Wow! I must say, this is great! I love it! Keep up the good work.
Thanks.
great story can't wait for the next chapter
Thank you. However, I am afraid that I must disappoint you a little. This was a oneshot exercise in getting my writing mojo working again. I have no intention of ever continuing this. Heck, I never actually meant to publish it when I was writing it.
Thank you. That was basically what I was going for. That or a “what the F*@#!”
Okay, I suppose there's no potential limit to the level of real violence involved in being a law enforcement officer or secret agent, at least in other stories written about this stuff (in reality I don't think good guys are allowed to act like this), but somehow the notion that Ron could decapitate people while Kim's missions remain G-rated is really cringe-worthy.
Now here I feel like I failed in some ways. This was not written with the intent of keeping Ron and Kim in the KP universe, but more with the intent of explaining how a teenage cheerleader could possibly fight “super villains” in the real world. The simple answer, she could never do what she does without some sort of guardian angel, some sort of protector. Someone that the “villains” would fear to the point of either playing with kid gloves or staying the hell away from Kim.
Sadly, for this story, Ron figured out pretty quickly that “villains” don’t fear “good guys”. So he made a deal with GJ which would allow him to earn the reputation necessary to “protect” Kim. Ron is neither in law enforcement nor is he a special agent, he is a wetworks operative or if you prefer a black ops assassin. Ron is the one that the “good guys” call when they need someone dealt with in a way that the “good guys” can’t deal with them.
There's a delicate balance between fantasy and reality that makes Kim and Ron what they are. Bringing them beyond the real world into a hyperviolent reality where the good guys act like Iraqi insurgents is going to radically change everything.
Ron did not act like the Iraqi insurgents. You are automatically associating any type of beheading with terrorism? The Iraqi insurgents, to my knowledge, beheaded their victims slowly and painfully. The only time that Ron decapitated anyone it was with the skill of a Feudal samurai. One stroke and the head is severed. Similar to the guillotine, a device invented because it was considered a humane way to kill people. The bit about the consciousness after the head is severed is actually believed to be real and is to my understanding one of the few reasons that the guillotine is not still used today.
A story about good versus evil could degenerate into moral ambivalence and beyond, and I don't mind that idea, but doing it this way just really bothers me-- more, I think, than somehow twisting things around so Kim loves Drakken.
Good and Evil? We love the concept that there is really a cut and dried difference. It is why we love KP, the idea that there is some cloud of colored mist that physically separates the “good guys” from the “evil guys”. However, I believe that Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett said it best in
Good Omens “Just when you'd think they [humans] were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved.”
Who are the good guys? What makes them good guys? Is it that they never kill? Or is it that they only kill when necessary and don’t enjoy it?
Your Ron has lost his Ronness.
That was the price that he paid. That was the whole bloody point of the story, and I failed to convey it. darn, back the drawing board for me. I guess that is what separates the pros from me.
But if Ron's a ruthless assassin,
Ruthless? How did I portray him as ruthless?
Probably the worst way that he was shown killing anyone (as far as the target feeling pain) was the piano wire, and I threw this in because of what an ex-coworker of mine told me about his experience in Vietnam as a medic with a SEAL unit sent behind enemy lines to retrieve some POWs who were then abandoned behind enemy lines due to a bunch of bureaucrats negotiating for the prisoner’s release during the mission and succeeding. Top brass commanded the SEALs and my ex-coworker to make their way across to friendly territory if they could, but to leave the POWs since it wouldn’t look good to rescue prisoners while negotiating for their release. They also wouldn’t be getting any support since the mission never really happened. I don’t remember how many months he said it took for him and the SEALs to get back, but of the SEAL team, my coworker, and the POWs only three of the SEALS and my coworker made it back. That was one hell of a story. And held a bit of the reality of what I wanted to portray in this story.
Who were the good guys in this story? The SEALs? When the SEALs made it back one of them killed the CO that abandoned them behind enemy lines and as of five years ago was still in Leavenworth.
and Kim doesn't know this [-CUT-] it destroys their relationship from the inside out.
