"EEP! Oh no! Nonononono! Not good!"
“Hey! Rufus! Put him down, Shawn! Put him down! Or-”
“Or what, Ronnie? Your girlfriend’s father is just trying to scare us, anyways!” Shawn snorted at his older cousin, holding Ron’s pet naked mole rat mockingly. “"Areas on the floor will dissolve if the weight is spread unequally on it for more than a minute…" Hah! What a load of -WAAAAHHHHHH!” he cried as the floor around him suddenly disappeared, and he and Rufus fell into the darkness below.
“SHAWN! RUFUS! RUFUS!” Ron looked over the edge, but all he could see was a pool of blood.
“Oh, who cares if you lost your detachable penis and annoying cousin! The door’s open, let’s go!”
“RUFUS WAS NOT MY DETACHABLE P–wait, what?”
“GAH! C’MON, STOPPABLE!” Dr. Drakken grabbed the young man’s arm and dragged Ron down the hallway. “Of all the things that could happen today, James has to go lose it, and utterly humiliate me!”
“What? Don’t tell me you’re angry that the dude’s a psycho-Lecter murderer now?”
“No! It’s not that, sidekick! Well, partially, it is, since he’s who put me in this mess with having your left arm grafted onto my body - but I’m more angry at the fact I wasn’t the one who made him that way!” Drakken whirled around in his huff and crossed his arms in an incredibly snooty fashion.
“So, in other words, you’re jealous of him building much better set deathtraps than you could ever do?”
“YES! I’m jealous of him. Okay? I said it. I’m jealous of him. One more time? I’M. JEALOUS. OF. HIM. Can we keep moving so we don’t die? I’d like to leave here in one piece, thank you very much!”
“Hold on. You hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Ron cautiously put his ear to the side of the wall. The voices were faint, but he heard clear enough:
“Don’t you EVER accuse my Drewbie of such a vile thing again!”
Drakken froze. “On second thought, why don’t we go back to-” WHAM! His face met a wall as he tried to turn around. “-the other room. Ow,” he added, rubbing his nose. “Why’d I know that would happen?”
“Oh! The nerve of those Stoppables! Accusing my sweet Drewbie of all of this! Hmmph! The nerve!”
“Stoppables?” Ron spun around to see a door closing behind Mrs. Lipsky – who draped in shadow.
Hearing Ron, Mrs. Lipsky looked up, noticing she wasn’t alone. “Drewbie?”
Drakken turned around. “Mother! What are you doing h-” He jumped back as his mother stepped into the dim light. “Why are you covered in blood and carrying an axe?”
“Drewbie…You forgot to tell me that Kim Possible girl you treated a while back had father issues, too! What floor is he on? Because that man is getting a talking to! Nobody messes with a Lipsky like that and gets away with it! The nerve of that man – trapping me in that room with those Stoppables - who accused you – YOU - of making that man so demented! When he forced me to kill them in order to esc-”
“WHAT?” Ron yelled.
“Who’s that, Drewbie?”
“Mother – that’s the Stoppables’ son!” said Drakken, backing away.
“YOU KILLED MY PARENTS?” Ron fumed, closing in on the woman.
“You think I had a choice, young man? Once they got done accusing my sweet Drewbie of atrocities he’d never, EVER commit, they begged for me to kill them! I couldn’t stand there and watch them hold their innards in forever! I killed them, got the door keys that psycho man sewed into their guts, and left!”
“They – they wanted to die?” asked Ron, slumping to the ground, tears welling up. “They asked you to-”
Mrs. Lipsky just said no more. “Come, Drewbie. Let’s let the nice young man mourn in peace.”
“Ah - Right, Mother…” Drakken grit his teeth. “James, this next deathtrap of yours better be good…”
“What, Drewbiekins?”
“Nothing, Mother! Nothing!”
TICK.
“OW!” The piercing sting in her neck woke Bonnie up. “Kim, did you just-” She froze. There was something around her neck. “What th-” She stopped, and looked at her hands. They were dripping with blood. Fresh blood. And as she looked down at herself, she realized: Her blood. With a growing horror, Bonnie looked to her left – and caught a view of herself in a grimy mirror on the floor. Her neck was locked into a collar – which had a blade inside it that was cutting into her neck. “WHAT THE FUCK?”
