lizard hunter Kim Stoppable eases her bruised body into one of the hotel’s private hot tubs for a well deserved soak,” she said, sitting next to Ron in the foaming water.
“What? Is there a camera crew somewhere?” he asked with mock alarm. “You’re narrating.”
“Just poking fun at Jack and Kate,” said Kim.
“I know, I know,” said Ron.
“I know you know.”
“Well, I know you know I know.”
Kim laughed. “That brings back memories,” she said. “We sat on our sleeping bags inside the tent in your backyard, saying stuff like that to each other long after we were supposed to be asleep. Then I’d hold my hand close to the flashlight to make a great big hand shadow.”
“One time we were fighting the evil shadow giant and the tent fell on us,” said Ron.
Kim laughed again. “Now we’re catching giant iguanas on our honeymoon.”
“It’s the life we always imagined,” said Ron. “How many kids ever get that?”
“Mm hmm,” Rufus agreed. He was nesting in Ron’s hair.
“I haven’t seen much of you, little buddy,” said Kim, reaching up to pet the naked molerat.
“He stays in my pocket when the iguanas come around. Right now there’s no iguanas.”
“And no pockets,” said Kim.
Dot dot dadot!
“What’s the sitch?” Ron asked Wade.
“Give me just a minute,” said Kim.
“She’s getting dressed. We’re gonna try to go out again tonight.”
“I finally hacked into Gonzales’ papers,” said Wade. “Yeah, he has spent time repeatedly at the Orinoco Wildlife Research Station, starting three years ago.”
“Here I am,” said Kim, again wearing the new little black dress. “Go on.”
“Gonzales did do some growth-hormone experiments there,” said Wade. “Those are his babies you’re catching.”
“Good. I mean, good that there’s no unknown mastermind to worry about. We’re doing the dining and dancing thing, and gonna help Crocodile Jack tomorrow. After that, we’re supposed to come home to Northwestern State.”
“And here’s the biggest bloke of all,” said Crocodile Jack, approaching one of the net traps the next morning.
“The lizard inside was eighteen feet long, and very annoyed about being tangled up in ropes,” Kate narrated. “But he was pretty tired, and turned quite docile once Jack got his jaws taped shut and a blindfold over his eyes. Getting him into the box wasn’t too much trouble. He seemed to think he was crawling into a hole where he’d be safe.”
“So once we’ve got seven giant iguanas in crates, what do we do with ’em, that’s the big question,” Jack said, facing the camera. “So we put out calls to zoos and reptile parks all over the world, starting with Venezuela of course, trying to find homes for these oversized blokes and sheilas. They’re not natural, but they are pretty neat. I’m taking two of ’em to Australia. Maybe Sheila can tame ’em. She seems to have a way with iguanas.”
The camera cut to Sheila saying, “Right, Jacko, in your dreams, mate!” with a cynical tone and mock Australian accent.
And back to Crocodile Jack. “Maybe Sheila’s having a bad day. We’ll see what happens.”
Kim and Ron found a considerably mellower looking Sheila, lounging by the pool in another green peasant blouse and black ruffled skirt, reading a fashion magazine, and casually eating a fruit salad. “Ya ready to go?” she asked.
“All packed up and piled by your rental car,” said Kim.
“Okay, then.”
They walked from the pool to the parking lot, Sheila unlocked the trunk, and Ron loaded the suitcases and backpacks.
On the way to the airport, Sheila and Ron rapped in unison with an old MC Honey recording while Kim and Rufus rolled their eyes at each other.
“Come see us when the baby’s born,” Sheila told them. “Don’t be strangers.”
“We’ll come,” said Kim. “No promises about exactly when, though.”
It was late Sunday night when Kim and Ron opened the front door to Mathom House. Monique, Felix, Belinda, and several other friends were there to meet them. “Welcome home, Mr. and Mrs. Stoppable,” they tried to say in unison, breaking into laughter when it didn’t quite work.
“So how was the honeymoon?” asked Monique.
“We got shot at by a drug lord’s henchmen and caught some giant iguanas,” said Kim.
“You’re kidding.”
“I am so not kidding.”
“That’s a couple hours worth of talkin’ at least,” said Ron, “and we’re kinda worn out from lizard wrangling and want to go to bed.”
“Ooooh!” said several voices in unison.
Kim rolled her eyes.
“Wait till you see your bed,” said Monique.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
The whole group climbed the stairs to the third floor. Kim turned toward Ron’s room, but Monique said, “Nuh uh,” and led Kim to the room they formerly shared. An envelope taped to the door said “Kim and Ron Stoppable.”
Kim opened it up and read aloud, “Because you’ve already paid your tuition and board for the next two years, we’ve remodeled your room to make it more comfortable for you, which was much easier than reinstalling the elaborate security you require in a regular married students’ room. Sincerely, Phillip Fogg, president, NWSU.”
Kim opened the door. “Ron! We’ve got a double bed!” she exclaimed. “With the covers from my own bed.” She paused and thought for a moment. “So where are you?” she asked Monique.
“In Belinda’s old room, with Yvonne.”
“And I’m with Felix, unofficially of course, in the room you guys were in before the break,” Belinda said.
“They didn’t have enough rooms to be able to separate us,” said Felix. “Not that we would have stayed separated anyway.”
“Wow, and all our stuff is just like we had it, but moved over here,” Kim said.
“Look what Josh gave us,” said Ron, pointing at the portrait of Kim, posed as the Mona Lisa, hanging on the opposite wall.
“Oh, I knew he gave us that,” said Kim. “Didn’t you?”
“You look like your own remote ancestor,” said Monique.
“The Mona Kimberly,” said Ron. “What’s the secret to her mysterious smile?”
“Ron, I was looking at you,” said Kim.