ARGH! While I was trying to be somewhat vague about exactly how much Kim knew about what Ron did, I thought that I made it clear that she knew that he was an assassin for GJ and that he did it to protect her from the more unsavory individuals in the world. I guess again that I failed miserably in getting my message across. Oh well, this is really what I need to hear. It will help me work on portraying things better in the future.
she's the one who seems more likely to have the nerves for this
I don’t doubt that if motivated correctly that Kim could and would do exactly what Ron did. However, I truly think that you sell Ron way short. Of the two I think that Ron is the much darker, the much more likely to be fatally violent.
Ron's completely lying to her,
You do not tell your loved ones that you are an assassin for an organization which doesn’t officially have assassins. Not if you want them to continue living. This again is part of the price that Ron thinks he is paying. There is now a part of him that he doesn’t think he can ever share with anyone else lest he put them at risk.
and if she ever finds out what a deadly game she's involved in and how much she's being "protected," she'll completely lose confidence (I think).
Here I disagree. I look at Kim as being more of a humanitarian then a crime fighter.
I think that it was even you that said that most of what Kim does resembles more of what the Red Cross does then what law enforcement does. It is only the villain fighting that we see because it is more exciting. I agree. I think that in the end, Kim would be perfectly happy only doing the humanitarian work.
There is having confidence and there is facing reality. Should a police officer lose confidence because the FBI, CIA, NSA, and military keeps him safe from the majority of international elements that would have no qualms about killing him? I don’t think so. I think that a police officer would realize that they have their job and he has his.
Cringing is fine. I wanted people to cring. I wanted them to feel that Ron was doing horrible things not because he wanted to but because he felt that he had to.
Anyway, the mere fact that I have to actually explain any of this means that I failed miserably, and I can accept that.
Thank you.
the idea of ron being an assassin is a scary thought
As it should be.
i've always thought what if ron was a ruthless killer this answers that.
Again with the ruthless killer. Did anyone get why his hands were red and raw? I even put in the line about the blood on the hands, despite my gut feeling that it was too much hand holding. I guess it wasn’t enough. Ron hates what he has to do. He loathes what he has become, but it is what he felt he had to become to protect Kim and allow her to live her life in the way she chooses. He is far from ruthless, he is just very good at it.
also i don't think ron could be a ruthless killer or be able to keep it from he for he wouldn't be able to lie to her like that
If it came down to a choice of lying to my wife and putting her life in danger, I would lie in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?
I don't think alot of us try to preserve the Kim Ron ness that the shows have.
I definitely didn’t in this fanfiction. While I think that there are times and places for it. I also realize that I am quite frankly not good enough to try following in those shoes. Also, while I love KP, I would not have minded one bit if it had been made more dramatic and not as a children’s show. Most of my fanfictions will reflect that, as most do, Cloud’s included. (I will say that Cloud’s does maintain more of the innocence of the show then many, but the very thesis of his story is the ambiguity of what is right and wrong in a very adult way.)
It still is a interesting idea
Thanks.
On a bit of reflection, some other things that bother me about this scenario came to mind:
Thank you for sharing this. Despite what it might look like, I really do enjoy hearing this. It will only make me better.
It reverses the whole premise of the show. Here Ron's actually doing the serious work [-CUT-]while Kim's, um, in comparison, playing around? Is that the right way to put it. As if Ron can do this and she can't! It's like anti-feminizing a feminist scenario.
In a way, I did mean for it to reverse the whole premise of the show. I started with the idea of what type of protection it would take for Kim and Ron to actually do what they do in a semi-real world environment. My original thought was that GJ goes to some very drastic measures to protect them while allowing them to “play around” with some of the more annoying then dangerous villains.
This however, didn’t carry a lot of emotional impact. Why would the reader really care if I showed a GJ agent assassinating someone to protect Kim and Ron. Not much emotional investment.
Kim was automatically out as the assassin. If she was the assassin then no one would have to protect them, and quite frankly the entire show would be busted since for Kim to be the assassin meant that she had accepted that she would do that sort of thing and then all of the villains would end up dead pretty quickly.