“SOMEBODY GET US OUT OF HERE!”
Bonnie bolted up to her feet as the shriek snapped her out of her stupor, and she began to draw a bead on her surroundings. She squinted forward in the dim light. The room was huge. Dank. Dusty. Digusting. Smelled like the open-air restrooms of Middleton Community Pool in the winter. An ancient TV screen, caked with a sickening layer of grime, hung from rusty chains on the ceiling in the center of the room.
An extremely bulked shadow fell over her. “Hey! She’s up!”
“Huh?” asked Bonnie as more figures swarmed around her, casting shadows. She shook her head to clear her cloudy vision – and saw them standing over her: “Tara? Hope? Marcella? Liz? Maggie?”
“Dude - don’t forget me, Bonnie, even though I am your ex.”
Bonnie looked over shoulder to see Brick Flagg. “Brick?”
“Yep.”
Suddenly, Bonnie panicked. “What’s going on? What’s with these collars? Where are we? Where’s-”
“Bonnie! Whoah!” countered Tara, running over to the woman, catching her as her knees partially buckled. “Don’t get worked up! Your heart will pump faster and you’ll, like, lose more blood!”
“Huh?” Bonnie looked at herself in the mirror again – specifically, the blood trailing down her neck. “Oh…Right…” she whimpered. She looked around, trying to calm herself down as best as possible.
“HELP US! SOMEBODY! PLEASE! PLEEEASE! GET US OUT OF HERE! ANYBODY! HELP!” Crystal pounded her fist against the wall – and quickly yanked it back, wailing in pain as millions of hidden, tinny glass pebbles ripped her fingers to near-shreds and embedded into her skin. “OW! OW!”
“Oh my god! Crystal! Are you okay?” Liz raced over to her friend and looked at the fist. There were so many pieces of glass embedded into the skin, Crystal’s hand looked like it was encrusted with diamonds.
“Ow! Ngh! I’m fine, Liz. At least we know we can’t touch the walls now.”
Brick looked around. “Dude. If there’s glass that reflective on the walls, this place is, like, dirty as hell.”
TICK.
“ARGH!” echoed the simultaneous scream as the blades on the collars sliced deeper into their necks.
“Hello, girls; Brick.”
Everyone looked up as the TV screen flickered on, bathing the room with a harsh glow. Bonnie’s face lit up with joy as she recognized the face of Mrs. Possible on the screen. “Mr. Possible! Oh, thank god, you found us! Help us! Send Kim to get us out of here! Somebody’s kidnapped us and stuck these collars o-”
“Those collars are set to slice through your jugular vein and carotid artery if you don’t get out of that room in 15 minutes, girls. Now, you can get out of the room, and get those collars off of you - but only if the sensors under the hallway floor pick up that five different DNA patterns have passed over them.”
“-n…us…” The fear gradually washed away Bonnie’s face of joy. “M-m-m- Mr… M-Mr. Possible?”
“Hallway?” asked Brick.
“Oh, that’s right! Heh, don’t mind me, just forgot to unlock the door…Ah! Here we go! That’s it!”
The loud, sudden groaning of metal caught the squad’s attention. The only door of the room slid open to reveal a hallway - a hallway with an assortment of various different types of blades, all of them rusty.
And all of them spinning furiously, around an area barely large enough for a toddler to fit through.
“WHAT?” Maggie shrieked. “We have to go through THAT?”
“Oh, don’t worry! There’s enough room for a tall toddler to pass through relatively unscathed.”
“Uh, Mr. P? All of us here are like, taller than a toddler,” noted Brick.
“Well, then I guess the five people who pass through the chamber first will die then. Oh, well.”
Bonnie and Tara looked at each other, trying to assure the other what they’d heard was what was said.
“Oh.” Brick looked down. “Bummer.”
“Either that, or the next time that clock in the room strikes upon the hour – it does so to a quiet room.”
