Required Disclaimer: All the characters in this parallel universe are the property of Disney's Kim Possible. The author has merely borrowed them under the not-for-profit/fair-use policy and will put them back in their universe prime once the story is over.

Tales from the Kimarillion

RSVP IV: 6 – Loch Mess

She came out of the lake, trailing water droplets like cascades of diamonds in the moonlight.

The summer night sky was cloudless and the fullness of the lunar orb cast shadows across the wooded earth while silvering the trees and bushes to look like a winter wonderland.

Even had the night been cloudy and moon new and below the horizon, she still would have found her way easily enough. Her large eyes adjusted to the change in ambient light and she picked her way up the gravel path remembering the way, just as she had for the past four years.

The camp had been abandoned years ago and the horror and the deaths that had happened on their ill-fated trip to Cheer Camp and insured that no one would buy or re-develop the property ever again.

Ron had been right: Camp Wannaweep truly was cursed.

She turned off the path and found the shrine much as they'd left it the previous year.

The makeshift cross, a pair of boat oars lashed together with rope, had been blown over by the wind at some point but it was easily righted. She knelt and rebuilt the cairn of stones around its base to prop it back up again. The coonskin cap, nailed to the topmost portion had deteriorated even more with another year's worth's exposure to the elements.

And the squirrels.

Ron would have said: "I told you so!"

She felt a sob rise in her chest and she fought to keep it inside. She didn't like the sound it made when it came out.

"Do you think he might have won?" a new voice asked out of the darkness.

Kim jumped to her feet and struck one of her old, kung-fu poses. It felt odd. It probably looked odder. "Who's there?" she demanded, wincing at the sound of her own voice.

"It's Tara."

And she could hear it now. What was left of her old cheermate's voice, drowning in the gargle of their changed circumstances.

"He tried to save us," she elaborated. "I think he almost did…"

Kim nodded slowly. "It was a cramp, I think. Maybe if he hadn't eaten that candy under the floorboards before going in the water…" She stopped. It was never right to speak ill of the dead. Even when her best friend had earned a well-deserved reputation for his "never be normal" eating habits.

"If he had, I would have kissed him. I would have dated him—Bonnie be damned!" Tara had yet to emerge from the shadows and Kim was glad. Better to remember her as the vivacious blonde back in high school than…

The sound of wet, slithery footsteps, coming up from the lake, sounded behind them.

She turned and stared at the hideous apparition coming toward them.

It was humanoid but seemed to owe its taxonomy to lizards and amphibians rather than anything warm blooded and hominid.

Gill-like ruffles adorned the sides of its head and circled its neck. Its green and black hide was offset by a pair of baleful red eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. It raised a clawed, three-fingered paw as it approached and its wide rubbery lips gurgled a greeting.

"Hey, K. Tara. Come to pay your respects?"

"Yeah, Bonnie," Kim growled back. "But why are you here?"

The mutant queen of mean slumped a little. "Hey, don't think I'm not grateful to the froob for trying. Even if he did fail to ultimately deliver."

"He died trying, Bonnie," Tara said softly. It sounded like she was crying. But that might have only been the changes in her vocal chords with her own mutation from human to Gill-monster.

"Really?" Kim shot back. "Does Gil know you feel that way? I'm surprised you're even here. After all, you ditched us for mutant boy practically before the slime had finished settling!"

The thing that had once been Bonnie Rockwaller hung its oddly shaped head. "What choice did I have?" she gurgled finally. "I-I don't know how to be without a guy. And what kind of a guy is going to want to be with—with—this!" she moaned, gesturing at her scaly, misshapen self. "It took me months to learn how to manage on my own. Find food. I had to learn how to swim, for cripe's sake! By the time I could manage without him, I—I—didn't want to."

"Well that's fine, B!" Kim snarled back. "Go back to him. Raise a nice school of guppies with him. Just don't come around here pretending you're sorry or wishing you could have it both ways. Gil's a monster. And one of these days I'm going to hunt him down and bring him to justice!"

"Well," Tara burbled after a moment, "that went well…"

Kim sighed. "Yeah. In the end we've all had to figure out where to go from here. After what happened to Marcella…"

"Kim. Don't."

"Every year I come back here," the former redhead said finally, "I think it's going to be the last time. Maybe it should be, now. Nothing left for me here. Especially if Rockwaller and her Lizard King are setting up house around here."

"Where will you go, K?"

She turned back and looked down the path to where Bonnie was wading back into Lake Wannaweep. "There's an underground river that feeds the lake on the south end. It connects up with the Rio Blanco River and then the San Juan down into New Mexico. I'm thinking about following it as far south and west as I can go and head for the Baja Gulf."

"And from there?"

"It's a big world, T. And four-fifths of it are water."

"Would you mind some company?" the former blonde asked hesitantly.

"I'd be glad of it," she answered, wondering if the quiver in her own voice was emotion or the odd vibration of her own mutated larynx.

Together, the two former Middleton Mad Dog cheerleaders ran down the hill and plunged into the lake.

As the lake's surface closed over her head, Kim was reminded, once again, as to how foreign the out-of-water world had become to her transformed physiognomy and how natural the liquid universe was to her, now. Ron would have loved this, she thought as she swam down to the underwater grotto. He would've missed Nacho Grande but the seafood probably would've made up for it. And as far as she could remember, there probably wasn't any kind of food that her best friend hadn't liked.

Though, for some strange reason, the words "meat cakes" suddenly darted through her mind.

She paused at the entrance of the cave, waiting for Tara to catch up, and scrubbed at her eyes. Underwater, no one could see you cry, still she was glad of the murk at this depth. She thought that she had cried herself out over Ron's sacrifice and her and the other cheerleaders' fates, years ago. It really would be best to not come back here again.

There was nothing left for her here.

Only ghosts.

And regrets.

And the burning thought of something that might have been but would never be, now.

She turned as Tara arrived and swam down into the darkness.

Tara followed.

And a moment later, an oddly shaped fish followed in their wake.

A fish that, once upon a time, might have been small and pink and possessed of a pair of large, buck teeth.

"FIN"

Authors/Notes: In RSVP II: The Two Powers, The Pan-Dimensional Vortex Inducer is struck in Chapter 41 and something mighty odd happens. Is this little window into an alternate universe one of the results? Time will tell…