This only left Ron. Which was fine with me. I like writing with Ron as my main character.
Quite frankly I do not find KP a feminist scenario at all. For it to be a truly feminist scenario the writers would not feel the need to make the main male characters so incompetent. If they really wanted a feminist scenario Ron and many of the other male characters should be competent, yet still have Kim and Shego be strong characters able to give and take superiority in situations. It is degrading to pass the message that for a woman to be strong and in charge she has to surround herself with incompetent men and never ever allow control to slip from her fingers because apparently she wouldn’t be strong enough to handle not being the best or in charge all of the time.
(but really, isn't eye-stabbing and beheading a bit much? The knife in the throat works pretty well if assassination is the object)
I was mixing it up. I mean seriously wouldn’t it have been a little boring if I would have had Ron kill everyone in exactly the same way?
Next question, has this assassin Ron already killed Drakken, Shego, and Senor Senior Senior? They've all come pretty close to killing Kim, and last we saw potentially harbor murderous intent. Or does this Ron figure she's good enough to handle them?
The mere fact that GJ lets a teenager handle them means that in the grand scheme of things they are more annoyances then dangers. As such Ron has allowed them to continue, with a few rules. While this is really dark, I have a hard time believing that Kim would not have been raped several times now if this had been reality. Rape is a pretty standard technique in breaking an individual. Read
Friday by Robert Heinlen some time. It starts out with an agent getting captured and what she goes through as her captors try to break her. Dark stuff, but a good story.
So, Ron figures that she is good enough to handle them.
Well, why not? Isn't that why you like the characters in the first place?
Okay, whenever you use someone else's character, you're gonna change something. That's inevitable. But at the same time, I think it's a good idea to preserve as much of each character's characteristics as possible, while allowing for some changes caused by age and experience.
Yes and no. Fanfictions allow for us to explore exactly what makes these characters tick What are their fundamental characteristics. What is really at their core. In some instances this is achieved by aging them ,sometimes by moving them through experiences, but sometimes it is not by altering them but by altering the world around them. By forcing them out of the environment which they are comfortable in and seeing how they react.
For this story I worked with the belief that fundamentally Ron will do anything to protect Kim. But just how far will that hold? Would Ron essentially sacrifice who and what he is to become something that he loathes just to protect her? I found myself answering that yes, he would.
Kim and Ron will soon be adults, but I don't see any reason why they should become bad adults.
Again, I find it interesting that you feel that this Ron is a bad person. Perhaps we differ in our beliefs on capital punishment.
They're so not the type to fall into drug and alcohol abuse, extramarital sex with arch foes, or excessive brutality in the line of police or army work. I could see Ron killing a foe in self defense, or in the heat of battle, or if there's no other way to stop something that's gonna take a lot of innocent lives, or the like. What a good cop or soldier might do. I can't see him being a rogue cop. Same with Kim, of course.
I agree. What I don’t agree with is that Ron is different in my story then what you explained. The people that he killed were planning on taking over countries and they were not planning on doing so without the loss of life. I also tried to convey that this was not the first time that these individuals had tried or done stuff like this. These were bad people who had killed countless others. There are people in this world that would feel that the only way to deal with these people would be to kill them, and Ron is the weapon that these people employ.
But why would he do this? He would do this to protect and keep happy the woman that he loves.
Note that I am not trying to say that this was the right thing to do. Personally, I think that would have been much better ways of handling the situation, but the better ways made worse stories and since my purpose was to tell a thought provoking and interesting story I did not choose for Ron to follow the better ways.
Thank you everyone who commented on this story. If time permits sometime I want to try starting on a continuation series. The series will be made up of “episodes” which will, as usual, escalate the drama and maturity of the storylines. Think similar to Cloud’s series with a darker current running through it. I am shooting for a
Farscape feel. Good love story, some humor, great relationships, but a definite sense of real danger and serious consequences. Think of this as being Cloud’s age and experience change coupled with a bit of real world malice thrown in, but not too much.