BOOM! A distant explosion rocked the room, knocking them down. “The fuck was that?” asked Hope.
“Oop, there goes Team Impossible. Well, that’s all for now, girls! Leave as much raw flesh as you can!”
The screen turned off – and promptly imploded, causing Hope to scream and jump back into the arms of Marcella - who let the woman bury her crying face into her shoulder as she tried to calm her best friend.
Maggie was not happy. “We can get out of here - but only if five of us DIE?”
Liz nodded at her. “Either that – or we all die.”
Bonnie huffed. “Well, then. I hope my sisters got kidnapped along with me…”
TICK.
Another simultaneous scream erupted as the collar blades dug just a little more deeper into their necks than last time. The amount of blood trickling from the wounds increased as the scream echoed again.
“What's happened to Kim's dad?” asked Tara. “He's, like, so completely scary and creepy now! Do you really think that was him? I don’t think it was. I think it’s that Drakken guy in disguise - or maybe a-”
“Tara, SHUT UP!” Marcella interrupted. “Jeezus, leave that type of conspiracy shit to Ron! God!”
“Sorry. I just can’t accept that Kim’s dad would do something like this! I really hope that wasn’t him!”
“I really hope it wasn't, either, Tara,” retaliated Marcella. “But we don’t know. It may well could be…”
Tara looked at Bonnie. “What are we gonna do?”
Bonnie was shaking, even if she was trying to hide it. “I - don't know, Tara. I don't know.”
Hope clenched her fists and stood up, shaking and fighting back tears. “…I'll go first.”
Marcella whirled around. “What? NO! HOPE! DON'T-”
But Hope was already running towards the doorway.
“HOOOOOOPE!” screamed Marcella, throwing her hands out in protest—
One splatter of blood later, and Hope’s decapitated head landed in them. Marcella shrieked, juggled it, then eventually threw it away from herself, backing into a corner, her whole body shaking. “Oh, god…”
As Bonnie, Liz, Brick, and Crystal tried not to vomit, Maggie clenched her fists tightly. “…I’ll go, too.”
“What?” Liz gasped. “No! Maggie! No!”
“Better me than any of you guys!” snapped Maggie in retaliation, tears already running down her cheek. “Just…Don’t watch.” With that, she hugged Liz and every member of the squad – all of them crying.
Everyone averted their eyes. Seconds later, the disgusting SPLAT! told them it was over.
Bonnie dried her eyes and looked around. “Well, that’s two people…”
Tara was on the verge of distraught. “Bonnie! What do we do?”
“I DON’T KNOW, TARA! IT’S NOT LIKE I’M PUT IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS EVERY DAY!”
Bonnie winced as Tara recoiled at her outburst. “Gah! This whole thing’s messing with my head! I can’t think straight! 3 more of us must go…But none of us want to…Nor do we want to see anyone else go-”
TICK.
There came another echoing scream as, this time, the collar blades sliced twice as far into everyone’s skin. Rivers of blood started to drain out their necks. “We could just…like-let him win…” gasped Brick.
“All of us die, Brick? Hell no! Excuse me if I’m not allowed to desire self-preservation!” Bonnie sniped.
“…Rock, paper, scissors?”
Tara cringed as they all looked at her.
“Ugh. Fine with me,” Bonnie grumbled.
Tara looked at Brick and the other cheerleaders. “You guys okay with this?”
“Well, there’s no other way…” Liz sighed.
“Okay. First we have to split into three groups – so let’s all line up, then step to a side,” instructed Bonnie.
Doing so, the 1st group that resulted was Brick, Liz, and Tara; the 2nd, Crystal, Bonnie, and Marcella.
“Alright,” Marcella said, her voice cracking. “Rock…Paper…Scissors.”
After everyone opened their eyes, Bonnie, Tara, and Brick all burst into tears, hugging Crystal, Liz, and Marcella. “Dude, when we get out of this, we’re so, building you a memorial and all,” promised Brick.
“H-How will you know we won’t chicken out on this?” Crystal asked.
Bonnie bit her lip, fighting back more tears. “…I’ll watch.”
Tara looked at Bonnie, and fought back her own tears. “I’ll watch, too.”
TICK.
“AHH!”
Bonnie looked at the clock. “Shit - GO! We’ve got a minute left!” she yelled, clutching her neck in pain.
Liz, Marcella, and Crystal held hands and walked towards the hallways.
The blood was spilled. The machine stopped, the blades folding away into the hallway walls. The blades in the collars of the survivors stopped and folded into the contraptions. A surgical laser replaced them, completely sealing up the survivors’ cuts. The collars unlocked. “C’MON!” Tara yelled, running to the unlocked door. “Mr. Possible might’ve set it to close if we take our time to get out!”
“I’m with her on that one!” Bonnie agreed – she and Brick giving chase. Racing through the door, all three of them ignored the carnage – until they stopped moving. Immediately, they all turned to vomit.
When they were done, the faint sound of someone crying wafted through the darkness, coming from the only other area of light. A figure was huddled over themselves, crying, and looking at their hands.
Squinting to see, Tara gasped.
“What?” asked Bonnie in a whisper. “Who is it?”
Tara looked at her. “Monique.”
“It has been my honour…Learning from you…S-”
She fell to the ground, already too weak to talk. The fan in her heart dislodged upon the impact and rolled away on the ground. As she struggled to keep her eyes open, it came to a rest by its his foot.
He picked up the blood-soaked fan, depositing it in his pocket. “You sacrificed yourself to save me. While your loss saddens me greatly, it is uplifiting to know you have truly followed the code of Yamanouchi. I will be proud to share your name as one of my top students. Should I succeed in reaching Possible-san’s father, I give you my word: The justice he receives shall fall within the bounds of Yamanouchi.”
She smiled.
The door slid open. Sensei stepped out, turning and bowing to his fallen protégé.
As he walked down the hallway, a tear escaped his eye.
“I - I don’t think Ron and Drakken are the only other people in this place.”
Shego smacked her forehead. “Ugh…Can’t you have tunnel vision for once in your life, Princess?”
“Shego, I’m not going to let my boyfriend or anybody who doesn’t deserve it die!”
“Oh, right…He’s your boyfriend now…Wait, you’re dating the buffoon?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” Kim’s eyes flared with an intensity Shego hadn’t witnessed before.
“Well, he is the buffoon…”
Kim looked away, tears welling up. “It’s just he - He damn well better be okay! He would never give up on me. I’m not gonna give up on him.” She looked away as Shego rolled her eyes. “Laugh on, Shego...”
KEE-RASH!
“MAYBE IF YA’ ACTUALLY CAME UP T’ VISIT US IN MONTANA INSTEAD’A ALWAYS HEADIN’ T’ UNCLE JAMES’, YOU’D SEE JUST WHAT I CAN DO, YA’ OLD BAG LADY!”
“Whoah. Wow, that girl really looks like you, Kimmie,” said Shego.
“Huh?” Kim whirled her head around - and recognized her cousin – standing over their grandmother. Holding a club, lines of razor wire attached to it in a hatchet shape. The girl was right furious. “Joss?”
“All that Army trainin’ of yers – FER WHAT, YA’ HAG? YA’ THOUGHT YEW COULD KILL YER’ FIRSTBORN SON AND GET AWAY WITH IT? WELL-” Joss raised the club high over her head, her eyes wild with anger. “YOU! DON’T! KNOW! NUTHIN’! ‘BOUT!” she screamed, hacking down on Nana’s neck with every exclamation point as Kim watched in horror. “ME!” With one final blow, Joss finally chopped Nana’s head off. Finished, she tossed the club aside and wiped the blood off of her face. “Hmph…Just like we used t’ do t’ th’ chickens ‘fore Daddy ‘cided t’ go all high-tech…”
Kim elbowed Shego to get out of the woman’s grip, and approached Joss. “J-Joss?” she whispered.
Joss moved like lightning, spinning on her heel, grabbing the makeshift hatchet back off the ground and hurling it at Kim’s spot in the darkness. Caught completely off her guard, all Kim could do was scream.